Most people believe in culturism, racism, socialism, and protectionism. They are ignorant, the same way that people who believe in creationism are.
It is natural to want to be culturist, racist, socialist, and protectionist because it is how humans survived in our original evolutionary niche of small clans of related families working and dying together, and battling other clans for lands and resources in a zero-sum game. Creationism is natural as well, because we evolved religion to achieve social cohesion within these clan groups.
However the reality is that global, self-organizing markets allow for non-zero-sum games, ones where everyone benefits from trade, specialization, and enhancements in scientific and technological knowledge. It is hard to realize that our trade with other clans helps us all, and that today our inborn tendancy to be socialist and charitable and to redistribute wealth actually causes poverty instead of reducing it because it removes the very competition that drives ever more efficient production.
Carolina glow-in-the-dark DNA transformation kit to show how genetically engineered DNA can be inserted into plasmids and then into the DNA of E. Coli.
While Chinese made goods have saved American consumers billions of dollars a year, trade with China has also helped to bring 100 million Chinese out of absolute poverty (under $1 per day).
Certainly China is doing much better these days than back when Mao starved 20 million Chinese to death with farm collectivism!
I stopped going to RadioShack very often when it became a cellphone store.
You would go into the store, and the one or two people working there would be on the phone busy trying to get someone's cellphone service working. You would wait for 20 minutes to check out. They didn't care if you were buying $10 of stuff, since they were in the process of selling $100 cellphones plus the monthly service.
The ironic thing is that despite leaving the chip selling business, RadioShack is one of the few places you can drop by and pick up a wire wrap tool and wire wrap wire. But I need to do that once or twice a year.
R/S has no differentiator now. If you want a cellphone, the carriers have their own stores that are better staffed and more familiar with the products. If you want home electronics, it is hard to beat Best Buy, and for that matter the low-end stuff is at Target as well. The one differentiator of R/S in the past was the electronics parts, which have been gutted.
DNAhack.com has a list of sites where you can order DNA synthesis and gene synthesis online. In gene synthesis, your DNA will be synthesized and inserted into an E. Coli plasmid so you can easilly insert it into your own E. Coli.
It is very simple: go to a web site, type in "ATCGCCGA..." and put in your credit card number, and the DNA or gene will come in the mail in a few days.
Cow dung for power generation seems to have some problems.
One of the problems is that particular air pollution is a big killer in the developing world. That is the problem with having lots of little, pollution-uncontrolled fires instead of a large pollution-controlled powerplant.
The economy of scale and polical clout of these giants are impossible to compete with effectively for most small, individual run businesses. The effect is to drain profit out of local economies and into a much larger scale economy.
Actually the historical result is that specialization enhances efficiency, and makes everyone richer.
If everyone ran their own water supply, there would be less time for people to learn how to program computers, fix cars, be doctors, etc.
You are correct that large companies and labor unions can extract high rents from governments, but the truth is that this is more usually done in the guise of "helping the little guy", such as the supermarkets and grocery workers unions backing the anti-WalMart law in Maryland, which will raise consumer prices for many goods while keeping profits for the grocery folks high.
Unfortunately, the fact that a country has to turn to microcredit is a signal that the government of that country has been unsuccessful in encouraging a real retail banking sector to come into existance.
Governments screw up retail banking through mechanisms such as: badly documented or poorly performing registration of land and other property (can't borrow against land you can't prove you own), banking over-regulation, only allowing state-owned banks, and high levels of corruption in banking and bank regulation.
In a perfect world, governments would create the environment for retail banking to come into existance, and microcredit would be not needed.
For example, China is about the open up its state-owned banking infrastructure to private industry, including foreign retail banks that can come in and operate with high levels of efficiency.
If you are beating your wife, perhaps someone should invade your home.
Of course, you might go ahead and shoot the invader, your wife, and yourself, despite the fact that the long-term results may be worse than just not beating your wife anymore.
I believe that if you are OK with the application space that you can have equivalent or lower enterprise TCO on desktop Linux.
