DNA is the book of life. It's also the book of death.
Hard science journalism at it's best. Sheesh.
This, I'm told, is the first time a healthy human has ever been screened for the full gamut of genetic-disease markers.
Yeah, RIGHT. Imagine that lab meeting: Guys, I have a plan, we've never done this before, so lets invite in a journalist and see if we can humiliate ourselves.
Braun, 46, is both jovial and German.
Yes, Homer, Germany is the land of chocolate.
These disease-causing SNPs are fueling a biotech bonanza; the hope is that after finding them, the discoverers can design wonder drugs.
The hope of many of these bottom feeders is that they can identify an SNP and exert some intellectual property over it to horn in on whomever actually can find a treatment. Anyone want me to deliver another manifesto on the evil of this approach?
Alright - let's talk genetic diversity. As Braun explains it, somewhere in the past, an isolated human community lived in an area where the food was poor in iron. Those who developed a mutation that stores high levels of iron survived, and those who didn't became anemic and died, failing to reproduce.
Good point! This is reason number one NOT to reduce the genetic diversity of the human race. All of these alleles floating around the population - which may become increasingly rare as there is selective pressure against them, and may even cause considerable suffering or death to some of those who carry them - should not be removed from our collective gene pool, at least not without considerable discussion. Why? Because WE MAY NEED THEM. A monoculture (were all organisms have the same genes) is not sustainable in a biological sense.
This is also one of the great tragedies of our times - sub-saharan africa contains only a fraction of the human population, but it contains over a third (depending on how you measure it) of human genetic diversity. The region of the world being devastated by AIDS may contain any number of alleles which our decsendents may need in the population in order to face the challenges of the future, whatever they may be.
"Ja, that's my favorite," says Braun, himself a smoker. "I wonder what Philip Morris would pay for that."
Note that this gene doesn't make it safe to smoke - smoking still causes heart disease and so forth in these people. Still, a treatment to clone this gene into your lungs could make billions, no (clone as in move DNA around)?
These genetic modification treatments may not be such a good idea, either. You all remember in 1999 when a research subject at Penn died from a liver treatment (search for "liver")? The upshot is - anything that delivers genes into a person can, and sooner or later will, go out of control and do things you don't expect. Killing the subject is the most likely, but frankly least frightening, of these possibilities. The real threat - and my colleagues in biotech like to play this down but I am not at all convinced by their arguments - is that vectors for DNA delivery into humans could go wild and become contagious.
Of course, I'm opposed to animal organ transplantation for fear of introducing new human pathogens, so maybe I'm just a naysayer.
Now, now, don't be mean. Let me list other things you shouldn't do:
Point out that the original poster is lazy, or a moron, or functionally illiterate, or a karma whore.
Complain about the moderation system by posting sarcastic responses like: I'm lost. Where am I? What is the article about? Where do I click my mouse, in order to read it? Someone come over to my house and read it to me. I expect a new category (score: 6) to be introduced, my ignorance is so praiseworthy.
Also! Never point out that you're karma capped. It's offtopic.
we'll have the bandwidth and storage to make it unnecessary
That's like saying mp3s are unnecessary if you have broadband.
Yes, I'm perfectly capable of downloading (and storing) most of the songs I want as.wav files. However, I still get them as mp3s, because a tenth as long is a tenth as long.
Also, if we're talking p2p distribution, the bandwidth hog has an UNLIMITED appetite. If movies are a tenth as big you can get ten times as many.
John Lennon and Janis Joplin are "happy" that a new generation is listening to their music
Nice choice of examples.
There are many musicians that have expressed this sentiment, and not via Ouija board. I'm sure that John Lennon and Jani Joplin WOULD be happy to have their music swapped on people's computers, but lets not attribute to the dead what they never ever said.
I want to see "They Live" relreased in digital format.
No, subliminal messages don't work, but you could still print messages on the screen (invisible to the naked eye) using this system, and then only people trying to pirate the movie with a camcorder would be treated to the messages like:
OBEY
NO ALIENS LIVE AMONG US
and so on. Then, they turn themselves in when they reveal the subliminal messages to the press! Pure genius. Alternatively, you could sell sunglasses that let you read the subliminal messages (they'd have digital camcorders built in with displays on the inside of the glasses,) AND let you see that hilarry rosen is really an alien.
Is already known to dwell somewhere near the star Fomalhaut. No, not the oscilloscope for your mp3 player; an unspeakable great old one who gibbers and meeps unspeakably beyond the dimensions we know.
Now that we have located intelligent life, all we need to do is contact it (which, under the new rules, will cost us a permanent wisdom point.)
If he died on the toilet it was probably a heart attack - if you have a weak heart, constapation can kill you; stimulant drugs are also a possibility.
