When AMD's K6 came out following up on the massive name recognition of the K5 I was really looking forward to eventually being able to buy a K9. Think about the possible slogan: "Introducing the AMD K9. No fancy names, no gimmicks, just pure processing power that dogs the competition." Then when the K9 got older people would say "K9? Man, that slow-ass chip's a dog!" Yup, I was looking forward to both. AMD could have even made that robot dog thing from Dr. Who the mascot. But then AMD blew their chance by listening to some marketing twits and called the K7 the Athlon, whatever the hell that means--sounds sort of like someone sneezing right before they jump off a diving board.
There's an awful lot of animosity towards Craig Venter, so it's no surprise that around the lab there's been more than one reference towards the genetically modified poodle seen in the Hulk...
Except that the Wright brothers flew four times the first day, taking off from level ground, and without the aid of the primitive catapult that they would not develop until the summer of 1904. Further, they flew the Flyer 3 on Oct. 5, 1905 a distance of 24 miles in a 39-minute flight, well outdistancing Santos-Dumonts' 1906 flights, and all these flights had witnesses and documentation, some even had photographs.
But there is one thing that most of us Americans don't remember about the history of flight. While we have the best claim for first manned self-powered heavier-than-air flight, we fell so far behind that we did not fly any American-designed aircraft during World War I and wouldn't catch up until the 1920's. Other pioneers did much for powered flight and deserve mention, and I'd mention this were I the one writing the history textbooks.
The lab next door to me has an old Evans & Sutherland ESV graphics processor. It's the size of a small dorm fridge and it was built in '90 or '91, and is still working...as an end table, after being retired in '98. But I understand that a few are still doing graphics work today, despite (I think) not being Y2K compliant. Anyway, I like knowing that the age of 65 Dr. Sutherland's still out there working since back in the day apparently he did a lot of cool work.
There is a very small segment of the population that actually needs an SUV. People like ranchers, who might live or work miles from the nearest road yet need to transport 3+ people and equipment. Fire and police departments in rural areas also might find SUV's on occasion usefull. Likewise Highway Department crews might find an SUV useful in transporting a work crew miles from the nearest road. But my sedan's seen much rougher roads than the vast majority of any SUV has ever seen and done just fine, and either a minivan, van, or light truck will at bare minimum equal the SUV's abilitiy to haul cargo, at a fraction of the sticker price and the fuel cost. SUV's are proven to be more unsafe than sedans, see High and Mighty: SUV's--The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way--written by the NY Times automotive reviewer. For example, a Cadilac SUV was so horribly undrivable and unsafe that he refused to drive it after only a couple miles on the highway! Both an SUV's occupants and the passengers of other vehicles that are involved in accidents with SUV's are more likely to be injured/killed when compared to accidents not involving SUVs. Further, most SUV's are vastly inferior to trucks when it comes to off-road driving due to the higher center of gravity.
I am not the only one who resents being forced to pay higher insurance premiums in what amounts to a road arms-race, or pay more to maintain roads (a sensible 1-1.5 ton sedan causes a lot less wear and tear than a 3.5 ton Ford Excursion behemoth), nor am I the only one angered by the massive amounts of pollution a huge SUV spews out with its pathetic 14 mpg gasguzzler when the Europeans can get 50 mpg stationwagons that are more capable in almost every way. I also resent the funding of terrorists that my tax dollars have to fight: $2.00+ a gallon to the Saudies to fund Hamas and Al Qaeda via their brother Osama and official "humanitarian" charities. For nearly everbody, there is no excuse to drive an SUV other than conspicuous consumption; a sports car is a much better option. You want a non-average car how about a Mini Cooper? Looks cool, hauls ass, 28/37 mpg, blows away other sports cars in the turns, critically acclaimed safety and crash tests? How about a Subaru Outback/Forrester, for those who might actually go offroad on occasion, such as my botanist friend when she's on specimen collection trips? You don't actually think a Lexus or Cadillac or other $50k+ SUV's ever going to get mud on it do you? Or how about a PT Cruiser? Immediately recognizable, unlike any SUV save the king of excessiveness the 10 mpg Hummer, but has all the cargo room and none of the negatives? Or how about a new Volkswagon Beetle? That's sure distinctive--or how about a classic car? A classic car beats the crap out of any SUV in terms of "non-average"ness, and at least some will beat SUVs for gas mileage and safety to boot. But if you want to keep up with the Joneses and be definitively average and conformist, fine. Drive yet another tipsy, unsafe, poor-handling, bad braking, pollution-spewing, gas-guzzling, terrorist supporting SUV--as long as you're the one who pays for the higher insurance premiums, increased road wear, environmental damage, and terrorist bombing damage, not me. But I'll still continue to point and laugh when you're struggling to put your grocery bags full of cheesie-poofs and diet Pepsi into your overly high and unnecesarily jacked up excessivemobile.
Yes, the extra high center of gravity makes the poorly designed and needlessly high SUV more prone to tipping over, and puts extra stress on the brakes.
Just making SUV's that weren't jacked way up would help a lot. There's lots of models of SUV's that are really tall but have the same or less ground clearance than a Subaru Outback station wagon--which is nice and low like a normal sedan. A taller SUV or truck is supposed to look intimidating, not add any real function. I am not always able to resist the urge to point and laugh at the grocery store when some slob's trying to load groceries into some huge "little dick compensator" SUV or fullsized Dodge pickup monstrosity. Especially when I'm with my friend in his little Ford Ranger--the bed's nearly a foot lower than theirs and yet the Ranger's probably got them beat for ground clearance. Alas, even work trucks are being hit by the higher/more agressive = more sales BS. Comparing my friend's 1990 Ranger to a 2002, the 2002 is appreciably taller but has a half an inch less ground clearance, and looking at what Ford's done to the F150 for 2004 just makes me want to cringe--they don't even offer it with a V6 anymore.
