What put down on Bill O'Reilly? The parent poster thought that O'Reilly had been on "Inside Edition" and I confirmed this and linked where I got this information from: his bio on FOX News! Then I had a separate brief comment pointing out that Geraldo was on FOX News as a war correspondant, not Jerry Springer as an anchor and an aside about the relative merits of Geraldo vs Springer. Not that I'd want either reporting the news, or O'Reilly for that matter either. O'Reilly's editorializing would be welcome on the opinion section of the paper, while Geraldo might make paperboy and Springer...circulation chief? Beats me.
"For example, people like Orielly are nothing but paparazzi in disguise. Didn't he work for inside edition or some equally worthless tabloid? And now he is a news reporter? Wouldn't that be about the same if Jerry Springer decided to anchor the news?"
O'Reilly did work for six years on the TV-tabloid Inside Edition according to his bio on the FOX News website. It looks like a career low for O'Reilly, no matter what your opinion of FOX News is you'd have to say it is at least more credible a news source than "Inside Edition."
Oh, and it's Geraldo Riviera, not Jerry Springer that FOX News employed as a war correspondant, not an anchor. Now judging from the quality of personnel that FOX News employs they probably did think about Springer but they probably knew he has too much intelligence and integrity to ever work for them.
"In some cases, the discs will not easily eject from the computer."
I've since made my peace with this "feature" and now desire (but can't afford) a G4 powerbook, but this is one of the things that used to throw me into screaming fits about the inherent inferiority of Macs: the refusal by Apple to spend the extra nickel to put a damn eject button on the CD and floppy drives. Of course this was back in the day when some idiot Apple engineer who decided that it would be really neat to stick the on/off button right where the floppy eject button should be on certain pizza-box format Macs, and usually involved the loss of a large amount of work.
I was curious about your claim about US Gov't land ownership so I did a little looking and found this site that tallies government land ownership, took that data and ran it through a spreadsheet. Not including Alaska and Hawaii, state and federal government ownership accounts for 34% of the land in states west of the Mississippi (including those states stradling the river). Including AK and HI the total goes up to 47%.
The next question though is how much of this land is actually worth anything, since the states with the highest proportion of government land (Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon are the top five by percent) tend to have the largest percentages of land that is worthless or nearly so. There's a whole lot of mountains, desert and arid plains in the west, and in Alaska there's less of the desert, but they make up for that with tundra and boreal forests. Sure there's some valuable resource-rich land out here, but extractive industries won't buy public lands that they already have rights to take resources out of. These two factors alone will likely make the total saleable goverment land plummet to a small fraction of the total government holdings. Some desireable lands will remain, but some portion will be in state and national parks and outside of the Libertarian party you'll find scant public support for selling those, dropping the saleable number even further.
Just a quick note: rapid fire weapons were known (but rarely, if ever used) well before the American Revolution. James Puckle patented a weapon he called a "defense system" in 1718. It was a more or less a large tripod-mounted revolver capable of firing 9 shots a minute. There is mention of a test on another site where one man fired 63 shots in seven minutes--an incredible volume of fire considering it takes roughly 2-3 minutes to load and fire a black powder musket. The weapon, oddly enough, didn't fare too well in the market. But it wasn't the only weapon of firing (more) rapidly that were at least known of during the period; a breif google search turned up multiple-barreled weapons dating to the late 1500's. Since many of the Founding Fathers had military experience and/or military training as a part of their schooling it is highly unlikely that they would be ignorant of these devices, although they may have scoffed at their practicality.
As for larger weapons, we do have to remember that around the time of the American Revolution private persons owned merchant ships (and privateers) that went about armed with cannons.
Rush Limbaugh and the other conservative talk show hosts didn't go anywhere when Bush I was in office, got a little surge over Clinton, and have remained in place for Bush II. Whatever your opinion on politics though they do have one advantage over Air America: they're entertaining, even if it's only for the screaming back at the radio while on long drives (for us lefties, anyway).
Oh, and Limbaugh et al are also easy to find on the dial. I heard a rumor that Air America's on NPR...somewhere...at...uh...sometime, but I haven't been able to confirm this. So make that two advantages.