Sudden death syndrome maybe, although I don't think they ever diagnose that it anyone unhealthy/obese, if he was, though there is a teat for it.
Until recently (barring drug overdose, genetic or developmental abnormalities) 26 year olds did not have heart attacks. So, looking into my crystal ball, this will be used as ammunition for the argument that videogames reduce your level of physical activity, and are somehow responsible for the recent rise in cardiovascular disease among the very young - I can't find the ref. on google, can anyone else?
If you want to avoid having heart attacks: 1) Get exercise. This is NOT the same as don't game, and I myself utterly reject the notion that videogames are somehow responsible for droping levels of physical activity. 2) Try not to be angry all the time. I know this can be difficult if you are a member of an oppressed minority group or work in tech support. Depression and overuse of simulants = also bad.
Yes, but not in the way you think. We can use apoptosis to kill harmful cells, like cancer cells. This is a "natural purpose" of apoptosis, and drugs are under development to "encourage" cancer cells (and virally infected cells) to die by this mechanism.
The theory that apoptosis plays a central role in human aging is part-and-parcel of the "free radical" theory of aging, which I think is bullshit.
The basic idea is that reactive oxygen species - these are chemicals that want to take electrons away from biological molecules and can do in such a fashion that the biological molecule is damaged - damage your mitochondria in such a fashion that the mitochondria signal the cell to die. This definitely CAN happen - however, I don't believe that it actually does, or that any of the pathologies we observe in human aging actually depend on this pathway. Btw, I'm a bioinformatician (grad student); when I worked with my Dad, I studied oxidative stress - he still does but he does not think it plays a role in normal aging. Certain conditions - being a chain smoker, being on hemodialysis, whatever - may actually put enough of these reactive oxygen species into your system that this could happen, but I doubt it.
FYI: some people try to sell you antioxidant dietary supplements (or other treatments.) I cannot emphasise enough - these products are snake oil. Even if reactive oxygen species do play a significant role in aging (which I doubt,) taking spills to scavenge them or soak them up is utter malarky.
To sum up - I can't say conclusively that there is no aging-related process that depends on apoptosis, but I don't find the evidence at all convincing. The one that people are fond of at the moment, which is oxidative stress-come-apoptosis, is hogwash.
Aptoptosis serves two functions: 1) Developmental. Developmental Aptoptosis is necesarry to "carve out" your body. For example, when your fingers form, the tissue between what will become the fingers goes aptoptotic and dies. There is no real evidence that this is what happens when you get old.
2) Defensive. Cells which are pre-cancerous, or which have been infected with viruses, can become apoptotic. Certain conditions that some old people get - autoimmune disorders, for example - depend on apoptosis to do harm. However, this is not a part of normal aging.
P.S. Most scientists pronounce it "apo-tosis," the p is silent (like pterodactyl.) On the other hand, by this reasoning, helicopter (which comes from the same root as pterodactyl) would be "heli-coter", so say the p if you want.
The rebuttal rebuts some stuff, but dismisses the following paragraph, rather than challenging it.
Stranger still is the lack of consistency amongst these beliefs. Many values, such as the love of privacy and free speech come from a broadly libertarian tradition evolving from the philosophy of Mill and Locke. Others, such as the hatred of Microsoft and the loathing of Spam come from a quite reverse philosophy - a principled distain of the side-effects of capitalism, betraying socialist ancestry. Still others come from a strong defence of certain rights (notably fair use of copyrighted materials) which seem to be primarily based on rational self-interest, rather than any particular ideology. From Tom's op-ed.
By way of reply: Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values--be they religious, ethical, social, or political--have their source in human experience and culture. Humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny. From the Humanist Magazine.
Which is, it seems to me, totally consistent with the three things he names. The first two are obvious, but humanistic opposition to DRM needs some explanation. The RIAA/MPAA are trying to prevent the emergence of a new, popularly empowered culture from which they won't be able to make as much money.
I'm sure they've heard this before, but...
on
A Look at IRIX 6.5.17
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
IRIX Machines are huge in scientific computing.
However, since SGI announced that they wouldn't support IRIX anymore, everyone has concluded that they need to shift over to Linux machines.
Most people I know buy Dell machines. The cost savings is actually less of a concern for scientists (although it is an issue,) than keeping up with the state of the art.
If SGI released their IRIX source code, that would do a lot to help them recover their scientific market share; scientists would pay the extra money for SGI hardware if they aren't worried that support for the OS is going to evaporate entirely, and a Linux distro with lots of SGI-specific code imported from IRIX ought to fit that bill nicely. I'm a biologist, though, so maybe I'm missing something.
