Although I agree that the idea that going into space will not cure all the ills of mankind, I disagree that we should require that we get Earth completely "fixed" before we go.
I put that in quotes because it brings the question to mind: "What is fixed?" Most of the things we are talking about are social ills. So what is "fixed"? I mean, how do you define it? No crime? No poverty? I doubt that's possible, ever. There will always be those willing to exploit weaker individuals (crime, at all levels), and there will always be the myriad of reasons for poverty (from purely lazy to the exploited).
Saying we need to fix Earth before going elsewhere hamstrings us. Why not set up an experiment in a new place, with no history to tie you back?
Think about the Americas in the late 1700s. The Great Experiment was the government of the US. Granted, it's far from perfect, but it was a helluva lot better than anything else around at the time (emphesis to prevent misunderstandings). Moving to a new place was the catalyst that allowed the experiment to occur. Personally, I think the relative stagnation and degredation of most of society (globally) since then is the result of the lack of new places to try things like this out. When the disenfranchised have no place to go and do things their own way, they fight the system, and the system fights them back out of reflex, without regard to the merit of the ideas.
If, however, the disenfranchised have a new place to go and do things their own way, they can demonstrate to the system that they have a better or improved system. It's like evolution: you need a niche to grow. If a new species fights an entrenched one for a niche, it will lose unless it is vastly superior. Normally, the improvement is too small to be considered an overwhelming advantage. If, however, the new species (or system) is capable of exploiting a new niche, it will thrive and eventually be able to demonstrate its superiority by thriving, or its inferiority by its demise.
The idea behind therapeutic cloning, however, is to take cells from the patient, clone them, and harvest the ES cells from the clone. These ES cells would have identical makeup to the patient, and be perfectly viable.
Your point about "adult" stem cells is valid, though. There has been as good deal of success using cord blood and bone marrow pluripotents. There is even evidence that pluripotents can be differentiated into muscle, liver, neural, endothelial, and a number of other tissue types. The reason this line of research shows more promise, though, is because it has been going on for a lot longer, due to both technical and ethical factors.
Aside from your point, I just want to nitpick : 10 months ago it was a heckuva lot more than an undifferentiated lump of cells. In fact, at that stage (~4 weeks) you're already well into the embryo stage, with a good number of organ systems derived and developing (CNS, cardiovascular, some of the sensory organs, etc) and is not terribly useful for ES harvesting. It can be used, but it's tougher (based on my experience with mice, at least)
The stuff they use for ES is a LOT further back than that. I'm a pretty strong pro-lifer (and yes, that does have a lot to do with the cloning argument), and even I see the line quite blurred at that stage.
Well, here we have some difficulty, and we start an offtopic rant. Sometimes, what we take as a symptom is, in fact, the illness (AFAWK). These are primary diseases. There are diseases which are a specific pathologic state associated with a particular etiology, and there are diseases which are sets associated pathologies, with no certain associated etiology.
Take asthma, for instance. There is a distinct set of pathologies associated with asthma, but there is no single etiology, nor is there a set of etiologies which acount fully for the disease state (i.e., two people exposed to the same conditions may or may not develop asthma, even apart from genetics). Type I diabetes is the same way. There is a set of symptoms (airway hyperresponsiveness for asthma, or low insulin for diabetes) with an unknown cause. As that we do not know the cause, we must treat only the symptoms. Oddly, with the primary diseases, controlling the symptoms makes the disease undectable.
If you treat all of the symptoms of a cold, the cold is still detectable as adenovirus in in lungs (Use Koch's postulates). If someone has cancer and it is forced into remission, there are still ways to detect the presence of an old cancer (exceptionally difficult sometimes, but possible).
Not so with things like asthma, diabetes and primary diseases. Unless the symptom reasserts itself, the syndrome/disease/etc is undectable. Keep in mind that total ablation of the symptoms is rarely possible. It is only a theorectical concept except in mild cases.
Back on topic, there are many known causes for obesity the most common of which are eating too much or sitting on your ass too much. Most commonly obesity is a result of a combination of the two. Therefore, it could be aruged that obesity is not a primary disease, because we know the cause. The opposing arguement is that because we do not understand the motivations which cause the self destructive behavior (which is regarded as a symptom), the disease is primary. That is, since we do not understand the cause of the "eating too much" symptom, we must call it a primary disease. I disagree, personally, because I do not see self-destructive behavior as a pathological state in Man. It may not be beneficial, but I don't think it's abnormal.
