Those squirrels are radioactive. In fact, any squirrel in any tree is radioactive. Other radioactive things include chipmunks, bananas, houses, and Al Gore. Any substance made up of certain elements that have naturally occuring radioactive isotopes are radioactive.
That's the problem. It's so easy to make fun of radioactivity that you can attach the word "radioactive" to virtually anything. Then it becomes the butt of jokes, protested by environmentalists, and regulated by the government.
These Las Alamos trees, for example, are barely more radioactive than they should be. In fact, the report mentioned that it was hard to even discern these more-radioactive-than-normal trees because of small fluctations in background radiation.
These trees are harmless, and so are the squirrels.
--
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
Do you like acid rain, deforestation, and resperatory ailments. Then close down the nuke plants.
That made sense. Nuke plants are virtually pollution free (aside from carefully controlled solid radioactive waste). Closing down nuke plants won't affect acid rain, deforestation, or resperatory illness in any of those ways.
To have your post make sense, switch it around so it says "Do you like those problems? No? Then close down coal plants. Then you'll either have to switch to nuclear, hope for a miracle, or change your standard of living"
--
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
We're all aware that/. editors post repeats..., and we hear about it ad nauseum from twerps like yourself who are looking for a quick, cheap karma boost.
Sometimes we can't remember if this is a duplicate story or not. These "repeat" posts are very helpful in figuring that out.
Besides, he wasn't karma whoring. He took the time to search the last strangelet article, get the url, and link it for us. If he was truly karma whoring, there would be no link. He would have worried about taking all that time getting us a link while giving up valueable time for some other person to post their "repeat" message.
---
Old actors don't die, they just go to Old Navy
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam..."This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.
Truly, this man has no soul.
----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! -Kodos
I was laughing my head off thinking about that eposide, when I read this line from the article:
"Supporters chanted "Monorail! Monorail!" at a rally held at Westlake Center after the vote count was announced."
I was just waiting for some politician to be quoted as saying, "We believe that monorail will put Seattle on the map, right next to Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway." =)
-----
Old actors don't die, they just go to Old Navy
I found this relating to the RHIC and quark-gluon plasma. Its an interesting link that explains more about this "doomsday" scenario and why it wont happen.
Actually, beta partciles are stopped by a sheet of metal. Its alpha particles there are stopped by a sheet of paper. (Gamma rays are are stopped by 6 inches of steel.)
But I agree with you, in this situation, there really isn't that much to worry about. Radiation is one of those terribly misunderstood things. And unfortunately, those activists who are afraid of science have done an excellent job villifying it, turning well understood scientific material into one of the greatest FUD campaigns ever.
-----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
Here in Utah, they test out the booster engines out by the Great Salt Lake. Its really an impressive thing to hear. There will be a really loud but low pitched rumbling noise that echoes for a few minutes. These booster test are at least 30 miles away from my city, but I have I have no clue exactly how far away they are. I'll look out west across the Great Salt Lake and the mountains, but see nothing.
I'd sure like to see the shuttle enginges test up close. It'd probably one of those tests that you feel much more than you hear.
-----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos!
he's right, at least if this site is to be believed
That's the problem with any policital report with a massive bias such as this one. Generally, their reports are meant to persuade people into their political views, not into reporting facts. Take such groups as Amnesty Intl (super-duper left extremist), or NRA (right extremist). They always release reports that throughly analyze data to eventually show that they're right!
In this case, its obvious that their opinions lean towards the left. Its also no surprise that their opinions end up showing they disagree with Republicans. That doesn't matter though, they didn't mean for their report to be politically neutral, they're activisits. They're explaning something they're passitionate over. Therefore, we shouldn't draw any conclusions, such as Republicans write bad internet laws, from this report.
And now I'll be modded down to -1 Troll since I've shown I'm a somewhat conservative poster on slashdot.
