"Why does anyone still expect evolution in our society? With the social system and the way our economy works there is no reason for evolution anymore."
Like another poster said, you've got a common misconception of what evolution is. There is no "upward drive" to evolution, it is simply changes in allele frequencies within a population over the course of time due to mutation, natural selection, genetic drift as the primary factors. Now take our society (by "our" I mean a modern industrialized nation or nations) and a relatively common condition: nearsightedness. There's lots of causes of this disorder including genetic links. In our society nearsightedness isn't too terrible a disadvantage. Glasses are affordable for most people and there are programs to get them to people who can't afford them; I always donate my old pairs. There might even be a slight plus in nearsightedness: we make worse front-line soldiers than people with excellent vision, and the military won't let you do that if your vision is too poor. The advantage of this is that front-line soldiers are at greater risk of getting killed. Now compare our society with a third world nation like Afghanistan. Nearsightedness is going to be detrimental: glasses are much harder to get and good vision will help someone tell the difference between a partially-buried landmine and a rock. In the long term a nearsighted person without glasses will have an even harder time getting work and will be less able to support any children, which in turn puts these kids at a disadvantage which will be compounded by their own propensity towards the same poor eyesight. Nearsightedness will be selected against in Afghanistan, so there will likely be fewer nearsighted people in Afghanistan and fewer genes associated with nearsightedness in that population versus our society. The advent of cheap glasses even in our society is relatively recent so there probably has been a change in allele frequency for nearsightedness (that is probably ongoing), thus evolution is still occuring. This is of course just one trait and you can imagine other traits being selected for or against as well.
It's not just white blood cells. A virus has to bind a host cell, get into the host cell, hijack the machinery to produce more viruses instead of maintaining normal physiological functions, and get out of the cell to infect more host cells. There are a limited number of ways for a virus to do these things and we've naturally evolved ways to frustrate these general viral functions. This is before we get to any real immune response, which has evolved likewise. A virus from 70 million years ago has missed out on the evolution of all these features and is more susceptible to them, not less. This is in addition to whatever specific defenses we've evolved against relatives (not necessarily descendants) of this virus that we've encountered.
We of course weren't around when T. rex was, but our ancestors were. Or ancestors and viruses from T. rex's days have been evolving side-by-side in an arms race for 70 million years. We've inherited our robust immune system, viruses have inherited various devious ways of attempting to get around it. A virus from that T. rex (assuming it's still present and viable...a big assumption) has been left out of 70 million years of evolution. We've evolved the immune system equivalents of stealth bombers, machineguns, and flamethrowers, while our contemporary viruses have anti-aircraft guns, bulletproof vests, and flame-retardant pajamas. Species that didn't evolve elaborate defenses got killed off by viruses. Viruses that didn't evolve sneaky ways of getting around defense systems didn't reproduce and ceased to exist. A virus from 70 million years ago isn't going to have something that somehow didn't get tried out by untold numbers of viruses in untold numbers of infections in untold numbers of our ancestors in 70 million years, especially since it's likely that some modern viruses are related to it, although not necessarily descended from it. No, a virus from the T. rex has the pointy stick. We've got good defenses against that.
We've got a 70 million year evolutionary leg up on the little buggers; I'd be stunned if they could induce a case of the sniffles in a person with AIDS. What'd be more interesting would be if (HUGE IF: I'll take any science by press release with a few pounds of salt. This soft tissue business needs to go through peer review before it's credible to any real extent) any were present we could potentially learn a great deal about viral evolution.
The time is now over-ripe for a MINOR league baseball game. It'll be just like a minor league game: score points for having your pitcher bean the batter in the head, have drunk umpires, rowdy fans getting on the field and sometimes even playing, mascots fighting the opposing mascot, opposing players, the fans, and their own team...I hope the guys who did Redneck Rampage eventually do something like this.
As someone else mentioned, not all HP48s can do this. My HP48SX is powered by a 2 MHz processor, so overclocking it to 200 MHz would probably generate enough heat to initiate fusion or something. 2 MHz isn't really all that bad though, for all you kiddies out there. The only thing I've ever done with it that made it start to puke was some funkier graphing with parametric equations or something. By comparison, I also got it at the time I replaced my Apple IIe with a 386sx-16. That computer's been long gone, but I'll have the calculator forever. RPN, baby! My calculator does math like Yoda talks!
The article says: " "This is about who you are and how you do something." said Sebastian. This biometric is the foundation of Dynamic Grip Recognition. The technology measures not only the size, strength and structure of a person's hand, but also the reflexive way in which the person acts. For smart gun, the observed actions are how the person squeezes something to produce a unique and measurable pattern. Embedded sensors in the experimental gun then can read and record the size and force of the users' hand during the first second when the trigger is squeezed. "
What they've got is the gun recognizing a particular person and not another under highly controlled circumstances. This is quite a feat, to be sure, but note the statement "This is about who you are and how you do something." How I'm handling a gun depends greatly on the situation I'm in. It's a lot different between sitting at home on the couch cleaning a gun versus firing at the range, versus going hunting...and for shotguns or handguns of course vastly different when in a life-threatening situation. Tests will have to be conducted under a large range of situations before any sane person would trust such a firearm as far as they can throw it, regardless of their views of gun control.
