Again, this isn't necessarily the case. The most likely form of self-destruction is self-replicating devices, and nature has managed to work with such things for billions of years without imploding. It could be that by the time individuals get the power to easily create virilent strains of deadly bacteria, we'll have sophisticated counter-measures. I agree that self-replicating devices are probably the largest man-made threat in the foreseeable future. And, I agree that pointing to nature is a great way to be less scared about it. I think, though, that you're not giving nature enough credit when you talk about counter-measures. I believe that we already have sophisticated counter-measures, in the form of immune systems, DNA repair mechanisms, competing bacteria, virii, etc.
It remains a remote possibility that a truly heinous man-made self-replicating something could go through enough iterations toward Evil that it could outstrip the natural defenses already present. But, I think the most likely scenario is that what seems unthinkably deadly, virulent, mutable, etc, does not begin to compare with what has already come and gone through the natural course of events during the billions of years of life's evolution here. I think it is prudent to plan counter-measures to self-replicating badness before it happens, I also think that we're just one player at the table, and that plenty of other living/self-replicating systems around us will be at least as ingenious, and self-preserving, as we are.
Only if the asteroids are made of scrith. Niven's ringworld is a badass idea, don't get me wrong, but it might as well be made of unobtanium for all it's practicality right now.
If I had MOD points, and hadn't already commented in this article, I'd give them to you! Thanks for the link. I've added it to my bookmarks and will probably be reading over lunch(es). It also linked to this Tim O'Reilly book: http://tim.oreilly.com/sci-fi/herbert/ which is available free, online.
I've always wished to find some literary criticisms of Dune, or the entire series, or the other individual books. However, as an engineering student, I've never been able to find any and am convinced that I'm just woefully uneducated when it comes to literary journals and publications. Can anyone point to or suggest some Dune analysis or criticism articles, papers, theses, etc?
See my comments below re: Sci-Fi's terrible mini-series.
Short version: "Dune, desert planet." means the Fremen should freaking wear their stillsuits, and use them to actually keep their water. How any film maker can miss that FUNDAMENTAL aspect of the Dune story is beyond explanation.
Please, for the love of melange, do NOT let this stray into the territory of the horrendously terribly Sci-Fi channel adaptation of Dune. I mean, seriously, Fremen strutting around w/o their stillsuits on? Never mind all the times they're wearing them but don't have their nose plugs and mouth covers on. And Jessica as a sniveling woe-is-me damsel in distress! Bah!
Dune is by far my favorite series of books. I've read and re-read them many times, and always find new, provocative stuff in each iteration. Someday I plan to go page by page and make notes, ask questions in the margins, and analyze the hell out of the whole series. I've never felt that compelled about any other story.
I don't think a movie can be entirely true to the text, nor can it, I think, approach it much better than Lynch's work. Short of doing one movie per book, the plots, characters, politics, etc are just too wide AND deep to be presented on screen. For goodness sake, the original screening of Lynch's movie included a handout telling the characters' names and a short bio of each!
I hope that they do an excellent job with this movie. I must not fear that they mangle it as badly, or worse than, Sci-Fi did.
I've not RTFA, so I can't speak to the specifics and I may be answering a charge that doesn't exist or is otherwise addressed. Still, I found that, during my undergrad and graduate engineering education, the students who knew how to find and assemble the right study groups did much better in class and had a better understanding of the material. Now, of course there was some "I've looked at problem 5 for 3 hours and don't understand it. What did you get?" type of soft cheating, but by and large, the study groups I was involved in were really training for trouble shooting, communication, teaching peers, and understanding others' methodologies.
I hope that the very valuable experience of finding a group you can get along with, who shares your same level of academic commitment, and compliments your learning style, is not reduced because of fears of expulsion similar to this case.
The law of mass-energy equivalence can be demonstrated through purely geometric arguments -- you need not even understand calculus in order to grasp the math. We have grasped the power of stars. That proves something about us, but I am not sure what.
Wouldn't it be possible for some mosquitoes affected by this attack to happen to also smell/taste tetracyclene in people and animals? And therefore, be able to survive provided they always follow that sensory signal along with whatever they use to find blood?