Obesity can however be described as a cyclical disease, in that the disease state causes worsening of the state after a certain point. It is these people that truly need help. They essentially dug a hole that is too deep for them to climb out of on their own. These are the people who need intervention.
BTW, Rice is a great place for nanotech (I know, master of the obvious). They're even getting a medical nanotech conference together here accross the street (Texas medical center) on 5/14. It's billed as "bridging the wet and dry divide". Smalley & Hirsch are going to be speaking, along with a bunch of others. I'm going to try to go, if I can get away from the lab for a while.
intelligent, adaptable or effective as my own immune system anytime soon.
No, but it is possible to manufacture materials that are practically invisible to your immune system. Coat the nanobot in that, and the immune system is crippled. What's worse, we may not know a lot about how the immune system works, but we are quite adept at throwing wrenches into the works. Hijacking of the immune system would not be that farfecthed of an idea (e.g., it would be possible to trick the immune system into recognizing healthy cells as diseased, forgein, cancerous, etc.)
So, if you're not a Christian, please stop reading. Especially if you're touchy about people discussing their religion. The following will be at best boring, and possibly quite irritating.
Sorry it irritated you anyway. But I did warn you;)
I never said that there was only one way to know what is good. I just pointed out something that is useful in determining that. I also never said that Christianity was only about doing good works, I just implied that good works are a significant part of the practice of Christianity. Motivation for those good works is an even more important part. The actions are supposed to be symptoms of what you believe.
And no, I can't divorce myself from my "supernatural fairytales" as you so condescendingly put it. They are an integral part of faith. If I could prove it, it wouldn't be faith. Additionally, I really don't care if you think I'm crazy/stupid/superstitious/etc for what I believe. I would expect it, even if it wasn't such a common response.
Please excuse my typos, spelling, etc..I've been grading tests all night, and it's 530AM here.
What's so funny is how many people get riled up about all of this, on both sides of the argument. Well, not so much funny as it is odd. And not so much odd as it is sad.
I can't say anything about it to people that aren't Christians, I don't really know what your motivations are (nor do I really care...believe what you want). But I can say something to my fellow Christians out there. So, if you're not a Christian, please stop reading. Especially if you're touchy about people discussing their religion. The following will be at best boring, and possibly quite irritating.
You base these arguments on the idea that the Bible is infallible. That is, that it is incapable of being incorrect because "God said it". Or, rather, "All scripture is God breathed" (I Tim 3:16). OK, you've started. You read something. Most likely you just heard it, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Now find out more. Those represent the first 5 words of a sentence of 30, in some translations. Read the rest. It says "...and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
Where does it say that it's good for establishing an accurate archeological record? Or check historical facts? Or provide an astronomical model? Or a biologocal model?
No, it's made for instructing people in what is right. Morally right, not factually right. After learning, we are to use this knowledge to do "every good work".
Some part of me doubts that finding Noah's Ark and taking pictures of it to "prove" the Bible to the world was what God had in mind when He breathed that little statement. Read Matt 23 sometime, and try not to let spohism and "proving" that you're right substitue for real "good works". What are we (as Christians) really asked to do? Look it up. (Clues: Fruits of the spirit; actually read the Dispensation; what were the specific instructions? What about if people don't want to listen to you? What are you supposed to do?)
So does it have this rhythmic independent activity during general anesthesia too?
Yes. It does. have something to do with it. Interesting addition of function of ketamine to the whole thing, too.
Re:Saviour for people in need in of transplants?
on
Synthetic Life In The Lab
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· Score: 2, Informative
think $1,000,000 to set up a lab to do some low-moderate work.
It's expensive, but that's a little over the top. Unless, of course, you're talkng about building a lab from "open field" to "research building", in which case you're a bit low. We started up our lab with $500k startup funds. We've grown a LOT since then, and put a lot more money into it, but I remember not even using all the startup grant. I also recall that during the budgeting phase, we figured on a cost of $20k/yr/person in reagents. So yeas, it gets really expensive.
Anyway, you're in bioinformatics, so you probably work with chips & arrays. I recall that equipment is quite expensive. We normally farm out the data collection part of that.
The corpus callosum is not the only conection between the two sides of the brain. There are also connections in the fornix, peduncles, and other portions of the basal ganglia. The callosum connects the cortical regions to each other, but not the basal ganglia*.
Moreover, the parts of the brain that control life support (heart=beating, vasculature=functioning, etc) are not so easily divided into hemishperes as is are the lobes. These are also the regions in which a good deal of the left-right crossover in the central nervous system takes place. I doubt you would be able to remove one side without seriously disrupting the other.