Of course, ground clearance only matters if you're driving offroad or on really bad roads, not anytown suburbia where 99.9% of all SUV's reside. Even then, my POS Oldsmobile sedan's been fine on most of the logging roads and desert washboards it's seen.
Sci. Am. & Hitching: What you have him quoted as saying is: "Protiens depend on DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing protien." To which anyone who's taken entry level biology says "duh." You then link it to "your" Scientific American quote, which in my previous message I showed why it was inappropriate--both becuase it is a popular journal and becuase the field has moved on. Besides that, the Scientific American quote is taken out of context, as it is part of a rhetorical device: following the quote the author then proceeds to explain how (it was thought in the 1970's) protein and DNA might develop in parallel. Of course, you would know this had you read the article.
All that aside, it's not just me who knows that Hitching is an amatuer, it's both evolutionists and creationists as evidenced by his description on talkorigins and on the creationist Answers in Genesis. For two diametrically opposed camps to agree on this should tell you something. At least you've started to distance yourself from it by saying that he's not your hero either.
Hoyle: Do not attempt to put your words into my mouth. You were the one, not I, who claimed that because Hoyle's an expert on astrophysics he is an expert on biochemistry: "To suggest that he was a stargazer without the faintest clue how evolution might work or protiens might form, well, not so fast, he was rather qualified as an expert in this area." Recognize those words? You should, they're yours. I on the other hand said that he was not qualified and gave an argument by analogy (experience with biochemistry not transferring over to organic chemistry, two fields much more closely related than biochemistry and astrophysics) explaining why being expert in one area does not mean being expert in another. Then I proceeded to give an example of something obvious to any biochemist that Hoyle failed to take into account, and provided a weblink further debunking his calculation, defeating the argument on its merits (and not saying a thing about his ideas on astrophysics). Either you didn't read, understand, or simply chose to ignore this.
Behe: You won't read/can't understand talkorigins debunking (that's on the merits, again), won't read/can't understand the National Center for Science Education's (the premier science education organization in the land, also attacking on the merits), well how about Nature, the premier academic biology journal? They likewise came out with a scathing review in 1996, Volume 383, pages 227-228. They (like talkorigins and NCSE) noted that Behe's "irreducable" complexity had internal inconsistencies, preposterous claims, and suffered from a lack of testability--it is not science. Far from being "recent and unchallenged" Behe's "irreducable" complexity was DOA.
You refuse to read either my arguments or ones I refer you to, you're out of arguments (as evidenced by your repeating ones already defeated and bringing up issues unrelated to the applicability and veracity of your quotes to current thinking in evolution or abiogenesis) and your language and debating tactics are more appropriate for an elementary school playground than an intellectual discussion. This and since I've reached my aim of removing those quotes from their apparent support of creationism, there is no further value in this discussion for me.
Scientific American: Again, it is a popular magazine, not a technical journal. The distinction between the two is straightforward: a technical journal is where scientists report their current findings and conclusions, representing the cutting edge of the field, provides an idea for future directions, and is written explicitly for those who are working in the field. A popular magazine provides a summary of a field and a summary of recent research, for an audience primarily of interested amateurs. Criticizing your use of a quote from Scientific American is appropriate because it has no impact: everything reported in the magazine has already been presented in technical journals. Meanwhile using Scientific American's endorsement of talkorigins' website is perfectly valid as Scientific American is a well thought of clearinghouse of mainstream scientific ideas written for a broad audience comprised largely of interested amateurs. Likewise, talkorigins is a well regarded source of information about evolution and related fields with a similar audience. Now besides your quote being from Scientific American, it represents a summation for an interested amateur of what was going on in the field in the 1970's: the field has moved on since. For instance, in the early 80's Thomas Cech demonstrated that some RNAs can actually catalyze reactions--that is, it is possible that RNA could be both a carrier of genetic information and an enzyme. Was all the old work dumped? No but Cech's finding certainly had impact on new work, as around the same time the "RNA World" hypothesis was born.. For your source to be ignorant of a discovery of this magnitude is astounding.
Francis Hitching: You didn't even skim his book, did you? I did. Besides (again) being only a writer on the paranormal, Hitching has a poor grasp of the subject and his book is mostly a (poor) attempt at bridging the gap between evolution and creationism. Since you stubbornly refuse to read anything on talkorigins, perhaps you would read what the creationists at Answers in Genesis have to say: "Its main interest to creation scientists is its broad critique of the accepted processes of evolution from one who has found the foundation of his belief in evolution to be crumbling in parts, and at times even non-existent. [new paragraph] Perhaps many will have difficulty with Hitching's credentials. He is a populariser [sic] of 'unexplained phenomena' - yet his writing is mostly clear, and very readable. Although his journalistic style can be frustratingly general or occasionally misleading, he is largely an excellent educator and expounds his points well." So in addition to not being a champion of evolution and being endorsed by AiG, they note that Hitching has no real scientific standing. Hitching is only well-regarded by creationists.
Fred Hoyle: Let's illustrate this with another personal example. I'm a biochemist studying a particular enzyme. I want to inhibit this enzyme, and so when I was looking at its catalytic site I began drawing out various potential inhibitors. Naturally, I wondered how I could make them, but while I have some familiarity with organic chemistry and that field is closely related to my own, I am no expert in it. So I get help from an organic chemist so I can obtain my inhibitors. Note how much closer biochemistry and organic chemistry are than astrophysics and biochemistry. Fred Hoyle was only showing off the limits of his knowledge (and his hubris) when he was pontificating on the probabilities of a particular protein existing.
