I'd buy a million songs from myself as a PR stunt; while I was at it, I'd buy them as albums in order to make things look good to the music industry that I'm trying to woo.
Money can't buy everything, it's true, but it can buy a press release that may impress the idiots who run the music industry.
A million dollars a week is only 52 million dollars a year - that is CHUMP CHANGE. How much of that do you think went to the music industry? It's gonna take money, a whole lotta spendin' money, to make it worthwhile for the distribution oligopoly to embrace this.
In the original article - which shows no signs of slashdotting - we see: For example, the IEEE 1394 FireWire standard
While in the article posted to slashdot, we see: For example, the IEEE 1488 FireWire standard
Now, unless you believe that Adam retyped the entire article by hand, it is clear that he copied the article and then deliberately changed the 1394 to 1488.
He may be saying that he's saying that the firewire standard is fascist, like changing the S in MS to a $ (M$), rather than making a white power statement on his own part; I've read some of his other stuff and have not noticed white supremacist comments.
I assume that they thought it was Funny and then decided to upmod me as interesting; personally, I think a joke is funnier if you don't emblazon "ALERT: THIS IS A JOKE!" all over it.
As for the informative, this was information that J-Lo and Mrs. Ziyi NEED to have, so that they can explore their intense, phsyical love for one another - on camera.
Sure, the information may not be of much use to you, but that doesn't mean it's not informative.
We have begun to release a series of plugins that will expand the Brain's functionality to other major media players.
Analysis indicates that I am 99.9% likely to want to see ZhAng Ziyi in a plastic raincoat going down on Jennifer Lopez in ripped SCUBA gear (or the reverse, I'm not picky.) Now, if "the Brain" can FIND such porn for me instead of just making playlists, I might get some use out of it! Teach the damn thing to know when the women are fat and skanky so it won't download lousy porn, and I'll be sold.
Seriously: There is of course the question of our definition of self, and how it might evolve as computers become more sophisticated. The distinction between the self and the environment, when our nervous systems are physical processes influenced by and dependent on "external" factors, is fundamentally artificial.
When I use a hammer, a tool for doing physical work, it becomes like a part of me.
When I use a computer, a tool for doing intellectual work, should I regard it any differently?
The music I listen to has fundamental impact on my mood, on my posture, on my creativity and critical evaluation of ideas. If I am continuously communicating with my computer regarding my taste in music, and if my computer continuously responds by playing music, it becomes difficult to draw a meaningful distinction between my computer, which is a device, and my self, which does the thinking.
OH GOOD LORD I'M RUNNING WINDOWS XP! GET IT OUT OF MY BRAIN!
The Villain: Rodney Dangerfield Dr. Whastisname: Rowan Atkinson
Are you kidding, these two would be awesome!
Alita's butch boyfriend: Bronson Pinchot
The guy from perfect strangers? He's pretty annoying, but I still think baby Vader is worse. Actually, I got the wrong actor - I meant the little boy from Phantom Menace.
I agree. James Cameron is a manipulative, commercial whore, just like everyone else in hollywood, but at least he is good at it - the dark adventure of Aliens with the schmaltz of Titanic is a perfect fit for Battle Angel.
My only worry is bad casting. I challenge you to come up with worse casting:
The Villain (evil cyborg or mad scientist, it doesn't matter)
Kenneth Branagh
Dr. Whasname
Kevin Costner
Alita
Christina Aguilera*
Alita's Wimpy Boyfriend**
Leonardo DiCapprio
Alita's Butch Boyfriend***
Hayden Christensen
* Also to provide soundtrack ** The first one, who dies in the anime. *** The one from the manga with his own secret kung fu.
And even then, that wouldn't be so bad.... would it?
Actually, now that I've re-read the license, I see that it makes seperate provisos for most of the invariant sections I would expect to want to include; authors, acknowledgements and suchnot.
Nonetheless, the primary data in a methods paper is something I would wish to require be included in an invariant form; if you are going to modify the method and claim an improvement, you should be required to include the primary data generated by my method which you have altered. I'm sure there are other examples of sundry text that some author might wish to require.
As I understood it, the license allowed for invariant sections so that you can include "Originally written by..." at the top and then prevent anyone from changing it; I've always intended to distribute laboratory manuals under this license, and I can think of some other things I might want to make invariant, primary data for instance. In source, you might conceivably use such a clause to require someone to include a Trojan (or, gasp, an unfree supplementary component!), but since it is a document we're talking about, I do not see the problem. If I decide to make false or misleading text invariant, why use my document (or fork of a document) at all?