Okay, and Limbaugh was committed to being the host of a radio program. Al Franken doesn't seem so inclined and probably will quit as soon as possible after the 2004 presidential race is over. Make that three advantages...and no Monty Python jokes!
"...Apple's G5 orders far eclipsed any other 64-bit *desktop* offering from any vendor the first day it was introduced."
Okay, I saw in a lower message you mean desktops and not desktops and workstations. Putting that aside I wonder when Apple's G5 sales will surpass SGI or Alpha sales, since while both SGI and Alpha are 64 bit systems that have been around for years they owned a small market niche whereas Apple's got 5ish% of the consumer market. If it hasn't happend yet (probably), I wonder how long before it will?
Business tax that Walmart gets out of via tax incentives--of which this is just an example. Where can the local store go to get its $10 million and 350 acres of land to compete? This is only one of the things that large corporations do to unfairly squeeze out the little guy.
Local option sales tax won't help. There will be a little more tax from a few more people from out of town comming in attracted by the convenience of doing all their shopping in one place. This will do nothing against $10 million and 350 acres, even if stretched out for many years. Also there will be a loss of sales tax because people with lower wages buy less. There will of course be a large loss from local businesses going under as they will no longer be paying business tax...the tax that Walmart gets reduced/exempted from as an incentive. For taxes a Walmart comming to town is probably a net negative.
Paycheck deductions--I guess the moderators were correct when they modded your first post as "troll" because this proves it. We all know that when Walmart comes to town there are reductions in people's paychecks.
Fashion classes at Walmart...that's really over the top. So's the idea of a special sale on toasters saving the town from financial ruin, and the "mini economy" of a Walmart, burger joint, and gas station. Never did here where this $38 million mysteriously comes from...don't expect to either.
Did Walmart really add $38 million to the tax base or did that $38 million come from somewhere? Now a Walmart might slightly increase the local tax base because of out of towners comming in to do shopping since it is slightly more convenient to do all your shopping in one place, but more likely than not that $38 million simply came from smaller local shops not getting the business they used to and thus paying less in income tax.
Now we all know that very few, if any, local Mom 'n' Pop stores can compete with the Walmart juggernaut. Now although we do live in Fear of Walmart comming to a town near us, Uncertainty that Walmart may show interest in our little business, and Denial that our store will go bankrupt because we're now competing with almightly Walmart, none of my statements were untrue and I challenge you to prove it!
In our system in the US, the law generally belongs to the side with the highest paid lawyers. Walmart makes 2% of the US gross domestic product, therefore for all practical purposes they have an unlimited amount of money to spend on lawyers. Joe Paluka, defrauded by Walmart of $50, hasn't got squat in comparison...not even if there are a 100,000 fighting it--that's just a total payment of a paltry $5 million. After Walmart's lawyers have dragged it out for 2+ years there's not much incentive for a (competent) law firm to fight it. Walmart knows this, and given how they mistreat their employees and the communities in which they place their stores it is simply a question of is it worth Walmart's time to defraud their customers given the a) negligible chance of a defrauded customer winning in court b) the law team's paychecks c) the negative publicity...assuming that it comes out at all, of course (Hey newspaper! No more adverts if there's too much negativity! Now bark like a dog. Good boy!).
Just look at Diebold for an example. Diebold did more than just steal a few tens of dollars from a few thousand people. Diebold subverted the electoral process by "accidentally" converting a few thousand democratic votes into a few thousand republican votes via a software "bug." Was Diebold keelhauled in the courts? Was the corporation dismembered for voter fraud? Are the executives currently the being cornholed by thier very best *special* freind Big Al, their 350 pound 6' 4" roomie at San Quentin? Nope. They're doin' just fine enjoying their bonuses. Wake up and smell the coffee: If you're rich, you're impervious...and Walmart's as rich as they come. They make Haliburton and Enron look like shoeshine boys.