Tired of those self righteous earth freaks and their santimonious love for the "environment?" If you are, buy one of our EcoHostile (TM) PCs.
1) Comes pre-installed with our special Cartmania! Linux distro. Whenever you open an xterm window, it hacks into that network of things they put on spermwhales to track them, and causes the tracking device to emit a lethal shock, killing the damned stupid animal and notifying the japanese of the animal's position so that you can collect your bounty. If you provide it with a list of god damn dirty hippies, it will notify them of each of the oversized fish you kill so that you can call them up and listen to them cry.
2) Uses silicon doped with enriched uranium, which has no desirable semiconductor properties, for no reason.
3) Onboard gasoline powered generator serves as an uninteruptable power supply, and runs constantly, even when machine is off.
4) Using our patented "bassmaster" technology, fan produces constant, 110 decibel throb (roughly as loud as a car horn,) at a frequency of only 175 Hz, to maximally penetrate floors, walls and ceilings. This places you in handy violation of most of those intrusive noise ordinances that red meat eating, tree hating Americans despise so much. For a small extra fee, we can supply you with special "superscreech" hard drives to supply treble.
5) Special catalytic circuitry produces extra ozone - with the fan running at full capacity, and a constant supply of ozone-free air, the mother board alone produces 25 mg of ozone per minute; that's enough to sustainably exceed the OSHA safe limit of 5 ppm in a 5,000 square foot room. Don't worry! At ground level, ozone is a deadly pollutant - it won't rise into the upper atmosphere and can't do anything to screen out the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays.
So, if you're a real american, and if you hate the earth, you should definitely try our EcoHostile PC. Building a more dystopic tomorrow!
Just to play devil's advocate - would any of these substances interfere with the polarity of the water?
As water becomes colder, water and oil become less miscible. Therefore, I'd expect this high-pressure superfluid (is it warmed by by reactions in Pluto's core? Someone else mentioned Pluto's surface temperature,) to be quite free of non-polar contaminants. Polar contaminants are not a problem for a terrestrial cell - they cannot cross the cell membrane.
Argon is harmless. Liquid argon is very cold, but still completely unreactive.
So, actually, I don't think the impurities in the water would be a problem. Whatever lives there - if anything does, which I very much doubt - would probably eat whatever chemical impurities were found there.
"We must save the internet from its founding myth that it is good for democracy and is open and cannot be regulated."
Oh, is *that* why we need to be told what to do? For DEMOCRACY?
Eli Noam is an academic who moonlights as a beurecrat. Based on his webpage, he doesn't seem to advocate censorship exactly - he wants to somehow use regulation to encourage people to talk one another when they have diverse social backgrounds. This is a laudable goal, and I'm certainly no anti-government nut - but this is a stupid target for regulation. Like regulation to make people be nice.
He complains about centralization of information. This has NOT been my experience with the web - EXCEPT for academic journals. If he wants regulation to require peer-reviewed academic journals to make their content available for free online; well, that would be great. I'd support that 100%. A journal that wants money shouldn't publish publically funded research.
The fact is - the protocols (TCP/IP, http/html) fascilitate free, open and DIVERSE exchanges of communication. I can't think of any changes I'd make that would encourage people to interact with people of diverse experience. If there were improvements to these fundamental protocols, there would some justification in legislating them (you'd get them no other way), but I don't think his goals are well enough defined, or the effects well enough understood, to even talk about this as an option at this juncture.
His op-ed pieces are particularly enlightening if you really care what he thinks.
I'm not saying Microsoft wouldn't do the same if they had the chance (may have the chance and may be doing the same), and I acknowledge that AOL/TW has as many employees as the entire human race 1,000 years ago, so they're going to be doing something I'm not happy with, and that there is something to be said for "engaging" China under whatever terms are possible - which seems to mean at least some censorship.
But to say that AOL is making the world a better place, at least insofar as computers are concerned, I'm not so sure about that. Censorship is the #1 threat to the vitality of the net, and since AOL promotes that in various ways, there's not many ways I could think of them as a net good.
Also - AOL supplied the internet to the masses, but the masses really wanted it. Without AOL, I think we'd have seen more or less the same landscape with more business for compuserve.
Let's fire up Yacc. Okay, I've parsed these statements, and yes, they really are an advertisement for a videogame.
The ingenious, creative mind of Matt Groening (The Simpsons) now brings arguably his greatest creation yet, Futurama, to the interactive entertainment screen.
so, this parses into {TAGLINE} {TAGLINE} {PLUG}
Featuring Bender, Fry, Leela and a whole host of other Futurama characters we've come to know, love and bemuse at, this 3D arcade adventure game is winging its way toward you soon.