If I understand correctly, absolutely nothing prevents you from adding entire additional sections to the document - including, if necesarry, screaming tirades against sections you were forced to include.
Let me put it another way - I release the documentation for my software under this license. What invariant text could I possibly add that is genuinely going to interfere with someone's free speech?
You think this criticism comes from the left? Do you have any statements by liberal senators to back this up? Quoth the article:
Over the years, studies on cloning, abortion, animal rights, needle-exchange programs and various types of AIDS research have been criticized by members of Congress.
Now, I recall when these criticisms were delivered, and every one of them came from a republican.
Democrats may or may not have a politically correct deal about using euphemisms for homosexual acts. I don't see any evidence for this, however.
You can find a number of republicans, however, opposed to this sort of research on principle; they don't think it should be done at all. Given that the republicans control all three branches of government at this time, it is utterly facetious to blame "liberal democrats" for this recently emerging policy. Why don't you blame them for the excessive size of the tax cut, while you're at it?
How do you know that there is nothing we can do about AIDS in Africa? Most people with AIDS in Africa are not prostitutes - however, prostitution (which is ubiquitous) is how the disease is transmitted.
The research *under discussion* is substantially social - do you think that it's impossible to study social trends, find which *educational* techniques successfully promote lower risk behavior and translate that information to China or Africa? I assume that you did not mean to suggest that we should avoid such an effort because of the genetic background of Africans.
Your cost/benefit analysis is flawed. Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer; it does not follow that every single medical research dollar should be spent on it. You are mistaken about the ability of a scientist to productively switch research focus; even between what might seem to be related fields. Yes, we can have everyone, including me, work on heart disease research. People have been trying this for decades with cancer and it is NOT a good strategy.
The proposals discussed in the ORIGINAL ARTICLE are social in nature. They are VERY CHEAP, and can be quite effective. There is no way that a $25 million dollar search for anti-HIV compounds would mention who was gay!
Social studies are already being run and funded for most other diseases - sexually transmitted diseases are more complex, as social phenomena, than the flu, so studying their role in society is likely to be more productive, and more dollars should be spent. I'm all for maximising lives saved / $, but a lot more goes into that analysis than simply funding whichever disease kills the most people.
However, even the more expensive sort of HIV research ought to be done, if the research itself is good and will enable us to learn something. The quality of the science should be the controlling factor - because good science will teach us more about other disease conditions, down the road.
This is also true of the social research that was the focus of the *original article* - HIV is not the first sexually transmitted disease in human history, it won't be the last.
I don't think homosexuals, drug users and prostitutes form a single community, although of course there is considerable overlap here in NYC.
the simple fact is that AIDS will largely take care of itself if left alone.
Really? So, the infection rate among straight, non-drug using people who don't employ sex workers is going down? Oh, wait, it's not! It's going UP.
Even if it were not, I do not regard all these individuals death's as AIDS "take care of itself." Once they're dead, the problem becomes unsolvable, not solved. Saving their lives - that is taking care of AIDS. Do you see a crucial distinction between our assumptions here? In the future, we can screen embryos and no-one will ever have cystic vibrosis again. Ask someone who has it and see if they think the problem is taken care of.
I never mod anyone down but I can see how the moderator thought that was flamebait.
Sorry about my double post - it didn't show up for two hours so I posted again.
Science is not a "zero sum" game. Studies of HIV have revealed important information about the immune system, for example, which may be of help in combating antibiotic resistant bacteria, or autoimmune diseases.
I'm a biologist but I don't study diseases at all. Is the pure knowledge I gain worth nothing?
Tens of millions of people in Africa DO have aids. Hundreds of millions of people in China COULD get AIDS - if we study how it spreads, which is what most of the NIH grants that mention gay people are actually about, we might prevent that.
Finally, there are serious diminishing returns in science when you tell the researchers what to work on.
1) There are only so many genuinely promising heart disease research projects for the NIH to fund. The bill to fund these projects (recall that the pharmaceutical industry provides a lot of funding, as well) is actually quite small - what should the NIH do with the rest of the money? Throw it at heart disease research projects which are NOT promising?
2) You can't just take an AIDS researcher, who presumably has come up with what he feels is unique insight into fighting AIDS, and move him into heart disease. He might accomplish something, but chances are he would have accomplished more doing the work he felt he was qualified to do. There is no question in my mind that science driven primarily by institutional goals is lousy science, but that science driven by the personal creativity of the scientists is good science.