Illustrating further, Hoyle ignored the fact that a great many different proteins are capable of performing the same function. Taking yet another example from personal experience, the enzyme that I work on is 700 amino acids long. There are other examples of this protein found in other organisms, varying slightly in length and in composition--the sequences may be as little as 5
Darwin, Newton, Einstein & Co. all are worthwhile reading, mostly to see where in the past a field came from and how these people revolutionized science. They are not particularly useful for telling where a field is going today. For instance, my last paper had 61 references. To break them down by decade, 13 were from the 2000's, 26 from the 1990's, 11 1980's, 4 1970's, 5 1960's, and two all the way back from 1959. For the field, my paper had an extensive (perhaps overly so) review of the literature before delving into the issues at hand. I did not cite anything earlier because it simply wasn't relevant--reinventing the wheel, so to speak. As far as the field was concerned, earlier works laid the foundations but are compressed and sorted into textbooks. Similarly for the evolutionary biologists, they seldom cite Darwin. Why? Because the field has moved on--his work is no longer on the cutting edge but instead is a part of the foundation of the field. So if you want to attack current thinking in a field, you should do so by using references as current as possible. Fields move rapidly, and what was cutting edge twenty years ago is old hat today. Also when you quote something, it is improper and dishonest to take a reference's quotation and cite it as your own if you have not read the original quoted material youself. A more proper quote would be something like "X said Y, as quoted in Z." Or would you care to demonstrate you actually read those original sources? Just the sentence on either side of the quotes will do--and yes, I have access to the original sources to check up on you.
But maybe before you bother, you should know that "Scientific American" is a popular magazine, not a technical journal (and your quote has no impact on current thinking in either evolution or abiogenesis). Fred Hoyle was an astronomer, not a biochemist, so his views on protein structure and their probabilities of existing are no more informed than any other layman. Francis Hitching it turns out is a writer, mainly on the paranormal, with titles to his credit such as "Dowsing: the Psi Connection." As far as Behe goes he's regarded as a crackpot. Black Parrot's already pointed out talkorigins' thorough debunking of his ides, but if you don't trust the site try the National Center for Science Education and do a search for "Behe". I particularly like the first hit, a review of "Darwin's Black Box." In a nutshell, it's crap. 200 year old rehashed debunked crap, actually.
"Your" (actually Hoyle's, see above) statistical improbabilities: you could read Black Parrot's or barakn's posts, or for something more thorough go here to talkorigins and read. Why do I put trust in the site? Besides being in my own experience an excellent, factually correct, and largely up-to-date source on the topic, it is endorsed by Science, Scientific American, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Smithsonian Institute, and The Geological Society of America, among many others. In other words, the scientific mainstream: the people who work in labs and in the field, who write papers presenting their findings and their ideas, papers which must stand up to the criticism of their peers, persons whose careers are shaped by their abilities to form and support hypotheses and correct past errors of in their field, using evidence and reason. Your concept of "orginal thinkers" seems to be those who would ignore the vast body of know
Just to sample how far off base you are: "Of course, there are some 2,000 protiens that serve as enzymes, which are absolutely required for sustaining life." You do know that Mycoplasma genitalium with a whopping 468 genes, of which only 265-350 are absolutely required, is the current record holder for smallest genome, right? Come on--besides likely being distorted the material your source(s) quote is 20+ years old. You don't expect anyone to believe you had those quotes all by yourself, now do you? You probably haven't read any of them! Your strawmen are dealt with in detail on talk.origins. Perhaps to prevent yourself from looking foolish you should read some of it, or at least read something from the scientific mainstream, preferrably something that isn't older than you are.
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Another preview? We've been seeing bloody previews for the last two freaking years. Wake me up when it hits the shelves in volume and has broad based software support for 64 bit mode.
Science does make money for schools. When we get a grant for doing science, the department and/or the university gets a cut. So if a lab gets a $600,000 grant, they'll probably actually get to see only $200,000-$300,000 of it or so, depending (greatly) on the university. For instance, in the grant administration booklet for my university it looks like 49% of a grant goes directly to the university for "Facilities and Administration." Then there are another 70 pages of crud I'm not going to look at which nibbles away the grant further. Given an article in the student paper last year saying with pride that the football team was now one of the few in the country to be so profitable as to hit the break-even point and my university's perverse overspending on athletics and consistent underfunding of maintenence and faculty pay (2nd lowest in the country, baby!), I imagine "Facilities and Administration" is simply a euphanism for "Athletics Department."
If you just look at a university's budget and see X income from grants and Y from ticket sales and etc., and expenditures X/2 for research and 2Y for athletics (after all, only men's football and basketball programs ever have a hope in hell of ever reaching the break even point--sad but true for now) then athletics are just a drain on the university. But I'm not so blinded by my intense hatred of the Athletics Department to say that it doesn't bring in money--it just does so in a very roundabout way. Private donations are very important to the survival of the university. People might donate becuase of a sense of pride in the university or out of nostalgia, but while academic research doesn't rank high on most people's minds for either of these two things, the old football and basketball teams often do. Similarly, a good sports program may grease the wheels a bit for what little funding we get through the state. How much income from private donations and the state can be indirectly attributed to athletics is very hard to say. Does it surpass research grants? Probably at some universities. But it is worth noting that there are schools that do just fine without athletics and still get piles from grants, the state, and private donations.
Crap. I was going to mention that artificial insemination has been used for a while, but then I guess I got sidetracked. Don't know why I forgot--sitting in my living room is an old liquid nitrogen dewar marked "Bull Semen" that I bought surplus from Iowa State University for 50 cents when I was an undergrad there. Makes an interesting conversation piece, to say the least.
"I mean, one cow, at this point, when grazing, can clear an entire square mile of pasture and be set for the day. I think."
It's not that bad. I was curious myself since a relative of mine has a small dairy operation (~60 head on ~300 acres, probably less on both). So, from a webpage from a U. Arkansas argonomy class it looks like about 80 acres of pasture will be fine for 60 head of cattle for a month. So we're talking 60x the cattle for 30x the time on 1/8th the land. But the required acreage naturally increases if you're ranching on shitty west Texas desert compared to my relative's dairy farm in Iowa. How much I don't know, I'm not in the cattle business.
