Now these extremists tone down their argument a little: "nanoscale materials are toxic". The problem is that most nanotechnology is just unusual applications of exisiting natural chemical processes.
Well, microscale materials are toxic. Why shouldn't nanoscale materials be dangerous, too?
Crystalline silica (quartz) is totally harmless in bulk form. It is, quite literally, a rock. You could eat one and it wouldn't do you any harm, unless it was pointy. Large crystals of it are kind of pretty; I have some polished on my shelf for decoration.
Silica particles on a micron scale, if inhaled, cause scarring in the lungs and an steeply increased risk of lung cancer. Oops. And I thought silica was harmless...
We're used to thinking of iron and aluminum as noncombustible. Fine metal powders can be touched off with a spark, and burn rapidly and with high heat.
The properties of materials are indeed dependent on their scale. Yes, rampant paranoid and running around shouting "Gray goo! Gray goo!" should be curtailed--but there are indeed toxic (and other) effects that merit further examination.
Fluoride (at the concentrations in tap water) has no effect on bacteria or any other contamination. It is added solely to strengthen teeth. It encourages the formation of calcium fluoride in tooth enamel.
Unfortunately, excess fluoride causes discoloration of the teeth--yellowness, or brown mottling in extreme cases. The teeth are still quite sound, physically speaking, but they are less aesthetically pleasing. (The beneficial effects of fluoride on dental health were discovered when dentists noticed that people with these awful looking teeth tended to have fewer cavities. It turned out that they were drinking well water naturally high in fluorides.)
To kill bacteria and other nasties in water would require significant amounts of fluorine--a very unpleasant gas that would probably leave all kinds of toxic stuff behind. Oxidizing agents that are used in water treatment these days include chlorine, bromine, and ozone. (Ozone, being an allotrope of oxygen, in gaining in popularity due to it being perceived as more 'natural'.) In all water treatment systems I am familiar with, the goal is to kill off all of the pathogens--not just weaken them, or eliminate some of them, in hope of challenging people's immune systems.
Granted, in some places, the water treatment isn't quite up to snuff, and so the process you describe may happen inadvertantly.
Not unless you're willing to risk arrest, and the expense of a legal Charter-based defence. Last time I checked, that cost about CA$100,000, and it is not permitted for lawyers to accept cases on a contingency basis.
First, you don't have to go all the way through the appeals chain to the Supreme Court of Canada. If it's clearly a free speech issue, then a Provincial Court judge would likely toss the charge immediately, and the applicable provincial Court of Appeals shouldn't grant leave to the Crown to appeal the lower court ruling.
Second, and much more important--you haven't indicated what on earth there is that you could be charged with for discussing private health care. In Canada, it is generally vey difficult to arrest citizens without laying charges. (In Canada, as in the United States, arbitrary detention of non-citizens is legally tenable--though quite rare.)
In Canada, too, it is quite possible to sue for false arrest and seek damages, if the police or Crown acted in bad faith.
i.e. discussing U.S. vs. Canadian style health care (private vs. socialized) is enough to get you arrested (yes, I was threatened with this simply because someone, in a public place, overheard a peaceful conversation I was having, weighing the pros and cons of each).
Huh?
You're welcome to debate the merits of private and public health care in Canada. Write a letter to the editor. Hold a peaceful protest somewhere. Talk about it in a bar.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees explicitly "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;" (Section 2(b) of the Charter).
Mind, the Charter does contain restrictions and exceptions (Section 1 specifies "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.", and Section 33 aka the "Notwithstanding Clause".) The U.S. Supreme Court also recognizes that there are tolerable restrictions on free speech in the United States--that doesn't make the First Amendment moot.
Maybe we can all take a page from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and wrap a towel around our head when anything dangerous approaches. We would then be more confident and capable.
The George W. Bush school of international diplomacy, I see.
Everybody who really understands the basics of General Relativity and Special Relativity knows why FTL travel and "subspace" communication can't happen.
Well, there's the problem, really. It's supposed to be entertainment. Presumably, I should be entertained. Unfortunately, many movies think that they can prop up terrible scripts and bad acting with CG imagery--that also happens to violate the laws of physics. I (and probably many other/.ers) am willing to forgive quite a few science lapses...if the rest of the movie isn't equally unforgivably bad. Take The Core. Please. Sure, the science is dismal, but so is the rest of the movie.