Given how Walmart mistreats its employees (forced unpaid overtime, automatic firing for even *thinking* of getting unionized, illegal immigrant janitors making well below minimum wage and locked in the stores at night, etc.) and how Walmart systematically ruins local economies, and who knows what else, would it surprise anyone at all if some Walmart executive would have the system set up to wipe out gift cards X% of the time? In Walmart's case assuming a system compromised by petty theft is just unwarranted--systematic and corporate-sanctioned theft may be more appropriate.
I'm no forensic anthropologist, but here's some ideas: Check the sutures of the skull--the older the person the less trace of them there will be. Second, check the teeth. Increasing wear and damage implies an older (or perhaps poorer...) person. Also you can check to see if the wisdom teeth have erupted or not. Also, the presence of deciduous teeth obviously means a very young age. You could also check bone density--the less dense the older the individual, IIRC. Also I think the jaw will deteriorate as people get older, especially if there are a lot of missing teeth. Also cartilage keeps on growing thoughout the life of a person, so cartilaginous portions of the nose and ears will get larger over time. Just some ideas, and I imagine no one would be too surprised if this individual was in his late 30's or mid-50's.
Those benefits and the wage is $7 an hour...that's very surprising. I worked a manufacturing job on my summers off from college, no benefits of any kind, 2nd shift payed $6.50 an hour. The vast majority of the workers including me were "temporary" workers, allthough there were some fledgling efforts to start unionization for better working conditions and pay--so the only way those guys could have gotten benefits at all was if they were union, I imagine.
I'd want a job with 401k, pension, 2+ weeks vacation time when you start, and bonus...or are those now completely dead in the US except for executives?
The point of going to a university is to get an education, and this requires courses on a variety of subjects, including liberal arts. A liberal arts education is absolutely essential to a university experience because it broadens the horizons of the students. If I would have gone to this trade school I wouldn't have learned anything about music theory, philosophy, theology, physics, Russian history, chemistry, medieval warfare in Europe, economics, history of the ancient near east, or biology. I would have just learned how to be a code monkey. What's worse is that I wouldn't have the faintest clue what software people at large would want to use with what interface or features or what should be in the manual because I would have had no contact with anyone who wasn't another programmer like me.
I graduated from a state university with a BS in Biochemistry. I have four shelves of books on math and science, and three on history and philosophy and religion. Those liberal arts classes have stayed with me even though I graduated five years ago. Like when I was an undergrad, I spend a lot of time thinking outside my area of expertise because it's interesting and relaxing. You can't go day in and day out thinking about one topic as that's a sure recipe for a life (and a mind) duller than dirt. Also thinking about a range of topics which require different ways of thinking about them is fun and challenging. Because of that I doubt this place will be much of a brain boiler. I had a number of friends who were engineering or CS majors who complained about the difficulty of the liberal arts classes, perhaps because it required these people who were very strong in math and logical thinking skills to think in a completely different way they weren't so good at. I also remember that some of the history and philosophy classes were among the most discussed and most highly recommended.
It's a lazy Sunday and I'm a little bored, so I thought I'd respond to your post a little.
First off, it'd be nice if you were to include where you got your information. Most people don't have copies of the Journal of Gastroenterology lying about their house, from 1976 or otherwise. I imagine you instead got the Journal of Gastroenterology reference from here or some other creationist site without ever reading the primary citation yourself--this is disingenuous on your part. Second, you are salting your post with a demonstrably false and slanderous attack on scientists by accusing us of keeping the population ignorant of the appendix's role in the immune system, when it is clear that it was scientists who reported appendix functionality in the first place in academic and medical journals. Third, the appendix is indeed vestigial. Creationists are fond of redefining the word "vestigial" to be synonymous with "useless" but this is not the proper definition of the word in biology: "An organ, serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other. Thus, in plants, the office of the pistil is to allow the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules protected in the ovarium at its base. The pistil consists of a stigma supported on the style; but in some Compositae, the male florets, which of course cannot be fecundated, have a pistil, which is in a rudimentary state, for it is not crowned with a stigma; but the style remains well developed, and is clothed with hairs as in other compositae, for the purpose of brushing the pollen out of the surrounding anthers. Again, an organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object: in certain fish the swim-bladder seems to be rudimentary for its proper function of giving buoyancy, but has become converted into a nascent breathing organ or lung. Other similar instances could be given." This quote comes from chapter 13 of Darwin's Origin of Species from 1859. In my "Penguin Classics" edition published in 1985, the above quote is on page 429. All the way back to Darwin: vestigial does not necessarily equate to useless.