There's also another detail that's relevent. If these cows actually produce 3x the amount of milk, and the costs of doing this are low then it becomes interesting. Not to most of us nerds but to dairy farmers. I'm not a dairy farmer, but I do know that transporting a cow isn't too bad, but naturally gets more expensive and difficult with the distance. Transporting a bull for stud services is a bit different. Bull size depends a lot on variety, some can clear 2500 pounds or more. They are often transported sedated, but when the bull wakes up it's a ton plus of pissed-off horny beef that is trying to decide whether to kill or hump everything in sight. Embryo implantation might be/become cheaper than traditional stud services, allowing the premier beef/milk genes to get passed around more easily. It doesn't cost that much more to send a dewar full of liquid nitrogen and embryos across a state or across the country. Downside: more genetically homogeneous cow herds, and another crash in milk prices if everybody grabs "supercow" embryos to produce 3x the milk.
I got to say that as cool as the technique to restore his sight was, I'm more interested in the neurology. For 40 years his visual cortex was utilized for other functions than sight, otherwise one would expect them to atrophy away. Will he lose some functions that his brain has mapped onto those areas now that they are needed again for sight? What would be super cool would be to see EEG or MRI scans (or both or whatever--I am not a neurologist) of his visual cortex before and after the operation, to see what changes in brain activity have taken place. I imagine something like that is in the Nature Neuroscience article, but I don't have access to it here. Anybody read the article?
1. Moscow State University also now offers 4-year Bachelors. I guess "Specialist" or "Bachelor" just sounds better than "University Diploma" and so they've adopted the title.
2. Who said they have no idea? I imagine you've said "I don't know much about X, but I'd like to." and pursued that interest, or late in your training "I think physical chemistry is pretty cool, but inorganic chemistry is kind of dull." or something comparable for your field. In America, once you've got the core requirements done you can go on and get a little bit more training for your Bachelor's on that subspecialty of your choice.
3. So we finally agree. We are talking about full-blown papers that are published, and that the (more stringent) American M.S., American Ph.D., Russian Candidate, and Russian Doctorate all then have to write a thesis based on those full-blown published papers and then defend it against a panel of professors. You are making my point for me. The more stringent American M.S. is roughly equivalent to a Russian Candidate, and likewise an American Ph.D. is roughly equivalent to a Russian Doctorate.
4. Besides being irrelevant it runs counter to our respective statements. It is you who declared that an American Ph.D. is equal to Russian highschool or "incomplete highest" while I have stated repeatedly that the American Ph.D. and Russian Doctorate degrees are roughly equivalent.
1. Moscow State University has a Specialist degree: "Most of the University faculties teach domestic students according to the Specialist programme (5 years) and grant Specialist Diploma." (from their website).
2. Well roundedness built into a rigid class structure? Unlikely. The idea of pick and choose courses in the arts and humanities (which often are discrete units with no "dependency tree") is to study outside the field of one's specialization according to one's own interests. Without some broadening of the mind a university education is no different than a trade school. The idea of selecting a couple classes from a limited number of in-field courses is to allow students some degree of specialization--these classes are usually taken in the last year of study. Does that mean that the American undergraduate education is the best way to go? No, but one must wonder at the large number of foreign students we have.
3. I'm not talking about some essay, I'm talking about papers as in those that get printed in academic journals like Biochemistry or Science or Cell. You take one of those papers and add a bit that you cut for page limits or some additional figures and a broader intro, and you've got a (more stringent) American M.S. thesis, which is roughly the equivalent to a Candidate thesis. You take 2-3 first author papers plus supporting author stuff and the hodgepodge everybody generates that never quite gets in print and you have a Ph.D. thesis, the rough equivalent of a Russian Doctorate.
Look, I know what I'm talking about. I've already got my M.S. and am pursuing a Ph.D. so I've got a pretty good look at how the American system works. I've worked in labs that have had Russian grad students and post-docs; some of my current lab's collaborators are Russian expatriates while some others are currently still in Russian universities, so I'd say I've got a pretty good handle on what the Russians are capable of and what they had to do for their degrees. You on the other hand have betrayed complete ignorance of the American postgraduate education system, best exemplified by your equating of an Amercian Ph.D. with a Russian highschooler or "incomplete highest." You said you spent time in Russia so I imagine you have a Russian 5-year diploma or something like it and I would take your word for how Russian undergraduate education works. However from your comments on academic publications it's clear that you have no experience with them. Since academic publication is such a major part of the work of a postgraduate student, I find it doubtful that you have any experience with postgraduate education, Russian or otherwise. I don't know where you've gotten your warped view on postgraduate education and I frankly don't care. Unless you're able to make some point to support your view this discussion is over as far as I am concerned.
The quality of American secondary education is not what it should be, and so more Americans are taking at the university what they should be learning in high school. This simply lengthens the amount of time that students will spend in the university, ie they can't apply say trigonometry towards their engineering degree but instead take it then two or more years of calculus and advanced math. This is the reason why time spent by Americans in American universities has creeped up to five years, and so there has been no real loss of quality at the B.S. level...yet, anyway. As for degree requirements, there are the classes that are explicitly required for your major--which make up the bulk of your training, plus a number of in-field courses you select from a limited number of electives, and a few credits from social sciences and humanites; the goal being a more "well rounded" education and an individual getting to explore his/her interests while still getting intensive training in a given field. An American B.S. is just a little shy of a Russian Specialist degree, from what I was able to gather from a brief search on the web looking at Russian university sites. An American M.S. has variable quality and can include anything from just one year of intensive course work making it equal to a Russian Specialist degree to 2-3 years culminating in the defense of a thesis and likely getting a publication or two (at least in the sciences anyway) making the more stringent American M.S. the rough equivalent of a Russian Candidate degree in time, effort, and accomplishments.
