Heck no, There's a whole host of new PC's hitting the market for ~$50 (just mentioned one right here on Slashdot yesterday by APC.) Heck, but 10 and throw a party. Hackers delight! Just make sure you, order it anonymously and have it delivered someplace that can't be traced back to you. Helps if you aren't a puter pro too.
In fact, there is recent work described in this months Discover about using proteins produced by pythons (and no not the language) to renew and strengthen damages hearts.
This is going to be stupid... a generation of Alpha Males, rooted to the spot by their 400 lb, 6 foot appendages... Just because you have the money and science makes it possible doesn't mean you should do it!
Indeed, I think its fair to say that the decision to give corporations unlimited access to the nations political machinery had the Founding Fathers crying tears of joy up there in patriot's heaven.
When your hospital is for profit, you end up in this funny cycle. Ambulance chaser sues someone, and wins a ridiculous tort settlement against a doctor/hospital. Insurance company says "Boohoo, I can't possibly survive this assault if I don't raise my rates accordingly!" so they accommodate the ambulance chaser, and pad the raise to increase their profits by 5-10%. The Hospital says "Boohoo, I can't possibly survive this assault if I don't raise my rates accordingly!" so they accommodate the insurance company and jack their rates up an additional 5-10% to increase their profit margins. Everyone pats each other on the back, wash and repeat. The problem is, 5-10% starts looking like business as usual, and the only way for a CEO to stand out with his shareholders, is to bring in 10-20%. Then 15-30%. On and on. Until now a hospital charges $15 for a Tums, or $20 for a travel size box of Kleenex. Or the one I love, nearly $400 for a $1.60 spinal tap needle.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of greedy asshole lawyers. Likewise greedy asshole clients who think winning a tort is a lottery ticket. Greedy Insurance company executives. Even greedy money grubbing Hospital Administrators. Its the circle of life in a dystopian money grubbing circle jerk. So you can pick one clown out of the circus if you like, but there are plenty of other rings of action going on, and if you were to bring the owner of every palm being greased forward, I'm guessing you'd be looking at quite a crowd.
Perhaps a more interesting conversation might be, how do we mozy our culture back to society based on personal responsibility, social service, and personal dignity. Sorry, forgive the brain-fart, just fantasizing.
the potential problems that can stem from access to pornography and other explicit content on the uncensored, often incendiary Web. Schlomo Cohen, 24, said he came to Citi Field because the rally was a good way to remind his community to keep temptation at bay. 'Desires are out there,' said Cohen. 'We have to learn how to control ourselves.'
I look at this statement and instantly see two HUGE problems. The first is setting oneself in conflict with being human. Like there's something inherently wrong with desire. Let me give you an example. Food is bad. You're too fat. Stop eating. Don't think about delicious food. Stop thinking about how good it tastes and how nice it would be to get a great big juicy (fill in your favorite blank... nothing obscene, that would be wrong!) Until you can actually own your desires, take some responsibility for the desires you have, and frame them in a context that looks at them with the intention of having a great life, you my friend are buggered. Because when you cheat on a diet, who are you cheating on? You actually have to develop a relationship with yourself that demands you honoring promises you make to and with yourself.
Which brings us to the second problem, which is the externalization of "It". The desire is "Out There". No its not. Its "In There" and you take it wherever you go. Wherever you go... there you are... and so is the desire. Its your desire, how else could it exist. These are all abstractions attempting to separate one self from the fact that we are animals with intellect and language. As such we have things to say about our existence, and are therefore distinct from our nonspeaking primate relatives. The things you say are important. Because you are either the source of your experience of life, or the victim of circumstance. It all lives in the stories in which you indulge yourself. Worse, if its out there, its THEIR FAULT. Now you are completely absolved of your humanity and all you have to do is dump it on some poor clod over there. Its only a short throw now from your warm and fuzzy God giving you the go ahead to shoot that bugger. Being responsible for yourself doesn't make you warm and fuzzy. It does however give some say about who you'll be.