Read some good science fiction. A reasonable rule of thumb is that the author should be permitted (at most) one 'impossible' technique, technology, or concept. Exploring the ramifications of such 'impossibilities'--when done well--can be both thought-provoking and genuinely entertaining.
Dawes' limit for resolution (separation of two point light sources) is:
theta = 115.8 / D
Where theta is the resolvable angle in seconds of arc and D is the objective lens diameter in millimetres.
At its closest, Mars' angular size will be a hair more than a giant 25". If your camera lens is more than five millimetres in diameter (probable), then you might be able to begin making claims about seeing a non-point. Mind, you've also got to have very good optics to claim diffraction-limited resolution.
Still, it doesn't take much. A good pair of small binocs will show a small but visible disc. (I've a pair of 7x42s that I'm quite happy with.)
If you want to see any features--not just a blob--you're going to need a telescope. The south polar ice cap, along with some dark features at more temperate latitudes, are observable in my mother's eight inch (200 mm) reflector.
Things in space inevitably drift a little, but the beauty of digital cameras is that you don't have to do the exposure all at once. You could pause, re-aim the telescope then begin again.
Indeed. The Hubble Deep Field images were assembled in exactly this way.
By the way, the parent post is modded Funny. Why is that?
his new pump requires 75W or more, then you're unlikely to win in the long run - you'll just need a bigger PSU (and bigger, noisier fan in it) to get the job done.
You could water cool the PSU and run the hot water to an external radiator. Of course, I'm not sure that I want coolant water flowing through the high voltage parts of my case.
I've got a lot of pretty old LED stuff. I've never seen one burn out. From what I know of how they pump photons, I'm not sure how you would burn them out other than running them outside of spec.
LEDs will fade slowly with time, thought it's a very slow process for diodes operated at low levels.
LEDs contain an interface between two semiconductor layers; it is around this interface that light is generated. Electrons crossing this interface can occasionally kick atoms back and forth over this boundary. Eventually, enough cross-contamination will occur to dim and then extinguish the LED. This does take a long time. Note also that this process is accelerated at high temperatures.
Hard drives are faster, take up less space, and are very cost competative with CD's. I am unclear why CD's are popular with the tech savvy crowd. It's an inferior storage technology.
I can put a CD in its jewel case, then drop it off a desk and on to a concrete floor--and I can expect the data to still be intact.
Hard drives are impact sensitive, and still prone to failure after a year or two.
Also, if I need to move a file from point A to point B CDs are convenient and lightweight--everybody has a CD-ROM drove. Subsequent to that, many people prefer to make backups to CDs because they are a technology that they already have installed for other reasons. Rhetorical question by hypothetical individual: Why would I go to the trouble and expense of another backup method when I already have a CD burner?
Because we detonated several hundred atomic bombs in the atmosphere in the 50's with no increase in worldwide radiation levels.
Increases in the average annual exposure to radiation were indeed very slight, but not zero.
The total global dose commitment for each individual from all nuclear explosions carried out before 1976 ranges from about 100 mrad (in the gonads) to about 200 mrad (in the bone-lining cells). In the northern temperate zone the values are about 50 percent higher, and in the southern temperate zone about 50 percent lower than these estimates.
"Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation", UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, Report to the General Assembly, nos. 90-91, 1977.
All that said, I agree with you--there's no real danger associated with launching a cold uranium-fuelled nuclear reactor. Uranium fuel pellets are really relatively safe to handle. I suppose such a reactor could do some serious damage if it fell on someone's head....
Here is the quintessential humour piece about the absurdity of the "Information Superhighway" metaphor. I haven't attributed it, because the first five citations of it in Google list five unique authors. (If anyone can identify the real author, let me know.)
There it is again. Some clueless fool talking about the "Information Superhighway". They don't know didley about the Net. It's nothing like a superhighway. That's a rotten metaphor.
Suppose the metaphor ran in the other direction. Suppose the highways were like the net...
A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection.
No signs. Wanna get to Ensenada? Holler out the window at a passing truck to ask directions.
Ad hoc traffic laws. Some lanes would vote to make use by a single-occupant-vehicle a capital offense on Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 9:00. Other lanes would just shoot you without a trial for talking on a car phone.
AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims on board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars, most of which have been assembled at home from kits. Some are built around 2.5 horsepower lawn mower engines with a top speed of nine miles an hour. Others burn nitroglycerin and idle at 120.
No license plates. World War II bomber nose art instead. Terrifying paintings of huge teeth or vampire eagles. Bumper mounted machine guns. Flip somebody the finger on this highway and get a white phosphorus grenade up your tailpipe. Flatbed trucks cruise around with anti-aircraft missile batteries to shoot down the traffic helicopter. Little kids on tricycles with squirt guns filled with hydrochloric acid switch lanes without warning.
NO OFFRAMPS. None.
Now that's the way to run an Interstate Highway system.
This interesting technology could potentially lead to some better new-age energy sources.
Well, it's a way to store energy, perhaps, but it can't act as a source in and of itself. Excited-state nuclei aren't just lying around in the ground--they tend to have short half-lives, from decades down to the tiniest fractions of a second. To create these metastable nuclei, you have to put in at least as much energy as you're taking out.
Mind, these metastable isotopes already have nonmilitary uses. Technetium-99m has long been used as a radioactive tracer in medicine. It is produced from the decay of molybdenum-99, and has a half-life of about six hours.
Small nitpick. You're referring to trisomy, not triploidy. Trisomy (in humans) refers to an inadvertant tripling of one chromosome; triploidy is the result of an extra (third) copy of all chromosomes. Triploidy is usually the result of two sperm fertilizing a single egg. (Oops.) Trisomy (or monosomy, where the fetus is one chromosome short) is usually the result of an uneven division of genetic material when sperm or egg was formed.
Triploid fetuses usually spontaneously abort, though some will survive to term--in which case their life expectancy is less than a month.
As you noted, some trisomies are survivable; most are not. More details here.
Interesting aside: Some species (particularly plants) tolerate polyploidy quite well, having tetraploid or hexaploid genomes (four or six sets of chromosomes). Odd numbers of sets are infertile, but again are often tolerated in plants--this infertility is sometimes a desired trait, as in seedless watermelons and grapes.
Hate to nitpick, but this is a really important point from an ethical standpoint. The eggs that were collected were from rabbits. The rabbit nuclear DNA was removed, and replaced with human DNA.
It's the same end result--an egg with human nuclear DNA and rabbit mitochondrial DNA--but the original eggs were harvested from rabbits. This is potentially a very useful technique, because it represents a source of embryonic stem cells that doesn't require the collection of eggs from humans--a time-consuming, costly, and potentially dangerous process.
Aside: There is no intention to allow these chimeric embryos to mature into some sort of science fiction half-man half-rabbit hybrid--the Chinese government limited the researchers to fourteen days growing time. The only purpose of these experiments is to develop a new source of embryonic stem cells.
Also with the removeal of bulk of the ice glaciers, much of the land that was under the weight of the ice is actually rising.
Yes, but the land that was under glaciers doesn't happen to have cities on it. Moving New York, or Tokyo, or Vancouver, or any other coastal city to higher ground is a nontrivial undertaking.
I don't think it takes that much creatine to benefit from the protective effect (how much is probably unknown). For some people it might be worth it, particularly people who play some kind of sport where they fall alot (like skiing/snowboarding).
This nicely encapsulates the chief problem for people who self-medicate. You don't think it takes that much of a dose, but you don't know how much is required. I would wager that most people who take these supplements don't consult their physician about them. Heck, it's bloody difficult to get people to even read all of the small-print warnings on supplement bottles.
Obviously it's not for everyone, but for some of us it is creatine's most useful function. Its effects seem alot more significant and proven than many of the alleged benefits of vitamin supplements. It has the potential to at least partially protect the geek's most used organ from the unexpected.
The possible neuroprotective effects are certainly intriguing, though I would note that experimental results are limited to studies in rats at this point. It is also worth reiterating that although creatine may protect the geek's "most used organ", it may have detrimental effects on the rest of the body. To quote the BBC article you cited in your original post,
But experts warn against athletes in contact sports using it prophylactically in a bid to avoid the effects of a brain injury.
Nick Fellows, general manager of the British Olympic Medical Centre said many people already use the supplement inappropriately.
"Some people are using too high a dose and some are using it for too long - what we find is that athletes are actually very ignorant about the basics of nutrition," he said.
"The danger is people will see this research and think that creatine ought to be taken if they want to protect themselves."