3) The NIH exists to fund research that the pharmaceutical industry will not. In the long run, the pure knowledge gained has shown itself worthwhile, I assure you.
The article is not about avoiding AIDS research in favor of heart disease research. It is about avoiding "politically charged" AIDS research - research into how AIDS spreads, by and large, which is preventative research and has the most significant impact per dollar spent - because of the politico-religious convictions of right wing zealots in congress who still think only gay people get AIDS.
Science is not a "zero sum" game. Studies of HIV have revealed important information about the immune system, for example, which may be of help in combating antibiotic resistant bacteria, or autoimmune diseases.
I'm a biologist but I don't study diseases at all. Is the pure knowledge I gain worth nothing?
Tens of millions of people in Africa DO have aids. Hundreds of millions of people in China COULD get AIDS - if we study how it spreads, which is what most of the NIH grants that mention gay people are actually about, we might prevent that.
Finally, there are serious diminishing returns in science when you tell the researchers what to work on.
1) There are only so many genuinely promising heart disease research projects for the NIH to fund. The bill to fund these projects (recall that the pharmaceutical industry provides a lot of funding, as well) is actually quite small - what should the NIH do with the rest of the money? Throw it at heart disease research projects which are NOT promising?
2) You can't just take an AIDS researcher, who presumably has come up with what he feels is unique insight into fighting AIDS, and move him into heart disease. He might accomplish something, but chances are he would have accomplished more doing the work he felt he was qualified to do. There is no question in my mind that science driven primarily by institutional goals is lousy science, but that science driven by the personal creativity of the scientists is good science.
3) The NIH exists to fund research that the pharmaceutical industry will not. In the long run, the pure knowledge gained has shown itself worthwhile, I assure you.
The article is not about avoiding AIDS research in favor of heart disease research. It is about avoiding "politically charged" AIDS research - research into how AIDS spreads, by and large, which is preventative research and has the highest yield per dollar spent - because of the politico-religious convictions of right wing zealots in congress who still think only gay people get AIDS.
Firstly, if you gruesomely eviscerate your victims for religious purposes (instead of just on a whim) you can be a religion. You need at least three accomplices, if I recall correctly, to serve as treasurer and suchnot. If they complain on "principled" grounds about your savage murders of children, point out the tax benefits this accrues for them. This tactic works best on MBAs.
Secondly, remember to keep the children alive in cages for months in your basement. This way, you can claim them as dependents. ALSO, your house becomes a business expense.
Finally, you'll want to sell a few "insurance policies" to small farmers*. I recommend collaborating with your local Mafia Don in this, since farmers generally don't want to buy insurance from serial killers, and since the Mafia can help with the fundamentally cash-poor nature of ritually murdering children lured over the internet, which is of course a fine and laudible goal but still lacks an effective "business model."
* This is an actual tax loophole. If your primary business is selling insurance policies to farmers, and you meet some other requirements, you don't have to pay federal taxes. Recently this loophole has been heavily abused, but I can't find the reference. Anyone?
Quit raining on our parade! You can only come to sensible conclusions on this complicated issue using a fact set derived from joke posts such as this:
Any data stream is a valid mp3. Therefore, the radio station should take the DRM app which has been burned onto the CD, change the file extension, and play it over the radio.
Insist that it includes subliminal messages which you could somehow hear while listening to songs with it. Fake an Austrian accent, announce that you're a psychiatrist, and say that for marketing purposes Vivendi has included a digital brainwashing application than makes people buy Creed CDs. This has been scientifically proven to rob people of their free will (because there are Creed fans.)
The fact that this hasn't happened yet shows us how the profession of disk jockey is deteriorating; they're almost as bad as journalists now.
Our taxdollars are going towards rocks, chisels, and paying convicts to actually carve our flight itinerarys into stone, when this could all be done automatically with computers.
That's what I love about information technology - the tremendous cost savings it provides in keeping the french-loving commie peaceniks of the country in check. Now - I want a list of everyone on the island of manhattan who mail ordered anything french since the start of hostilities.
*MY* unique, inspired, BRILLIANT april fool's day submission was rejected, and in order to make room for THIS?
Q. Isn't complaining about what the editors post offtopic and flamebait? A. No! WRONG.
Q. Isn't grousing about rejected submissions offtopic? A. DOUBLE WRONG.
Q. How about the moderation system? Complaining about that, surely is offtopic. A. TRIPLE WRONG.
Q. Wasn't my posting rascist, libelous and vile? Also, not funny? Weren't slashdot's editors correct to reject it? A. WRONG TO THE FOURTH POWER!