*For the anatomists : yes, I know that the ganglia are also hemispheric. They do, however, have communicating white matter going between the hemispheres.
I am a Linux user for the most part, myself, so please don't slam me for this...
You can run a Windows box without getting infected with viruses, adware, and spyware. You can also run it without tons of security holes... you just have to work at it.
Don't use IE, don't use Outlook or OE, run Windows Update as a ritual, and use AV software. I now have an XP box at work (requirement now) and run Linux at home; I never have spyware/adware/virus trouble with either computer. It's just that I have to work at it on my Windows machine, just like I have to work at certain dependency issues, configuration, etc on my Linux machine. Granted, figuring out the configurations in Linux is MUCH more rewarding.....
True, but as the sample size increases, the effect of individual outliers and small groups of outliers dwindles. Once you hit a certain point, you have to have a large number of outliers, which would represent a seperate but significant group of users. Which is interesting in itself. Personally, I'd like a scatterplot of the data. Then see if you can type it to demographics...these people all had spyware, so it should be easy to get their demographic info.
Anyway, the Earthlink sample size was over 1 million. A single outlier or small group of outliers will not significantly affect that average, unless they had a couple of hundred thousand instances on his computer, and everyone else had 3.
this stuff has a boiling point of 49.2C (120.6F). Processors burn hotter than that,
In air, yes. But if it has thermal conductive properties similar to water, you probably wouldn't get up that high running immersed in it.
As for the problems with hard drives in this thread, why not put the stuff over the motherboard only? Have IDE (or SATA) cables coming out of a case in a case kind of design.
Another issue not addressed yet, at least that I saw, is noise. Generally, sound doesn't transmit well between liquid/gas interfaces. Also, you wouldn't need as many fans, nor would they have to spin them as fast. Even if you had to keep the drives out of the fluid, and had that noise to deal with, you'd still get a pretty siginificant drop.
Yes I agree, because the media is so devoid of sex these days.
If it weren't for the porno mags under my Dad's filing cabinet, I wouldn't even know what this "sex" things was! I mean heck, June and Ward still sleep in seperate beds!
It's not just for kids, though. My Mom, for instance, is really sensitive to casual cursing; it just really bugs her, personally. My siblings & I just kind of roll our eyes at it, but we figure it's harmless.
Anyway, as a result, there are certain (pretty decent) movies that she simply will not go see, just because of the swearing. This would allow her to see the movies.
As for the stuff with kids, I think that we shelter our kids from sex WAY too much anyway; it makes it (sex) seem like something bad or taboo, that you don't discuss, and only Bad People think about. Well, (feigning shock and disbelief) everybody thinks about sex. Kids do to and, as a result, the kids think that they are Bad People. Contrast that to movies & TV, which often take it too far the other way. Characters are seen a prude/rube/naive/odd if they don't have fairly frequent sex, or are at least seeking sex. Both give an unhealthy view of sex; it's not dirty (well, sometimes it is....but in a good way) and it's not to be the central focus of your life. What you wind up with is one group of people who think sex is a dirty little secret, and another that confuses sex with love. Either way, they can wind up obsessed with it.
Swearing and violence, however, are a different story. Swearing has the very useful function of letting someone know when you're really upset, or really mean business. It's a way of getting people's attention without yelling. Frequent use of cursing removes this very useful communication tool (and I'm not being sarcastic). As for violence, you also get a desensitization an acceptance of it after constant exposure. It's not that movies cause people to go kill, it's just that it wears down the barrier a little; it eats away at our inhibition to violence. And we do have such an inhibition, learned or innate. Most people do not resort to violence unless they think it necessary (please, no poltical commentary).
Funny how many people have this problem...I used to run quite a bit, loved it until I blew out my knees. My wife got me into cycling, and now I don't even know how many miles a week I do....I just hop on & go.
And don't let the whole no light after work thing get ya...bike to work!
And with that attitude, your kids will be exactly as your describe.
You'd be shocked how much kids can understand, even at very early ages. Shortly after their senses kick in, they can learn (I'm talking about sub-1 year olds here, even 3-4 months). Granted, it's simple stuff, but by the time they are one, most kids know things they should/should not do (and know when you're not looking so they can dig for Cherios in the car seat), they know their schedules (and not just for sleep/eat, but also for play), and can follow simple commands (go get the ball).
But if you act like they have the intelligence of a nematode, they will act like it.