-----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! -- Kodos
Have you ever taken a science class before?
on
Tailor-Made Cancer Drugs
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
In the presence of cosmic rays and background radiation, to say nothing of the computer monitors, cellular phones, and irradicated beef that we surround ourselves with every day, these genetic superdrugs could easily mutate. In their new forms, they'd be essentially unstoppable. One stray gramma ray could spell the end of humanity.
You would make a great B-Movie script writer. Unfortunately, virtually nothing you said can be backed up scientifically. Your flaws are these:
1) How is this drug going to spread? Drugs are molecules, not viruses or bacteria. The drug will simply stay inside the person they give it to.
2) If this drug *could* spread, how is it going to reproduce itself? Luckily, drugs dont self-divide or mate to reproduce.
3) Irratiated beef is NOT radioactive, neither are cell phones. Therefore, harmless beef and cell phones will not alter a drug. (Techinically cell phones give off radiation in the form of radio waves, but visible light gives off far more energetic radiation than a cell phone does.)
4) Gamma rays, computer monitors, and background radiation could only affect a change in the drug in miniscule amounts. Generally, if one drug molecule was hit by a stray gamma ray, it would change one molecular bond, and perhaps mess up the configuration of the molecule. At absolute worst, a single change alter the drug in such a way that it would kill the person using the drug, but that's *extremely* unlikely.
Personally, I've read the article, and feel this is a pretty good idea. He uses already approved FDA drugs, and just does a better job targeting them.
---
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
No explanation != Amazing Discovery
on
Bacteria @ 41km
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Here is the text of the article explaining what was found:
The probes sucked air at four different heights. Some bacteria were found in the air samples. These were not common contaminants.
Nor had they been used in the laboratory where the test was held. Moreover, no such growth was found on control membranes.
(End of Document)
Now how in the world does this mean its extraterrestial?
-----
Abortions for some...miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
No the reason environmentalists come under attack is because of people like you. Lets say there's a lake miles away from any people, but down wind from an XYZ factory thats 100 miles, pollutants from the factory can be found in the lake. So, humans have affected the lake.
The reason we attack environmentalists is because they use vague definitions of human impact to arrive at a definite percentage (83% in the case of Wildlife Conservation Society)
Why don't they tweak their definition of "human impact" to arrive at a bigger, more impressive number, say...95%? Nothing's stopping them but their own definitions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping development at bay in many areas so that we'll always have wilderness. I want to keep lakes free from pollution just as much as you do. But what we don't need are activists disguising web pages as scientific reports. Why can't environmentalists ever study the Earth and arrive at data factually and accurately?
What else is new?
Humans breath air.
Water is wet.
Deserts are dry.
According to this map, people live on lakes! Looking at where the huge Great Salt Lake should be in Utah, it says there's humans on vritually all of it. (Er, human footprints at least). It also looks like Lake Okeechobee in Flordia still has people living on it too (not as many as Miami, but its not a dark green).
Well, they are environmentalists, what do they care for scientific procedure? I still disagree with the figure.
Exactly. Environmentalists are activists first, and scientists last. Try this quote from the article: "Formerly it was difficult to visualize this influence across the entire planet, but recent advances in the quality of geographic data now allow us to systematically measure human influence on the land's surface"
Really? You mean we couldn't get an accurate map of the world 10 years ago? Wow, I love environemtalism, its always on the leading edge of science...with all these new discoveries and all.
Living in Utah, I can look out my window right now and see that these maps are wrong. In map #1, it shows that there is virtually no area in the lower 48 states that doesn't have people on it. Like the poster of the article said...you can see lots of wilderness driving through the southwest. I don't know of too many cities on top of the 10,000 foot mountains next to our office, but according to the map there are On map #2, it mentions very little in the lower 48 as qualifying as "wilderness". Amazingly, according to their map, the Great Salt Flats is not wilderness! Do you know how wide and empty those salt flats are? If you remember the movie Independence Day, they filmed the scene where Will Smith was dragging his alien behind him in the parachute out there. Yep, according to map #1, there's people living there, and according to map #2, its not wilderness.