So, then we have mosquitoes that just hover around places w/ lots of antibiotic treated animals, like dairy cows, chickens, etc (I'm actually not sure if these particular animals are treated w/ this particular antibiotic, but the point is the same), or around places w/ antibiotic treated people like hospitals, or people who take prescription antibiotics for acne among other things.
Seems to me like nature will correct this man made genetic problem pretty quickly.
3) The day/night cycle on the Moon is vastly longer than that of Mars. Mars is pretty close to that of Earth. Solar power is not even remotely practical on the Moon. (Except in the polar regions where it s theorized that would be possible to find spots where you have continual daylight). If you want to go somewhere other than the poles on the Moon for any duration, you are looking at needing a new generation of nuclear power. Which would also be useful on Mars, but there is a tradeoff there in terms of mass and other factors.)
It seems to me that if solar power is viable on Mars, then a longer day/night cycle doesn't mean anything on the moon. If a system can charge during the day on Mars, then discharge during the night, so can a lunar based system. Perhaps you need more battery capacity, but it's still a 50% duty cycle, yes?
Don't people realize that if a cow has twins (real twins, not just multiple calves at the same time), and those twins grow up to be big, strong, healthy bovine, they will go into the food supply? Seriously, this is a silly thing for people to be worried about, and I'm glad the FDA has made the common sense decision here.
How am I raising the price of blood diamonds if I buy a certified Canadian Ikuma diamond instead of some other of questionable origin? If _anything_, I'm supporting a different product and taking business away from De Beers, which should lead to them reducing prices in order to compete.
Now I know it's cliche to say that FF7 was great, but seriously, the music played during the first opening fights of the game, the Golden Saucer music, the end theme w/ Sephiroth...these are truly moving songs IF you've played the game. They capture so much of the experience, and bring back all those feelings and memories. Fantastic music.
My experience is academic, not hands on, so I'd happily defer to a truly experienced opinion should one surface. However, for certain load levels, some materials have an essentially infinite fatigue limit when it comes to cyclic loading. Many metals, for example, have a characteristic curve that will tell you the projected life of a part in cycles for a given load. This allows designers, without mandates for planned obsolescence, to make cyclically loaded parts that will not fail due to fatigue. So, presumably, there's a safe amount of cycled stress for silicon to avoid fatigue failure indefinitely. Whether or not the loading levels used in the NIST experiments were above that safe amount, I do not know. Though, I suppose that, given they DID find fatigue failure, it's safe to assume they used enough loading to cause fatigue in a "short" time frame.
IAAME (I AM a MEMS Engineer) and there are 2 quibbles I have with your statement:
1) The DLP mirrors' flexing is exactly the types of fatigue loading that most other materials eventually fail under. Just the slight imbalances in a rotating shaft cause it to experience slight up and down flexing during operation. If you've not taken into account the fatigue limit of your material, a 1 RPM shaft will eventually fail due to tiny "wobbles".
2) The "magnetic" field that causes DLP mirrors to actuate is magnetic in only a very general, electromagnetic way. The mirrors move due to electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged plates being very close to each other. There is no magnetic force involved.
IAAME (I am a mechanical engineer) I hate to be pedantic, but if you're going to give people technical words like tensile strength, give it to them correctly. Tensile strength refers to the amount of stress a material can handle, before failure, when loaded in axial tension. While bending does involve loading that is 50% tensile, it also contains an equal, compressive, component. In fact, many materials have a different compressive strength, and may fail at a loading that does not exceed tensile strength due to buckling or other problems on the compressive side.
This "argument" is worthless for one very simple reason, as are many of people's arguments against molecular nanotechnology. At the end of the day, the people raising objections exist as sentient, mobile, self-reproducing beings because of the startlingly complex and near infinite array of nanoscale machines working inside them. Working in a noisy environment, at well above room temperature, to pick apart organic molecules and put them back together in different ways. It may not be EASY to replicate what nature has created, but to argue that it's impossible is blind to a truth that a 5 yr old could spot.