However, in broadcast engineering, we have a problem that there are lots of devices (satellite receivers, video compressors, video effects devices, video monitoring systems) that are using GNU/Linux. Each vendor seems to pick a different distribution version, basically requiring keeping track of patching 10 or 20 different OS versions. And the truth is that vendors seem so sold on the notion of Linux security, that they often don't feel the need to have to even consider the need for automatic and regular patching of the OS. While Linux does tend to have fewer security problems than Windows, they do come along every now and then.
By insisting on Windows in devices, one can at least know there is a single location for automatic patching. You do have to be on top of the situation and be wary of zero-day events, but it is fairly manageable.
I often wonder if MPEG is more about good technology, or more about getting everyone's patents included.
It can't be about getting everyone's patents included, because nobody knows which patents are infringed upon until after the standards are published.
Yes, there are a few participants in ITU/MPEG/SMPTE processes who know they are putting in their patents (and they have to declare that ahead of time, and generally offer RAND terms). It is the non-participants who come out of the woodwork later that are the real concern.
The issue is that "patent clearance" doesn't exist, you can't really prove that no patents are relavent to your product. There are just too many of them, and they are worded too vaguely. Five years from now, some unknown company can come out of the woodwork and say "Vorbis infringes on our patent filed in 1997".
The ITU/MPEG folks THOUGHT they had gotten all the patent holders on MPEG-4 collected together by MPEG-LA, but it looks like they didn't.
My impression is that MPEG-LA is still trying to gather all the patents for Windows Media / SMPTE VC-1.
Low unemployment (very low) is bad because it causes inflation, which pretty much screws everyone (it will leads to higher unemployment over time).
That said, the US has spent several years living in a time of very low monetary inflation (oil is another matter, and not in Greenspan's hands) and fairly low unemployment rates, especially when you compare our unemployment rates with those of the developed economies of Europe.
It is a dollar issue. The planet is rapidly becoming richer, especially now that pro-growth policies are in place in India and China. The question is whether the costs of reducing CO2 emmissions and potentially reducing this economic growth are worth the benefits of reducing global warming.
Damaged economies kill poor people today, that is fact. The theory is that global warming may kill poor people tommorow.
The truth is also that people who are poor due to economically-unfree economies will be hurt more by global warming that people who have become richer in economically free economies.
It turns out that variations in chromosome number are known to occur in many different animal species, and although they sometimes seem to lead to reduced fertility, this is often not the case. For example, Przewalski's Wild Horse has 66 chromosomes, but domesticated horse has 64 chromosomes, yet they can breed to produce fertile offspring.
The is good evidence based on structural analysis of human chromosome 2 that it is the fused version of two chromosomes found in modern apes.
The genetics of "Post-zygotic Isolating Mechanisms" of speciation is under much study now. Here is a great review of speciation mechanisms.
Generally the strong force on post-zygotic speciation is "epistasis", negatively interacting genetic loci. So different and negatively interacting genes are more important in speciation than slight differences in chromosomal configuration. There are some speciation events driven mainly by chromosomal configuration, though most are not.
Desertification is a result of poor farming technology. Rich farmers growing ethanol crops would use high levels of technology to reduce the risk of desertification. It is much more of a problem in poor countries where small farms grow subsistence crops.
I think the big problem in cryonics is that after 5 minutes of hypoxia, synapses start to degenerate. I really think this is a significant information loss, not something repairable. Even if you could put some of the neurons back together, you will have a hard time figuring out which neuron is connected to which and with what strength.
Perhaps your body could come back, but unless you are frozen pretty much immediately upon onset of lethal hypoxia, the brain you come back with will not be much like your own.
The recent evidence has been improvements in agricultural production has dramatically outpaced population growth (esp. the "green revolution").
However the more important point is that industrializing economies and information economies dramatically reduce their fertility rate. Rapid population growth is a hallmark of unproductive argiculture (kids to work on the farm rather than tractors) rather than greater returns to parents from educating a smaller number children, not to mention the affordability and availability of family planning technology.
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Most people believe in culturism, racism, socialism, and protectionism. They are ignorant, the same way that people who believe in creationism are.
It is natural to want to be culturist, racist, socialist, and protectionist because it is how humans survived in our original evolutionary niche of small clans of related families working and dying together, and battling other clans for lands and resources in a zero-sum game. Creationism is natural as well, because we evolved religion to achieve social cohesion within these clan groups.
