This isn't news -- this is just Craig Venter (who despite his doctorate, is more a businessman than a scientist) chatting to the press. Craig absolutely loves seeing his image and words in print, and the press for its part is convinced that Venter is some sort of ubergenius and prints every word. The fact that there must be a minimum set of genes for life (and deriving a good set from highly degerate species like like Mycoplasmas) is not exactly an astounding realization and has been made before by many more qualified people than Craig, although they didn't run off to the BBC with it.
However, the claim that we are "at the verge of creating life" is about as meaningful as similar claims that we are at the verge of colonizing Mars or having real artifical intelligence. There are zillions of practical problems that need to be solved, and many of them seem quite intractable at present.
Well, Pokemon isn't the work of the devil or anything, but the whole craze just exists to sell cards and toys. "Toy Story" (including 2) is cool because it is *about* the hype and commercialism in the toy industry. Of course, since there are indeed licensed "Toy Story" toys the lesson is made somewhat murkier...
Consider: the outcome of a true scientific experiment either supports or rejects a hypothesis. Granted, the hypothesis that intelligent alien life exists would be supported if a signal believed to be of alien origin is found by S@H, but what does it mean if no such signal is detected? That the existence of intelligent alien life has been rejected? Surely not.
...but they are hardly the only people producing free e-texts. Yes, I remember that in the pre-Web era their ftp site was about the only place on the net for e-texts, but as the existence of huge archive sites like The Online Books page show, PG is just one group among many similar groups these days.
I posted this article on my office door this morning after reading the article last night-- a nice touch was the comment that blue green algae are actually cyanobacteria and not algae at all -- a true statement but one which microbiologists *always* bring up whenever blue-green algae are mentioned in any context, even if it contributes nothing to the discussion at hand.
Isn't the "there are things Man was not meant to know" spiel getting just a wee bit old? They said it about electricity for crying out loud...
Re:And the "Most Popular Art Award" goes to...
on
Focus Group Art
·
· Score: 1
>Art is by no means a tool to make the majority happy, content or pleased [...]
Of course it isn't. Art only has to make one person content or pleased -- the buyer! And one popular genre of art is "modern ugly", because the buyer can feel smug and hip for owning such a great piece of art that lesser mortals can't grok.
Re:The idea is not art by focus groups
on
Focus Group Art
·
· Score: 1
Actually, modern art is more democratic than at any time in history. Da vinci needed years of training in painting and anatomy in addition to his inherent talent to paint his pictures because in his unenlightened patriarchal society the people demanded pictures that actually looked like something they couldn't make themselves. Now, these unfair barriers of talent and knowledge have been removed. Thank goodness!
The difference is that in China it was a deliberate action of the government ordering professional warriors to attack the students. In Kent State a couple of "weekend warrior" National Guardsmen who were only there to prevent riots panicked and opened fire -- nobody ordered them to. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter.
It used to be the "Java" coffee cup, but CmdrTaco and friends recieved threatening e-mail from Sun, so they replaced it with a not particularly well drawn coffee cup of their own months ago.
Disclaimer: I'm technically a co-author on one of Venter's papers (yeah, who isn't these days with 50-author genome papers), although I've never met him in person.
Venter was head of TIGR, and all of TIGR's sequenced genomes are freely available (see http://www.tigr.org), so I really doubt Venter would stop scientific access to any of the human genome, but commercial use I'm sure will be a different matter. The issue isn't about whether Venter will hide the data from the scientific community but whether other companies will be able to use the data without paying huge fees.
Everybody has a fair shot in the US and Canada, too. Really, going to an expensive private college is more of a snob thing than anything else. Only a few private universities (MIT, Stanford, and Caltech) are anything special. Indeed, the majority of private universities are considerably worse than public universities in science and technology related subjects.
That's a very strange argument. What is "dying out naturally"? It's like when people say their grandparents died of "old age". Nothing happens without a cause.
I'm an American (Usonano) living in Canada and I just can't believe the number of Tim Hortons shops. Four! Count 'em -- four! within easy walking distance of my apartment. There's even one in the building where I work!
Yes, the women were supposed be to Celtic holdouts from the evil Anglo-Saxon culture. A small problem: Celtic culture wasn't in any way feminist either. The culture that the women seem to belong to in Avalon is more akin to modern feelgood Druidic cults than any historical Celtic culture.
I'm not against redefining genres -- my gripe with Avalon is that it is set in medieval England and it is simply a fact that women in that time and place had no rights whatsoever. So, when a book set in medieval England has women characters basically identical to 20th century feminists, it is just silly. There were historically matriarchal societies, and fantasy writers can of course create their own fictional societies, but I don't see the point of writing a novel in a historical setting and ignoring the true values of the people of that time. Medieval people were racist and sexist. Deal with it.
Er, the point of Scientific American is to be for non-scientists. It isn't a journal and doesn't try to be. Personally, of the "science for the masses" magazines, I think the British New Scientist is the best written.
Of course Teller wasn't Dr. Strangelove. Strangelove was a parody of a combination of Werner von Braun (the ex-Nazi missile designer) and John von Neumann, who besides being one of the fathers of modern computers, was a rabid anti-Communist who believed that nuclear war was not only inevitable but winnable for the nation doing the first strike.
Have you actually read Knuth's book? One doesn't have to be religious to do Bible commentary. Heck, the very non-religious Isaac Asimov was probably this century's best Bible scholar. The Bible is an important book in Western Civ, for better or worse, just as Confucian and Daoist texts are important in Chinese Civ.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't news -- this is just Craig Venter (who despite his doctorate, is more a businessman than a scientist) chatting to the press. Craig absolutely loves seeing his image and words in print, and the press for its part is convinced that Venter is some sort of ubergenius and prints every word. The fact that there must be a minimum set of genes for life (and deriving a good set from highly degerate species like like Mycoplasmas) is not exactly an astounding realization and has been made before by many more qualified people than Craig, although they didn't run off to the BBC with it.