If a "scientist" says that arguments can't happen unless both people are in the same room, but has sent this "profound" wisdom in an e-mail to someone who has a different opinion, then it should be pretty damn obvious that the wisdom is bunk. Similarly, if a scientist says that nanomachines can't disassemble and re-assemble molecules atom by atom, while the whole time existing solely thanks to such actions, that scientists argument is bunk.
My experience w/ a DVR is just the opposite, and is telling of how much I, and our culture, equate the real world to TV. I've found that since getting a DVR, I am inclined to rewind to make sure I heard something correctly, to laugh at someone picking their nose in an audience, to give myself extra time to solve the final Wheel of Fortune puzzle, etc. I skip as many ads as I can when we've partially recorded a show, and get miffed when I see the dreaded "Live Tv" message on screen. Ads in fully recorded shows are almost universally skipped unless they happen to contain something interesting to catch my eye in the half second of them I see as they're skipped.
Furthermore, when I now listen to the radio, I find myself wanting to rewind it to hear the part of the traffic report I missed while not paying full attention. I also want to rewind conversations I've just had with people to recall what was said. The DVR experience of being able to pause, rewind, etc, has become so integral to my TV watching that it has bled over into other parts of my life where content is perhaps not fully registered on first "viewing". In my personal experience, the DVR fundamentally changes TV into an active process and affects how I look at other things as well.
Tarzan by Aqua:
"Tarzan is handsome, Tarzan is strong. He's really cute and his hair is long"
A surprisingly catchy, fun song that would get most any guy punch in the nuts were he caught listening to it or buying the CD:)
Thank you for correcting, and educating, me! While I'm still a bit wary of the right only being present via the Supreme Court, I suppose it's a bit much to hope for a full Constitutional amendment.
Most sci-fi books I can think of, even the hard sf ones, often feature sexuality, swearing, and violence. While I am of the personal opinion that these are all parts of the real world, from which we should NOT protect our children, most high school principals, school boards, and legal counsel, will be quite squeamish around these topics. Short stories by someone like Asimov might be a bit more appropriate simply because they don't contain AS MUCH of the scary things that longer novels may have.
Make sure anything picked for students has been fully vetted by the principal, superintendent, school board, etc. If those administrators aren't willing to fight for the inclusion of the sci-fi material in the classroom, drop it. It's not something I'd risk my job and career for.
Unfortunately, you don't have any rights to privacy in the US. This is a common misconception. You do make a good point, though, that we should all DEMAND it as a right, and hopefully cause a legal change to take effect.
Slashdot Mirror
It remains a remote possibility that a truly heinous man-made self-replicating something could go through enough iterations toward Evil that it could outstrip the natural defenses already present. But, I think the most likely scenario is that what seems unthinkably deadly, virulent, mutable, etc, does not begin to compare with what has already come and gone through the natural course of events during the billions of years of life's evolution here. I think it is prudent to plan counter-measures to self-replicating badness before it happens, I also think that we're just one player at the table, and that plenty of other living/self-replicating systems around us will be at least as ingenious, and self-preserving, as we are.
Only if the asteroids are made of scrith. Niven's ringworld is a badass idea, don't get me wrong, but it might as well be made of unobtanium for all it's practicality right now.
If I had MOD points, and hadn't already commented in this article, I'd give them to you! Thanks for the link. I've added it to my bookmarks and will probably be reading over lunch(es). It also linked to this Tim O'Reilly book: http://tim.oreilly.com/sci-fi/herbert/ which is available free, online.
I've always wished to find some literary criticisms of Dune, or the entire series, or the other individual books. However, as an engineering student, I've never been able to find any and am convinced that I'm just woefully uneducated when it comes to literary journals and publications. Can anyone point to or suggest some Dune analysis or criticism articles, papers, theses, etc?
See my comments below re: Sci-Fi's terrible mini-series.
Short version: "Dune, desert planet." means the Fremen should freaking wear their stillsuits, and use them to actually keep their water. How any film maker can miss that FUNDAMENTAL aspect of the Dune story is beyond explanation.