There is a real syndrome ADHD, and people with that syndrome require treatment. It is not, however, as prevelant as the statistics may suggest. Parents with "problem children" want an easy way out and a way to not have to blame their kid. Pharmaceutical companies aren't going to turn down sales and will market to these parents, and doctors will get pressured by both sides. It's safe! My kid needs it!
A similar thing happened with dyslexia in the 1970s. My mother was an elementary school teacher at the time, and she still gets infuriated about the overdiagnosis at the time. A kid would have trouble in school, and the teacher would suggest some parent/kid study time. Parent would read about dyslexia in the paper, and become convinced their kid had it. Because it couldn't possibly be beacuse they don't spend enough time with their kid...it couldn't possibly the the kid's, or.....God forbid!....the parents' fault! They'd find a shrink and shop until one "gave" their kids dyslexia. And now evrybody has an excuse.
It happened then, and I think it's happening now, too. Some people really do have ADHD, but the majority of those labeled with it probably do not.
Not that it's a bad idea to pull your kid out from in front of the TV. Besides, it's a helluva lot more fun to take them outside and look for bugs than anything else you could possibly want to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I put that in quotes because it brings the question to mind: "What is fixed?" Most of the things we are talking about are social ills. So what is "fixed"? I mean, how do you define it? No crime? No poverty? I doubt that's possible, ever. There will always be those willing to exploit weaker individuals (crime, at all levels), and there will always be the myriad of reasons for poverty (from purely lazy to the exploited).
Saying we need to fix Earth before going elsewhere hamstrings us. Why not set up an experiment in a new place, with no history to tie you back?
Think about the Americas in the late 1700s. The Great Experiment was the government of the US. Granted, it's far from perfect, but it was a helluva lot better than anything else around at the time (emphesis to prevent misunderstandings). Moving to a new place was the catalyst that allowed the experiment to occur. Personally, I think the relative stagnation and degredation of most of society (globally) since then is the result of the lack of new places to try things like this out. When the disenfranchised have no place to go and do things their own way, they fight the system, and the system fights them back out of reflex, without regard to the merit of the ideas.
If, however, the disenfranchised have a new place to go and do things their own way, they can demonstrate to the system that they have a better or improved system. It's like evolution: you need a niche to grow. If a new species fights an entrenched one for a niche, it will lose unless it is vastly superior. Normally, the improvement is too small to be considered an overwhelming advantage. If, however, the new species (or system) is capable of exploiting a new niche, it will thrive and eventually be able to demonstrate its superiority by thriving, or its inferiority by its demise.
Yeah, but the pilgramage would be a bitch.
Your point about "adult" stem cells is valid, though. There has been as good deal of success using cord blood and bone marrow pluripotents. There is even evidence that pluripotents can be differentiated into muscle, liver, neural, endothelial, and a number of other tissue types. The reason this line of research shows more promise, though, is because it has been going on for a lot longer, due to both technical and ethical factors.
The stuff they use for ES is a LOT further back than that. I'm a pretty strong pro-lifer (and yes, that does have a lot to do with the cloning argument), and even I see the line quite blurred at that stage.
And the objective, quantifiable test for this is....?
Take asthma, for instance. There is a distinct set of pathologies associated with asthma, but there is no single etiology, nor is there a set of etiologies which acount fully for the disease state (i.e., two people exposed to the same conditions may or may not develop asthma, even apart from genetics). Type I diabetes is the same way. There is a set of symptoms (airway hyperresponsiveness for asthma, or low insulin for diabetes) with an unknown cause. As that we do not know the cause, we must treat only the symptoms. Oddly, with the primary diseases, controlling the symptoms makes the disease undectable.
If you treat all of the symptoms of a cold, the cold is still detectable as adenovirus in in lungs (Use Koch's postulates). If someone has cancer and it is forced into remission, there are still ways to detect the presence of an old cancer (exceptionally difficult sometimes, but possible).
Not so with things like asthma, diabetes and primary diseases. Unless the symptom reasserts itself, the syndrome/disease/etc is undectable. Keep in mind that total ablation of the symptoms is rarely possible. It is only a theorectical concept except in mild cases.
Back on topic, there are many known causes for obesity the most common of which are eating too much or sitting on your ass too much. Most commonly obesity is a result of a combination of the two. Therefore, it could be aruged that obesity is not a primary disease, because we know the cause. The opposing arguement is that because we do not understand the motivations which cause the self destructive behavior (which is regarded as a symptom), the disease is primary. That is, since we do not understand the cause of the "eating too much" symptom, we must call it a primary disease. I disagree, personally, because I do not see self-destructive behavior as a pathological state in Man. It may not be beneficial, but I don't think it's abnormal.