That's TEN TIMES that slashdot's editors have been wrong.
These ten mistakes are 100% likely under a model where the slashdot editors are ALWAYS WRONG. Meanwhile, under a model where they are merely mostly wrong, ten wrong answers in a row still only happens 3^10/4^10 = 5% of the time. THEREFORE, it is 95% likely that the slashdot editors are ALWAYS wrong; that is scientific certainty! SCIENCE says that slashdot editors are always wrong. This also proves that Rob Malda is a plagiarist neo-nazi pedophile.
Hollywood will bribe Congress into extending copyright laws forever. We used to own our culture. Now our culture owns us.
You forgot "in Soviet Russia."
I think your cynema cynicism is excyssive.
At the moment, our democracy has been totally subborned by moneyed interests. People make the argument that televised entertainment somehow alters the human condition so as to make this state of affairs sustainable.
Nonsense. The pendulum of political power will perturb the other way, sooner or later.
Also, who is to say that the entire structure of movie distribution will not change?
In the future, we could have arthouse movies, distributed over the internet about captured gorillas making arthouse movies, distributed over the interenet about captured gorillas (ad infinitum) made in someone's back yard, or in Tajikistan.
Neither the makers of King Kong nor of Adaptation could sue.
If present trends in corporate control over government continue, why shouldn't present trends in filesharing?
Speaking of which - if Peter Jackson wants to use my idea, feel free. If you're going to butcher a cinema classic, you should do it with gusto and spill the dramatic vicera of the original all over your audience. King Kong in space! With Islamic terrorists and Mecha King Kong! King Kong climbs those cool towers in the center of the (fully operational!) death star. Go nuts!
Did you glance at my sig before calling me a right wing christian?
I regard myself as intensely compassionate; I am a secular humanist and a libertarian socialist. If someone is delusional, they need help. Encouraging their delusion, especially if you profit from it, is not a compassionate act. Those doctors who maintain that MCS exists, and I can see this clearly because I have seen the primary data involved, are profiteering off of the mental illness of unfortunate individuals like the man who posted the original article.
When I see someone, even an unfortunate delusional person, promulgating their delusions on a public forum such as this, I think of the damage this can cause, on two fronts, and I become upset, which is entirely fitting.
The human cost is clear. This man's insanity is ruining his life for no good reason. This sort of posting encourages other sufferers to barricade themselves inside their houses instead of seeking psychiatric help.
The cost to the legitimate causes of environmental activism is indirect. Your immune system can be damaged by exposure to a number of environmental chemicals - most of these are chlorinated organics (PCBs being a prime example.) There is actual, indeed, extensive scientific evidence for this. However, unlike PCB poisoning, MCS is not scientifically validated. The more "mindshare" is given over to delusional diseases like MCS, the more ammunition is given over to those who are trying to subvert science to ignore actually existant threats like PCBs.
I realise that I may come across as a sophist, since many arguments similar in overall structure are proferred to justify horrendous acts of inhuman behavior, in an effort to conceal selfish motives. I point to the fact that I am a computational biologist who studies evolution and protein topology; I have no material interest in believing as I do. In fact, I could probably make good money developing "treatments" for MCS, as do those doctors who believe it is a disease with a physical basis.
The article poses the question: What Is Environmental Illness? It then goes off about Northern Exposure, which was a very funny television show, but is not a well established authority on immunological disorders.
Re:One of my favorite google easter eggs...
on
Playing with Google
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· Score: 1
goatse.cx appears on the search results.
What *also* appears on the search results is a link to a google groups node. That google groups node (distinct from the search results) contains no references to goatse.cx, except, as others have pointed out, for a slashdot article.
Re:One of my favorite google easter eggs...
on
Playing with Google
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The string goatse appears nowhere on the page; goatse.cx certainly isn't there. This was done with blogging, somehow? Does anyone know how that could possibly work? The closest thing I find is a.cx domain: http://lisatrust.freewinds.cx/
Evidently this is a mirror of something defunct, but it won't server pages to explorer and I can't be bothered to start mozilla.
Watson and Crick discovered the double helical structure of DNA; this reveals the method of genetic replication.
The genetic code, which is used to convert genetic information into actual proteins which do the physical work of life, was not discovered until quite a few years later. Crick made a number of important contributions to the discovery of the genetic code, but he isn't credited with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd buy a million songs from myself as a PR stunt; while I was at it, I'd buy them as albums in order to make things look good to the music industry that I'm trying to woo.
Money can't buy everything, it's true, but it can buy a press release that may impress the idiots who run the music industry.