Personally, I will never own such a weapon. As other posters have mentioned, it will never work as well as a firearm without the biometric sensor. More parts==more chance for failure. I don't screw around with that kind of risk when I'm essentially having a regulated explosion occuring inches from my face. That's all besides the major point IMHO that this is a reprehensible encrochment on basic human rights by the state of New Jersey. I may be a liberal, but I'm a gun-totin' red-necked liberal.
"As a student, I'm the consumer. I'm paying the professor to teach me what he/she knows and then to rate how well I've absorbed that information at the end of the class."
Like you said, there will be people who disagree with your view of a university education. You're not buying what your professor knows. Students are not consumers in the sense that they are buying an education. Students are consumers only in the sense that they are buying access to an education in the form of books, lectures/labs, classwork, and a Prof's or TA's office hours. Education cannot be purchased with dollars, it has to be earned by the effort of the student--that effort is ideally what is being rated by grades. That said, this prof sounds like he's stroking his ego by flunking most of the class and I would also encourage the students to complain. However they should not get their parents involved, at least not at first. The reaction that a professor will likely have when confronted by a student's parents over a grade will be eye-rolling contempt for the student. I'm not saying that this is good, just what I've gleaned from hearing professors griping about this very subject. If you're old enough to be in college you're an adult and should take care of your own problems. If you think you've been graded unfairly, talk to the professor about it and expect to back up your position. In my experience they'll at least listen. When you've got a whole class being victimized by BS grading then you might need to go over their head to the department chair, but you'll need to back up your position just the same. If most of the class fails because of this one project it sounds like the class can present a very strong case.
Oly's a favorite beer of mine, and there is definitely something about the water. Based on my experience the "it's in the water" refers to the loudest, longest, roundest belches I have ever had. I think it has more carbonation and less alcohol than even most American beers. Anyway, Olympia's truly great if you're out camping in a canyon and have had a couple--the echoes are amazing.
This reminds me strongly of a talk I went to by Richard Taylor, a physics prof at the University of Oregon. He's determined that Jackson Pollock's paintings are fractal in nature, and is one of the people contacted when a new painting of his turns up. So far, he's been in total agreement with expert opinion. An interesting note is that Pollock got to a "sweet spot" of what Taylor calls "drip fractal dimension" of ~1.6-1.7, whereas nature is around about 1.2-1.3. Pollock, Taylor said, seemed to want to challenge the viewer with more intense fractal patterns. He could get higher drip fractal dimensions, to a value of greater than 2, but he decided it was too far and painted over it--too challenging or something. This was something mentioned in Taylor's talk, not in the link. Anyway, it was a really interesting talk that's made me look for repeating patterns in nature when I'm out hunting or something, and gave me a greater appreciation for Pollock's paintings, which always used to look like...er...Jackson Pollocks to me. Also Taylor talked about how fractal nature seems to be appealing and relaxing to us, with our mood improved if there are either real plants or large photographs of natural scenes around our cube farms--which are incredibly unfractal like and horridly plain and repetitive.
"You do realize that over half of Americans reject the standard theories (important word: theories, not laws)[emphasis added] for the origin of life and the universe that are presented in secular science education, don't you?"
Yes, it troubles me greatly, as does your post and far, far too many just like it. The word "theory" in science doesn't mean "half-assed guess" like it does in normal parlance. It means an idea that has been rigorously tested and is supported by a mountain of evidence. Theory of relativity. Theory of gravity. Germ theory. Theory of evolution. All supported by mountains of evidence, all have stood the test of time and are all highly unlikely to go away anytime soon. Sure any one or more of them could be wrong. Some may be able to adapt to new evidence, some might (heavy, very heavy emphasis on might) be relegated to the scrapheap of disproven scientific ideas...like phlogiston or creationism. The latter one is the most troubling. Two hundred years ago the dominant scientific idea in the west was a special creation taking place 6000 years ago. Christian geologists went out looking for this, but instead found evidence incompatible with a young earth, thus refuting young-earth creationism (note: not creation, a supernatural event and thus outside the realm of science. A god or gods could create using any means s/he/it/they deem appropriate and are thus undetectable to naturalistic science). Modern day creation-science and its bastard child "intelligent design" are just attempts to turn back scientific progress over 200 years. So yes, it does bother me a great deal to see that certain well-established scientific theories are thrown out because of the religous ideology of certain groups. Whats worse is that these religious radicals aren't objecting to the science, they're objecting to the implications of established science towards certain literalistic interpretations of the Bible, not science at all. There is one scientifically valid idea about the origin of species currently, and like it or not it is evolution.
Re:This is interesting...
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Internet Hunting
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It depends on who, where, and what you're after if you consider if hunting is lopsided towards humans or not. We have bag limits and tags on anything worth eating, hunting seasons, and limitations on what you can use. Sure now we've got camoflage and scents and calls, but they aren't all that great and require skill to use. For whatever dumbass reason many hunters prefer the much less effective camo that has leaves and berries and crap printed on it than stuff that actually works. Scents? Helps for hunting some species but then at least in Oregon you can't use them for black bear unless you apply it to your own clothing! Then there's the decline in hunter skill and experience. I'm a total novice and manage to get out only maybe every other weekend at best during hunting season, but lots of people don't even do that.