However, the claim that we are "at the verge of creating life" is about as meaningful as similar claims that we are at the verge of colonizing Mars or having real artifical intelligence. There are zillions of practical problems that need to be solved, and many of them seem quite intractable at present.
Well, Pokemon isn't the work of the devil or anything, but the whole craze just exists to sell cards and toys. "Toy Story" (including 2) is cool because it is *about* the hype and commercialism in the toy industry. Of course, since there are indeed licensed "Toy Story" toys the lesson is made somewhat murkier...
Consider: the outcome of a true scientific experiment either supports or rejects a hypothesis. Granted, the hypothesis that intelligent alien life exists would be supported if a signal believed to be of alien origin is found by S@H, but what does it mean if no such signal is detected? That the existence of intelligent alien life has been rejected? Surely not.
...but they are hardly the only people producing free e-texts. Yes, I remember that in the pre-Web era their ftp site was about the only place on the net for e-texts, but as the existence of huge archive sites like The Online Books page show, PG is just one group among many similar groups these days.
I posted this article on my office door this morning after reading the article last night-- a nice touch was the comment that blue green algae are actually cyanobacteria and not algae at all -- a true statement but one which microbiologists *always* bring up whenever blue-green algae are mentioned in any context, even if it contributes nothing to the discussion at hand.
Isn't the "there are things Man was not meant to know" spiel getting just a wee bit old? They said it about electricity for crying out loud...
>Art is by no means a tool to make the majority happy, content or pleased [...]
Of course it isn't. Art only has to make one person content or pleased -- the buyer! And one popular genre of art is "modern ugly", because the buyer can feel smug and hip for owning such a great piece of art that lesser mortals can't grok.
Actually, modern art is more democratic than at any time in history. Da vinci needed years of training in painting and anatomy in addition to his inherent talent to paint his pictures because in his unenlightened patriarchal society the people demanded pictures that actually looked like something they couldn't make themselves. Now, these unfair barriers of talent and knowledge have been removed. Thank goodness!
The difference is that in China it was a deliberate action of the government ordering professional warriors to attack the students. In Kent State a couple of "weekend warrior" National Guardsmen who were only there to prevent riots panicked and opened fire -- nobody ordered them to. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter.
It used to be the "Java" coffee cup, but CmdrTaco and friends recieved threatening e-mail from Sun, so they replaced it with a not particularly well drawn coffee cup of their own months ago.
...stupid, maybe, but innovative...
>And Linux software is generally buggier. Don't >deny it
Maybe. But Linux doesn't generally crash when a program segfaults.
In order for it to be a buggy OS, one must first consider it an OS.
Disclaimer: I'm technically a co-author on one of Venter's papers (yeah, who isn't these days with 50-author genome papers), although I've never met him in person.
Venter was head of TIGR, and all of TIGR's sequenced genomes are freely available (see http://www.tigr.org), so I really doubt Venter would stop scientific access to any of the human genome, but commercial use I'm sure will be a different matter. The issue isn't about whether Venter will hide the data from the scientific community but whether other companies will be able to use the data without paying huge fees.
Everybody has a fair shot in the US and Canada, too. Really, going to an expensive private college is more of a snob thing than anything else. Only a few private universities (MIT, Stanford, and Caltech) are anything special. Indeed, the majority of private universities are considerably worse than public universities in science and technology related subjects.
It's the same in all sciences (For example, genetic enginering can't do anything nature hasn't been doing either)
It's sort of flattering that some journalists think scientists have god-like powers, but it just ain't so.
I dunno. I'm doing a postdoc at Waterloo, and NT sure seems more common here than it did in Illinois, where it was basically non-existant.
That's a very strange argument. What is "dying out naturally"? It's like when people say their grandparents died of "old age". Nothing happens without a cause.
I'm an American (Usonano) living in Canada and I just can't believe the number of Tim Hortons shops. Four! Count 'em -- four! within easy walking distance of my apartment. There's even one in the building where I work!
In Emacs, that is. Citzens, it is in the name of Equality, Fraternity, and Liberty that I inform you that today is:
Décade I, Decadi de Vendémiaire de l'Année 208 de la Révolution!
Yes, the women were supposed be to Celtic holdouts from the evil Anglo-Saxon culture. A small problem: Celtic culture wasn't in any way feminist either. The culture that the women seem to belong to in Avalon is more akin to modern feelgood Druidic cults than any historical Celtic culture.
I'm not against redefining genres -- my gripe with Avalon is that it is set in medieval England and it is simply a fact that women in that time and place had no rights whatsoever. So, when a book set in medieval England has women characters basically identical to 20th century feminists, it is just silly. There were historically matriarchal societies, and fantasy writers can of course create their own fictional societies, but I don't see the point of writing a novel in a historical setting and ignoring the true values of the people of that time. Medieval people were racist and sexist. Deal with it.
Er, the point of Scientific American is to be for non-scientists. It isn't a journal and doesn't try to be. Personally, of the "science for the masses" magazines, I think the British New Scientist is the best written.
Of course Teller wasn't Dr. Strangelove. Strangelove was a parody of a combination of Werner von Braun (the ex-Nazi missile designer) and John von Neumann, who besides being one of the fathers of modern computers, was a rabid anti-Communist who believed that nuclear war was not only inevitable but winnable for the nation doing the first strike.
Have you actually read Knuth's book? One doesn't have to be religious to do Bible commentary. Heck, the very non-religious Isaac Asimov was probably this century's best Bible scholar. The Bible is an important book in Western Civ, for better or worse, just as Confucian and Daoist texts are important in Chinese Civ.