A million dollars a week is only 52 million dollars a year - that is CHUMP CHANGE. How much of that do you think went to the music industry? It's gonna take money, a whole lotta spendin' money, to make it worthwhile for the distribution oligopoly to embrace this.
In the original article - which shows no signs of slashdotting - we see:
For example, the IEEE 1394 FireWire standard
While in the article posted to slashdot, we see:
For example, the IEEE 1488 FireWire standard
Now, unless you believe that Adam retyped the entire article by hand, it is clear that he copied the article and then deliberately changed the 1394 to 1488.
He may be saying that he's saying that the firewire standard is fascist, like changing the S in MS to a $ (M$), rather than making a white power statement on his own part; I've read some of his other stuff and have not noticed white supremacist comments.
I assume that they thought it was Funny and then decided to upmod me as interesting; personally, I think a joke is funnier if you don't emblazon "ALERT: THIS IS A JOKE!" all over it.
As for the informative, this was information that J-Lo and Mrs. Ziyi NEED to have, so that they can explore their intense, phsyical love for one another - on camera.
Sure, the information may not be of much use to you, but that doesn't mean it's not informative.
We have begun to release a series of plugins that will expand the Brain's functionality to other major media players.
Analysis indicates that I am 99.9% likely to want to see ZhAng Ziyi in a plastic raincoat going down on Jennifer Lopez in ripped SCUBA gear (or the reverse, I'm not picky.) Now, if "the Brain" can FIND such porn for me instead of just making playlists, I might get some use out of it! Teach the damn thing to know when the women are fat and skanky so it won't download lousy porn, and I'll be sold.
Seriously:
There is of course the question of our definition of self, and how it might evolve as computers become more sophisticated. The distinction between the self and the environment, when our nervous systems are physical processes influenced by and dependent on "external" factors, is fundamentally artificial.
When I use a hammer, a tool for doing physical work, it becomes like a part of me.
When I use a computer, a tool for doing intellectual work, should I regard it any differently?
The music I listen to has fundamental impact on my mood, on my posture, on my creativity and critical evaluation of ideas. If I am continuously communicating with my computer regarding my taste in music, and if my computer continuously responds by playing music, it becomes difficult to draw a meaningful distinction between my computer, which is a device, and my self, which does the thinking.
OH GOOD LORD I'M RUNNING WINDOWS XP! GET IT OUT OF MY BRAIN!
ka-blowie!
NO CARRIER
The Villain: Rodney Dangerfield
Dr. Whastisname: Rowan Atkinson
Are you kidding, these two would be awesome!
Alita's butch boyfriend: Bronson Pinchot
The guy from perfect strangers? He's pretty annoying, but I still think baby Vader is worse. Actually, I got the wrong actor - I meant the little boy from Phantom Menace.
As for the rest, you're just being silly.
My only worry is bad casting. I challenge you to come up with worse casting:
The Villain (evil cyborg or mad scientist, it doesn't matter)
Kenneth Branagh
Dr. Whasname
Kevin Costner
Alita
Christina Aguilera*
Alita's Wimpy Boyfriend**
Leonardo DiCapprio
Alita's Butch Boyfriend***
Hayden Christensen
* Also to provide soundtrack
** The first one, who dies in the anime.
*** The one from the manga with his own secret kung fu.
And even then, that wouldn't be so bad.... would it?
Actually, now that I've re-read the license, I see that it makes seperate provisos for most of the invariant sections I would expect to want to include; authors, acknowledgements and suchnot.
Nonetheless, the primary data in a methods paper is something I would wish to require be included in an invariant form; if you are going to modify the method and claim an improvement, you should be required to include the primary data generated by my method which you have altered. I'm sure there are other examples of sundry text that some author might wish to require.
As I understood it, the license allowed for invariant sections so that you can include "Originally written by..." at the top and then prevent anyone from changing it; I've always intended to distribute laboratory manuals under this license, and I can think of some other things I might want to make invariant, primary data for instance. In source, you might conceivably use such a clause to require someone to include a Trojan (or, gasp, an unfree supplementary component!), but since it is a document we're talking about, I do not see the problem. If I decide to make false or misleading text invariant, why use my document (or fork of a document) at all?
If I understand correctly, absolutely nothing prevents you from adding entire additional sections to the document - including, if necesarry, screaming tirades against sections you were forced to include.
Let me put it another way - I release the documentation for my software under this license. What invariant text could I possibly add that is genuinely going to interfere with someone's free speech?