Finally, some hunts are just brutal. Two years ago, my roomate lucked out and after four years unsuccessfully going after bull elk in Oregon, he got an antlerless elk tag. Elk are amazing animals, can weigh well over a half ton but take two steps into heavy brush and be gone without a trace or hardly a sound. Anyway, he spent five days in Oregon's coast range before he shot a ~900 pound cow elk. So that's December in a rain forest in Oregon. Lows below freezing, highs around 50, near-constant rain so hard that if you want a shower just stick a bar of soap on your head and stand outside for five minutes. The day he got her there were 100 mph wind gusts recorded at Bandon, just to the south. He didn't use any calls or scents, but that day got within 50 feet of her wearing a bright yellow rainsuit. Someone always visits him at elk camp to make sure he's alright, and that year it was me. He had somehow gutted, skinned, quartered, and hung her by himself and carried out about 2/3 of the meat over two miles of steep, abandoned logging roads to his truck on the "main" logging road by the time I finally found him around dusk. The next day we drove back and got the remainder and I found out what it was like to carry an elk quarter on my back for a couple miles. Or at least a big chunk of it, anyway. I had about 80 pounds of elk leg on my back, and whenever I leaned over I'd "accidentally" bonk him in the head with her hoof, which stuck out over my head by about a foot and a half. From just two trips I got some of the worst muscle pulls I've ever had, I can't imagine doing it for over a day like he did. Elk hunters are full-bore batshit insane. Tasty animal, though. Beef sucks.
But this so-called hunting from the safety and comfort of your own computer is just plain wrong, I agree.
I've had the privilege of voting in Oregon now several times, and I gotta say vote by mail rocks. I get to look over the ballot carefully, weigh pro and cons, check for more information online or from the media, take as long as I damn well feel like without any pressure...got some tunes on the stereo, a cold beer in one hand, my ballot in the other, sitting on the couch in my livingroom wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. In other states I've lived in not only do you have to go out to the polls, they make you wear pants while voting. What a total crock.
From a link off Dr. Faustman's webpage: "The source of the funding for the clinical research activities in the MGH Diabetes Center has come almost entirely from NIH and foundation grants. This funding is ear-marked for specific projects and protocols, allowing little flexibility or opportunity to fund the type of innovative clinical research that the Diabetes Center aims to conduct and provide hope of significant advances. Flexible funds to foster new initiatives, to support researchers who need the funds to pursue innovative approaches and research, are critically needed. Many of the exciting breakthroughs that occur in clinical research and lead to the development of new therapies require this type of initial backing, which is almost never available from government, corporate or foundation sources. Your support can make the difference."
It appears that some of her funding does come from the NIH, although she may want it to be more flexible or something.
"So let me get this straight: when it comes to war in Iraq, it's really important to Democrats and other Lefties for the U.S. to get the entire world on board. But when the U.S. decides that human cloning is something that should be stopped, it's suddendly bad for us to try to get the entire world on board?"
It seems simple to me. Democrats (but not "lefties") were initially supporting the war, or at least authorized Bush to make war if necessary, and naturally wanted to have the UN backing the war in Iraq to make it seem more legitimate in the eyes of the world--and therefore hopefully easier to get other countries to sign on and help carry the load like they did in the first Gulf War. Democrats and "Lefties" generally dislike the current administration's views on stem cell research, and naturally don't want that view pushed around the world. Either way the Democrats and "lefties" are trying to either get people on board with them or at least discourage people from supporting the opposing view. What's not to get?
"Medical school admission in the US is extremely competitive, likely the most competitive academic process in the US."
I've had to TA pre-med students and while some were bright it was their incessant grade-grubbing that made them stand out. While in grad school I've also had three pre-med students working in lab for me. All three were smart but only one was what I'd call brilliant. All three got into med school. One declined and went to grad school because she thought it'd be more challenging. One got in because her dad made a bri^H^H^H donation, and much to her credit she's having a serious moral dilemma about accepting the spot. The appalling thing is that "donations" to try and influence the admissions committee are not uncommon. As in most things if you're rich then the rules can easily be bent, and the ones that go to med school are disproportionately from wealthy families--so much for academics. The third is now a third year med student at USC and it's largely from her (and from my having to tell a MD that antibiotics don't work on viral infections) that my opinion of med students and MDs has dropped through the floor. Her classmates almost without exception are from wealth and privilege, brought up by maids and nannies and carefully insulated against the world. She was one of the few with real-world experience (academic research, paramedic, firefighter, crisis intervention worker); most simply were memorization machines with high grades but weak problem solving skills--her opinion as a fellow med student, mind you. Most were utterly clueless when it came to dealing with patients or figuring out a diagnosis.