However the reality is that global, self-organizing markets allow for non-zero-sum games, ones where everyone benefits from trade, specialization, and enhancements in scientific and technological knowledge. It is hard to realize that our trade with other clans helps us all, and that today our inborn tendancy to be socialist and charitable and to redistribute wealth actually causes poverty instead of reducing it because it removes the very competition that drives ever more efficient production.
Carolina glow-in-the-dark DNA transformation kit to show how genetically engineered DNA can be inserted into plasmids and then into the DNA of E. Coli.
While Chinese made goods have saved American consumers billions of dollars a year, trade with China has also helped to bring 100 million Chinese out of absolute poverty (under $1 per day).
Certainly China is doing much better these days than back when Mao starved 20 million Chinese to death with farm collectivism!
I stopped going to RadioShack very often when it became a cellphone store.
You would go into the store, and the one or two people working there would be on the phone busy trying to get someone's cellphone service working. You would wait for 20 minutes to check out. They didn't care if you were buying $10 of stuff, since they were in the process of selling $100 cellphones plus the monthly service.
The ironic thing is that despite leaving the chip selling business, RadioShack is one of the few places you can drop by and pick up a wire wrap tool and wire wrap wire. But I need to do that once or twice a year.
R/S has no differentiator now. If you want a cellphone, the carriers have their own stores that are better staffed and more familiar with the products. If you want home electronics, it is hard to beat Best Buy, and for that matter the low-end stuff is at Target as well. The one differentiator of R/S in the past was the electronics parts, which have been gutted.
DNAhack.com has a list of sites where you can order DNA synthesis and gene synthesis online. In gene synthesis, your DNA will be synthesized and inserted into an E. Coli plasmid so you can easilly insert it into your own E. Coli.
It is very simple: go to a web site, type in "ATCGCCGA..." and put in your credit card number, and the DNA or gene will come in the mail in a few days.
Cow dung for power generation seems to have some problems.
One of the problems is that particular air pollution is a big killer in the developing world. That is the problem with having lots of little, pollution-uncontrolled fires instead of a large pollution-controlled powerplant.
The economy of scale and polical clout of these giants are impossible to compete with effectively for most small, individual run businesses. The effect is to drain profit out of local economies and into a much larger scale economy.
Actually the historical result is that specialization enhances efficiency, and makes everyone richer.
If everyone ran their own water supply, there would be less time for people to learn how to program computers, fix cars, be doctors, etc.
If you would like a mathematical proof, see the theory of comparative advantage.
You are correct that large companies and labor unions can extract high rents from governments, but the truth is that this is more usually done in the guise of "helping the little guy", such as the supermarkets and grocery workers unions backing the anti-WalMart law in Maryland, which will raise consumer prices for many goods while keeping profits for the grocery folks high.
Microcredit is better than no credit, for sure.
Unfortunately, the fact that a country has to turn to microcredit is a signal that the government of that country has been unsuccessful in encouraging a real retail banking sector to come into existance.
Governments screw up retail banking through mechanisms such as: badly documented or poorly performing registration of land and other property (can't borrow against land you can't prove you own), banking over-regulation, only allowing state-owned banks, and high levels of corruption in banking and bank regulation.
In a perfect world, governments would create the environment for retail banking to come into existance, and microcredit would be not needed.
For example, China is about the open up its state-owned banking infrastructure to private industry, including foreign retail banks that can come in and operate with high levels of efficiency.
If you are beating your wife, perhaps someone should invade your home.
Of course, you might go ahead and shoot the invader, your wife, and yourself, despite the fact that the long-term results may be worse than just not beating your wife anymore.
I concur that OPEC has very limited capability to limit oil production these days.
On the other hand, militants in Iraq and Nigeria do have the capability to limit oil production, and are doing just that.
I believe that if you are OK with the application space that you can have equivalent or lower enterprise TCO on desktop Linux.
However, in broadcast engineering, we have a problem that there are lots of devices (satellite receivers, video compressors, video effects devices, video monitoring systems) that are using GNU/Linux. Each vendor seems to pick a different distribution version, basically requiring keeping track of patching 10 or 20 different OS versions. And the truth is that vendors seem so sold on the notion of Linux security, that they often don't feel the need to have to even consider the need for automatic and regular patching of the OS. While Linux does tend to have fewer security problems than Windows, they do come along every now and then.