There were tons of mitigating circumstances including the parents of the dead boy publicly saying they didn't want the young man to suffer a harsh sentence or extended jail time. One life lost was enough. A sentence of over a year would have almost certainly meant deportation for a young man who has never known a home other than the United States. He also has to receive counseling and pay $10,000 towards a program to prevent hate crimes.
Of course lawyers on both sides are unhappy, one side wanting exoneration, the other wanting public human sacrifice. This is a tough one. The kid did something terrible and it had an impact that can never fully be reconciled. That said, it was a stupid, childish, thoughtless action for a kid, and if we crushed every young person who committed such an action we'd have about 12 Stepford Children walking around to send cards to the rest of our children in permanent detention. I know I did some rather profoundly stupid things when I was his age and I hurt some innocent people's feelings. Thank goodness, the harm wasn't permanent, and I could clean up the mess I made. I don't have a clue how I'd deal with what he's facing.
Its moot, if you look at the lobes on the Homunculus Nebula in the Hubble image, you'll clearly see the axis of Eta Carinae is pointed nowhere near us.
Actually the first one is not likely... however regarding the second... just today I read that the city of Naples is giving the green light to drill the first of what will ultimately be a 4,000 meter hydrothermal energy vent into the Campi Flegrei super volcano caldera just outside Naples. Scientists are worried about earthquakes and the remote possibility of precipitating an eruption. I find this far more sleep depriving than any thought of astronomical events. Oh and if you follow the story links, the only vaguely possible stellar catastrophe is a possible Gamma Ray Burster towards the center of the galaxy... a low odds threat at best.
This isn't a liberal problem, and the fact that you think it is, tells me how poorly you understand the situation. We have a dozen vested interests. Corporations, Politicians, The People... its complicated, like life. The way things are going is completely unsustainable and the gas is going to get more expensive no matter what you do (read about peak oil), so the smart money is migrating to sustainable sources that don't turn the planet into a twin of Venus (sorry if that's over your head, look up weather on Venus.) Ultimately there will be Fusion... and more energy that we can use... any time soon. Until then, we need to push the fossil fuel corporations back from trying to manipulate the game in their favor and to everyone else's detriment. Again, there are more important things that profit. Personally, I'm fiscally conservative about some things and socially liberal about others. In any case, you gotta get a little brighter and stop listening to the talking heads, because they, for the most part liberal and conservative, are simply mouthpieces for corporate masters who just don't care about you or me.
Again, there are two groups of people at work here. Irresponsible hit and run artists looking to take the money and run leaving a new superfund site every place they go, and real business men and women who are both responsible to society and their share holders. The problem isn't fracking. The problem is a pervasive lack of regulation and responsible businesses performing the process. As with everything else, you can't expect any more than the lowest common denominator if you don't hold people and their political systems to account.
Wow... I'm hoping this is a sarcastic statement... The scientific evidence on global dimming, melting glaciers, ocean acidification, greenhouse gas impact on both animal and plant behavior is simply huge, I mean vast, immense, nearly astronomical! For someone to make this claim, I'd have to believe you either come from a parallel dimension where CO2 is some form of laughing gas, or you are spending way too much time watch Fox News. In any case, the issue is and has always been economics, and only became politics when the fossil fuel producers bought our government.
Clearly you haven't studied the effects of lubricating geological strata. Their having the same problem up around Calistoga, CA where they've been enhancing geothermal systems by injecting water to increase the steam but also as a side effect lubricating strata, and causing earthquakes from sub 1.0 to nearly 5.0 on the Richter Scale. In the case of Fracking, these are places where there was little or no movement in the ground and you created movement first by creating an artificial fault network (the Fracking itself) and then by applying a lubricant to help the gas migrate to the surface. All of that said, there are a host of ways to manage and mitigate these problems, and we need to be looking at how we can best balance the interest of the many with the well being of those impacted.