You think this criticism comes from the left? Do you have any statements by liberal senators to back this up? Quoth the article:
Over the years, studies on cloning, abortion, animal rights, needle-exchange programs and various types of AIDS research have been criticized by members of Congress.
Now, I recall when these criticisms were delivered, and every one of them came from a republican.
Democrats may or may not have a politically correct deal about using euphemisms for homosexual acts. I don't see any evidence for this, however.
You can find a number of republicans, however, opposed to this sort of research on principle; they don't think it should be done at all. Given that the republicans control all three branches of government at this time, it is utterly facetious to blame "liberal democrats" for this recently emerging policy. Why don't you blame them for the excessive size of the tax cut, while you're at it?
How do you know that there is nothing we can do about AIDS in Africa? Most people with AIDS in Africa are not prostitutes - however, prostitution (which is ubiquitous) is how the disease is transmitted.
The research *under discussion* is substantially social - do you think that it's impossible to study social trends, find which *educational* techniques successfully promote lower risk behavior and translate that information to China or Africa? I assume that you did not mean to suggest that we should avoid such an effort because of the genetic background of Africans.
Your cost/benefit analysis is flawed. Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer; it does not follow that every single medical research dollar should be spent on it. You are mistaken about the ability of a scientist to productively switch research focus; even between what might seem to be related fields. Yes, we can have everyone, including me, work on heart disease research. People have been trying this for decades with cancer and it is NOT a good strategy.
The proposals discussed in the ORIGINAL ARTICLE are social in nature. They are VERY CHEAP, and can be quite effective. There is no way that a $25 million dollar search for anti-HIV compounds would mention who was gay!
Social studies are already being run and funded for most other diseases - sexually transmitted diseases are more complex, as social phenomena, than the flu, so studying their role in society is likely to be more productive, and more dollars should be spent. I'm all for maximising lives saved / $, but a lot more goes into that analysis than simply funding whichever disease kills the most people.
However, even the more expensive sort of HIV research ought to be done, if the research itself is good and will enable us to learn something. The quality of the science should be the controlling factor - because good science will teach us more about other disease conditions, down the road.
This is also true of the social research that was the focus of the *original article* - HIV is not the first sexually transmitted disease in human history, it won't be the last.
I don't think homosexuals, drug users and prostitutes form a single community, although of course there is considerable overlap here in NYC.
the simple fact is that AIDS will largely take care of itself if left alone.
Really? So, the infection rate among straight, non-drug using people who don't employ sex workers is going down? Oh, wait, it's not! It's going UP.
Even if it were not, I do not regard all these individuals death's as AIDS "take care of itself." Once they're dead, the problem becomes unsolvable, not solved. Saving their lives - that is taking care of AIDS. Do you see a crucial distinction between our assumptions here? In the future, we can screen embryos and no-one will ever have cystic vibrosis again. Ask someone who has it and see if they think the problem is taken care of.
I never mod anyone down but I can see how the moderator thought that was flamebait.
Sorry about my double post - it didn't show up for two hours so I posted again.
Are you in research, anonymous? I am.
Science is not a "zero sum" game. Studies of HIV have revealed important information about the immune system, for example, which may be of help in combating antibiotic resistant bacteria, or autoimmune diseases.
I'm a biologist but I don't study diseases at all. Is the pure knowledge I gain worth nothing?
Tens of millions of people in Africa DO have aids. Hundreds of millions of people in China COULD get AIDS - if we study how it spreads, which is what most of the NIH grants that mention gay people are actually about, we might prevent that.
Finally, there are serious diminishing returns in science when you tell the researchers what to work on.
1) There are only so many genuinely promising heart disease research projects for the NIH to fund. The bill to fund these projects (recall that the pharmaceutical industry provides a lot of funding, as well) is actually quite small - what should the NIH do with the rest of the money? Throw it at heart disease research projects which are NOT promising?
2) You can't just take an AIDS researcher, who presumably has come up with what he feels is unique insight into fighting AIDS, and move him into heart disease. He might accomplish something, but chances are he would have accomplished more doing the work he felt he was qualified to do. There is no question in my mind that science driven primarily by institutional goals is lousy science, but that science driven by the personal creativity of the scientists is good science.
3) The NIH exists to fund research that the pharmaceutical industry will not. In the long run, the pure knowledge gained has shown itself worthwhile, I assure you.
The article is not about avoiding AIDS research in favor of heart disease research. It is about avoiding "politically charged" AIDS research - research into how AIDS spreads, by and large, which is preventative research and has the most significant impact per dollar spent - because of the politico-religious convictions of right wing zealots in congress who still think only gay people get AIDS.