Sadly, their only definition of wilderness in the Unites States is only land inside a national park, national monument, or national wilderess area. It doesn't have anything to do with the amount of people or development...it only matters if the government has given it that federal designation.
wtf could hold an entire GALAXY together but a black hole?
This is a small misunderstanding. Many people seem to think that a black hole has super gravity or extra strength power just because its a black hole. Actually, it all depends on the mass.
For example, if our sun suddenly turned into a black hole, we wouldn't get sucked in. We'd still orbit our new black hole sun the same way we orbited our old normal sun. Just because it became a black hole doesn't mean its mass changed. And since its mass didn't change, we would still orbit the same.
Ditto for our galaxy. If we didn't have this black hole at the center of the galaxy, but instead 3.7 million suns, everything would orbit just the same
Here's a link to a nice graphic comparing the sizes of Pluto-Charon to numerous Kuiper objects. (BTW, the graphic doesn't yet show Ixion, but the prior poster already mentioned that it's roughly the size of Varuna.)
Its amazing to see that at least 8 good sized Kuiper objects have been found since 1995, with three big ones (Varuna, Ixion, and Quaoar) being discovered in the last three years. It makes you wonder how many more objects we'll find in the next few years.
I remember reading one of the articles saying that the ozone hole was defined as an area where the density of ozone drops below a certain level.
Yep. Quoting the article on Yahoo:
"The ozone hole is the area with total column ozone below 220 Dobson Units...A reading of 100 Dobson Units means that if all the ozone in the air above a point were brought down to sea-level pressure and cooled to freezing it would form a layer 1 centimeter thick. At that scale a reading of 250 Dobson Units translates to a layer about an inch thick."
So isn't it possible that two holes would spread the thinning area out? The total lack of ozone still exists and could still be growing.
Sort of...ozone in the southern hemisphere has a funny way of displacing itself. The ozone hole is comes and goes in a cycle. First its there, half a year later it vanishes, half a year later its back...etc. The funny part is, when the hole arrives, a lot of the ozone is *displaced* around the hole. So if the south pole had only 150 Dobson units of ozone, Australia could jump up to 400 units. (275 being the rough average).
So with today's smaller ozone holes, the missing ozone isn't necessarilly thinning the surrounding area out, its bringing all the ozone in the atmosphere back to a uniform density.
Good points. Although I'm not an economist, I have heard some answers to your questions.
There is a healthy range of unemployement rate. It can't be too high or too low. A 5.7% unemployment is healthy as far as the economy is concerned. As far as being one of the unemployed 5.7%, it sucks. I remember in my state a few years ago, the unemployment rate was between 2%-3%, and it caused all sorts of problems. Like you said, the average joe loved it because places like McDonalds were hiring for $8 or $9 bucks an hour. But businesses hated it, all the talented workers were gone...they couldn't operate as well. (I know, we tried to hire employees at our company. We couldn't find anyone who came close to meeting our needs, but we were so desperate for labor, we hired the 2 best slackers out of the bunch).
Since employers are just as important as employees from the economy's standpoint, there has to be a happy medium unemployment level. 6%-7% gets too high, 4% on down gets too low. Our economy demands that there is sufficient pool of unemployed people floating around for businesses. But not too big, or else unemployed people will never find work.
I do agree with you that I'd sure love to have an "overemployment rate". Its one of the hardest things to see a close friend or neighbor who can't find a job when their kids need money for food and clothes. I wish Americans were more idealistic and could work together to make sure everyone had a job.
1) Interest rates are the lowest they've been in over 40 years. 2) We're in the longest bear market in 60 years. ...Being unemployed in a righteous republican family makes me wonder how I'm still alive..."
Let me get this logic straight. If the stock market goes down...the economy isn't growing...and therefore you wont get a job?
