But Singapore is not a democratic country. Sure, they hold elections, but the results are as predictable as those of any election held in the Soviet Union...
These people are not going to be helped with bioengineered rice.
Just like no one was ever helped by vaccinations, penicillin, DDT, or any of a host of other scientific advances, right?
You can't fix the problems by treating the symptoms
Right, let's not vaccinate anybody until the likes of Mugabe decide to emulate Swiss government. What a fucking stupid argument; the "symptoms" of which you speak are the premature, preventable deaths of millions of ordinary human beings with wishes and interests just like you, not some vague characteristics of a malaise affecting no one in particular.
Every dollar you invest in attempts at quick fixes like bioengineered rice is a dollar you aren't spending on fixing the fundamental problems.
Let me rephrase your argument: "Every dollar you invest in attempts at quick fixes like vaccinations/aids drugs is a dollar you aren't spending on fixing the fundamental problems." There, is the incredible stupidity of what you said clear to you now?
if you give these people crutches like bioengineered rice, they're even less likely to do what's necessary to modernize their infrastructure, and you make them dependent on high-tech products and imports.
If the fruits of science are "crutches", why don't you go live in a cave in Alaska and see how long you last? And if being "dependent on high-tech products and imports" is so terrible, why don't you stop buying foreign products altogether and make your own damn Playstation 3, Wii, plasma screens and laptops, so you can be free of the need to depend on Asian high-tech products? It's incredible that an antigovernment rant also manages to pack in luddism and protectionism in one go.
It's well-meaning idiots like you that focus on the short term and keep meddling in those societies (creating corruption and dependency in the process) that are responsible for a large part of the suffering in the third world. Europe and the US developed into modern societies with long life expectancies without such meddling, and these nations can and will as well if we give them access to world markets and let them compete and develop freely.
How exactly does a product intended for sale create "corruption and dependency?" I thought that was what aid did, not trade, so why don't you take your own advice about giving "access to world markets" by realizing that part of what it means to "have access" is the freedom to buy GM rice for fighting dysentery?
You, sir, are a moron of the lowest order, an utterly callous, ideological yet self-contradictory moron at that, and all your being modded up as "insightful" tells me is that Slashdot doesn't lack for its share of Freeper-style ideologues and fools.
A study by the World Health Organisation found that natural blonds are likely to be extinct within 200 years because there are too few people carrying the blond gene. According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202.
RTFA indeed! Perhaps you ought to have taken your own advice first.
I'm surprised a post linking to this piece of junk science is being modded up; doesn't anybody do their homework around here? Blondes are not going extinct, and they never will be as long as there is no selective pressure against blond genes in future populations; in fact it ought to be blatantly obvious that the claim that blondes are in peril is contradicted by the very title of this ridiculous Times article - if blondness is such a positive reproductive trait, how could the genes for it possibly vanish?
Do you know how science works at all? Since when did the burden lie on skeptics to "disprove" far-fetched claims? I can pull "numbers" out of my ass too, but I bet you wouldn't swallow them wholesale if they didn't fit with your prejudices, would you?
The poster you pounded out your inane response to is right: an IQ of 59 is so low that in clinical practice such a person should be barely able to function in society, let alone live an independent life as Equatorial Guineans actually do.
Because a charlatan like Richard Lynn told you so? Have you ever even been to Africa?
Some eugenicist quack without any knowledge of a single African language invents numbers out of whole cloth through "geographical averaging" [sic], chooses to ignore or downplay the Flynn Effect as it suits him, compares incomparable datasets separated by decades, uses tiny samples to stand in for entire countries, and just because the results match the racial prejudices of morons like you, it's simply eaten up uncritically.
Unlike you, I've actually spent lots of time in Africa, and I know for a fact that the average person I've met in my time there was no less intelligent than the average European or white American, especially when spoken to in his or her own language. Your crap about "pure" blacks and "interbreeding" (as if people of different colors were different species) only says just how far gone you are in Nazi thinking.
So, 65.64%, is it, not 65.63% or 65.65%? Someone ought to tell Darl McBride that such spurious accuracy is a dead giveaway that he's pulling that number out of his *ss.
And what homes were being occupied/invaded/bombed when September 11 happened? What homes are non-Muslims in Nigeria, Thailand and Sudan occupying/invading/bombing right now, to justify their being on the end of even more Islamic terrorism than the West has yet seen?
You're a moron, as are the fools who modded you up as insightful.
Gödel didn't show that there are non-standard models of arithmetic: that are such models is just a straightforward consequence of the Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem, which establishes that there are an infinite number of them, one for each cardinality greater than aleph_0. What Gödel did accomplish was to show that any formal system which could encode the rules of Peano arithmetic could also encode a statement equivalent to "This statement is unprovable within this system."