Are you in research, anonymous? I am.
Science is not a "zero sum" game. Studies of HIV have revealed important information about the immune system, for example, which may be of help in combating antibiotic resistant bacteria, or autoimmune diseases.
I'm a biologist but I don't study diseases at all. Is the pure knowledge I gain worth nothing?
Tens of millions of people in Africa DO have aids. Hundreds of millions of people in China COULD get AIDS - if we study how it spreads, which is what most of the NIH grants that mention gay people are actually about, we might prevent that.
Finally, there are serious diminishing returns in science when you tell the researchers what to work on.
1) There are only so many genuinely promising heart disease research projects for the NIH to fund. The bill to fund these projects (recall that the pharmaceutical industry provides a lot of funding, as well) is actually quite small - what should the NIH do with the rest of the money? Throw it at heart disease research projects which are NOT promising?
2) You can't just take an AIDS researcher, who presumably has come up with what he feels is unique insight into fighting AIDS, and move him into heart disease. He might accomplish something, but chances are he would have accomplished more doing the work he felt he was qualified to do. There is no question in my mind that science driven primarily by institutional goals is lousy science, but that science driven by the personal creativity of the scientists is good science.
3) The NIH exists to fund research that the pharmaceutical industry will not. In the long run, the pure knowledge gained has shown itself worthwhile, I assure you.
The article is not about avoiding AIDS research in favor of heart disease research. It is about avoiding "politically charged" AIDS research - research into how AIDS spreads, by and large, which is preventative research and has the highest yield per dollar spent - because of the politico-religious convictions of right wing zealots in congress who still think only gay people get AIDS.
Firstly, if you gruesomely eviscerate your victims for religious purposes (instead of just on a whim) you can be a religion. You need at least three accomplices, if I recall correctly, to serve as treasurer and suchnot. If they complain on "principled" grounds about your savage murders of children, point out the tax benefits this accrues for them. This tactic works best on MBAs.
Secondly, remember to keep the children alive in cages for months in your basement. This way, you can claim them as dependents. ALSO, your house becomes a business expense.
Finally, you'll want to sell a few "insurance policies" to small farmers*. I recommend collaborating with your local Mafia Don in this, since farmers generally don't want to buy insurance from serial killers, and since the Mafia can help with the fundamentally cash-poor nature of ritually murdering children lured over the internet, which is of course a fine and laudible goal but still lacks an effective "business model."
* This is an actual tax loophole. If your primary business is selling insurance policies to farmers, and you meet some other requirements, you don't have to pay federal taxes. Recently this loophole has been heavily abused, but I can't find the reference. Anyone?
The above was *written* by Richard M Stallman. It's in that book the FSF sends you when you join.
Quit raining on our parade! You can only come to sensible conclusions on this complicated issue using a fact set derived from joke posts such as this:
Any data stream is a valid mp3. Therefore, the radio station should take the DRM app which has been burned onto the CD, change the file extension, and play it over the radio.
Insist that it includes subliminal messages which you could somehow hear while listening to songs with it. Fake an Austrian accent, announce that you're a psychiatrist, and say that for marketing purposes Vivendi has included a digital brainwashing application than makes people buy Creed CDs. This has been scientifically proven to rob people of their free will (because there are Creed fans.)
The fact that this hasn't happened yet shows us how the profession of disk jockey is deteriorating; they're almost as bad as journalists now.
Our taxdollars are going towards rocks, chisels, and paying convicts to actually carve our flight itinerarys into stone, when this could all be done automatically with computers.
That's what I love about information technology - the tremendous cost savings it provides in keeping the french-loving commie peaceniks of the country in check. Now - I want a list of everyone on the island of manhattan who mail ordered anything french since the start of hostilities.
*MY* unique, inspired, BRILLIANT april fool's day submission was rejected, and in order to make room for THIS?
Q. Isn't complaining about what the editors post offtopic and flamebait?
A. No! WRONG.
Q. Isn't grousing about rejected submissions offtopic?
A. DOUBLE WRONG.
Q. How about the moderation system? Complaining about that, surely is offtopic.
A. TRIPLE WRONG.
Q. Wasn't my posting rascist, libelous and vile? Also, not funny? Weren't slashdot's editors correct to reject it?
A. WRONG TO THE FOURTH POWER!
That's TEN TIMES that slashdot's editors have been wrong.