Please, for the love of melange, do NOT let this stray into the territory of the horrendously terribly Sci-Fi channel adaptation of Dune. I mean, seriously, Fremen strutting around w/o their stillsuits on? Never mind all the times they're wearing them but don't have their nose plugs and mouth covers on. And Jessica as a sniveling woe-is-me damsel in distress! Bah!
Dune is by far my favorite series of books. I've read and re-read them many times, and always find new, provocative stuff in each iteration. Someday I plan to go page by page and make notes, ask questions in the margins, and analyze the hell out of the whole series. I've never felt that compelled about any other story.
I don't think a movie can be entirely true to the text, nor can it, I think, approach it much better than Lynch's work. Short of doing one movie per book, the plots, characters, politics, etc are just too wide AND deep to be presented on screen. For goodness sake, the original screening of Lynch's movie included a handout telling the characters' names and a short bio of each!
I hope that they do an excellent job with this movie. I must not fear that they mangle it as badly, or worse than, Sci-Fi did.
I've not RTFA, so I can't speak to the specifics and I may be answering a charge that doesn't exist or is otherwise addressed. Still, I found that, during my undergrad and graduate engineering education, the students who knew how to find and assemble the right study groups did much better in class and had a better understanding of the material. Now, of course there was some "I've looked at problem 5 for 3 hours and don't understand it. What did you get?" type of soft cheating, but by and large, the study groups I was involved in were really training for trouble shooting, communication, teaching peers, and understanding others' methodologies. I hope that the very valuable experience of finding a group you can get along with, who shares your same level of academic commitment, and compliments your learning style, is not reduced because of fears of expulsion similar to this case.
The law of mass-energy equivalence can be demonstrated through purely geometric arguments -- you need not even understand calculus in order to grasp the math. We have grasped the power of stars. That proves something about us, but I am not sure what.
Link?Wouldn't it be possible for some mosquitoes affected by this attack to happen to also smell/taste tetracyclene in people and animals? And therefore, be able to survive provided they always follow that sensory signal along with whatever they use to find blood? So, then we have mosquitoes that just hover around places w/ lots of antibiotic treated animals, like dairy cows, chickens, etc (I'm actually not sure if these particular animals are treated w/ this particular antibiotic, but the point is the same), or around places w/ antibiotic treated people like hospitals, or people who take prescription antibiotics for acne among other things. Seems to me like nature will correct this man made genetic problem pretty quickly.
Don't people realize that if a cow has twins (real twins, not just multiple calves at the same time), and those twins grow up to be big, strong, healthy bovine, they will go into the food supply? Seriously, this is a silly thing for people to be worried about, and I'm glad the FDA has made the common sense decision here.
How am I raising the price of blood diamonds if I buy a certified Canadian Ikuma diamond instead of some other of questionable origin? If _anything_, I'm supporting a different product and taking business away from De Beers, which should lead to them reducing prices in order to compete.
Now I know it's cliche to say that FF7 was great, but seriously, the music played during the first opening fights of the game, the Golden Saucer music, the end theme w/ Sephiroth...these are truly moving songs IF you've played the game. They capture so much of the experience, and bring back all those feelings and memories. Fantastic music.
My experience is academic, not hands on, so I'd happily defer to a truly experienced opinion should one surface. However, for certain load levels, some materials have an essentially infinite fatigue limit when it comes to cyclic loading. Many metals, for example, have a characteristic curve that will tell you the projected life of a part in cycles for a given load. This allows designers, without mandates for planned obsolescence, to make cyclically loaded parts that will not fail due to fatigue. So, presumably, there's a safe amount of cycled stress for silicon to avoid fatigue failure indefinitely. Whether or not the loading levels used in the NIST experiments were above that safe amount, I do not know. Though, I suppose that, given they DID find fatigue failure, it's safe to assume they used enough loading to cause fatigue in a "short" time frame.