Perhaps my glass is 3/4 full, but when I watch CNBC, this is what I hear:
Unemployment is at a healthy rate of 5.7%, and is expected to drop more.
The GDP is growing, at 1.3% last year, and is expected to increase.
Interest rates are at a 40 year low (yes, that's a wonderful thing, it lets you get cheaper loans on houses, cars, etc.)
And all of this despite a bear market! You wonder how you're still alive? Its because you're living in the world's econimic superpower...and its economy is getting better.
Your problem lies in misunderstanding how the real world works. The bear market and low interest rates didn't suck IT jobs away, it was because investors ran out of money to keep fueling the dotcom fad. If you can't find a job in the oversaturated IT industry, consider a different field. Unfortunately, from here on out, there's always going far too many computer geeks out there than there are $50K IT jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.
Those squirrels are radioactive. In fact, any squirrel in any tree is radioactive. Other radioactive things include chipmunks, bananas, houses, and Al Gore. Any substance made up of certain elements that have naturally occuring radioactive isotopes are radioactive.
That's the problem. It's so easy to make fun of radioactivity that you can attach the word "radioactive" to virtually anything. Then it becomes the butt of jokes, protested by environmentalists, and regulated by the government.
These Las Alamos trees, for example, are barely more radioactive than they should be. In fact, the report mentioned that it was hard to even discern these more-radioactive-than-normal trees because of small fluctations in background radiation.
These trees are harmless, and so are the squirrels.
--
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
That made sense. Nuke plants are virtually pollution free (aside from carefully controlled solid radioactive waste). Closing down nuke plants won't affect acid rain, deforestation, or resperatory illness in any of those ways.
To have your post make sense, switch it around so it says "Do you like those problems? No? Then close down coal plants. Then you'll either have to switch to nuclear, hope for a miracle, or change your standard of living"
--
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
They did it because they can.
Sometimes we can't remember if this is a duplicate story or not. These "repeat" posts are very helpful in figuring that out.
Besides, he wasn't karma whoring. He took the time to search the last strangelet article, get the url, and link it for us. If he was truly karma whoring, there would be no link. He would have worried about taking all that time getting us a link while giving up valueable time for some other person to post their "repeat" message.
---
Old actors don't die, they just go to Old Navy
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam..."This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.
Truly, this man has no soul.
----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! -Kodos
I was laughing my head off thinking about that eposide, when I read this line from the article:
"Supporters chanted "Monorail! Monorail!" at a rally held at Westlake Center after the vote count was announced."
I was just waiting for some politician to be quoted as saying, "We believe that monorail will put Seattle on the map, right next to Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway." =)
-----
Old actors don't die, they just go to Old Navy
Q. How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? A. None, its not the light bulb that needs changing.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=strangele t
(The link works, for some reason, Slashdot put a space in the link's description.)
---
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
But I agree with you, in this situation, there really isn't that much to worry about. Radiation is one of those terribly misunderstood things. And unfortunately, those activists who are afraid of science have done an excellent job villifying it, turning well understood scientific material into one of the greatest FUD campaigns ever.
-----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
And all this time I thought it would involve electricity.
-----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
I'd sure like to see the shuttle enginges test up close. It'd probably one of those tests that you feel much more than you hear.
-----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos!
That's the problem with any policital report with a massive bias such as this one. Generally, their reports are meant to persuade people into their political views, not into reporting facts. Take such groups as Amnesty Intl (super-duper left extremist), or NRA (right extremist). They always release reports that throughly analyze data to eventually show that they're right!
In this case, its obvious that their opinions lean towards the left. Its also no surprise that their opinions end up showing they disagree with Republicans. That doesn't matter though, they didn't mean for their report to be politically neutral, they're activisits. They're explaning something they're passitionate over. Therefore, we shouldn't draw any conclusions, such as Republicans write bad internet laws, from this report. And now I'll be modded down to -1 Troll since I've shown I'm a somewhat conservative poster on slashdot.
-----
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! -- Kodos
You would make a great B-Movie script writer.