The human appendix appears to have an immunological function, albeit a nonessential one--removal of appendix has no ill effect and people have been born without the appendix at all. Regardless, we still correctly call it vestigial. We do so because of comparative anatomy: humans are classified as mammals and as primates, and so we compare the human appendix to structures found within other species. The human appendix is homologous to the end of the mammalian caecum, which normally functions in the digestion of cellulose, which is something that we humans cannot digest. Digestion is of course the primary function of organs in the digestive tract, so therefore the human appendix is vestigial even though it may have an immunological function. You are free to consider talkorigins biased if you wish, but it represents the scientific mainstream. They have an excellent article in their archives on anatomical vestiges with a hefty dose of discussion on the human appendix. I suggest that you read it so you know what the mainstream view of science actually is, not what the creationists like to claim it is.
As for the flagellum, you are badly mistaken on one major point (yet another reason to read up on evolutionary biology as written by biologists, not creationists). There is absolutely no requirement that the evolution of the bacterial flagellum requires that each step must be linked, directly or indirectly, to flagellar motility. For instance, it is now known that the flagellum is related to the type IV pilus (J Mol Microbiol Biotechnol. 2004;7(1-2):41-51). This page
Re:yet another misleading slashdot article
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I wouldn't read too much into those phrases because all scientific papers use those copiously, no matter how well the subject phenomenon is established. I wrote a paper on the structure and mechanism of an enzyme all very pedestrian, straightforward stuff with a wealth of backing information information but I used the word "might" in it 11 times--that's just one of those qualifying terms. Do I doubt my findings? Nope--it's just the style of scientific writing coupled with the fact that nothing's ever proven in science.
I personally doubt that having (another) dog genome out there will increase the use of dogs in medical experiments. In the West, dogs are pretty much universally regarded as pets so it makes research on them very unpopular--eg your website. Also, we have much better animals for research--rat and mouse, both of which have had their genomes sequenced IIRC. They take up less space, reproduce and mature much more rapidly, are less expensive to feed, multiple different inbred strains are available (much moreso than for dogs) which increases experimental repeatability and are "vermin" which make research on them much less prone to provoke animal rights activists and the general public to condemn the animal experiments. That and somebody's got to kill the animals and it's a no-brainer that it is physically and psychologically easier for a (Western) lab tech to kill a rat than kill a dog. The only advantage that dogs might have over rats or mice is that they are bigger so dissection or the extraction of some compound might be easier. One advantage, lots of disadvantages.
I don't get their criteria for giving out the cards. Some major-league diseases are missing like tuberculosis and cholera, but they give some small-time (yeah yeah it's not small if you've got it) diseases their own card. Damnit, I want a 1918 influenza card! It killed millions worldwide--a very pricey card I'm sure.
"The Cassini space probe, launched nearly seven years ago by an international team, became the first craft to orbit Saturn and its rings and moons on Wednesday."
Cassini's in the process of accomplishing a big list of firsts in the exploration of our solar system--exactly what you wanted, right?
For high-end tools there is often a left-handed tool available on tools where there is an obvious handedness, and anything that has a feature like SawStops' is going to be high-end. Take circular saws for example: Porter-Cable, a high-end tool manufacturer, has left-handed models available.
This technology might also be useful for avalanche detection. I saw a program on PBS about the Mt. Blanc glacier. In 1892 a lake hidden in the interior of the glacier breached the glacial ice it was trapped in, and the resulting flood/avalanche killed 200 people in the town of Saint Gervais. The glaciers on Mt. Blanc have been retreating, but in melting process have developed large liquid water filled caves--which on the PBS program they got some loonies to go dive in. Other mountains probably have similar melting features, so if you could deposit sensors like those in the article into these glaciers you might be able to avert disaster.