Obesity can however be described as a cyclical disease, in that the disease state causes worsening of the state after a certain point. It is these people that truly need help. They essentially dug a hole that is too deep for them to climb out of on their own. These are the people who need intervention.
Awww...come on. You just weren't looking looking hard enough.
BTW, Rice is a great place for nanotech (I know, master of the obvious). They're even getting a medical nanotech conference together here accross the street (Texas medical center) on 5/14. It's billed as "bridging the wet and dry divide". Smalley & Hirsch are going to be speaking, along with a bunch of others. I'm going to try to go, if I can get away from the lab for a while.
That's not science, that's manufacturing. And the US fell behind there a couple of decades ago.
No, but it is possible to manufacture materials that are practically invisible to your immune system. Coat the nanobot in that, and the immune system is crippled. What's worse, we may not know a lot about how the immune system works, but we are quite adept at throwing wrenches into the works. Hijacking of the immune system would not be that farfecthed of an idea (e.g., it would be possible to trick the immune system into recognizing healthy cells as diseased, forgein, cancerous, etc.)
I thought so, too, but I just gave it a shot, spoofing as MSIE 6.0, and I got the same message.
Goodnight/morning.
Sorry it irritated you anyway. But I did warn you ;)
I never said that there was only one way to know what is good. I just pointed out something that is useful in determining that. I also never said that Christianity was only about doing good works, I just implied that good works are a significant part of the practice of Christianity. Motivation for those good works is an even more important part. The actions are supposed to be symptoms of what you believe.
And no, I can't divorce myself from my "supernatural fairytales" as you so condescendingly put it. They are an integral part of faith. If I could prove it, it wouldn't be faith. Additionally, I really don't care if you think I'm crazy/stupid/superstitious/etc for what I believe. I would expect it, even if it wasn't such a common response.
Please excuse my typos, spelling, etc..I've been grading tests all night, and it's 530AM here.
I can't say anything about it to people that aren't Christians, I don't really know what your motivations are (nor do I really care...believe what you want). But I can say something to my fellow Christians out there. So, if you're not a Christian, please stop reading. Especially if you're touchy about people discussing their religion. The following will be at best boring, and possibly quite irritating.
You base these arguments on the idea that the Bible is infallible. That is, that it is incapable of being incorrect because "God said it". Or, rather, "All scripture is God breathed" (I Tim 3:16). OK, you've started. You read something. Most likely you just heard it, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Now find out more. Those represent the first 5 words of a sentence of 30, in some translations. Read the rest. It says "...and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
Where does it say that it's good for establishing an accurate archeological record? Or check historical facts? Or provide an astronomical model? Or a biologocal model?
No, it's made for instructing people in what is right. Morally right, not factually right. After learning, we are to use this knowledge to do "every good work".
Some part of me doubts that finding Noah's Ark and taking pictures of it to "prove" the Bible to the world was what God had in mind when He breathed that little statement. Read Matt 23 sometime, and try not to let spohism and "proving" that you're right substitue for real "good works". What are we (as Christians) really asked to do? Look it up. (Clues: Fruits of the spirit; actually read the Dispensation; what were the specific instructions? What about if people don't want to listen to you? What are you supposed to do?)
Yes. It does. have something to do with it. Interesting addition of function of ketamine to the whole thing, too.
It's expensive, but that's a little over the top. Unless, of course, you're talkng about building a lab from "open field" to "research building", in which case you're a bit low. We started up our lab with $500k startup funds. We've grown a LOT since then, and put a lot more money into it, but I remember not even using all the startup grant. I also recall that during the budgeting phase, we figured on a cost of $20k/yr/person in reagents. So yeas, it gets really expensive.
Anyway, you're in bioinformatics, so you probably work with chips & arrays. I recall that equipment is quite expensive. We normally farm out the data collection part of that.
Moreover, the parts of the brain that control life support (heart=beating, vasculature=functioning, etc) are not so easily divided into hemishperes as is are the lobes. These are also the regions in which a good deal of the left-right crossover in the central nervous system takes place. I doubt you would be able to remove one side without seriously disrupting the other.
*For the anatomists : yes, I know that the ganglia are also hemispheric. They do, however, have communicating white matter going between the hemispheres.
You can run a Windows box without getting infected with viruses, adware, and spyware. You can also run it without tons of security holes... you just have to work at it.