Perhaps you ought to pick up a textbook or two and learn what a "formal system" is before saying such silly things as you have. What exactly do you think model theory's all about other than the study of formal systems? What do you think the goal of Hilbert's program was? What did Russell and Whitehead waste so much effort on with their Principia Mathematica?
ZFC is a formal system, as are the Peano axioms. I suggest you consult a decent book like Enderton's "Introduction to Mathematical Logic" or the one by Ebbinghaus & Flum before uttering any more such absurdities.
No, they didn't "prove" any such thing - you've been reading too much Roger Penrose if you think so. There's absolutely no evidence that human minds have magical access to truths which formal systems don't; there once was a time when it was thought "obvious" that parallel lines could never meet, and it's still hard for many people to believe that there is no such thing as universal time.
"If everyone has a voice, no one really has a voice. Any single voice will be drowned out by many thousands of "Gee, this is my blog, I thought it would be a good idea to start one because my cat is so cute. I'll post pictures of my cat and I love Jesus."
Nonsense! Who modded this up? To listen to you, one would think people were unable to discern quality or something: how exactly do you think people were able to find the top bloggers if what you say is true? Heck, why don't we just stop printing so many books and go back to medieval practices, the better in order to make sure that everyone "really has a voice"? (How denying people the chance to speak enhances their voices is something I'll leave to others to explain...)
"The main thing is that the Iranians have access to medical information, educational information, and worldwide news outlets. None of those are being squashed, even by the fundamental, right-wing Muslim leadership. They know that having good quality information is key to improving the quality of life in their country."
Yup, ordinary Iranian folk needn't bother their little heads about trivial things like having free discussions about the nature of the political system they live under, the rampant corruption that leaves so many of them jobless and despondent, or the widespread drug addiction that is a result of a society in which most other outlets are crushed by Islamists. Why ask for such things as long as they "have access to medical information, educational information, and worldwide news outlets"?
This has the dumbest and most complacent apologia for government censorship I've ever laid eyes upon.
Female genital mutilation is not an Islamic thing. It's an African thing. African Pagans still do it, and so do some African and Egyptian Christians.
Bullshit. I come from Africa, and I can tell you for certain that genital mutilation is mostly practiced in my part of the world by Muslims.
PS: Egyptians are Africans, last I checked. Let me guess - you're an Arab Muslim, right? Nothing like blaming the abjad ("darkies") for the failings others identify in your people, is there?
I don't see any information about the snag with expanding Hotmail account sizes anywhere in either of the two links provided. In fact, all I see when I follow the first link is a generic summary page with info on a wide variety of articles: could you rectify this so that it points to an actual article?
Yes, because the likes of Glenn Gould, Yo Yo Ma and Franz Liszt were to be found crafting their own instruments, right? This is a silly argument, and I don't understand how anyone could have found it "insightful".
More power to them I say. Free Software shouldn't be equated with the right to brazenly steal from those who provide it.
A Major Google Limitation
on
Google Turns 5
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· Score: 1
As much as I like Google, it is far from perfect.
One big problem with carrying out searches on Google is the 10 word limit it imposes on queries: because of the sheer amount of commercial junk there is out there, it is often hard to filter out distractions without limiting the actual query terms so much that one has to wade through hundreds of results. 10 words simply aren't enough in today's world of highly repetitive and commercialized rubbish.
Why is this surprising? Given how tightly coupled Outlook Express and Internet Explorer are, who could have expected anything other than this to happen?
It's a bit more complicated than that. The fact is that the ancient Egyptians spoke a semitic language, and all semitic languages share a great deal of vocabulary and pronounciation in common, so we can use phylogenetic techniques to reconstruct what many Egyptian words would have sounded like.
If we look at Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Tigrinya and other semitic languages, and see that a word sounds similar in most of them, and we have historical evidence to attest that this isn't due to one language borrowing from another, we can be confident that the Egyptians would have said it in a similar manner. For instance, the Arabic word for "book" is "kitab" (derived from the root for "writing"), while in Hebrew we have "k'tav", so we can guess that the Egyptians would also have said "kitab" or "ktab."
NB - Some idiot modded the original comment I made down as a "Troll", obviously because it didn't endorse said idiot's protectionist agenda. If you disagree with a comment, why not respond to it instead of trying to hide it from the view of others?
Here it is again:
"Afterall, who wants to lose his job and investments? But that doesn't mean the rest of the country ought to help subsidize your employment.
The reality is that:
DRAMs are a commodity, and as such provide very little value-added. There is no good reason why the U.S. has to have a domestic manufacturer of DRAM.