Perhaps this sums it up best: One of her classmates somehow made it to age 24 and was still under the impression that women have a cloaca. Nevermind never having a gf or never seeing any porn, he thought that women only have one opening down under after passing an undergraduate-level human anatomy lab! At least it being USC there's no shortage of porn stars to come in to be model patients for the med students' gynecology exams so that got straightened out real fast.
Doesn't produce own proteins outside of a cell
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A Truly Alive Virus
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· Score: 3, Informative
From the Science article: "Surprisingly, Mimivirus genome sequence now reveal genes relevant to all key steps of mRNA translation: tRNA and tRNA charging, initiation, elongation and termination, with the exception of ribosome components themselves." I'm sure many people knew that when the Nature News link said "Mimi carries about 50 genes that do things never seen before in a virus. It can make about 150 of its own proteins, along with chemical chaperones to help the proteins to fold in the right way." they meant within a host cell, but I'm sad to say I didn't get that right away. I really should have--there's a guy in the lab next door who does EM and crystallography on virus particles so I know that the inside of a virus capsid is ~crystaline DNA or RNA so no protein production would be expected to take place within the capsid itself.
Mimivirus does contain a lot of weird, weird stuff for a virus, including a number of DNA repair proteins, and truly bizarre, protein folding chaperones and a proline cis-trans isomerase. Doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, but it'll be interesting to find out why it has them.
Oh yeah. You know it's news when Science gives you 13 freakin' pages for your stuff as opposed to the usual miserly 3.
I've never seen Tucker on Crossfire, only on his PBS show "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered." I really enjoy PBS news shows as they are the only ones left in the nation. I made myself watch Tucker's show a couple times just because I thought it'd be a balance to the left-leanings of Bill Moyers, who I really enjoy watching. Rather than being a counter at all, "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered" consisted of Tucker sitting there asking his conservative guests softball questions only slightly better than "So Mr. Conservative, would you please list all the ways you are right and your opponents are wrong?" or "Mr. Conservative, in your opinion, are liberals evil or just dumb?" And then Tucker would just lean forward, smile and nod with each sentence and gaze lovingly at his guest. Naturally, I didn't think much of Tucker because of that show. Reading that transcript and seeing how easily Stewart (never seen his show either-no cable) made a total fool out of Tucker just confirmed my opinion that Tucker's just a party hack unable to really think for himself.
Totally different issue: Does Tucker have that hideous pastel paint smeared all over his face like he does on Unflitered or does he have a competent makeup artist on Crossfire?
It'll depend a lot on the range and the pressure of the gun. I was playing once about five years back and some idiot on my team shot an opposing player from a range of about five feet directly into his chest. Poor guy got knocked flat on his ass and had a black and purple bruise/welt about six inches across. It can happen. The idiot on my team who shot him got kicked off the field. Good riddance.
From TFA: "Jacksonville City Administrator Paul Wyntergreen said the protest was peaceful until a few people started pushing police. Police reacted by firing pepperballs, which he described as projectiles like a paintball filled with cayenne pepper. Two people were arrested for failing to disperse. There were no reports of injuries."
Police were pushed, then responded or: "He [Richard Swaney] said he was walking with the crowd away from the inn when he was hit in the back with three separate bursts, one of which knocked him down. He felt a stinging sensation he thought was rubber bullets and smelled pepper. "I don't think I moved fast enough,'' said Swaney. "I can't believe this happens in the United States. It was very peaceful. I think this is the way tyranny begins.''
The two statements don't exactly jive, and both one could say are biased--a protestor who got hit in the back while walking away and the city administrator. Who to believe? At best the city administrator's account is accurate and we have hypersensitivity by the police. If the city administrator's account is wrong and the protest was peaceful then we have something worse. Unfortunately we have no account from an objective, independent third observer to decide the matter.
Damn straight. My uncle was a short-haul trucker for 30 some odd years and has done quite well for himself, with lots of free time and low stress. The guys in my generation all went to college and then had at least some grad school (one has a masters, two have or will soon have Ph.D.s), so it won't be until we're about 40 at the earliest that we'll catch up to where our highschool-educated uncle was at the same age.
There is one more kind that people can get: Mycobacterium marinum. This is the mycobacterium that, as the name suggests, primarily infects aquatic critters such as fish and frogs. It seems one of the most common ways a person gets infected is through fishtanks. If your tank is contaminated and you're cleaning it out and your hands have open wounds you can get infected. The infection fortunately isn't nearly as bad as tuberculosis, as the bacteria tend to stay localized just under the skin. But the linked pagee does mention that it can hit the joints causing arthritis. Also like tuberculosis, you have a long treatment ahead of you to clear it up, on the order of two months.
There is a tuberculosis model system utilizing M. marinum and the zebrafish (Danio rerio) and a second one using M. marinum and Xenopus laevis, a frog. M. marinum model systems, despite being "hosted" by organisms that are evolutionarily quite distant from humans are pretty good, as M. marinum is very closely related to M. tuberculosis and the infection M. marinum causes in its natural hosts manifests pathological hallmarks of tuberculosis, including granulomas.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why does anyone still expect evolution in our society? With the social system and the way our economy works there is no reason for evolution anymore."