However, the real problem surrounding fracking is that ex-VP Cheney ramrodded legislation through for his good friends at Halliburton and its subsidiaries allowing them to claim the contents of their fracking fluid as a "Trade Secret", and virtually excusing them from all clean water law. The result is that a few greedy, nasty, bad men, did really sorry things to a few people's drinking water and used a number of small rural communities as their toilets. There is worrisome evidence that a few people have died. There is significant evidence that a number of people have been exposed to toxic levels of benzene, heavy metals, and a whole raft of other known carcinogens and neurotoxins. The culprits are folks who are well connected, have friends all the way to the Supreme Court and the chance they'll even receive even a wrist slap is vanishingly small. At best, those who have been assaulted and abused (or their grandchildren... if any survive) may in distant decades collect some small monetary recompense for their suffering and almost certainly shortened life spans. This is not an indictment on the industry. I believe its possible to "Frack" safely and with clear consideration for the environment and the people that live in said environment. It is, as with so many other things, a situation where a few really disgusting self serving two legged vermin, have paved the entire scenery with their personal manifest destinies and left all including responsible business men and women holding a bag full of their rancid social excrement.
A just system would punish the guilty and reward the innocent. We are sadly in a longing search for a just system. We need to come up with a better game than simple "Monetary Profit", because this game is killing us all.
The point is that everyone, everywhere, will take every opportunity to squeeze a buck out of every orifice they can legally get a finger in. This is why, you go to a movie for which you paid $15 dollars to see, and they subject you to 20 minutes of commercials. That is why people are driving around with advertisements on their cars. That is why if they ever figure out how to project images on the inside of contact lenses you best be prepared to be seeing commercials on them for at least an hour a day. The corporate machine is hawking its proverbial ass off and it has you square in its sights. How dare you deny them the opportunity to scream at you every waking moment of your life.
If you've been watching the Pharma business lately, mostly what is being created is minor chemical alterations to existing drugs, with virtually no change in either primary or side-effects all for the purpose of creating a "New" drug they already understand fully and will replace a cash cow whose patent is about to expire. A cynical manipulation of the system, but great for their bottom line.
Actually teaching myth "As Myth" is perfectly valid. It tells our children something about the people we came from, that human beings are hungry to know, to understand and that as a sentient (arguably) species we resort to making crap up if we can't come up with a better explanation (you remember the "But Why?" sessions with your parents when you were a child?... didn't take long to get to "That's just the way it is..." did it?.) It also teaches our children the importance of heroes, figures to aspire to. If today's society lacks anything, its real heroes. Stop worshiping sports or rock stars. Look at those who sacrifice to serve, and give that last measure of devotion for their friends, their families, their societies. Clearly myth has purpose, you simply have to keep it in the right place.
As for a creator. There actually very interesting conversations arguing for the possibility that we live in a simulation on a great big computer. There are also very exciting conversations that the big bang was in fact the White Hole side of a collapsing Black Hole in another universe. That Black Holes are in fact Einstein-Rosen bridges to other dimensions, which might make this universe very different than current scientists suppose and dramatically alter the meaning of dark matter and dark energy.
All of this is conjecture. Science is still too young to poke very deep into the really big questions (the huge stuff and the tiny things.) We do keep peeling back the mysteries one layer at a time, and the peeling is accelerating. Perhaps in our lifetime, we'll be able to say some really important things with authority or at least know if we ever can.
No He's a Laser Physicist... Iran wants to build a "Star Wars Defense System"!
So if you check out the "Human Rights Watch" you'll find that Iran is a stinking cesspool in the area of human rights and you simply can't be surprised at how unfair or nasty they are and on how little provocation they will burn you down and pee on the ashes. If you are LGBT or friendly to such, an "Intellectual or Social Scientist", an unhappy student, protester of any type, woman, child, religious/racial/or social minority, you best get ready to enjoy the hospitality of "Club Tehran" where they use real clubs and the only thing easier than the living is the dying.
Slashdot Mirror
Why choose... I say he was Incompalicious!!!
Heck no, There's a whole host of new PC's hitting the market for ~$50 (just mentioned one right here on Slashdot yesterday by APC.) Heck, but 10 and throw a party. Hackers delight! Just make sure you, order it anonymously and have it delivered someplace that can't be traced back to you. Helps if you aren't a puter pro too.