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What put down on Bill O'Reilly? The parent poster thought that O'Reilly had been on "Inside Edition" and I confirmed this and linked where I got this information from: his bio on FOX News! Then I had a separate brief comment pointing out that Geraldo was on FOX News as a war correspondant, not Jerry Springer as an anchor and an aside about the relative merits of Geraldo vs Springer. Not that I'd want either reporting the news, or O'Reilly for that matter either. O'Reilly's editorializing would be welcome on the opinion section of the paper, while Geraldo might make paperboy and Springer...circulation chief? Beats me.
"For example, people like Orielly are nothing but paparazzi in disguise. Didn't he work for inside edition or some equally worthless tabloid? And now he is a news reporter? Wouldn't that be about the same if Jerry Springer decided to anchor the news?"
O'Reilly did work for six years on the TV-tabloid Inside Edition according to his bio on the FOX News website. It looks like a career low for O'Reilly, no matter what your opinion of FOX News is you'd have to say it is at least more credible a news source than "Inside Edition."
Oh, and it's Geraldo Riviera, not Jerry Springer that FOX News employed as a war correspondant, not an anchor. Now judging from the quality of personnel that FOX News employs they probably did think about Springer but they probably knew he has too much intelligence and integrity to ever work for them.
"In some cases, the discs will not easily eject from the computer."
I've since made my peace with this "feature" and now desire (but can't afford) a G4 powerbook, but this is one of the things that used to throw me into screaming fits about the inherent inferiority of Macs: the refusal by Apple to spend the extra nickel to put a damn eject button on the CD and floppy drives. Of course this was back in the day when some idiot Apple engineer who decided that it would be really neat to stick the on/off button right where the floppy eject button should be on certain pizza-box format Macs, and usually involved the loss of a large amount of work.
I was curious about your claim about US Gov't land ownership so I did a little looking and found this site that tallies government land ownership, took that data and ran it through a spreadsheet. Not including Alaska and Hawaii, state and federal government ownership accounts for 34% of the land in states west of the Mississippi (including those states stradling the river). Including AK and HI the total goes up to 47%.
The next question though is how much of this land is actually worth anything, since the states with the highest proportion of government land (Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon are the top five by percent) tend to have the largest percentages of land that is worthless or nearly so. There's a whole lot of mountains, desert and arid plains in the west, and in Alaska there's less of the desert, but they make up for that with tundra and boreal forests. Sure there's some valuable resource-rich land out here, but extractive industries won't buy public lands that they already have rights to take resources out of. These two factors alone will likely make the total saleable goverment land plummet to a small fraction of the total government holdings. Some desireable lands will remain, but some portion will be in state and national parks and outside of the Libertarian party you'll find scant public support for selling those, dropping the saleable number even further.
Just a quick note: rapid fire weapons were known (but rarely, if ever used) well before the American Revolution. James Puckle patented a weapon he called a "defense system" in 1718. It was a more or less a large tripod-mounted revolver capable of firing 9 shots a minute. There is mention of a test on another site where one man fired 63 shots in seven minutes--an incredible volume of fire considering it takes roughly 2-3 minutes to load and fire a black powder musket. The weapon, oddly enough, didn't fare too well in the market. But it wasn't the only weapon of firing (more) rapidly that were at least known of during the period; a breif google search turned up multiple-barreled weapons dating to the late 1500's. Since many of the Founding Fathers had military experience and/or military training as a part of their schooling it is highly unlikely that they would be ignorant of these devices, although they may have scoffed at their practicality.
As for larger weapons, we do have to remember that around the time of the American Revolution private persons owned merchant ships (and privateers) that went about armed with cannons.
Rush Limbaugh and the other conservative talk show hosts didn't go anywhere when Bush I was in office, got a little surge over Clinton, and have remained in place for Bush II. Whatever your opinion on politics though they do have one advantage over Air America: they're entertaining, even if it's only for the screaming back at the radio while on long drives (for us lefties, anyway).
Oh, and Limbaugh et al are also easy to find on the dial. I heard a rumor that Air America's on NPR...somewhere...at...uh...sometime, but I haven't been able to confirm this. So make that two advantages.