Like another poster said, you've got a common misconception of what evolution is. There is no "upward drive" to evolution, it is simply changes in allele frequencies within a population over the course of time due to mutation, natural selection, genetic drift as the primary factors. Now take our society (by "our" I mean a modern industrialized nation or nations) and a relatively common condition: nearsightedness. There's lots of causes of this disorder including genetic links. In our society nearsightedness isn't too terrible a disadvantage. Glasses are affordable for most people and there are programs to get them to people who can't afford them; I always donate my old pairs. There might even be a slight plus in nearsightedness: we make worse front-line soldiers than people with excellent vision, and the military won't let you do that if your vision is too poor. The advantage of this is that front-line soldiers are at greater risk of getting killed. Now compare our society with a third world nation like Afghanistan. Nearsightedness is going to be detrimental: glasses are much harder to get and good vision will help someone tell the difference between a partially-buried landmine and a rock. In the long term a nearsighted person without glasses will have an even harder time getting work and will be less able to support any children, which in turn puts these kids at a disadvantage which will be compounded by their own propensity towards the same poor eyesight. Nearsightedness will be selected against in Afghanistan, so there will likely be fewer nearsighted people in Afghanistan and fewer genes associated with nearsightedness in that population versus our society. The advent of cheap glasses even in our society is relatively recent so there probably has been a change in allele frequency for nearsightedness (that is probably ongoing), thus evolution is still occuring. This is of course just one trait and you can imagine other traits being selected for or against as well.
It's not just white blood cells. A virus has to bind a host cell, get into the host cell, hijack the machinery to produce more viruses instead of maintaining normal physiological functions, and get out of the cell to infect more host cells. There are a limited number of ways for a virus to do these things and we've naturally evolved ways to frustrate these general viral functions. This is before we get to any real immune response, which has evolved likewise. A virus from 70 million years ago has missed out on the evolution of all these features and is more susceptible to them, not less. This is in addition to whatever specific defenses we've evolved against relatives (not necessarily descendants) of this virus that we've encountered.
We of course weren't around when T. rex was, but our ancestors were. Or ancestors and viruses from T. rex's days have been evolving side-by-side in an arms race for 70 million years. We've inherited our robust immune system, viruses have inherited various devious ways of attempting to get around it. A virus from that T. rex (assuming it's still present and viable...a big assumption) has been left out of 70 million years of evolution. We've evolved the immune system equivalents of stealth bombers, machineguns, and flamethrowers, while our contemporary viruses have anti-aircraft guns, bulletproof vests, and flame-retardant pajamas. Species that didn't evolve elaborate defenses got killed off by viruses. Viruses that didn't evolve sneaky ways of getting around defense systems didn't reproduce and ceased to exist. A virus from 70 million years ago isn't going to have something that somehow didn't get tried out by untold numbers of viruses in untold numbers of infections in untold numbers of our ancestors in 70 million years, especially since it's likely that some modern viruses are related to it, although not necessarily descended from it. No, a virus from the T. rex has the pointy stick. We've got good defenses against that.
We've got a 70 million year evolutionary leg up on the little buggers; I'd be stunned if they could induce a case of the sniffles in a person with AIDS. What'd be more interesting would be if (HUGE IF: I'll take any science by press release with a few pounds of salt. This soft tissue business needs to go through peer review before it's credible to any real extent) any were present we could potentially learn a great deal about viral evolution.
" All you have to do is get a few well known and respected scientists on board and all the other lemmings will fall in line."
It's hard enough to get a group of five scientists to agree to be in the same damn room at the same time much less this "lemmings" nonsense.
"Want an AOL CD? Go to Burger King! They make half-decent frisbees..."
They also make tricky targets for skeet shooting. It's damn satisfying to blow the crap out of one with a 12 guage.
The time is now over-ripe for a MINOR league baseball game. It'll be just like a minor league game: score points for having your pitcher bean the batter in the head, have drunk umpires, rowdy fans getting on the field and sometimes even playing, mascots fighting the opposing mascot, opposing players, the fans, and their own team...I hope the guys who did Redneck Rampage eventually do something like this.
As someone else mentioned, not all HP48s can do this. My HP48SX is powered by a 2 MHz processor, so overclocking it to 200 MHz would probably generate enough heat to initiate fusion or something. 2 MHz isn't really all that bad though, for all you kiddies out there. The only thing I've ever done with it that made it start to puke was some funkier graphing with parametric equations or something. By comparison, I also got it at the time I replaced my Apple IIe with a 386sx-16. That computer's been long gone, but I'll have the calculator forever. RPN, baby! My calculator does math like Yoda talks!
The article says: " "This is about who you are and how you do something." said Sebastian. This biometric is the foundation of Dynamic Grip Recognition. The technology measures not only the size, strength and structure of a person's hand, but also the reflexive way in which the person acts. For smart gun, the observed actions are how the person squeezes something to produce a unique and measurable pattern. Embedded sensors in the experimental gun then can read and record the size and force of the users' hand during the first second when the trigger is squeezed.