In fact, there is recent work described in this months Discover about using proteins produced by pythons (and no not the language) to renew and strengthen damages hearts.
This is going to be stupid... a generation of Alpha Males, rooted to the spot by their 400 lb, 6 foot appendages... Just because you have the money and science makes it possible doesn't mean you should do it!
Sadly yes, he wants to be a bag of Silicon, inflating some some nymphet's bust line.
Do they make a 0.0001 point font? Screw the disk space, He's wasting my life space... I want that post covered by a single period.
Indeed, I think its fair to say that the decision to give corporations unlimited access to the nations political machinery had the Founding Fathers crying tears of joy up there in patriot's heaven.
When your hospital is for profit, you end up in this funny cycle. Ambulance chaser sues someone, and wins a ridiculous tort settlement against a doctor/hospital. Insurance company says "Boohoo, I can't possibly survive this assault if I don't raise my rates accordingly!" so they accommodate the ambulance chaser, and pad the raise to increase their profits by 5-10%. The Hospital says "Boohoo, I can't possibly survive this assault if I don't raise my rates accordingly!" so they accommodate the insurance company and jack their rates up an additional 5-10% to increase their profit margins. Everyone pats each other on the back, wash and repeat. The problem is, 5-10% starts looking like business as usual, and the only way for a CEO to stand out with his shareholders, is to bring in 10-20%. Then 15-30%. On and on. Until now a hospital charges $15 for a Tums, or $20 for a travel size box of Kleenex. Or the one I love, nearly $400 for a $1.60 spinal tap needle.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of greedy asshole lawyers. Likewise greedy asshole clients who think winning a tort is a lottery ticket. Greedy Insurance company executives. Even greedy money grubbing Hospital Administrators. Its the circle of life in a dystopian money grubbing circle jerk. So you can pick one clown out of the circus if you like, but there are plenty of other rings of action going on, and if you were to bring the owner of every palm being greased forward, I'm guessing you'd be looking at quite a crowd.
Perhaps a more interesting conversation might be, how do we mozy our culture back to society based on personal responsibility, social service, and personal dignity. Sorry, forgive the brain-fart, just fantasizing.
the potential problems that can stem from access to pornography and other explicit content on the uncensored, often incendiary Web. Schlomo Cohen, 24, said he came to Citi Field because the rally was a good way to remind his community to keep temptation at bay. 'Desires are out there,' said Cohen. 'We have to learn how to control ourselves.'
I look at this statement and instantly see two HUGE problems. The first is setting oneself in conflict with being human. Like there's something inherently wrong with desire. Let me give you an example. Food is bad. You're too fat. Stop eating. Don't think about delicious food. Stop thinking about how good it tastes and how nice it would be to get a great big juicy (fill in your favorite blank... nothing obscene, that would be wrong!) Until you can actually own your desires, take some responsibility for the desires you have, and frame them in a context that looks at them with the intention of having a great life, you my friend are buggered. Because when you cheat on a diet, who are you cheating on? You actually have to develop a relationship with yourself that demands you honoring promises you make to and with yourself.
Which brings us to the second problem, which is the externalization of "It". The desire is "Out There". No its not. Its "In There" and you take it wherever you go. Wherever you go... there you are... and so is the desire. Its your desire, how else could it exist. These are all abstractions attempting to separate one self from the fact that we are animals with intellect and language. As such we have things to say about our existence, and are therefore distinct from our nonspeaking primate relatives. The things you say are important. Because you are either the source of your experience of life, or the victim of circumstance. It all lives in the stories in which you indulge yourself. Worse, if its out there, its THEIR FAULT. Now you are completely absolved of your humanity and all you have to do is dump it on some poor clod over there. Its only a short throw now from your warm and fuzzy God giving you the go ahead to shoot that bugger. Being responsible for yourself doesn't make you warm and fuzzy. It does however give some say about who you'll be.
There were tons of mitigating circumstances including the parents of the dead boy publicly saying they didn't want the young man to suffer a harsh sentence or extended jail time. One life lost was enough. A sentence of over a year would have almost certainly meant deportation for a young man who has never known a home other than the United States. He also has to receive counseling and pay $10,000 towards a program to prevent hate crimes.