The way in which U.S. antidumping laws operate makes even the most frivolous claims likely to succeed, so the fact that Micron has managed to obtain a ruling on its' behalf proves squat about the truth of its' complaint.
For those who want to understand the sordid reality behind the claims of "unfair" competition, and how rigged the system is against foreign manufacturers, I recommend the following paper:
Antidumping 101: The Devilish Details of "Unfair Trade" Law."
Afterall, who wants to lose his job and investments? But that doesn't mean the rest of the country ought to help subsidize your employment.
The reality is that:
DRAMs are a commodity, and as such provide very little value-added. There is no good reason why the U.S. has to have a domestic manufacturer of DRAM.
The way in which U.S. antidumping laws operate makes even the most frivolous claims likely to succeed, so the fact that Micron has managed to obtain a ruling on its' behalf proves squat about the truth of its' complaint.
For those who want to understand the sordid reality behind the claims of "unfair" competition, and how rigged the system is against foreign manufacturers, I recommend the following paper: Antidumping 101: The Devilish Details of "Unfair Trade" Law
The problem with Ritalin is that it tends to remove a person's sense of right and wrong.
This is a gigantic lie. I can attest to it from my own experience.
ALL of the kids who were involved in these mass school shootings were on Ritalin or similar substances.
Where is your proof of this? Why are so many people here willing to take your word for it? Because it conforms to their anti-ADHD prejudices, no doubt. It's a near certainty that you just pulled this "fact" out of your backside.
Re:Please be respectful on this topic
on
Working with ADHD?
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· Score: 1
Health professionals stress that since no one knows what causes ADHD...
No one knows what causes most cases of schizophrenia either, but that doesn't make them imaginary, does it? Please spare us the flippant cynicism, why don't you?
Slashdot Mirror
But Singapore is not a democratic country. Sure, they hold elections, but the results are as predictable as those of any election held in the Soviet Union ...
I'm surprised a post linking to this piece of junk science is being modded up; doesn't anybody do their homework around here? Blondes are not going extinct, and they never will be as long as there is no selective pressure against blond genes in future populations; in fact it ought to be blatantly obvious that the claim that blondes are in peril is contradicted by the very title of this ridiculous Times article - if blondness is such a positive reproductive trait, how could the genes for it possibly vanish?
They're thoroughly incompetent, and arrogant as hell to boot - do business with these clowns at your peril.
Do you know how science works at all? Since when did the burden lie on skeptics to "disprove" far-fetched claims? I can pull "numbers" out of my ass too, but I bet you wouldn't swallow them wholesale if they didn't fit with your prejudices, would you?
The poster you pounded out your inane response to is right: an IQ of 59 is so low that in clinical practice such a person should be barely able to function in society, let alone live an independent life as Equatorial Guineans actually do.
Because a charlatan like Richard Lynn told you so? Have you ever even been to Africa? Some eugenicist quack without any knowledge of a single African language invents numbers out of whole cloth through "geographical averaging" [sic], chooses to ignore or downplay the Flynn Effect as it suits him, compares incomparable datasets separated by decades, uses tiny samples to stand in for entire countries, and just because the results match the racial prejudices of morons like you, it's simply eaten up uncritically. Unlike you, I've actually spent lots of time in Africa, and I know for a fact that the average person I've met in my time there was no less intelligent than the average European or white American, especially when spoken to in his or her own language. Your crap about "pure" blacks and "interbreeding" (as if people of different colors were different species) only says just how far gone you are in Nazi thinking.
So, 65.64%, is it, not 65.63% or 65.65%? Someone ought to tell Darl McBride that such spurious accuracy is a dead giveaway that he's pulling that number out of his *ss.
And what homes were being occupied/invaded/bombed when September 11 happened? What homes are non-Muslims in Nigeria, Thailand and Sudan occupying/invading/bombing right now, to justify their being on the end of even more Islamic terrorism than the West has yet seen? You're a moron, as are the fools who modded you up as insightful.
ZFC is a formal system, as are the Peano axioms. I suggest you consult a decent book like Enderton's "Introduction to Mathematical Logic" or the one by Ebbinghaus & Flum before uttering any more such absurdities.
No, they didn't "prove" any such thing - you've been reading too much Roger Penrose if you think so. There's absolutely no evidence that human minds have magical access to truths which formal systems don't; there once was a time when it was thought "obvious" that parallel lines could never meet, and it's still hard for many people to believe that there is no such thing as universal time.
"If everyone has a voice, no one really has a voice. Any single voice will be drowned out by many thousands of "Gee, this is my blog, I thought it would be a good idea to start one because my cat is so cute. I'll post pictures of my cat and I love Jesus."