"
What they've got is the gun recognizing a particular person and not another under highly controlled circumstances. This is quite a feat, to be sure, but note the statement "This is about who you are and how you do something." How I'm handling a gun depends greatly on the situation I'm in. It's a lot different between sitting at home on the couch cleaning a gun versus firing at the range, versus going hunting...and for shotguns or handguns of course vastly different when in a life-threatening situation. Tests will have to be conducted under a large range of situations before any sane person would trust such a firearm as far as they can throw it, regardless of their views of gun control.
Personally, I will never own such a weapon. As other posters have mentioned, it will never work as well as a firearm without the biometric sensor. More parts==more chance for failure. I don't screw around with that kind of risk when I'm essentially having a regulated explosion occuring inches from my face. That's all besides the major point IMHO that this is a reprehensible encrochment on basic human rights by the state of New Jersey. I may be a liberal, but I'm a gun-totin' red-necked liberal.
"As a student, I'm the consumer. I'm paying the professor to teach me what he/she knows and then to rate how well I've absorbed that information at the end of the class."
Like you said, there will be people who disagree with your view of a university education. You're not buying what your professor knows. Students are not consumers in the sense that they are buying an education. Students are consumers only in the sense that they are buying access to an education in the form of books, lectures/labs, classwork, and a Prof's or TA's office hours. Education cannot be purchased with dollars, it has to be earned by the effort of the student--that effort is ideally what is being rated by grades. That said, this prof sounds like he's stroking his ego by flunking most of the class and I would also encourage the students to complain. However they should not get their parents involved, at least not at first. The reaction that a professor will likely have when confronted by a student's parents over a grade will be eye-rolling contempt for the student. I'm not saying that this is good, just what I've gleaned from hearing professors griping about this very subject. If you're old enough to be in college you're an adult and should take care of your own problems. If you think you've been graded unfairly, talk to the professor about it and expect to back up your position. In my experience they'll at least listen. When you've got a whole class being victimized by BS grading then you might need to go over their head to the department chair, but you'll need to back up your position just the same. If most of the class fails because of this one project it sounds like the class can present a very strong case.
Oly's a favorite beer of mine, and there is definitely something about the water. Based on my experience the "it's in the water" refers to the loudest, longest, roundest belches I have ever had. I think it has more carbonation and less alcohol than even most American beers. Anyway, Olympia's truly great if you're out camping in a canyon and have had a couple--the echoes are amazing.
This reminds me strongly of a talk I went to by Richard Taylor, a physics prof at the University of Oregon. He's determined that Jackson Pollock's paintings are fractal in nature, and is one of the people contacted when a new painting of his turns up. So far, he's been in total agreement with expert opinion. An interesting note is that Pollock got to a "sweet spot" of what Taylor calls "drip fractal dimension" of ~1.6-1.7, whereas nature is around about 1.2-1.3. Pollock, Taylor said, seemed to want to challenge the viewer with more intense fractal patterns. He could get higher drip fractal dimensions, to a value of greater than 2, but he decided it was too far and painted over it--too challenging or something. This was something mentioned in Taylor's talk, not in the link. Anyway, it was a really interesting talk that's made me look for repeating patterns in nature when I'm out hunting or something, and gave me a greater appreciation for Pollock's paintings, which always used to look like...er...Jackson Pollocks to me. Also Taylor talked about how fractal nature seems to be appealing and relaxing to us, with our mood improved if there are either real plants or large photographs of natural scenes around our cube farms--which are incredibly unfractal like and horridly plain and repetitive.
"You do realize that over half of Americans reject the standard theories (important word: theories, not laws) [emphasis added] for the origin of life and the universe that are presented in secular science education, don't you?"
Yes, it troubles me greatly, as does your post and far, far too many just like it. The word "theory" in science doesn't mean "half-assed guess" like it does in normal parlance. It means an idea that has been rigorously tested and is supported by a mountain of evidence. Theory of relativity. Theory of gravity. Germ theory. Theory of evolution. All supported by mountains of evidence, all have stood the test of time and are all highly unlikely to go away anytime soon. Sure any one or more of them could be wrong. Some may be able to adapt to new evidence, some might (heavy, very heavy emphasis on might) be relegated to the scrapheap of disproven scientific ideas...like phlogiston or creationism. The latter one is the most troubling. Two hundred years ago the dominant scientific idea in the west was a special creation taking place 6000 years ago. Christian geologists went out looking for this, but instead found evidence incompatible with a young earth, thus refuting young-earth creationism (note: not creation, a supernatural event and thus outside the realm of science. A god or gods could create using any means s/he/it/they deem appropriate and are thus undetectable to naturalistic science). Modern day creation-science and its bastard child "intelligent design" are just attempts to turn back scientific progress over 200 years. So yes, it does bother me a great deal to see that certain well-established scientific theories are thrown out because of the religous ideology of certain groups. Whats worse is that these religious radicals aren't objecting to the science, they're objecting to the implications of established science towards certain literalistic interpretations of the Bible, not science at all. There is one scientifically valid idea about the origin of species currently, and like it or not it is evolution.