It is not possible to be sure what the long term side-effects of creatine use may be, he said.
Unfortunately, there is still not a lot of information available on the effects of long-term creatine usage. We know that larger daily doses can result in kidney damage; there are no data for chronic low-level usage. I'm not yet prepared to tempt fate in exchange for a possible neuroprotective effect (in the unlikely event of a head trauma) and a possible (small) increase in memory.
As a side note, I agree with you about vitamins. Most vitamin supplements are completely unecessary for healthy individuals eating a properly balanced diet. Mind you, vitamins have in general been tested extensively for safety and efficacy. Their properties, indications, and contraindications are well known, and in a few cases their use is worthwhile. The real snake oil on shelves these days would be many of the herbal supplements. There are exceptions, but most of these preparations have received very little testing, and are at best harmless.
It seems like a big scam to support the PE Ponzi scheme.
I've been reading the replies to this thread, and I'm a little bit confused. The licensing of engineers has been a hotly-debated practice for...well, for as long as engineers have been licensed.
Whether in favour of or opposed to licensing, I don't see how it could qualify as a Ponzi scheme. It may or may not be a worthwhile practice, but it's quite a stretch to describe it as a pyramid scheme.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the alleged protective effect creatine may have for concussions and head injuries. Most of you will probably think this will never happen to you. I did, which is why I wasn't wearing that bike helmet.
Hm. Or, I could just wear a bike helmet--an inexpensive technique that doesn't require regular doses, expose me to potential kidney damage or excess body odour, and is proven--not alleged--to provide a significant and dramatic protective effect....
It's a good question. The short answer is probably yes, but there are other considerations. IANA economist, but it could be argued that the destruction of significant infrastructure and property in Iraq (much of which will have to be repaired or replaced, at tremendous cost) adds significantly to the cost of the cruise missiles.
Although expensive, the Apollo program generally wasn't used to destroy goods elsewhere--the designed purpose of cruise missiles.
Cynics might note that the destruction of property in Iraq is ultimately good for the U.S. economy, because it will be largely American companies that rebuild Iraq...so the missiles are potentially good for the economy, as long as they're used to blow up other people's weath.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, microscale materials are toxic. Why shouldn't nanoscale materials be dangerous, too?
Crystalline silica (quartz) is totally harmless in bulk form. It is, quite literally, a rock. You could eat one and it wouldn't do you any harm, unless it was pointy. Large crystals of it are kind of pretty; I have some polished on my shelf for decoration.
Silica particles on a micron scale, if inhaled, cause scarring in the lungs and an steeply increased risk of lung cancer. Oops. And I thought silica was harmless...
We're used to thinking of iron and aluminum as noncombustible. Fine metal powders can be touched off with a spark, and burn rapidly and with high heat.
The properties of materials are indeed dependent on their scale. Yes, rampant paranoid and running around shouting "Gray goo! Gray goo!" should be curtailed--but there are indeed toxic (and other) effects that merit further examination.
Unfortunately, excess fluoride causes discoloration of the teeth--yellowness, or brown mottling in extreme cases. The teeth are still quite sound, physically speaking, but they are less aesthetically pleasing. (The beneficial effects of fluoride on dental health were discovered when dentists noticed that people with these awful looking teeth tended to have fewer cavities. It turned out that they were drinking well water naturally high in fluorides.)
To kill bacteria and other nasties in water would require significant amounts of fluorine--a very unpleasant gas that would probably leave all kinds of toxic stuff behind. Oxidizing agents that are used in water treatment these days include chlorine, bromine, and ozone. (Ozone, being an allotrope of oxygen, in gaining in popularity due to it being perceived as more 'natural'.) In all water treatment systems I am familiar with, the goal is to kill off all of the pathogens--not just weaken them, or eliminate some of them, in hope of challenging people's immune systems.
Granted, in some places, the water treatment isn't quite up to snuff, and so the process you describe may happen inadvertantly.
First, you don't have to go all the way through the appeals chain to the Supreme Court of Canada. If it's clearly a free speech issue, then a Provincial Court judge would likely toss the charge immediately, and the applicable provincial Court of Appeals shouldn't grant leave to the Crown to appeal the lower court ruling.