Of course lawyers on both sides are unhappy, one side wanting exoneration, the other wanting public human sacrifice. This is a tough one. The kid did something terrible and it had an impact that can never fully be reconciled. That said, it was a stupid, childish, thoughtless action for a kid, and if we crushed every young person who committed such an action we'd have about 12 Stepford Children walking around to send cards to the rest of our children in permanent detention. I know I did some rather profoundly stupid things when I was his age and I hurt some innocent people's feelings. Thank goodness, the harm wasn't permanent, and I could clean up the mess I made. I don't have a clue how I'd deal with what he's facing.
Its the Navy Seals that will really suffer, but only for a little while... Box Jellies... Eeeeeeeewwwwwww!
Yeah, but it sounds funny because the folks who say atheist as a slur here in the U.S. frequently do so through missing front teeth.
The electromagnetic force. Since it governs all light and the behavior of barionic matter, I win, crown me!!!
Add that to rocks are hard and water's wet!!!
Its moot, if you look at the lobes on the Homunculus Nebula in the Hubble image, you'll clearly see the axis of Eta Carinae is pointed nowhere near us.
Actually the first one is not likely... however regarding the second... just today I read that the city of Naples is giving the green light to drill the first of what will ultimately be a 4,000 meter hydrothermal energy vent into the Campi Flegrei super volcano caldera just outside Naples. Scientists are worried about earthquakes and the remote possibility of precipitating an eruption. I find this far more sleep depriving than any thought of astronomical events. Oh and if you follow the story links, the only vaguely possible stellar catastrophe is a possible Gamma Ray Burster towards the center of the galaxy... a low odds threat at best.
This isn't a liberal problem, and the fact that you think it is, tells me how poorly you understand the situation. We have a dozen vested interests. Corporations, Politicians, The People... its complicated, like life. The way things are going is completely unsustainable and the gas is going to get more expensive no matter what you do (read about peak oil), so the smart money is migrating to sustainable sources that don't turn the planet into a twin of Venus (sorry if that's over your head, look up weather on Venus.) Ultimately there will be Fusion... and more energy that we can use... any time soon. Until then, we need to push the fossil fuel corporations back from trying to manipulate the game in their favor and to everyone else's detriment. Again, there are more important things that profit. Personally, I'm fiscally conservative about some things and socially liberal about others. In any case, you gotta get a little brighter and stop listening to the talking heads, because they, for the most part liberal and conservative, are simply mouthpieces for corporate masters who just don't care about you or me.
Again, there are two groups of people at work here. Irresponsible hit and run artists looking to take the money and run leaving a new superfund site every place they go, and real business men and women who are both responsible to society and their share holders. The problem isn't fracking. The problem is a pervasive lack of regulation and responsible businesses performing the process. As with everything else, you can't expect any more than the lowest common denominator if you don't hold people and their political systems to account.
Wow... I'm hoping this is a sarcastic statement... The scientific evidence on global dimming, melting glaciers, ocean acidification, greenhouse gas impact on both animal and plant behavior is simply huge, I mean vast, immense, nearly astronomical! For someone to make this claim, I'd have to believe you either come from a parallel dimension where CO2 is some form of laughing gas, or you are spending way too much time watch Fox News. In any case, the issue is and has always been economics, and only became politics when the fossil fuel producers bought our government.
Clearly you haven't studied the effects of lubricating geological strata. Their having the same problem up around Calistoga, CA where they've been enhancing geothermal systems by injecting water to increase the steam but also as a side effect lubricating strata, and causing earthquakes from sub 1.0 to nearly 5.0 on the Richter Scale. In the case of Fracking, these are places where there was little or no movement in the ground and you created movement first by creating an artificial fault network (the Fracking itself) and then by applying a lubricant to help the gas migrate to the surface. All of that said, there are a host of ways to manage and mitigate these problems, and we need to be looking at how we can best balance the interest of the many with the well being of those impacted.