{TAGLINE} {ATTEMPT AT HUMOR} {THIS GAME IS QUAKE}
Recall, an advertisement for a videogame can be parsed with the following grammar:
where ADVERT:
| PLUGS JOKES THIS_GAME_IS_QUAKE ;
PLUGS:
| PLUG PLUGS
| ;
JOKES:
| ATTEMPT_AT_HUMOR JOKES
| ;
PLUG:
| TAGLINE PLUG
| a statement that a game is to be made. ;
ATTEMPT_AT_HUMOR:
| TAGLINE ATTEMPT_AT_HUMOR
| something which is uniquely characterised as not funny. ;
TAGLINE:
| a cultural reference. ;
THIS_GAME_IS_QUAKE:
| any sentence containing the words "adventure" and "3D." ;
Next week we'll learn how to parse slashdot comments, a preview - {INACCURACIES | BAD_JOKES}* {IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER} {TOPIC}
Imagine a beowulf cluster of... er.... videogames.
"The FBI has us looking for certain specific things,"[terrorist steganography] says Ishikawa, "but we haven't found anything yet."
Gosh, maybe that's because they aren't there?
This one landlady we had when I was a kid told my Mom, "every time I bring groceries home, I turn the bags upside down over the sink and shake them to get the roaches out, and we've never had roaches!"
My Mom said "have you ever found a roach in a grocery bag?"
"Everybody has to do his own thing to protect cyberspace," he said.
Excellent, a government guideline I can get behind!
I'll take my laptop down to the beach, get stoned out of my mind, and watch this high quality version of Attack of the Clones I finally downloaded, then take a nap.
Wake me up when I've made the net secure - and try and explain it slowly, this south american shit I got utterly destroys you. I'll be laughing at stains on the ceiling 'til new years, no lie.
Okay, 70 watts is enough juice to power a soft white lightbulb. I don't think it was that much material - grams, on the order of what would be on hand in radiology in a well equipped hospital. I can't be bothered to do the math, though. Certainly, even if every mission we'd ever launched had exploded like the Challenger, the rads released into the upper atmosphere wouldn't even register against the increase from Bikini Atoll.
Not hard, okay, yeah, I grant. Now, give me however much hot nuclear mass I need to build it. I can get carbon-14 and deuterium (although I'd have a hard time explaining this one to my PI) but I don't think that would do it.
The point is - I want to stamp a big nuclear symbol and the cool, physically inaccurate atom with the electrons depicted as billiard balls, on my laptop and I want it to MEAN something.
P (This is spam) = P (This is Spam | It will enlarge my penis) * P (It will enlarge my penis)
Now, given that I have prior knowledge that: P (It will enlarge my penis)
is very low,
and given that, having never encountered anything which enlarges my penis in any permanent way, I have no knowledge of P (This is Spam | It will enlarge my penis)
and we have the product of one probability which I know is low, and another of which I have no posterior knowledge, so we conclude that P (It is Spam) is also low, and that I must have requested more information on their new penile enlargement technique.
So, that message goes into the keepers.
Meanwhile,
P (It is Spam) = P (It is Spam | Frank is getting maried) * P (Frank is getting married)
So, I know frank is getting married, since he sent me this e-mail I'm considering filtering as Spam, and weather or not it is spam is pretty much independent of whether or not frank is getting married, so.... it's Spam. Away it goes.
P.S. I've deliberated made a hash of this for a joke. The actual rule is:
If you were talking to a young kid who's trading warez, how would you advise him to do it without getting caught?
If you go to one of those country club prisons, will they let you have highspeed internet access?
If they mysteriously put you in high security, will you get tatooed with a ballpoint pen? That would certainly intimidate the students when you're back on the outside.
If you write a book, do you think hollywood will try to sue you for the proceeds?
If the RIAA/MPAA/MS offered you a boatload of money to work for them developing DRM, would you take it? Would you do a good job?
If you could be any animal, any animal at all, what animal would you be?
That would require actual *enforcement*, which is expensive. Should the university actually kick someone of their network, this might be a good suggestion.
As yet, the university has employed only talk, which is cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
DNA is the book of life. It's also the book of death.
Hard science journalism at it's best. Sheesh.
This, I'm told, is the first time a healthy human has ever been screened for the full gamut of genetic-disease markers.
Yeah, RIGHT. Imagine that lab meeting: Guys, I have a plan, we've never done this before, so lets invite in a journalist and see if we can humiliate ourselves.
Braun, 46, is both jovial and German.
Yes, Homer, Germany is the land of chocolate.
These disease-causing SNPs are fueling a biotech bonanza; the hope is that after finding them, the discoverers can design wonder drugs.
The hope of many of these bottom feeders is that they can identify an SNP and exert some intellectual property over it to horn in on whomever actually can find a treatment. Anyone want me to deliver another manifesto on the evil of this approach?