By insisting on Windows in devices, one can at least know there is a single location for automatic patching. You do have to be on top of the situation and be wary of zero-day events, but it is fairly manageable.
I often wonder if MPEG is more about good technology, or more about getting everyone's patents included.
It can't be about getting everyone's patents included, because nobody knows which patents are infringed upon until after the standards are published.
Yes, there are a few participants in ITU/MPEG/SMPTE processes who know they are putting in their patents (and they have to declare that ahead of time, and generally offer RAND terms). It is the non-participants who come out of the woodwork later that are the real concern.
The issue is that "patent clearance" doesn't exist, you can't really prove that no patents are relavent to your product. There are just too many of them, and they are worded too vaguely. Five years from now, some unknown company can come out of the woodwork and say "Vorbis infringes on our patent filed in 1997".
The ITU/MPEG folks THOUGHT they had gotten all the patent holders on MPEG-4 collected together by MPEG-LA, but it looks like they didn't.
My impression is that MPEG-LA is still trying to gather all the patents for Windows Media / SMPTE VC-1.
Low unemployment (very low) is bad because it causes inflation, which pretty much screws everyone (it will leads to higher unemployment over time).
That said, the US has spent several years living in a time of very low monetary inflation (oil is another matter, and not in Greenspan's hands) and fairly low unemployment rates, especially when you compare our unemployment rates with those of the developed economies of Europe.
As of 2003, there were 54,846 pages of Federal tax rules (source).
It is a dollar issue. The planet is rapidly becoming richer, especially now that pro-growth policies are in place in India and China. The question is whether the costs of reducing CO2 emmissions and potentially reducing this economic growth are worth the benefits of reducing global warming.
Damaged economies kill poor people today, that is fact. The theory is that global warming may kill poor people tommorow.
The truth is also that people who are poor due to economically-unfree economies will be hurt more by global warming that people who have become richer in economically free economies.
I went to google.cn and got plenty of hits on "Falun Gong". Am I missing something? Do I have to be in China to be properly censored?
God must be a bad programmer - he didn't comment properly.
It turns out that variations in chromosome number are known to occur in many different animal species, and although they sometimes seem to lead to reduced fertility, this is often not the case. For example, Przewalski's Wild Horse has 66 chromosomes, but domesticated horse has 64 chromosomes, yet they can breed to produce fertile offspring.
The is good evidence based on structural analysis of human chromosome 2 that it is the fused version of two chromosomes found in modern apes.
The genetics of "Post-zygotic Isolating Mechanisms" of speciation is under much study now. Here is a great review of speciation mechanisms.
Generally the strong force on post-zygotic speciation is "epistasis", negatively interacting genetic loci. So different and negatively interacting genes are more important in speciation than slight differences in chromosomal configuration. There are some speciation events driven mainly by chromosomal configuration, though most are not.
Desertification is a result of poor farming technology. Rich farmers growing ethanol crops would use high levels of technology to reduce the risk of desertification. It is much more of a problem in poor countries where small farms grow subsistence crops.
Real web sites have caches in front of their CMS to enhance speed. I've seen several Zope/Squid combos that do fine.
Yahoo Mail's integrated calendaring ability makes it more useful to many people than Google Gmail. I think Gmail needs to add a calendaring function.
BTW, if you don't believe me, look at the images in this paper which shows significant dendritic spine loss after 25 minutes of lethal hypoxia.
I think the big problem in cryonics is that after 5 minutes of hypoxia, synapses start to degenerate. I really think this is a significant information loss, not something repairable. Even if you could put some of the neurons back together, you will have a hard time figuring out which neuron is connected to which and with what strength.
Perhaps your body could come back, but unless you are frozen pretty much immediately upon onset of lethal hypoxia, the brain you come back with will not be much like your own.
The recent evidence has been improvements in agricultural production has dramatically outpaced population growth (esp. the "green revolution").
However the more important point is that industrializing economies and information economies dramatically reduce their fertility rate. Rapid population growth is a hallmark of unproductive argiculture (kids to work on the farm rather than tractors) rather than greater returns to parents from educating a smaller number children, not to mention the affordability and availability of family planning technology.