However, the real problem surrounding fracking is that ex-VP Cheney ramrodded legislation through for his good friends at Halliburton and its subsidiaries allowing them to claim the contents of their fracking fluid as a "Trade Secret", and virtually excusing them from all clean water law. The result is that a few greedy, nasty, bad men, did really sorry things to a few people's drinking water and used a number of small rural communities as their toilets. There is worrisome evidence that a few people have died. There is significant evidence that a number of people have been exposed to toxic levels of benzene, heavy metals, and a whole raft of other known carcinogens and neurotoxins. The culprits are folks who are well connected, have friends all the way to the Supreme Court and the chance they'll even receive even a wrist slap is vanishingly small. At best, those who have been assaulted and abused (or their grandchildren... if any survive) may in distant decades collect some small monetary recompense for their suffering and almost certainly shortened life spans. This is not an indictment on the industry. I believe its possible to "Frack" safely and with clear consideration for the environment and the people that live in said environment. It is, as with so many other things, a situation where a few really disgusting self serving two legged vermin, have paved the entire scenery with their personal manifest destinies and left all including responsible business men and women holding a bag full of their rancid social excrement.
A just system would punish the guilty and reward the innocent. We are sadly in a longing search for a just system. We need to come up with a better game than simple "Monetary Profit", because this game is killing us all.
The point is that everyone, everywhere, will take every opportunity to squeeze a buck out of every orifice they can legally get a finger in. This is why, you go to a movie for which you paid $15 dollars to see, and they subject you to 20 minutes of commercials. That is why people are driving around with advertisements on their cars. That is why if they ever figure out how to project images on the inside of contact lenses you best be prepared to be seeing commercials on them for at least an hour a day. The corporate machine is hawking its proverbial ass off and it has you square in its sights. How dare you deny them the opportunity to scream at you every waking moment of your life.
If you've been watching the Pharma business lately, mostly what is being created is minor chemical alterations to existing drugs, with virtually no change in either primary or side-effects all for the purpose of creating a "New" drug they already understand fully and will replace a cash cow whose patent is about to expire. A cynical manipulation of the system, but great for their bottom line.
Actually teaching myth "As Myth" is perfectly valid. It tells our children something about the people we came from, that human beings are hungry to know, to understand and that as a sentient (arguably) species we resort to making crap up if we can't come up with a better explanation (you remember the "But Why?" sessions with your parents when you were a child?... didn't take long to get to "That's just the way it is..." did it?.) It also teaches our children the importance of heroes, figures to aspire to. If today's society lacks anything, its real heroes. Stop worshiping sports or rock stars. Look at those who sacrifice to serve, and give that last measure of devotion for their friends, their families, their societies. Clearly myth has purpose, you simply have to keep it in the right place.
As for a creator. There actually very interesting conversations arguing for the possibility that we live in a simulation on a great big computer. There are also very exciting conversations that the big bang was in fact the White Hole side of a collapsing Black Hole in another universe. That Black Holes are in fact Einstein-Rosen bridges to other dimensions, which might make this universe very different than current scientists suppose and dramatically alter the meaning of dark matter and dark energy.
All of this is conjecture. Science is still too young to poke very deep into the really big questions (the huge stuff and the tiny things.) We do keep peeling back the mysteries one layer at a time, and the peeling is accelerating. Perhaps in our lifetime, we'll be able to say some really important things with authority or at least know if we ever can.
The mice turned green, grew to immense proportions and began pimp slapping the researchers around like they were red-headed step children!
No He's a Laser Physicist... Iran wants to build a "Star Wars Defense System"!
So if you check out the "Human Rights Watch" you'll find that Iran is a stinking cesspool in the area of human rights and you simply can't be surprised at how unfair or nasty they are and on how little provocation they will burn you down and pee on the ashes. If you are LGBT or friendly to such, an "Intellectual or Social Scientist", an unhappy student, protester of any type, woman, child, religious/racial/or social minority, you best get ready to enjoy the hospitality of "Club Tehran" where they use real clubs and the only thing easier than the living is the dying.