Alright - let's talk genetic diversity.
As Braun explains it, somewhere in the past, an isolated human community lived in an area where the food was poor in iron. Those who developed a mutation that stores high levels of iron survived, and those who didn't became anemic and died, failing to reproduce.
Good point! This is reason number one NOT to reduce the genetic diversity of the human race. All of these alleles floating around the population - which may become increasingly rare as there is selective pressure against them, and may even cause considerable suffering or death to some of those who carry them - should not be removed from our collective gene pool, at least not without considerable discussion. Why? Because WE MAY NEED THEM. A monoculture (were all organisms have the same genes) is not sustainable in a biological sense.
This is also one of the great tragedies of our times - sub-saharan africa contains only a fraction of the human population, but it contains over a third (depending on how you measure it) of human genetic diversity. The region of the world being devastated by AIDS may contain any number of alleles which our decsendents may need in the population in order to face the challenges of the future, whatever they may be.
"Ja, that's my favorite," says Braun, himself a smoker. "I wonder what Philip Morris would pay for that."
Note that this gene doesn't make it safe to smoke - smoking still causes heart disease and so forth in these people. Still, a treatment to clone this gene into your lungs could make billions, no (clone as in move DNA around)?
These genetic modification treatments may not be such a good idea, either. You all remember in 1999 when a research subject at Penn died from a liver treatment (search for "liver")? The upshot is - anything that delivers genes into a person can, and sooner or later will, go out of control and do things you don't expect. Killing the subject is the most likely, but frankly least frightening, of these possibilities. The real threat - and my colleagues in biotech like to play this down but I am not at all convinced by their arguments - is that vectors for DNA delivery into humans could go wild and become contagious.
Of course, I'm opposed to animal organ transplantation for fear of introducing new human pathogens, so maybe I'm just a naysayer.
Google's cache of the second link.
Read the fucking links.
It is open to anybody.
Now, now, don't be mean. Let me list other things you shouldn't do:
Point out that the original poster is lazy, or a moron, or functionally illiterate, or a karma whore.
Complain about the moderation system by posting sarcastic responses like:
I'm lost. Where am I? What is the article about? Where do I click my mouse, in order to read it? Someone come over to my house and read it to me. I expect a new category (score: 6) to be introduced, my ignorance is so praiseworthy.
Also! Never point out that you're karma capped. It's offtopic.
we'll have the bandwidth and storage to make it unnecessary
.wav files. However, I still get them as mp3s, because a tenth as long is a tenth as long.
That's like saying mp3s are unnecessary if you have broadband.
Yes, I'm perfectly capable of downloading (and storing) most of the songs I want as
Also, if we're talking p2p distribution, the bandwidth hog has an UNLIMITED appetite. If movies are a tenth as big you can get ten times as many.
John Lennon and Janis Joplin are "happy" that a new generation is listening to their music
Nice choice of examples.
There are many musicians that have expressed this sentiment, and not via Ouija board. I'm sure that John Lennon and Jani Joplin WOULD be happy to have their music swapped on people's computers, but lets not attribute to the dead what they never ever said.
It could be the MARK OF THE BEAST.
We all know Canada was inspired by Satan to make us (Americans) look bad. Single payer system (rude gesture)! This just proves it.
I want to see "They Live" relreased in digital format.
No, subliminal messages don't work, but you could still print messages on the screen (invisible to the naked eye) using this system, and then only people trying to pirate the movie with a camcorder would be treated to the messages like:
OBEY
NO ALIENS LIVE AMONG US
and so on. Then, they turn themselves in when they reveal the subliminal messages to the press! Pure genius. Alternatively, you could sell sunglasses that let you read the subliminal messages (they'd have digital camcorders built in with displays on the inside of the glasses,) AND let you see that hilarry rosen is really an alien.
Is already known to dwell somewhere near the star Fomalhaut. No, not the oscilloscope for your mp3 player; an unspeakable great old one who gibbers and meeps unspeakably beyond the dimensions we know.
Now that we have located intelligent life, all we need to do is contact it (which, under the new rules, will cost us a permanent wisdom point.)
If he died on the toilet it was probably a heart attack - if you have a weak heart, constapation can kill you; stimulant drugs are also a possibility.
Sudden death syndrome maybe, although I don't think they ever diagnose that it anyone unhealthy/obese, if he was, though there is a teat for it.
Until recently (barring drug overdose, genetic or developmental abnormalities) 26 year olds did not have heart attacks. So, looking into my crystal ball, this will be used as ammunition for the argument that videogames reduce your level of physical activity, and are somehow responsible for the recent rise in cardiovascular disease among the very young - I can't find the ref. on google, can anyone else?