The general idea of an American Ph.D. degree in the sciences is the individual has made a significant and original contribution to his/her field. To put a number to it, this means 2-3 first author publications or more and often a couple supporting author publications and absolutely no less than four years of work, more realistically 5-7 (my own program averages 6-6.5 years after the B.S.), culminating in the defense of a thesis. Along the way a student teaches, takes classes, passes qualifying exams and an advancement to candidacy exam (here you defend a pair of original research proposals--along the line of a grant application--in a 3+ hour long oral exam with a panel of five profs), does research, research, and more research, presents findings at scientific conferences, writes and publishes papers. There are no shortcuts to the Ph.D., not at any worthwhile university. An American Ph.D. is clearly more than a Russian Candidate; I could take my first first-author paper, add the stuff we cut to get it under page limits and have a thesis for the more stringent American M.S. with no real difficulty and defend it with even less, the result being equivalent to a Russian Candidate, yet less than an American Ph.D. I take that paper, the stuff we cut, the work I did on other publications, my current work, plus what I've got planned out for the next 18 months or so (which I expect will result in two more first-author papers) combine it all into a thesis, defend it, and it's an American Ph.D. Obviously more than a Russian Candidate, and roughly equivalent to the Russian Doctorate. To call an American Ph.D. equivalent to a Russian high school diploma or "incomplete highest" is so far off-base it's insulting--unless Russian high schoolers routinely get published in the scientific literature.
"most of American "Ph.D" would have their education level listed as "Secondary school" or "Incomplete highest" in Russia."
It takes 4 years to get a B.S. followed by 5-7 years after the B.S. to get the Ph.D. for a whopping total of 9-11 years. A Russian candidate is similar to an American Ph.D. candidate or a M.S., with the former passing an advancement to candidacy exam and the latter usualy completing a master's thesis. Likewise a Russian doctor is similar to an American one, with both having defended a thesis and passed through candidacy and both have been in school for similar lengths of time. Yet you think that an American Ph.D. only rates as a less than 5-year's worth of work "incomplete highest" or even just secondary school in Russia? Bullshit. It's you who shouldn't "diss things that you have no freaking idea about."
Yeah, they convinced people that redwood is beautiful, sturdy, weather-resistant wood perfect for making outdoor decks. In reality redwood decks are nothing but unsightly brittle and thin grey toothpicks with a thick layer of sawdust under them in at best five years. I haven't worked with the stuff all that much, but it is terrible wood for anything more than veneer--and indoor use only at that. Hell, it's not all that good at holding up trees for that matter either. But all the home owner associations and gated communities and similar fascist groups get it written into the community regulations that they get to fine you if you use anything other than crappy-ass redwood for your deck. Really good materials are plastic/wood scrap composites like Trex, which is mostly made out of recycled plastic bags, reclaimed pallets and waste wood. Looks a damn sight better after ten years than redwood does after two.
You can look at it that they are in fact modeling DNA computers on "normal" computers. So far, they've managed to make a number of logic gates. In the article in Nature Biotechnology, this group has made YES, NOT, AND, and ANDANDNOT gates. Other groups have made similar molecular gates, but this is the most advanced thing to date. As for replacing your silicon PC, my $0.02 says it ain't gonna happen.
While the scientific community has been metric for decades, American engineering definitely isn't. Before I switched majors midway through college to biochemistry, I was majoring in mechanical engineering. While we had to be proficient in both "English" and metric systems the majority of the homework and exams were "English," which reflected the state of the industry. A couple of my old college pals are mechanical engineers and rarely use metric, ditto with the chemical engineers. According to my family members who are engineers at petrochemical plants, no American facility is metric. Who would want to be the first to switch over? All of a sudden your valves and pipes and whatnot aren't the same as anyone else's and probably have to be imported. What would happen if you had to shut down the plant and wait two days for a part? It could cost 10's of millions. Another example that I ran into myself was that I needed to custom build an apparatus for an experiment I was running. When I say "mil" I mean millimeter, but when a metalworker hears "mil" they mean 1/1000 of an inch--which comes out about a factor of 40 smaller!
Thanks for providing some information on different types of (semi?)guilty pleas, but it might not be relevant. Considering how exactly he was imprisoned, don't you think it would be easy to pressure him to give the full-blown guilty plea as opposed to nolo or Alford? It's not exactly like his constitutional rights were fully protected at any time since his arrest. There will be doubts about whether or not he did what he plead guilty to until all documents related to his case are released to the public, which we all know won't happen anytime soon.
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When AMD's K6 came out following up on the massive name recognition of the K5 I was really looking forward to eventually being able to buy a K9. Think about the possible slogan: "Introducing the AMD K9. No fancy names, no gimmicks, just pure processing power that dogs the competition." Then when the K9 got older people would say "K9? Man, that slow-ass chip's a dog!" Yup, I was looking forward to both. AMD could have even made that robot dog thing from Dr. Who the mascot. But then AMD blew their chance by listening to some marketing twits and called the K7 the Athlon, whatever the hell that means--sounds sort of like someone sneezing right before they jump off a diving board.
I still bought one, though.
There's an awful lot of animosity towards Craig Venter, so it's no surprise that around the lab there's been more than one reference towards the genetically modified poodle seen in the Hulk...
Except that the Wright brothers flew four times the first day, taking off from level ground, and without the aid of the primitive catapult that they would not develop until the summer of 1904. Further, they flew the Flyer 3 on Oct. 5, 1905 a distance of 24 miles in a 39-minute flight, well outdistancing Santos-Dumonts' 1906 flights, and all these flights had witnesses and documentation, some even had photographs.
But there is one thing that most of us Americans don't remember about the history of flight. While we have the best claim for first manned self-powered heavier-than-air flight, we fell so far behind that we did not fly any American-designed aircraft during World War I and wouldn't catch up until the 1920's. Other pioneers did much for powered flight and deserve mention, and I'd mention this were I the one writing the history textbooks.
The lab next door to me has an old Evans & Sutherland ESV graphics processor. It's the size of a small dorm fridge and it was built in '90 or '91, and is still working...as an end table, after being retired in '98. But I understand that a few are still doing graphics work today, despite (I think) not being Y2K compliant. Anyway, I like knowing that the age of 65 Dr. Sutherland's still out there working since back in the day apparently he did a lot of cool work.