Second, and much more important--you haven't indicated what on earth there is that you could be charged with for discussing private health care. In Canada, it is generally vey difficult to arrest citizens without laying charges. (In Canada, as in the United States, arbitrary detention of non-citizens is legally tenable--though quite rare.)
In Canada, too, it is quite possible to sue for false arrest and seek damages, if the police or Crown acted in bad faith.
Huh?
You're welcome to debate the merits of private and public health care in Canada. Write a letter to the editor. Hold a peaceful protest somewhere. Talk about it in a bar.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees explicitly "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;" (Section 2(b) of the Charter).
Mind, the Charter does contain restrictions and exceptions (Section 1 specifies "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.", and Section 33 aka the "Notwithstanding Clause".) The U.S. Supreme Court also recognizes that there are tolerable restrictions on free speech in the United States--that doesn't make the First Amendment moot.
The George W. Bush school of international diplomacy, I see.
Everybody who really understands the basics of General Relativity and Special Relativity knows why FTL travel and "subspace" communication can't happen.
Well, there's the problem, really. It's supposed to be entertainment. Presumably, I should be entertained. Unfortunately, many movies think that they can prop up terrible scripts and bad acting with CG imagery--that also happens to violate the laws of physics. I (and probably many other /.ers) am willing to forgive quite a few science lapses...if the rest of the movie isn't equally unforgivably bad. Take The Core. Please. Sure, the science is dismal, but so is the rest of the movie.
Read some good science fiction. A reasonable rule of thumb is that the author should be permitted (at most) one 'impossible' technique, technology, or concept. Exploring the ramifications of such 'impossibilities'--when done well--can be both thought-provoking and genuinely entertaining.
theta = 115.8 / D
Where theta is the resolvable angle in seconds of arc and D is the objective lens diameter in millimetres.
At its closest, Mars' angular size will be a hair more than a giant 25". If your camera lens is more than five millimetres in diameter (probable), then you might be able to begin making claims about seeing a non-point. Mind, you've also got to have very good optics to claim diffraction-limited resolution.
Still, it doesn't take much. A good pair of small binocs will show a small but visible disc. (I've a pair of 7x42s that I'm quite happy with.)
If you want to see any features--not just a blob--you're going to need a telescope. The south polar ice cap, along with some dark features at more temperate latitudes, are observable in my mother's eight inch (200 mm) reflector.
Credit where credit is due: the parent quote is from Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame.
Indeed. The Hubble Deep Field images were assembled in exactly this way.
By the way, the parent post is modded Funny. Why is that?
You could water cool the PSU and run the hot water to an external radiator. Of course, I'm not sure that I want coolant water flowing through the high voltage parts of my case.
LEDs will fade slowly with time, thought it's a very slow process for diodes operated at low levels.
LEDs contain an interface between two semiconductor layers; it is around this interface that light is generated. Electrons crossing this interface can occasionally kick atoms back and forth over this boundary. Eventually, enough cross-contamination will occur to dim and then extinguish the LED. This does take a long time. Note also that this process is accelerated at high temperatures.
Source?
I can put a CD in its jewel case, then drop it off a desk and on to a concrete floor--and I can expect the data to still be intact.
Hard drives are impact sensitive, and still prone to failure after a year or two.
Also, if I need to move a file from point A to point B CDs are convenient and lightweight--everybody has a CD-ROM drove. Subsequent to that, many people prefer to make backups to CDs because they are a technology that they already have installed for other reasons. Rhetorical question by hypothetical individual: Why would I go to the trouble and expense of another backup method when I already have a CD burner?
Bad CDs also make excellent coasters.
Is this as naughty as it sounds?
Increases in the average annual exposure to radiation were indeed very slight, but not zero.
Recent analysis of fallout data suggest that roughly eleven thousand excess thyroid cancer deaths in the United States may be attributed to aboveground nuclear tests.
All that said, I agree with you--there's no real danger associated with launching a cold uranium-fuelled nuclear reactor. Uranium fuel pellets are really relatively safe to handle. I suppose such a reactor could do some serious damage if it fell on someone's head....
Well, it's a way to store energy, perhaps, but it can't act as a source in and of itself. Excited-state nuclei aren't just lying around in the ground--they tend to have short half-lives, from decades down to the tiniest fractions of a second. To create these metastable nuclei, you have to put in at least as much energy as you're taking out.