If you want to avoid having heart attacks:
1) Get exercise. This is NOT the same as don't game, and I myself utterly reject the notion that videogames are somehow responsible for droping levels of physical activity.
2) Try not to be angry all the time. I know this can be difficult if you are a member of an oppressed minority group or work in tech support. Depression and overuse of simulants = also bad.
Yes, but not in the way you think. We can use apoptosis to kill harmful cells, like cancer cells. This is a "natural purpose" of apoptosis, and drugs are under development to "encourage" cancer cells (and virally infected cells) to die by this mechanism.
The theory that apoptosis plays a central role in human aging is part-and-parcel of the "free radical" theory of aging, which I think is bullshit.
The basic idea is that reactive oxygen species - these are chemicals that want to take electrons away from biological molecules and can do in such a fashion that the biological molecule is damaged - damage your mitochondria in such a fashion that the mitochondria signal the cell to die. This definitely CAN happen - however, I don't believe that it actually does, or that any of the pathologies we observe in human aging actually depend on this pathway. Btw, I'm a bioinformatician (grad student); when I worked with my Dad, I studied oxidative stress - he still does but he does not think it plays a role in normal aging. Certain conditions - being a chain smoker, being on hemodialysis, whatever - may actually put enough of these reactive oxygen species into your system that this could happen, but I doubt it.
FYI: some people try to sell you antioxidant dietary supplements (or other treatments.) I cannot emphasise enough - these products are snake oil. Even if reactive oxygen species do play a significant role in aging (which I doubt,) taking spills to scavenge them or soak them up is utter malarky.
The opinion of someone with whom I disagree almost completely. More of the same - the summary is fairly accesible.
To sum up - I can't say conclusively that there is no aging-related process that depends on apoptosis, but I don't find the evidence at all convincing. The one that people are fond of at the moment, which is oxidative stress-come-apoptosis, is hogwash.
Aptoptosis serves two functions:
1) Developmental. Developmental Aptoptosis is necesarry to "carve out" your body. For example, when your fingers form, the tissue between what will become the fingers goes aptoptotic and dies. There is no real evidence that this is what happens when you get old.
2) Defensive. Cells which are pre-cancerous, or which have been infected with viruses, can become apoptotic. Certain conditions that some old people get - autoimmune disorders, for example - depend on apoptosis to do harm. However, this is not a part of normal aging.
P.S. Most scientists pronounce it "apo-tosis," the p is silent (like pterodactyl.) On the other hand, by this reasoning, helicopter (which comes from the same root as pterodactyl) would be "heli-coter", so say the p if you want.
The rebuttal rebuts some stuff, but dismisses the following paragraph, rather than challenging it.
Stranger still is the lack of consistency amongst these beliefs. Many values, such as the love of privacy and free speech come from a broadly libertarian tradition evolving from the philosophy of Mill and Locke. Others, such as the hatred of Microsoft and the loathing of Spam come from a quite reverse philosophy - a principled distain of the side-effects of capitalism, betraying socialist ancestry. Still others come from a strong defence of certain rights (notably fair use of copyrighted materials) which seem to be primarily based on rational self-interest, rather than any particular ideology. From Tom's op-ed.
By way of reply:
Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values--be they religious, ethical, social, or political--have their source in human experience and culture. Humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny. From the Humanist Magazine.
Which is, it seems to me, totally consistent with the three things he names. The first two are obvious, but humanistic opposition to DRM needs some explanation. The RIAA/MPAA are trying to prevent the emergence of a new, popularly empowered culture from which they won't be able to make as much money.
IRIX Machines are huge in scientific computing.
However, since SGI announced that they wouldn't support IRIX anymore, everyone has concluded that they need to shift over to Linux machines.
Most people I know buy Dell machines. The cost savings is actually less of a concern for scientists (although it is an issue,) than keeping up with the state of the art.
If SGI released their IRIX source code, that would do a lot to help them recover their scientific market share; scientists would pay the extra money for SGI hardware if they aren't worried that support for the OS is going to evaporate entirely, and a Linux distro with lots of SGI-specific code imported from IRIX ought to fit that bill nicely. I'm a biologist, though, so maybe I'm missing something.
Tired of those self righteous earth freaks and their santimonious love for the "environment?" If you are, buy one of our EcoHostile (TM) PCs.
1) Comes pre-installed with our special Cartmania! Linux distro. Whenever you open an xterm window, it hacks into that network of things they put on spermwhales to track them, and causes the tracking device to emit a lethal shock, killing the damned stupid animal and notifying the japanese of the animal's position so that you can collect your bounty. If you provide it with a list of god damn dirty hippies, it will notify them of each of the oversized fish you kill so that you can call them up and listen to them cry.