There is a very small segment of the population that actually needs an SUV. People like ranchers, who might live or work miles from the nearest road yet need to transport 3+ people and equipment. Fire and police departments in rural areas also might find SUV's on occasion usefull. Likewise Highway Department crews might find an SUV useful in transporting a work crew miles from the nearest road. But my sedan's seen much rougher roads than the vast majority of any SUV has ever seen and done just fine, and either a minivan, van, or light truck will at bare minimum equal the SUV's abilitiy to haul cargo, at a fraction of the sticker price and the fuel cost. SUV's are proven to be more unsafe than sedans, see High and Mighty: SUV's--The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way--written by the NY Times automotive reviewer. For example, a Cadilac SUV was so horribly undrivable and unsafe that he refused to drive it after only a couple miles on the highway! Both an SUV's occupants and the passengers of other vehicles that are involved in accidents with SUV's are more likely to be injured/killed when compared to accidents not involving SUVs. Further, most SUV's are vastly inferior to trucks when it comes to off-road driving due to the higher center of gravity.
I am not the only one who resents being forced to pay higher insurance premiums in what amounts to a road arms-race, or pay more to maintain roads (a sensible 1-1.5 ton sedan causes a lot less wear and tear than a 3.5 ton Ford Excursion behemoth), nor am I the only one angered by the massive amounts of pollution a huge SUV spews out with its pathetic 14 mpg gasguzzler when the Europeans can get 50 mpg stationwagons that are more capable in almost every way. I also resent the funding of terrorists that my tax dollars have to fight: $2.00+ a gallon to the Saudies to fund Hamas and Al Qaeda via their brother Osama and official "humanitarian" charities. For nearly everbody, there is no excuse to drive an SUV other than conspicuous consumption; a sports car is a much better option. You want a non-average car how about a Mini Cooper? Looks cool, hauls ass, 28/37 mpg, blows away other sports cars in the turns, critically acclaimed safety and crash tests? How about a Subaru Outback/Forrester, for those who might actually go offroad on occasion, such as my botanist friend when she's on specimen collection trips? You don't actually think a Lexus or Cadillac or other $50k+ SUV's ever going to get mud on it do you? Or how about a PT Cruiser? Immediately recognizable, unlike any SUV save the king of excessiveness the 10 mpg Hummer, but has all the cargo room and none of the negatives? Or how about a new Volkswagon Beetle? That's sure distinctive--or how about a classic car? A classic car beats the crap out of any SUV in terms of "non-average"ness, and at least some will beat SUVs for gas mileage and safety to boot. But if you want to keep up with the Joneses and be definitively average and conformist, fine. Drive yet another tipsy, unsafe, poor-handling, bad braking, pollution-spewing, gas-guzzling, terrorist supporting SUV--as long as you're the one who pays for the higher insurance premiums, increased road wear, environmental damage, and terrorist bombing damage, not me. But I'll still continue to point and laugh when you're struggling to put your grocery bags full of cheesie-poofs and diet Pepsi into your overly high and unnecesarily jacked up excessivemobile.
Yes, the extra high center of gravity makes the poorly designed and needlessly high SUV more prone to tipping over, and puts extra stress on the brakes.
Just making SUV's that weren't jacked way up would help a lot. There's lots of models of SUV's that are really tall but have the same or less ground clearance than a Subaru Outback station wagon--which is nice and low like a normal sedan. A taller SUV or truck is supposed to look intimidating, not add any real function. I am not always able to resist the urge to point and laugh at the grocery store when some slob's trying to load groceries into some huge "little dick compensator" SUV or fullsized Dodge pickup monstrosity. Especially when I'm with my friend in his little Ford Ranger--the bed's nearly a foot lower than theirs and yet the Ranger's probably got them beat for ground clearance. Alas, even work trucks are being hit by the higher/more agressive = more sales BS. Comparing my friend's 1990 Ranger to a 2002, the 2002 is appreciably taller but has a half an inch less ground clearance, and looking at what Ford's done to the F150 for 2004 just makes me want to cringe--they don't even offer it with a V6 anymore.
Of course, ground clearance only matters if you're driving offroad or on really bad roads, not anytown suburbia where 99.9% of all SUV's reside. Even then, my POS Oldsmobile sedan's been fine on most of the logging roads and desert washboards it's seen.
Sci. Am. & Hitching: What you have him quoted as saying is: "Protiens depend on DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing protien." To which anyone who's taken entry level biology says "duh." You then link it to "your" Scientific American quote, which in my previous message I showed why it was inappropriate--both becuase it is a popular journal and becuase the field has moved on. Besides that, the Scientific American quote is taken out of context, as it is part of a rhetorical device: following the quote the author then proceeds to explain how (it was thought in the 1970's) protein and DNA might develop in parallel. Of course, you would know this had you read the article.
All that aside, it's not just me who knows that Hitching is an amatuer, it's both evolutionists and creationists as evidenced by his description on talkorigins and on the creationist Answers in Genesis. For two diametrically opposed camps to agree on this should tell you something. At least you've started to distance yourself from it by saying that he's not your hero either.
Hoyle: Do not attempt to put your words into my mouth. You were the one, not I, who claimed that because Hoyle's an expert on astrophysics he is an expert on biochemistry: "To suggest that he was a stargazer without the faintest clue how evolution might work or protiens might form, well, not so fast, he was rather qualified as an expert in this area." Recognize those words? You should, they're yours. I on the other hand said that he was not qualified and gave an argument by analogy (experience with biochemistry not transferring over to organic chemistry, two fields much more closely related than biochemistry and astrophysics) explaining why being expert in one area does not mean being expert in another. Then I proceeded to give an example of something obvious to any biochemist that Hoyle failed to take into account, and provided a weblink further debunking his calculation, defeating the argument on its merits (and not saying a thing about his ideas on astrophysics). Either you didn't read, understand, or simply chose to ignore this.