Unfortunately, virtually nothing you said can be backed up scientifically. Your flaws are these:
1) How is this drug going to spread? Drugs are molecules, not viruses or bacteria. The drug will simply stay inside the person they give it to.
2) If this drug *could* spread, how is it going to reproduce itself? Luckily, drugs dont self-divide or mate to reproduce.
3) Irratiated beef is NOT radioactive, neither are cell phones. Therefore, harmless beef and cell phones will not alter a drug. (Techinically cell phones give off radiation in the form of radio waves, but visible light gives off far more energetic radiation than a cell phone does.)
4) Gamma rays, computer monitors, and background radiation could only affect a change in the drug in miniscule amounts. Generally, if one drug molecule was hit by a stray gamma ray, it would change one molecular bond, and perhaps mess up the configuration of the molecule. At absolute worst, a single change alter the drug in such a way that it would kill the person using the drug, but that's *extremely* unlikely.
Personally, I've read the article, and feel this is a pretty good idea. He uses already approved FDA drugs, and just does a better job targeting them.
---
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
The probes sucked air at four different heights. Some bacteria were found in the air samples. These were not common contaminants.
Nor had they been used in the laboratory where the test was held. Moreover, no such growth was found on control membranes.
(End of Document)
Now how in the world does this mean its extraterrestial?
-----
Abortions for some...miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
I wouldn't be surpirsed if a major source for their map was taking the NASA image and changing the color palette.
Lets say there's a lake miles away from any people, but down wind from an XYZ factory thats 100 miles, pollutants from the factory can be found in the lake. So, humans have affected the lake.
The reason we attack environmentalists is because they use vague definitions of human impact to arrive at a definite percentage (83% in the case of Wildlife Conservation Society)
Why don't they tweak their definition of "human impact" to arrive at a bigger, more impressive number, say...95%? Nothing's stopping them but their own definitions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping development at bay in many areas so that we'll always have wilderness. I want to keep lakes free from pollution just as much as you do. But what we don't need are activists disguising web pages as scientific reports. Why can't environmentalists ever study the Earth and arrive at data factually and accurately?
Humans breath air.
Water is wet.
Deserts are dry.
According to this map, people live on lakes! Looking at where the huge Great Salt Lake should be in Utah, it says there's humans on vritually all of it. (Er, human footprints at least). It also looks like Lake Okeechobee in Flordia still has people living on it too (not as many as Miami, but its not a dark green).
Environmentalist science...gotta love it
Exactly. Environmentalists are activists first, and scientists last. Try this quote from the article:
"Formerly it was difficult to visualize this influence across the entire planet, but recent advances in the quality of geographic data now allow us to systematically measure human influence on the land's surface"
Really? You mean we couldn't get an accurate map of the world 10 years ago? Wow, I love environemtalism, its always on the leading edge of science...with all these new discoveries and all.
Living in Utah, I can look out my window right now and see that these maps are wrong. In map #1, it shows that there is virtually no area in the lower 48 states that doesn't have people on it. Like the poster of the article said...you can see lots of wilderness driving through the southwest. I don't know of too many cities on top of the 10,000 foot mountains next to our office, but according to the map there are
On map #2, it mentions very little in the lower 48 as qualifying as "wilderness". Amazingly, according to their map, the Great Salt Flats is not wilderness! Do you know how wide and empty those salt flats are? If you remember the movie Independence Day, they filmed the scene where Will Smith was dragging his alien behind him in the parachute out there. Yep, according to map #1, there's people living there, and according to map #2, its not wilderness.
Sadly, their only definition of wilderness in the Unites States is only land inside a national park, national monument, or national wilderess area. It doesn't have anything to do with the amount of people or development...it only matters if the government has given it that federal designation.
This is a small misunderstanding. Many people seem to think that a black hole has super gravity or extra strength power just because its a black hole. Actually, it all depends on the mass.