2) Uses silicon doped with enriched uranium, which has no desirable semiconductor properties, for no reason.
3) Onboard gasoline powered generator serves as an uninteruptable power supply, and runs constantly, even when machine is off.
4) Using our patented "bassmaster" technology, fan produces constant, 110 decibel throb (roughly as loud as a car horn,) at a frequency of only 175 Hz, to maximally penetrate floors, walls and ceilings. This places you in handy violation of most of those intrusive noise ordinances that red meat eating, tree hating Americans despise so much. For a small extra fee, we can supply you with special "superscreech" hard drives to supply treble.
5) Special catalytic circuitry produces extra ozone - with the fan running at full capacity, and a constant supply of ozone-free air, the mother board alone produces 25 mg of ozone per minute; that's enough to sustainably exceed the OSHA safe limit of 5 ppm in a 5,000 square foot room. Don't worry! At ground level, ozone is a deadly pollutant - it won't rise into the upper atmosphere and can't do anything to screen out the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays.
So, if you're a real american, and if you hate the earth, you should definitely try our EcoHostile PC. Building a more dystopic tomorrow!
Just to play devil's advocate - would any of these substances interfere with the polarity of the water?
As water becomes colder, water and oil become less miscible. Therefore, I'd expect this high-pressure superfluid (is it warmed by by reactions in Pluto's core? Someone else mentioned Pluto's surface temperature,) to be quite free of non-polar contaminants. Polar contaminants are not a problem for a terrestrial cell - they cannot cross the cell membrane.
Argon is harmless. Liquid argon is very cold, but still completely unreactive.
So, actually, I don't think the impurities in the water would be a problem. Whatever lives there - if anything does, which I very much doubt - would probably eat whatever chemical impurities were found there.
"We must save the internet from its founding myth that it is good for democracy and is open and cannot be regulated."
Oh, is *that* why we need to be told what to do? For DEMOCRACY?
Eli Noam is an academic who moonlights as a beurecrat. Based on his webpage, he doesn't seem to advocate censorship exactly - he wants to somehow use regulation to encourage people to talk one another when they have diverse social backgrounds. This is a laudable goal, and I'm certainly no anti-government nut - but this is a stupid target for regulation. Like regulation to make people be nice.
He complains about centralization of information. This has NOT been my experience with the web - EXCEPT for academic journals. If he wants regulation to require peer-reviewed academic journals to make their content available for free online; well, that would be great. I'd support that 100%. A journal that wants money shouldn't publish publically funded research.
The fact is - the protocols (TCP/IP, http/html) fascilitate free, open and DIVERSE exchanges of communication. I can't think of any changes I'd make that would encourage people to interact with people of diverse experience. If there were improvements to these fundamental protocols, there would some justification in legislating them (you'd get them no other way), but I don't think his goals are well enough defined, or the effects well enough understood, to even talk about this as an option at this juncture.
His op-ed pieces are particularly enlightening if you really care what he thinks.
Dr. X: They mocked my research! But I'll show them, I'll show them all!
Announcer: Fascinating. What scientific principle have you applied?
Dr. X: Leverage.
Announcer: I see, and how are you going to use your invention... what's it called?
Dr. X: A big stick.
Annonucer: Yes, your stick. Dr. Sullivan has succeeded in making charcoal a furnace. How does your invention compare to that?
Dr. X: I will use it to leverage his cranium.
Announcer: That science-speak is too much for me.
Dr. X: Let me demonstrate. [Smashes announcer's head in.]
They're not bad in all respects. However, they cooperate with the PRC in censoring their own citizens. Information on this topic is readily available from Google.
I'm not saying Microsoft wouldn't do the same if they had the chance (may have the chance and may be doing the same), and I acknowledge that AOL/TW has as many employees as the entire human race 1,000 years ago, so they're going to be doing something I'm not happy with, and that there is something to be said for "engaging" China under whatever terms are possible - which seems to mean at least some censorship.
But to say that AOL is making the world a better place, at least insofar as computers are concerned, I'm not so sure about that. Censorship is the #1 threat to the vitality of the net, and since AOL promotes that in various ways, there's not many ways I could think of them as a net good.
Also - AOL supplied the internet to the masses, but the masses really wanted it. Without AOL, I think we'd have seen more or less the same landscape with more business for compuserve.
Let's fire up Yacc. Okay, I've parsed these statements, and yes, they really are an advertisement for a videogame.
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
The ingenious, creative mind of Matt Groening (The Simpsons) now brings arguably his greatest creation yet, Futurama, to the interactive entertainment screen.
so, this parses into
{TAGLINE} {TAGLINE} {PLUG}
Featuring Bender, Fry, Leela and a whole host of other Futurama characters we've come to know, love and bemuse at, this 3D arcade adventure game is winging its way toward you soon.