Behe: You won't read/can't understand talkorigins debunking (that's on the merits, again), won't read/can't understand the National Center for Science Education's (the premier science education organization in the land, also attacking on the merits), well how about Nature, the premier academic biology journal? They likewise came out with a scathing review in 1996, Volume 383, pages 227-228. They (like talkorigins and NCSE) noted that Behe's "irreducable" complexity had internal inconsistencies, preposterous claims, and suffered from a lack of testability--it is not science. Far from being "recent and unchallenged" Behe's "irreducable" complexity was DOA.
You refuse to read either my arguments or ones I refer you to, you're out of arguments (as evidenced by your repeating ones already defeated and bringing up issues unrelated to the applicability and veracity of your quotes to current thinking in evolution or abiogenesis) and your language and debating tactics are more appropriate for an elementary school playground than an intellectual discussion. This and since I've reached my aim of removing those quotes from their apparent support of creationism, there is no further value in this discussion for me.
Scientific American: Again, it is a popular magazine, not a technical journal. The distinction between the two is straightforward: a technical journal is where scientists report their current findings and conclusions, representing the cutting edge of the field, provides an idea for future directions, and is written explicitly for those who are working in the field. A popular magazine provides a summary of a field and a summary of recent research, for an audience primarily of interested amateurs. Criticizing your use of a quote from Scientific American is appropriate because it has no impact: everything reported in the magazine has already been presented in technical journals. Meanwhile using Scientific American's endorsement of talkorigins' website is perfectly valid as Scientific American is a well thought of clearinghouse of mainstream scientific ideas written for a broad audience comprised largely of interested amateurs. Likewise, talkorigins is a well regarded source of information about evolution and related fields with a similar audience. Now besides your quote being from Scientific American, it represents a summation for an interested amateur of what was going on in the field in the 1970's: the field has moved on since. For instance, in the early 80's Thomas Cech demonstrated that some RNAs can actually catalyze reactions--that is, it is possible that RNA could be both a carrier of genetic information and an enzyme. Was all the old work dumped? No but Cech's finding certainly had impact on new work, as around the same time the "RNA World" hypothesis was born.. For your source to be ignorant of a discovery of this magnitude is astounding.
Francis Hitching: You didn't even skim his book, did you? I did. Besides (again) being only a writer on the paranormal, Hitching has a poor grasp of the subject and his book is mostly a (poor) attempt at bridging the gap between evolution and creationism. Since you stubbornly refuse to read anything on talkorigins, perhaps you would read what the creationists at Answers in Genesis have to say: "Its main interest to creation scientists is its broad critique of the accepted processes of evolution from one who has found the foundation of his belief in evolution to be crumbling in parts, and at times even non-existent. [new paragraph] Perhaps many will have difficulty with Hitching's credentials. He is a populariser [sic] of 'unexplained phenomena' - yet his writing is mostly clear, and very readable. Although his journalistic style can be frustratingly general or occasionally misleading, he is largely an excellent educator and expounds his points well." So in addition to not being a champion of evolution and being endorsed by AiG, they note that Hitching has no real scientific standing. Hitching is only well-regarded by creationists.
Fred Hoyle: Let's illustrate this with another personal example. I'm a biochemist studying a particular enzyme. I want to inhibit this enzyme, and so when I was looking at its catalytic site I began drawing out various potential inhibitors. Naturally, I wondered how I could make them, but while I have some familiarity with organic chemistry and that field is closely related to my own, I am no expert in it. So I get help from an organic chemist so I can obtain my inhibitors. Note how much closer biochemistry and organic chemistry are than astrophysics and biochemistry. Fred Hoyle was only showing off the limits of his knowledge (and his hubris) when he was pontificating on the probabilities of a particular protein existing.
Illustrating further, Hoyle ignored the fact that a great many different proteins are capable of performing the same function. Taking yet another example from personal experience, the enzyme that I work on is 700 amino acids long. There are other examples of this protein found in other organisms, varying slightly in length and in composition--the sequences may be as little as 5
Darwin, Newton, Einstein & Co. all are worthwhile reading, mostly to see where in the past a field came from and how these people revolutionized science. They are not particularly useful for telling where a field is going today. For instance, my last paper had 61 references. To break them down by decade, 13 were from the 2000's, 26 from the 1990's, 11 1980's, 4 1970's, 5 1960's, and two all the way back from 1959. For the field, my paper had an extensive (perhaps overly so) review of the literature before delving into the issues at hand. I did not cite anything earlier because it simply wasn't relevant--reinventing the wheel, so to speak. As far as the field was concerned, earlier works laid the foundations but are compressed and sorted into textbooks. Similarly for the evolutionary biologists, they seldom cite Darwin. Why? Because the field has moved on--his work is no longer on the cutting edge but instead is a part of the foundation of the field. So if you want to attack current thinking in a field, you should do so by using references as current as possible. Fields move rapidly, and what was cutting edge twenty years ago is old hat today. Also when you quote something, it is improper and dishonest to take a reference's quotation and cite it as your own if you have not read the original quoted material youself. A more proper quote would be something like "X said Y, as quoted in Z." Or would you care to demonstrate you actually read those original sources? Just the sentence on either side of the quotes will do--and yes, I have access to the original sources to check up on you.
But maybe before you bother, you should know that "Scientific American" is a popular magazine, not a technical journal (and your quote has no impact on current thinking in either evolution or abiogenesis). Fred Hoyle was an astronomer, not a biochemist, so his views on protein structure and their probabilities of existing are no more informed than any other layman. Francis Hitching it turns out is a writer, mainly on the paranormal, with titles to his credit such as "Dowsing: the Psi Connection." As far as Behe goes he's regarded as a crackpot. Black Parrot's already pointed out talkorigins' thorough debunking of his ides, but if you don't trust the site try the National Center for Science Education and do a search for "Behe". I particularly like the first hit, a review of "Darwin's Black Box." In a nutshell, it's crap. 200 year old rehashed debunked crap, actually.