These ten mistakes are 100% likely under a model where the slashdot editors are ALWAYS WRONG. Meanwhile, under a model where they are merely mostly wrong, ten wrong answers in a row still only happens 3^10/4^10 = 5% of the time. THEREFORE, it is 95% likely that the slashdot editors are ALWAYS wrong; that is scientific certainty! SCIENCE says that slashdot editors are always wrong. This also proves that Rob Malda is a plagiarist neo-nazi pedophile.
You forgot "in Soviet Russia."
I think your cynema cynicism is excyssive.
At the moment, our democracy has been totally subborned by moneyed interests. People make the argument that televised entertainment somehow alters the human condition so as to make this state of affairs sustainable.
Nonsense. The pendulum of political power will perturb the other way, sooner or later.
Also, who is to say that the entire structure of movie distribution will not change?
In the future, we could have arthouse movies, distributed over the internet about captured gorillas making arthouse movies, distributed over the interenet about captured gorillas (ad infinitum) made in someone's back yard, or in Tajikistan.
Neither the makers of King Kong nor of Adaptation could sue.
If present trends in corporate control over government continue, why shouldn't present trends in filesharing?
Speaking of which - if Peter Jackson wants to use my idea, feel free. If you're going to butcher a cinema classic, you should do it with gusto and spill the dramatic vicera of the original all over your audience. King Kong in space! With Islamic terrorists and Mecha King Kong! King Kong climbs those cool towers in the center of the (fully operational!) death star. Go nuts!
Did you glance at my sig before calling me a right wing christian?
I regard myself as intensely compassionate; I am a secular humanist and a libertarian socialist. If someone is delusional, they need help. Encouraging their delusion, especially if you profit from it, is not a compassionate act. Those doctors who maintain that MCS exists, and I can see this clearly because I have seen the primary data involved, are profiteering off of the mental illness of unfortunate individuals like the man who posted the original article.
When I see someone, even an unfortunate delusional person, promulgating their delusions on a public forum such as this, I think of the damage this can cause, on two fronts, and I become upset, which is entirely fitting.
The human cost is clear. This man's insanity is ruining his life for no good reason. This sort of posting encourages other sufferers to barricade themselves inside their houses instead of seeking psychiatric help.
The cost to the legitimate causes of environmental activism is indirect. Your immune system can be damaged by exposure to a number of environmental chemicals - most of these are chlorinated organics (PCBs being a prime example.) There is actual, indeed, extensive scientific evidence for this. However, unlike PCB poisoning, MCS is not scientifically validated. The more "mindshare" is given over to delusional diseases like MCS, the more ammunition is given over to those who are trying to subvert science to ignore actually existant threats like PCBs.
I realise that I may come across as a sophist, since many arguments similar in overall structure are proferred to justify horrendous acts of inhuman behavior, in an effort to conceal selfish motives. I point to the fact that I am a computational biologist who studies evolution and protein topology; I have no material interest in believing as I do. In fact, I could probably make good money developing "treatments" for MCS, as do those doctors who believe it is a disease with a physical basis.
The article poses the question: What Is Environmental Illness? It then goes off about Northern Exposure, which was a very funny television show, but is not a well established authority on immunological disorders.
It's a psychosomatic condition. Get a subscription for paxil and go the fuck outside.
goatse.cx appears on the search results.
What *also* appears on the search results is a link to a google groups node. That google groups node (distinct from the search results) contains no references to goatse.cx, except, as others have pointed out, for a slashdot article.
What's really weird is that when you search for "goatse", you get a pointer to the anti-scientology subtree of google groups.
.cx domain: http://lisatrust.freewinds.cx/
The string goatse appears nowhere on the page; goatse.cx certainly isn't there. This was done with blogging, somehow? Does anyone know how that could possibly work? The closest thing I find is a
Evidently this is a mirror of something defunct, but it won't server pages to explorer and I can't be bothered to start mozilla.
You forgot to mention that they have to have oil.
And since none of the spam-source countries have... oh, yes, Nigeria. Those spammers are in meteial breach, boys. Let's roll.
Seat 23C spends $250 a month on burritos! Look at the SIZE of him! Sweet Jesus, he's GASSY! EVACUATE THE PLANE!
He's fallen asleep, of course, so they send hostage negotiators on to try and get the people in 23A and 23B off the plane alive.
Watson and Crick discovered the double helical structure of DNA; this reveals the method of genetic replication.
The genetic code, which is used to convert genetic information into actual proteins which do the physical work of life, was not discovered until quite a few years later. Crick made a number of important contributions to the discovery of the genetic code, but he isn't credited with it.
Here's a writeup on the history of efforts to decipher the genetic code.