Okay, and Limbaugh was committed to being the host of a radio program. Al Franken doesn't seem so inclined and probably will quit as soon as possible after the 2004 presidential race is over. Make that three advantages...and no Monty Python jokes!
"...Apple's G5 orders far eclipsed any other 64-bit *desktop* offering from any vendor the first day it was introduced."
Okay, I saw in a lower message you mean desktops and not desktops and workstations. Putting that aside I wonder when Apple's G5 sales will surpass SGI or Alpha sales, since while both SGI and Alpha are 64 bit systems that have been around for years they owned a small market niche whereas Apple's got 5ish% of the consumer market. If it hasn't happend yet (probably), I wonder how long before it will?
Business tax that Walmart gets out of via tax incentives--of which this is just an example. Where can the local store go to get its $10 million and 350 acres of land to compete? This is only one of the things that large corporations do to unfairly squeeze out the little guy.
Local option sales tax won't help. There will be a little more tax from a few more people from out of town comming in attracted by the convenience of doing all their shopping in one place. This will do nothing against $10 million and 350 acres, even if stretched out for many years. Also there will be a loss of sales tax because people with lower wages buy less. There will of course be a large loss from local businesses going under as they will no longer be paying business tax...the tax that Walmart gets reduced/exempted from as an incentive. For taxes a Walmart comming to town is probably a net negative.
Paycheck deductions--I guess the moderators were correct when they modded your first post as "troll" because this proves it. We all know that when Walmart comes to town there are reductions in people's paychecks.
Fashion classes at Walmart...that's really over the top. So's the idea of a special sale on toasters saving the town from financial ruin, and the "mini economy" of a Walmart, burger joint, and gas station. Never did here where this $38 million mysteriously comes from...don't expect to either.
Did Walmart really add $38 million to the tax base or did that $38 million come from somewhere? Now a Walmart might slightly increase the local tax base because of out of towners comming in to do shopping since it is slightly more convenient to do all your shopping in one place, but more likely than not that $38 million simply came from smaller local shops not getting the business they used to and thus paying less in income tax.
Now we all know that very few, if any, local Mom 'n' Pop stores can compete with the Walmart juggernaut. Now although we do live in Fear of Walmart comming to a town near us, Uncertainty that Walmart may show interest in our little business, and Denial that our store will go bankrupt because we're now competing with almightly Walmart, none of my statements were untrue and I challenge you to prove it!
In our system in the US, the law generally belongs to the side with the highest paid lawyers. Walmart makes 2% of the US gross domestic product, therefore for all practical purposes they have an unlimited amount of money to spend on lawyers. Joe Paluka, defrauded by Walmart of $50, hasn't got squat in comparison...not even if there are a 100,000 fighting it--that's just a total payment of a paltry $5 million. After Walmart's lawyers have dragged it out for 2+ years there's not much incentive for a (competent) law firm to fight it. Walmart knows this, and given how they mistreat their employees and the communities in which they place their stores it is simply a question of is it worth Walmart's time to defraud their customers given the a) negligible chance of a defrauded customer winning in court b) the law team's paychecks c) the negative publicity...assuming that it comes out at all, of course (Hey newspaper! No more adverts if there's too much negativity! Now bark like a dog. Good boy!).
Just look at Diebold for an example. Diebold did more than just steal a few tens of dollars from a few thousand people. Diebold subverted the electoral process by "accidentally" converting a few thousand democratic votes into a few thousand republican votes via a software "bug." Was Diebold keelhauled in the courts? Was the corporation dismembered for voter fraud? Are the executives currently the being cornholed by thier very best *special* freind Big Al, their 350 pound 6' 4" roomie at San Quentin? Nope. They're doin' just fine enjoying their bonuses. Wake up and smell the coffee: If you're rich, you're impervious...and Walmart's as rich as they come. They make Haliburton and Enron look like shoeshine boys.
Given how Walmart mistreats its employees (forced unpaid overtime, automatic firing for even *thinking* of getting unionized, illegal immigrant janitors making well below minimum wage and locked in the stores at night, etc.) and how Walmart systematically ruins local economies, and who knows what else, would it surprise anyone at all if some Walmart executive would have the system set up to wipe out gift cards X% of the time? In Walmart's case assuming a system compromised by petty theft is just unwarranted--systematic and corporate-sanctioned theft may be more appropriate.