It depends on who, where, and what you're after if you consider if hunting is lopsided towards humans or not. We have bag limits and tags on anything worth eating, hunting seasons, and limitations on what you can use. Sure now we've got camoflage and scents and calls, but they aren't all that great and require skill to use. For whatever dumbass reason many hunters prefer the much less effective camo that has leaves and berries and crap printed on it than stuff that actually works. Scents? Helps for hunting some species but then at least in Oregon you can't use them for black bear unless you apply it to your own clothing! Then there's the decline in hunter skill and experience. I'm a total novice and manage to get out only maybe every other weekend at best during hunting season, but lots of people don't even do that.
Finally, some hunts are just brutal. Two years ago, my roomate lucked out and after four years unsuccessfully going after bull elk in Oregon, he got an antlerless elk tag. Elk are amazing animals, can weigh well over a half ton but take two steps into heavy brush and be gone without a trace or hardly a sound. Anyway, he spent five days in Oregon's coast range before he shot a ~900 pound cow elk. So that's December in a rain forest in Oregon. Lows below freezing, highs around 50, near-constant rain so hard that if you want a shower just stick a bar of soap on your head and stand outside for five minutes. The day he got her there were 100 mph wind gusts recorded at Bandon, just to the south. He didn't use any calls or scents, but that day got within 50 feet of her wearing a bright yellow rainsuit. Someone always visits him at elk camp to make sure he's alright, and that year it was me. He had somehow gutted, skinned, quartered, and hung her by himself and carried out about 2/3 of the meat over two miles of steep, abandoned logging roads to his truck on the "main" logging road by the time I finally found him around dusk. The next day we drove back and got the remainder and I found out what it was like to carry an elk quarter on my back for a couple miles. Or at least a big chunk of it, anyway. I had about 80 pounds of elk leg on my back, and whenever I leaned over I'd "accidentally" bonk him in the head with her hoof, which stuck out over my head by about a foot and a half. From just two trips I got some of the worst muscle pulls I've ever had, I can't imagine doing it for over a day like he did. Elk hunters are full-bore batshit insane. Tasty animal, though. Beef sucks.
But this so-called hunting from the safety and comfort of your own computer is just plain wrong, I agree.
I've had the privilege of voting in Oregon now several times, and I gotta say vote by mail rocks. I get to look over the ballot carefully, weigh pro and cons, check for more information online or from the media, take as long as I damn well feel like without any pressure...got some tunes on the stereo, a cold beer in one hand, my ballot in the other, sitting on the couch in my livingroom wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. In other states I've lived in not only do you have to go out to the polls, they make you wear pants while voting. What a total crock.
From a link off Dr. Faustman's webpage: "The source of the funding for the clinical research activities in the MGH Diabetes Center has come almost entirely from NIH and foundation grants. This funding is ear-marked for specific projects and protocols, allowing little flexibility or opportunity to fund the type of innovative clinical research that the Diabetes Center aims to conduct and provide hope of significant advances. Flexible funds to foster new initiatives, to support researchers who need the funds to pursue innovative approaches and research, are critically needed. Many of the exciting breakthroughs that occur in clinical research and lead to the development of new therapies require this type of initial backing, which is almost never available from government, corporate or foundation sources. Your support can make the difference."
It appears that some of her funding does come from the NIH, although she may want it to be more flexible or something.
"So let me get this straight: when it comes to war in Iraq, it's really important to Democrats and other Lefties for the U.S. to get the entire world on board. But when the U.S. decides that human cloning is something that should be stopped, it's suddendly bad for us to try to get the entire world on board?"
It seems simple to me. Democrats (but not "lefties") were initially supporting the war, or at least authorized Bush to make war if necessary, and naturally wanted to have the UN backing the war in Iraq to make it seem more legitimate in the eyes of the world--and therefore hopefully easier to get other countries to sign on and help carry the load like they did in the first Gulf War. Democrats and "Lefties" generally dislike the current administration's views on stem cell research, and naturally don't want that view pushed around the world. Either way the Democrats and "lefties" are trying to either get people on board with them or at least discourage people from supporting the opposing view. What's not to get?
"Medical school admission in the US is extremely competitive, likely the most competitive academic process in the US."
I've had to TA pre-med students and while some were bright it was their incessant grade-grubbing that made them stand out. While in grad school I've also had three pre-med students working in lab for me. All three were smart but only one was what I'd call brilliant. All three got into med school. One declined and went to grad school because she thought it'd be more challenging. One got in because her dad made a bri^H^H^H donation, and much to her credit she's having a serious moral dilemma about accepting the spot. The appalling thing is that "donations" to try and influence the admissions committee are not uncommon. As in most things if you're rich then the rules can easily be bent, and the ones that go to med school are disproportionately from wealthy families--so much for academics. The third is now a third year med student at USC and it's largely from her (and from my having to tell a MD that antibiotics don't work on viral infections) that my opinion of med students and MDs has dropped through the floor. Her classmates almost without exception are from wealth and privilege, brought up by maids and nannies and carefully insulated against the world. She was one of the few with real-world experience (academic research, paramedic, firefighter, crisis intervention worker); most simply were memorization machines with high grades but weak problem solving skills--her opinion as a fellow med student, mind you. Most were utterly clueless when it came to dealing with patients or figuring out a diagnosis.