{TAGLINE} {ATTEMPT AT HUMOR} {THIS GAME IS QUAKE}
Recall, an advertisement for a videogame can be parsed with the following grammar:
where
ADVERT:
| PLUGS JOKES THIS_GAME_IS_QUAKE
PLUGS:
| PLUG PLUGS
|
JOKES:
| ATTEMPT_AT_HUMOR JOKES
|
PLUG:
| TAGLINE PLUG
| a statement that a game is to be made.
ATTEMPT_AT_HUMOR:
| TAGLINE ATTEMPT_AT_HUMOR
| something which is uniquely characterised as not funny.
TAGLINE:
| a cultural reference.
THIS_GAME_IS_QUAKE:
| any sentence containing the words "adventure" and "3D."
Next week we'll learn how to parse slashdot comments, a preview -
{INACCURACIES | BAD_JOKES}* {IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER} {TOPIC}
Imagine a beowulf cluster of... er.... videogames.
"The FBI has us looking for certain specific things,"[terrorist steganography] says Ishikawa, "but we haven't found anything yet."
Gosh, maybe that's because they aren't there?
This one landlady we had when I was a kid told my Mom, "every time I bring groceries home, I turn the bags upside down over the sink and shake them to get the roaches out, and we've never had roaches!"
My Mom said "have you ever found a roach in a grocery bag?"
And the landlady said "No."
Deep wisdom there.
"Everybody has to do his own thing to protect cyberspace," he said.
Excellent, a government guideline I can get behind!
I'll take my laptop down to the beach, get stoned out of my mind, and watch this high quality version of Attack of the Clones I finally downloaded, then take a nap.
Wake me up when I've made the net secure - and try and explain it slowly, this south american shit I got utterly destroys you. I'll be laughing at stains on the ceiling 'til new years, no lie.
Okay, 70 watts is enough juice to power a soft white lightbulb. I don't think it was that much material - grams, on the order of what would be on hand in radiology in a well equipped hospital. I can't be bothered to do the math, though. Certainly, even if every mission we'd ever launched had exploded like the Challenger, the rads released into the upper atmosphere wouldn't even register against the increase from Bikini Atoll.
Not hard, okay, yeah, I grant. Now, give me however much hot nuclear mass I need to build it. I can get carbon-14 and deuterium (although I'd have a hard time explaining this one to my PI) but I don't think that would do it.
The point is - I want to stamp a big nuclear symbol and the cool, physically inaccurate atom with the electrons depicted as billiard balls, on my laptop and I want it to MEAN something.
Quoth the msnbc story on the thing hitting the moon:
These nuclear-powered [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages] included a passive seismometer.
Which caused me to do a bit of a double take, but no, they didn't launch entire nuke plants into space.
Quoth this other article:
A 70-watt power module converted heat from a radioisotope fuel capsule into electricity by means of thermocouples.
That is..... so cool! I WANT ONE!
P (This is spam) = P (This is Spam | It will enlarge my penis) * P (It will enlarge my penis)
Now, given that I have prior knowledge that:
P (It will enlarge my penis)
is very low,
and given that, having never encountered anything which enlarges my penis in any permanent way, I have no knowledge of
P (This is Spam | It will enlarge my penis)
and we have the product of one probability which I know is low, and another of which I have no posterior knowledge, so we conclude that P (It is Spam) is also low, and that I must have requested more information on their new penile enlargement technique.
So, that message goes into the keepers.
Meanwhile,
P (It is Spam) = P (It is Spam | Frank is getting maried) * P (Frank is getting married)
So, I know frank is getting married, since he sent me this e-mail I'm considering filtering as Spam, and weather or not it is spam is pretty much independent of whether or not frank is getting married, so.... it's Spam. Away it goes.
P.S. I've deliberated made a hash of this for a joke. The actual rule is:
P (A & B) = P (A | B) * P (B)
If you were talking to a young kid who's trading warez, how would you advise him to do it without getting caught?
If you go to one of those country club prisons, will they let you have highspeed internet access?
If they mysteriously put you in high security, will you get tatooed with a ballpoint pen? That would certainly intimidate the students when you're back on the outside.
If you write a book, do you think hollywood will try to sue you for the proceeds?
If the RIAA/MPAA/MS offered you a boatload of money to work for them developing DRM, would you take it? Would you do a good job?
If you could be any animal, any animal at all, what animal would you be?
That would require actual *enforcement*, which is expensive. Should the university actually kick someone of their network, this might be a good suggestion.
As yet, the university has employed only talk, which is cheap.