I'm no forensic anthropologist, but here's some ideas: Check the sutures of the skull--the older the person the less trace of them there will be. Second, check the teeth. Increasing wear and damage implies an older (or perhaps poorer...) person. Also you can check to see if the wisdom teeth have erupted or not. Also, the presence of deciduous teeth obviously means a very young age. You could also check bone density--the less dense the older the individual, IIRC. Also I think the jaw will deteriorate as people get older, especially if there are a lot of missing teeth. Also cartilage keeps on growing thoughout the life of a person, so cartilaginous portions of the nose and ears will get larger over time. Just some ideas, and I imagine no one would be too surprised if this individual was in his late 30's or mid-50's.
Those benefits and the wage is $7 an hour...that's very surprising. I worked a manufacturing job on my summers off from college, no benefits of any kind, 2nd shift payed $6.50 an hour. The vast majority of the workers including me were "temporary" workers, allthough there were some fledgling efforts to start unionization for better working conditions and pay--so the only way those guys could have gotten benefits at all was if they were union, I imagine.
I'd want a job with 401k, pension, 2+ weeks vacation time when you start, and bonus...or are those now completely dead in the US except for executives?
The point of going to a university is to get an education, and this requires courses on a variety of subjects, including liberal arts. A liberal arts education is absolutely essential to a university experience because it broadens the horizons of the students. If I would have gone to this trade school I wouldn't have learned anything about music theory, philosophy, theology, physics, Russian history, chemistry, medieval warfare in Europe, economics, history of the ancient near east, or biology. I would have just learned how to be a code monkey. What's worse is that I wouldn't have the faintest clue what software people at large would want to use with what interface or features or what should be in the manual because I would have had no contact with anyone who wasn't another programmer like me.
I graduated from a state university with a BS in Biochemistry. I have four shelves of books on math and science, and three on history and philosophy and religion. Those liberal arts classes have stayed with me even though I graduated five years ago. Like when I was an undergrad, I spend a lot of time thinking outside my area of expertise because it's interesting and relaxing. You can't go day in and day out thinking about one topic as that's a sure recipe for a life (and a mind) duller than dirt. Also thinking about a range of topics which require different ways of thinking about them is fun and challenging. Because of that I doubt this place will be much of a brain boiler. I had a number of friends who were engineering or CS majors who complained about the difficulty of the liberal arts classes, perhaps because it required these people who were very strong in math and logical thinking skills to think in a completely different way they weren't so good at. I also remember that some of the history and philosophy classes were among the most discussed and most highly recommended.
It's a lazy Sunday and I'm a little bored, so I thought I'd respond to your post a little.
First off, it'd be nice if you were to include where you got your information. Most people don't have copies of the Journal of Gastroenterology lying about their house, from 1976 or otherwise. I imagine you instead got the Journal of Gastroenterology reference from here or some other creationist site without ever reading the primary citation yourself--this is disingenuous on your part. Second, you are salting your post with a demonstrably false and slanderous attack on scientists by accusing us of keeping the population ignorant of the appendix's role in the immune system, when it is clear that it was scientists who reported appendix functionality in the first place in academic and medical journals. Third, the appendix is indeed vestigial. Creationists are fond of redefining the word "vestigial" to be synonymous with "useless" but this is not the proper definition of the word in biology: "An organ, serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other. Thus, in plants, the office of the pistil is to allow the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules protected in the ovarium at its base. The pistil consists of a stigma supported on the style; but in some Compositae, the male florets, which of course cannot be fecundated, have a pistil, which is in a rudimentary state, for it is not crowned with a stigma; but the style remains well developed, and is clothed with hairs as in other compositae, for the purpose of brushing the pollen out of the surrounding anthers. Again, an organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object: in certain fish the swim-bladder seems to be rudimentary for its proper function of giving buoyancy, but has become converted into a nascent breathing organ or lung. Other similar instances could be given." This quote comes from chapter 13 of Darwin's Origin of Species from 1859. In my "Penguin Classics" edition published in 1985, the above quote is on page 429. All the way back to Darwin: vestigial does not necessarily equate to useless.