Perhaps this sums it up best: One of her classmates somehow made it to age 24 and was still under the impression that women have a cloaca. Nevermind never having a gf or never seeing any porn, he thought that women only have one opening down under after passing an undergraduate-level human anatomy lab! At least it being USC there's no shortage of porn stars to come in to be model patients for the med students' gynecology exams so that got straightened out real fast.
From the Science article: "Surprisingly, Mimivirus genome sequence now reveal genes relevant to all key steps of mRNA translation: tRNA and tRNA charging, initiation, elongation and termination, with the exception of ribosome components themselves." I'm sure many people knew that when the Nature News link said "Mimi carries about 50 genes that do things never seen before in a virus. It can make about 150 of its own proteins, along with chemical chaperones to help the proteins to fold in the right way." they meant within a host cell, but I'm sad to say I didn't get that right away. I really should have--there's a guy in the lab next door who does EM and crystallography on virus particles so I know that the inside of a virus capsid is ~crystaline DNA or RNA so no protein production would be expected to take place within the capsid itself.
Mimivirus does contain a lot of weird, weird stuff for a virus, including a number of DNA repair proteins, and truly bizarre, protein folding chaperones and a proline cis-trans isomerase. Doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, but it'll be interesting to find out why it has them.
Oh yeah. You know it's news when Science gives you 13 freakin' pages for your stuff as opposed to the usual miserly 3.
I've never seen Tucker on Crossfire, only on his PBS show "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered." I really enjoy PBS news shows as they are the only ones left in the nation. I made myself watch Tucker's show a couple times just because I thought it'd be a balance to the left-leanings of Bill Moyers, who I really enjoy watching. Rather than being a counter at all, "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered" consisted of Tucker sitting there asking his conservative guests softball questions only slightly better than "So Mr. Conservative, would you please list all the ways you are right and your opponents are wrong?" or "Mr. Conservative, in your opinion, are liberals evil or just dumb?" And then Tucker would just lean forward, smile and nod with each sentence and gaze lovingly at his guest. Naturally, I didn't think much of Tucker because of that show. Reading that transcript and seeing how easily Stewart (never seen his show either-no cable) made a total fool out of Tucker just confirmed my opinion that Tucker's just a party hack unable to really think for himself.
Totally different issue: Does Tucker have that hideous pastel paint smeared all over his face like he does on Unflitered or does he have a competent makeup artist on Crossfire?
It'll depend a lot on the range and the pressure of the gun. I was playing once about five years back and some idiot on my team shot an opposing player from a range of about five feet directly into his chest. Poor guy got knocked flat on his ass and had a black and purple bruise/welt about six inches across. It can happen. The idiot on my team who shot him got kicked off the field. Good riddance.
From TFA: "Jacksonville City Administrator Paul Wyntergreen said the protest was peaceful until a few people started pushing police. Police reacted by firing pepperballs, which he described as projectiles like a paintball filled with cayenne pepper. Two people were arrested for failing to disperse. There were no reports of injuries."
Police were pushed, then responded or: "He [Richard Swaney] said he was walking with the crowd away from the inn when he was hit in the back with three separate bursts, one of which knocked him down. He felt a stinging sensation he thought was rubber bullets and smelled pepper. "I don't think I moved fast enough,'' said Swaney. "I can't believe this happens in the United States. It was very peaceful. I think this is the way tyranny begins.''
The two statements don't exactly jive, and both one could say are biased--a protestor who got hit in the back while walking away and the city administrator. Who to believe? At best the city administrator's account is accurate and we have hypersensitivity by the police. If the city administrator's account is wrong and the protest was peaceful then we have something worse. Unfortunately we have no account from an objective, independent third observer to decide the matter.
Damn straight. My uncle was a short-haul trucker for 30 some odd years and has done quite well for himself, with lots of free time and low stress. The guys in my generation all went to college and then had at least some grad school (one has a masters, two have or will soon have Ph.D.s), so it won't be until we're about 40 at the earliest that we'll catch up to where our highschool-educated uncle was at the same age.
No no you're thinking of naquadria.
There is one more kind that people can get: Mycobacterium marinum . This is the mycobacterium that, as the name suggests, primarily infects aquatic critters such as fish and frogs. It seems one of the most common ways a person gets infected is through fishtanks. If your tank is contaminated and you're cleaning it out and your hands have open wounds you can get infected. The infection fortunately isn't nearly as bad as tuberculosis, as the bacteria tend to stay localized just under the skin. But the linked pagee does mention that it can hit the joints causing arthritis. Also like tuberculosis, you have a long treatment ahead of you to clear it up, on the order of two months.
There is a tuberculosis model system utilizing M. marinum and the zebrafish (Danio rerio) and a second one using M. marinum and Xenopus laevis, a frog. M. marinum model systems, despite being "hosted" by organisms that are evolutionarily quite distant from humans are pretty good, as M. marinum is very closely related to M. tuberculosis and the infection M. marinum causes in its natural hosts manifests pathological hallmarks of tuberculosis, including granulomas.