Mind, these metastable isotopes already have nonmilitary uses. Technetium-99m has long been used as a radioactive tracer in medicine. It is produced from the decay of molybdenum-99, and has a half-life of about six hours.
Which specific disaster are you referring to--the ability to do embryonic stem cell research without having to harvest embryos from humans?
Small nitpick. You're referring to trisomy, not triploidy. Trisomy (in humans) refers to an inadvertant tripling of one chromosome; triploidy is the result of an extra (third) copy of all chromosomes. Triploidy is usually the result of two sperm fertilizing a single egg. (Oops.) Trisomy (or monosomy, where the fetus is one chromosome short) is usually the result of an uneven division of genetic material when sperm or egg was formed.
Triploid fetuses usually spontaneously abort, though some will survive to term--in which case their life expectancy is less than a month.
As you noted, some trisomies are survivable; most are not. More details here.
Interesting aside: Some species (particularly plants) tolerate polyploidy quite well, having tetraploid or hexaploid genomes (four or six sets of chromosomes). Odd numbers of sets are infertile, but again are often tolerated in plants--this infertility is sometimes a desired trait, as in seedless watermelons and grapes.
Hate to nitpick, but this is a really important point from an ethical standpoint. The eggs that were collected were from rabbits. The rabbit nuclear DNA was removed, and replaced with human DNA.
It's the same end result--an egg with human nuclear DNA and rabbit mitochondrial DNA--but the original eggs were harvested from rabbits. This is potentially a very useful technique, because it represents a source of embryonic stem cells that doesn't require the collection of eggs from humans--a time-consuming, costly, and potentially dangerous process.
Aside: There is no intention to allow these chimeric embryos to mature into some sort of science fiction half-man half-rabbit hybrid--the Chinese government limited the researchers to fourteen days growing time. The only purpose of these experiments is to develop a new source of embryonic stem cells.
Yes, but the land that was under glaciers doesn't happen to have cities on it. Moving New York, or Tokyo, or Vancouver, or any other coastal city to higher ground is a nontrivial undertaking.
This nicely encapsulates the chief problem for people who self-medicate. You don't think it takes that much of a dose, but you don't know how much is required. I would wager that most people who take these supplements don't consult their physician about them. Heck, it's bloody difficult to get people to even read all of the small-print warnings on supplement bottles.
Obviously it's not for everyone, but for some of us it is creatine's most useful function. Its effects seem alot more significant and proven than many of the alleged benefits of vitamin supplements. It has the potential to at least partially protect the geek's most used organ from the unexpected.
The possible neuroprotective effects are certainly intriguing, though I would note that experimental results are limited to studies in rats at this point. It is also worth reiterating that although creatine may protect the geek's "most used organ", it may have detrimental effects on the rest of the body. To quote the BBC article you cited in your original post,
Unfortunately, there is still not a lot of information available on the effects of long-term creatine usage. We know that larger daily doses can result in kidney damage; there are no data for chronic low-level usage. I'm not yet prepared to tempt fate in exchange for a possible neuroprotective effect (in the unlikely event of a head trauma) and a possible (small) increase in memory.
As a side note, I agree with you about vitamins. Most vitamin supplements are completely unecessary for healthy individuals eating a properly balanced diet. Mind you, vitamins have in general been tested extensively for safety and efficacy. Their properties, indications, and contraindications are well known, and in a few cases their use is worthwhile. The real snake oil on shelves these days would be many of the herbal supplements. There are exceptions, but most of these preparations have received very little testing, and are at best harmless.
I've been reading the replies to this thread, and I'm a little bit confused. The licensing of engineers has been a hotly-debated practice for...well, for as long as engineers have been licensed.
Whether in favour of or opposed to licensing, I don't see how it could qualify as a Ponzi scheme. It may or may not be a worthwhile practice, but it's quite a stretch to describe it as a pyramid scheme.
Hm. Or, I could just wear a bike helmet--an inexpensive technique that doesn't require regular doses, expose me to potential kidney damage or excess body odour, and is proven--not alleged--to provide a significant and dramatic protective effect....
Although expensive, the Apollo program generally wasn't used to destroy goods elsewhere--the designed purpose of cruise missiles.
Cynics might note that the destruction of property in Iraq is ultimately good for the U.S. economy, because it will be largely American companies that rebuild Iraq...so the missiles are potentially good for the economy, as long as they're used to blow up other people's weath.