Don't use IE, don't use Outlook or OE, run Windows Update as a ritual, and use AV software. I now have an XP box at work (requirement now) and run Linux at home; I never have spyware/adware/virus trouble with either computer. It's just that I have to work at it on my Windows machine, just like I have to work at certain dependency issues, configuration, etc on my Linux machine. Granted, figuring out the configurations in Linux is MUCH more rewarding.....
Anyway, the Earthlink sample size was over 1 million. A single outlier or small group of outliers will not significantly affect that average, unless they had a couple of hundred thousand instances on his computer, and everyone else had 3.
In air, yes. But if it has thermal conductive properties similar to water, you probably wouldn't get up that high running immersed in it.
As for the problems with hard drives in this thread, why not put the stuff over the motherboard only? Have IDE (or SATA) cables coming out of a case in a case kind of design.
Another issue not addressed yet, at least that I saw, is noise. Generally, sound doesn't transmit well between liquid/gas interfaces. Also, you wouldn't need as many fans, nor would they have to spin them as fast. Even if you had to keep the drives out of the fluid, and had that noise to deal with, you'd still get a pretty siginificant drop.
If it weren't for the porno mags under my Dad's filing cabinet, I wouldn't even know what this "sex" things was! I mean heck, June and Ward still sleep in seperate beds!
Oh crap, I said heck, I'm going to hell...
Uh-oh...
Anyway, as a result, there are certain (pretty decent) movies that she simply will not go see, just because of the swearing. This would allow her to see the movies.
As for the stuff with kids, I think that we shelter our kids from sex WAY too much anyway; it makes it (sex) seem like something bad or taboo, that you don't discuss, and only Bad People think about. Well, (feigning shock and disbelief) everybody thinks about sex. Kids do to and, as a result, the kids think that they are Bad People. Contrast that to movies & TV, which often take it too far the other way. Characters are seen a prude/rube/naive/odd if they don't have fairly frequent sex, or are at least seeking sex. Both give an unhealthy view of sex; it's not dirty (well, sometimes it is....but in a good way) and it's not to be the central focus of your life. What you wind up with is one group of people who think sex is a dirty little secret, and another that confuses sex with love. Either way, they can wind up obsessed with it.
Swearing and violence, however, are a different story. Swearing has the very useful function of letting someone know when you're really upset, or really mean business. It's a way of getting people's attention without yelling. Frequent use of cursing removes this very useful communication tool (and I'm not being sarcastic). As for violence, you also get a desensitization an acceptance of it after constant exposure. It's not that movies cause people to go kill, it's just that it wears down the barrier a little; it eats away at our inhibition to violence. And we do have such an inhibition, learned or innate. Most people do not resort to violence unless they think it necessary (please, no poltical commentary).
Now you wanna talk about a tech-rich, geek-friendly sport....try carrying around a life support system.
And don't let the whole no light after work thing get ya...bike to work!
You'd be shocked how much kids can understand, even at very early ages. Shortly after their senses kick in, they can learn (I'm talking about sub-1 year olds here, even 3-4 months). Granted, it's simple stuff, but by the time they are one, most kids know things they should/should not do (and know when you're not looking so they can dig for Cherios in the car seat), they know their schedules (and not just for sleep/eat, but also for play), and can follow simple commands (go get the ball).
But if you act like they have the intelligence of a nematode, they will act like it.
Overhyped? Oh, hell yes
There is a real syndrome ADHD, and people with that syndrome require treatment. It is not, however, as prevelant as the statistics may suggest. Parents with "problem children" want an easy way out and a way to not have to blame their kid. Pharmaceutical companies aren't going to turn down sales and will market to these parents, and doctors will get pressured by both sides. It's safe! My kid needs it!
A similar thing happened with dyslexia in the 1970s. My mother was an elementary school teacher at the time, and she still gets infuriated about the overdiagnosis at the time. A kid would have trouble in school, and the teacher would suggest some parent/kid study time. Parent would read about dyslexia in the paper, and become convinced their kid had it. Because it couldn't possibly be beacuse they don't spend enough time with their kid...it couldn't possibly the the kid's, or.....God forbid!....the parents' fault! They'd find a shrink and shop until one "gave" their kids dyslexia. And now evrybody has an excuse.
It happened then, and I think it's happening now, too. Some people really do have ADHD, but the majority of those labeled with it probably do not.
Not that it's a bad idea to pull your kid out from in front of the TV. Besides, it's a helluva lot more fun to take them outside and look for bugs than anything else you could possibly want to do.