Technically, inkjet print heads or accelerometers are a much larger MEMS rollout. They're just not as sexy as DLPs :)
IAAME (I AM a MEMS Engineer) and there are 2 quibbles I have with your statement: 1) The DLP mirrors' flexing is exactly the types of fatigue loading that most other materials eventually fail under. Just the slight imbalances in a rotating shaft cause it to experience slight up and down flexing during operation. If you've not taken into account the fatigue limit of your material, a 1 RPM shaft will eventually fail due to tiny "wobbles". 2) The "magnetic" field that causes DLP mirrors to actuate is magnetic in only a very general, electromagnetic way. The mirrors move due to electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged plates being very close to each other. There is no magnetic force involved.
IAAME (I am a mechanical engineer) I hate to be pedantic, but if you're going to give people technical words like tensile strength, give it to them correctly. Tensile strength refers to the amount of stress a material can handle, before failure, when loaded in axial tension. While bending does involve loading that is 50% tensile, it also contains an equal, compressive, component. In fact, many materials have a different compressive strength, and may fail at a loading that does not exceed tensile strength due to buckling or other problems on the compressive side.
Aha! 140Mandak262Jamuna is really Michael Crichton.
This "argument" is worthless for one very simple reason, as are many of people's arguments against molecular nanotechnology. At the end of the day, the people raising objections exist as sentient, mobile, self-reproducing beings because of the startlingly complex and near infinite array of nanoscale machines working inside them. Working in a noisy environment, at well above room temperature, to pick apart organic molecules and put them back together in different ways. It may not be EASY to replicate what nature has created, but to argue that it's impossible is blind to a truth that a 5 yr old could spot. If a "scientist" says that arguments can't happen unless both people are in the same room, but has sent this "profound" wisdom in an e-mail to someone who has a different opinion, then it should be pretty damn obvious that the wisdom is bunk. Similarly, if a scientist says that nanomachines can't disassemble and re-assemble molecules atom by atom, while the whole time existing solely thanks to such actions, that scientists argument is bunk.
My experience w/ a DVR is just the opposite, and is telling of how much I, and our culture, equate the real world to TV. I've found that since getting a DVR, I am inclined to rewind to make sure I heard something correctly, to laugh at someone picking their nose in an audience, to give myself extra time to solve the final Wheel of Fortune puzzle, etc. I skip as many ads as I can when we've partially recorded a show, and get miffed when I see the dreaded "Live Tv" message on screen. Ads in fully recorded shows are almost universally skipped unless they happen to contain something interesting to catch my eye in the half second of them I see as they're skipped. Furthermore, when I now listen to the radio, I find myself wanting to rewind it to hear the part of the traffic report I missed while not paying full attention. I also want to rewind conversations I've just had with people to recall what was said. The DVR experience of being able to pause, rewind, etc, has become so integral to my TV watching that it has bled over into other parts of my life where content is perhaps not fully registered on first "viewing". In my personal experience, the DVR fundamentally changes TV into an active process and affects how I look at other things as well.
When I was in college, we always thought it sounded more like "lesbian gas". We need more lesbian gas!
Tarzan by Aqua: "Tarzan is handsome, Tarzan is strong. He's really cute and his hair is long" A surprisingly catchy, fun song that would get most any guy punch in the nuts were he caught listening to it or buying the CD :)
Thank you for correcting, and educating, me! While I'm still a bit wary of the right only being present via the Supreme Court, I suppose it's a bit much to hope for a full Constitutional amendment.
Most sci-fi books I can think of, even the hard sf ones, often feature sexuality, swearing, and violence. While I am of the personal opinion that these are all parts of the real world, from which we should NOT protect our children, most high school principals, school boards, and legal counsel, will be quite squeamish around these topics. Short stories by someone like Asimov might be a bit more appropriate simply because they don't contain AS MUCH of the scary things that longer novels may have. Make sure anything picked for students has been fully vetted by the principal, superintendent, school board, etc. If those administrators aren't willing to fight for the inclusion of the sci-fi material in the classroom, drop it. It's not something I'd risk my job and career for.
Unfortunately, you don't have any rights to privacy in the US. This is a common misconception. You do make a good point, though, that we should all DEMAND it as a right, and hopefully cause a legal change to take effect.