Nonsense! Who modded this up? To listen to you, one would think people were unable to discern quality or something: how exactly do you think people were able to find the top bloggers if what you say is true? Heck, why don't we just stop printing so many books and go back to medieval practices, the better in order to make sure that everyone "really has a voice"? (How denying people the chance to speak enhances their voices is something I'll leave to others to explain ...)
"The main thing is that the Iranians have access to medical information, educational information, and worldwide news outlets. None of those are being squashed, even by the fundamental, right-wing Muslim leadership. They know that having good quality information is key to improving the quality of life in their country."
Yup, ordinary Iranian folk needn't bother their little heads about trivial things like having free discussions about the nature of the political system they live under, the rampant corruption that leaves so many of them jobless and despondent, or the widespread drug addiction that is a result of a society in which most other outlets are crushed by Islamists. Why ask for such things as long as they "have access to medical information, educational information, and worldwide news outlets"?
This has the dumbest and most complacent apologia for government censorship I've ever laid eyes upon.
Female genital mutilation is not an Islamic thing. It's an African thing. African Pagans still do it, and so do some African and Egyptian Christians.
Bullshit. I come from Africa, and I can tell you for certain that genital mutilation is mostly practiced in my part of the world by Muslims.
PS: Egyptians are Africans, last I checked. Let me guess - you're an Arab Muslim, right? Nothing like blaming the abjad ("darkies") for the failings others identify in your people, is there?
I don't see any information about the snag with expanding Hotmail account sizes anywhere in either of the two links provided. In fact, all I see when I follow the first link is a generic summary page with info on a wide variety of articles: could you rectify this so that it points to an actual article?
Yes, because the likes of Glenn Gould, Yo Yo Ma and Franz Liszt were to be found crafting their own instruments, right? This is a silly argument, and I don't understand how anyone could have found it "insightful".
But plumbers get paid per call-in, while IT workers don't. If they did, you can be sure job satisfaction would be a whole lot higher than it is.
More power to them I say. Free Software shouldn't be equated with the right to brazenly steal from those who provide it.
As much as I like Google, it is far from perfect.
One big problem with carrying out searches on Google is the 10 word limit it imposes on queries: because of the sheer amount of commercial junk there is out there, it is often hard to filter out distractions without limiting the actual query terms so much that one has to wade through hundreds of results. 10 words simply aren't enough in today's world of highly repetitive and commercialized rubbish.
Why is this surprising? Given how tightly coupled Outlook Express and Internet Explorer are, who could have expected anything other than this to happen?
It's a bit more complicated than that. The fact is that the ancient Egyptians spoke a semitic language, and all semitic languages share a great deal of vocabulary and pronounciation in common, so we can use phylogenetic techniques to reconstruct what many Egyptian words would have sounded like.
If we look at Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Tigrinya and other semitic languages, and see that a word sounds similar in most of them, and we have historical evidence to attest that this isn't due to one language borrowing from another, we can be confident that the Egyptians would have said it in a similar manner. For instance, the Arabic word for "book" is "kitab" (derived from the root for "writing"), while in Hebrew we have "k'tav", so we can guess that the Egyptians would also have said "kitab" or "ktab."
NB - Some idiot modded the original comment I made down as a "Troll", obviously because it didn't endorse said idiot's protectionist agenda. If you disagree with a comment, why not respond to it instead of trying to hide it from the view of others?
Here it is again:"Afterall, who wants to lose his job and investments? But that doesn't mean the rest of the country ought to help subsidize your employment.
The reality is that:
For those who want to understand the sordid reality behind the claims of "unfair" competition, and how rigged the system is against foreign manufacturers, I recommend the following paper: Antidumping 101: The Devilish Details of "Unfair Trade" Law."
Afterall, who wants to lose his job and investments? But that doesn't mean the rest of the country ought to help subsidize your employment.
The reality is that:
For those who want to understand the sordid reality behind the claims of "unfair" competition, and how rigged the system is against foreign manufacturers, I recommend the following paper:
Antidumping 101: The Devilish Details of "Unfair Trade" Law
This is a gigantic lie. I can attest to it from my own experience.
ALL of the kids who were involved in these mass school shootings were on Ritalin or similar substances.Where is your proof of this? Why are so many people here willing to take your word for it? Because it conforms to their anti-ADHD prejudices, no doubt. It's a near certainty that you just pulled this "fact" out of your backside.
Health professionals stress that since no one knows what causes ADHD...
No one knows what causes most cases of schizophrenia either, but that doesn't make them imaginary, does it? Please spare us the flippant cynicism, why don't you?