The human appendix appears to have an immunological function, albeit a nonessential one--removal of appendix has no ill effect and people have been born without the appendix at all. Regardless, we still correctly call it vestigial. We do so because of comparative anatomy: humans are classified as mammals and as primates, and so we compare the human appendix to structures found within other species. The human appendix is homologous to the end of the mammalian caecum, which normally functions in the digestion of cellulose, which is something that we humans cannot digest. Digestion is of course the primary function of organs in the digestive tract, so therefore the human appendix is vestigial even though it may have an immunological function. You are free to consider talkorigins biased if you wish, but it represents the scientific mainstream. They have an excellent article in their archives on anatomical vestiges with a hefty dose of discussion on the human appendix. I suggest that you read it so you know what the mainstream view of science actually is, not what the creationists like to claim it is.
As for the flagellum, you are badly mistaken on one major point (yet another reason to read up on evolutionary biology as written by biologists, not creationists). There is absolutely no requirement that the evolution of the bacterial flagellum requires that each step must be linked, directly or indirectly, to flagellar motility. For instance, it is now known that the flagellum is related to the type IV pilus (J Mol Microbiol Biotechnol. 2004;7(1-2):41-51). This page
You've obviously never been to Kansas.
I wouldn't read too much into those phrases because all scientific papers use those copiously, no matter how well the subject phenomenon is established. I wrote a paper on the structure and mechanism of an enzyme all very pedestrian, straightforward stuff with a wealth of backing information information but I used the word "might" in it 11 times--that's just one of those qualifying terms. Do I doubt my findings? Nope--it's just the style of scientific writing coupled with the fact that nothing's ever proven in science.
I personally doubt that having (another) dog genome out there will increase the use of dogs in medical experiments. In the West, dogs are pretty much universally regarded as pets so it makes research on them very unpopular--eg your website. Also, we have much better animals for research--rat and mouse, both of which have had their genomes sequenced IIRC. They take up less space, reproduce and mature much more rapidly, are less expensive to feed, multiple different inbred strains are available (much moreso than for dogs) which increases experimental repeatability and are "vermin" which make research on them much less prone to provoke animal rights activists and the general public to condemn the animal experiments. That and somebody's got to kill the animals and it's a no-brainer that it is physically and psychologically easier for a (Western) lab tech to kill a rat than kill a dog. The only advantage that dogs might have over rats or mice is that they are bigger so dissection or the extraction of some compound might be easier. One advantage, lots of disadvantages.
I don't get their criteria for giving out the cards. Some major-league diseases are missing like tuberculosis and cholera, but they give some small-time (yeah yeah it's not small if you've got it) diseases their own card. Damnit, I want a 1918 influenza card! It killed millions worldwide--a very pricey card I'm sure.
"The Cassini space probe, launched nearly seven years ago by an international team, became the first craft to orbit Saturn and its rings and moons on Wednesday."
Cassini's in the process of accomplishing a big list of firsts in the exploration of our solar system--exactly what you wanted, right?
Is there a way to print it on blotting paper?
Sheesh that should have been one of the first comments. Stupid slashdot. And I don't even do drugs. Just sweet, sweet beer.
For high-end tools there is often a left-handed tool available on tools where there is an obvious handedness, and anything that has a feature like SawStops' is going to be high-end. Take circular saws for example: Porter-Cable, a high-end tool manufacturer, has left-handed models available.
This technology might also be useful for avalanche detection. I saw a program on PBS about the Mt. Blanc glacier. In 1892 a lake hidden in the interior of the glacier breached the glacial ice it was trapped in, and the resulting flood/avalanche killed 200 people in the town of Saint Gervais. The glaciers on Mt. Blanc have been retreating, but in melting process have developed large liquid water filled caves--which on the PBS program they got some loonies to go dive in. Other mountains probably have similar melting features, so if you could deposit sensors like those in the article into these glaciers you might be able to avert disaster.
It's called a "bow tie." Solves all those problems except the slow strangulation thingy.