For example, if our sun suddenly turned into a black hole, we wouldn't get sucked in. We'd still orbit our new black hole sun the same way we orbited our old normal sun. Just because it became a black hole doesn't mean its mass changed. And since its mass didn't change, we would still orbit the same.
Ditto for our galaxy. If we didn't have this black hole at the center of the galaxy, but instead 3.7 million suns, everything would orbit just the same
---
A black hole is just God dividing by zero
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~ira/kuvat/web2.jpg
"Say, what should we do with this old banana cardboard box here?" "I know! Lets use it as a stand for our futuristic invention!"
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/varuna.ht ml
Its amazing to see that at least 8 good sized Kuiper objects have been found since 1995, with three big ones (Varuna, Ixion, and Quaoar) being discovered in the last three years. It makes you wonder how many more objects we'll find in the next few years.
Yep. Quoting the article on Yahoo:
"The ozone hole is the area with total column ozone below 220 Dobson Units...A reading of 100 Dobson Units means that if all the ozone in the air above a point were brought down to sea-level pressure and cooled to freezing it would form a layer 1 centimeter thick. At that scale a reading of 250 Dobson Units translates to a layer about an inch thick."
So isn't it possible that two holes would spread the thinning area out? The total lack of ozone still exists and could still be growing.
Sort of...ozone in the southern hemisphere has a funny way of displacing itself. The ozone hole is comes and goes in a cycle. First its there, half a year later it vanishes, half a year later its back...etc. The funny part is, when the hole arrives, a lot of the ozone is *displaced* around the hole. So if the south pole had only 150 Dobson units of ozone, Australia could jump up to 400 units. (275 being the rough average).
So with today's smaller ozone holes, the missing ozone isn't necessarilly thinning the surrounding area out, its bringing all the ozone in the atmosphere back to a uniform density.
There is a healthy range of unemployement rate. It can't be too high or too low. A 5.7% unemployment is healthy as far as the economy is concerned. As far as being one of the unemployed 5.7%, it sucks. I remember in my state a few years ago, the unemployment rate was between 2%-3%, and it caused all sorts of problems. Like you said, the average joe loved it because places like McDonalds were hiring for $8 or $9 bucks an hour. But businesses hated it, all the talented workers were gone...they couldn't operate as well. (I know, we tried to hire employees at our company. We couldn't find anyone who came close to meeting our needs, but we were so desperate for labor, we hired the 2 best slackers out of the bunch).
Since employers are just as important as employees from the economy's standpoint, there has to be a happy medium unemployment level. 6%-7% gets too high, 4% on down gets too low. Our economy demands that there is sufficient pool of unemployed people floating around for businesses. But not too big, or else unemployed people will never find work.
I do agree with you that I'd sure love to have an "overemployment rate". Its one of the hardest things to see a close friend or neighbor who can't find a job when their kids need money for food and clothes. I wish Americans were more idealistic and could work together to make sure everyone had a job.
2) We're in the longest bear market in 60 years.
...Being unemployed in a righteous republican family makes me wonder how I'm still alive..."
Let me get this logic straight. If the stock market goes down...the economy isn't growing...and therefore you wont get a job?
Perhaps my glass is 3/4 full, but when I watch CNBC, this is what I hear:
Unemployment is at a healthy rate of 5.7%, and is expected to drop more.
The GDP is growing, at 1.3% last year, and is expected to increase.
Interest rates are at a 40 year low (yes, that's a wonderful thing, it lets you get cheaper loans on houses, cars, etc.)
And all of this despite a bear market! You wonder how you're still alive? Its because you're living in the world's econimic superpower...and its economy is getting better.
Your problem lies in misunderstanding how the real world works. The bear market and low interest rates didn't suck IT jobs away, it was because investors ran out of money to keep fueling the dotcom fad. If you can't find a job in the oversaturated IT industry, consider a different field. Unfortunately, from here on out, there's always going far too many computer geeks out there than there are $50K IT jobs.