"Your" (actually Hoyle's, see above) statistical improbabilities: you could read Black Parrot's or barakn's posts, or for something more thorough go here to talkorigins and read. Why do I put trust in the site? Besides being in my own experience an excellent, factually correct, and largely up-to-date source on the topic, it is endorsed by Science, Scientific American, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Smithsonian Institute, and The Geological Society of America, among many others. In other words, the scientific mainstream: the people who work in labs and in the field, who write papers presenting their findings and their ideas, papers which must stand up to the criticism of their peers, persons whose careers are shaped by their abilities to form and support hypotheses and correct past errors of in their field, using evidence and reason. Your concept of "orginal thinkers" seems to be those who would ignore the vast body of know
Just to sample how far off base you are: "Of course, there are some 2,000 protiens that serve as enzymes, which are absolutely required for sustaining life." You do know that Mycoplasma genitalium with a whopping 468 genes, of which only 265-350 are absolutely required, is the current record holder for smallest genome, right? Come on--besides likely being distorted the material your source(s) quote is 20+ years old. You don't expect anyone to believe you had those quotes all by yourself, now do you? You probably haven't read any of them! Your strawmen are dealt with in detail on talk.origins. Perhaps to prevent yourself from looking foolish you should read some of it, or at least read something from the scientific mainstream, preferrably something that isn't older than you are.
Another preview? We've been seeing bloody previews for the last two freaking years. Wake me up when it hits the shelves in volume and has broad based software support for 64 bit mode.
Science does make money for schools. When we get a grant for doing science, the department and/or the university gets a cut. So if a lab gets a $600,000 grant, they'll probably actually get to see only $200,000-$300,000 of it or so, depending (greatly) on the university. For instance, in the grant administration booklet for my university it looks like 49% of a grant goes directly to the university for "Facilities and Administration." Then there are another 70 pages of crud I'm not going to look at which nibbles away the grant further. Given an article in the student paper last year saying with pride that the football team was now one of the few in the country to be so profitable as to hit the break-even point and my university's perverse overspending on athletics and consistent underfunding of maintenence and faculty pay (2nd lowest in the country, baby!), I imagine "Facilities and Administration" is simply a euphanism for "Athletics Department."
If you just look at a university's budget and see X income from grants and Y from ticket sales and etc., and expenditures X/2 for research and 2Y for athletics (after all, only men's football and basketball programs ever have a hope in hell of ever reaching the break even point--sad but true for now) then athletics are just a drain on the university. But I'm not so blinded by my intense hatred of the Athletics Department to say that it doesn't bring in money--it just does so in a very roundabout way. Private donations are very important to the survival of the university. People might donate becuase of a sense of pride in the university or out of nostalgia, but while academic research doesn't rank high on most people's minds for either of these two things, the old football and basketball teams often do. Similarly, a good sports program may grease the wheels a bit for what little funding we get through the state. How much income from private donations and the state can be indirectly attributed to athletics is very hard to say. Does it surpass research grants? Probably at some universities. But it is worth noting that there are schools that do just fine without athletics and still get piles from grants, the state, and private donations.
Crap. I was going to mention that artificial insemination has been used for a while, but then I guess I got sidetracked. Don't know why I forgot--sitting in my living room is an old liquid nitrogen dewar marked "Bull Semen" that I bought surplus from Iowa State University for 50 cents when I was an undergrad there. Makes an interesting conversation piece, to say the least.
"I mean, one cow, at this point, when grazing, can clear an entire square mile of pasture and be set for the day. I think."
It's not that bad. I was curious myself since a relative of mine has a small dairy operation (~60 head on ~300 acres, probably less on both). So, from a webpage from a U. Arkansas argonomy class it looks like about 80 acres of pasture will be fine for 60 head of cattle for a month. So we're talking 60x the cattle for 30x the time on 1/8th the land. But the required acreage naturally increases if you're ranching on shitty west Texas desert compared to my relative's dairy farm in Iowa. How much I don't know, I'm not in the cattle business.
There's also another detail that's relevent. If these cows actually produce 3x the amount of milk, and the costs of doing this are low then it becomes interesting. Not to most of us nerds but to dairy farmers. I'm not a dairy farmer, but I do know that transporting a cow isn't too bad, but naturally gets more expensive and difficult with the distance. Transporting a bull for stud services is a bit different. Bull size depends a lot on variety, some can clear 2500 pounds or more. They are often transported sedated, but when the bull wakes up it's a ton plus of pissed-off horny beef that is trying to decide whether to kill or hump everything in sight. Embryo implantation might be/become cheaper than traditional stud services, allowing the premier beef/milk genes to get passed around more easily. It doesn't cost that much more to send a dewar full of liquid nitrogen and embryos across a state or across the country. Downside: more genetically homogeneous cow herds, and another crash in milk prices if everybody grabs "supercow" embryos to produce 3x the milk.
I got to say that as cool as the technique to restore his sight was, I'm more interested in the neurology. For 40 years his visual cortex was utilized for other functions than sight, otherwise one would expect them to atrophy away. Will he lose some functions that his brain has mapped onto those areas now that they are needed again for sight? What would be super cool would be to see EEG or MRI scans (or both or whatever--I am not a neurologist) of his visual cortex before and after the operation, to see what changes in brain activity have taken place. I imagine something like that is in the Nature Neuroscience article, but I don't have access to it here. Anybody read the article?
1. Moscow State University also now offers 4-year Bachelors. I guess "Specialist" or "Bachelor" just sounds better than "University Diploma" and so they've adopted the title.
2. Who said they have no idea? I imagine you've said "I don't know much about X, but I'd like to." and pursued that interest, or late in your training "I think physical chemistry is pretty cool, but inorganic chemistry is kind of dull." or something comparable for your field. In America, once you've got the core requirements done you can go on and get a little bit more training for your Bachelor's on that subspecialty of your choice.
3. So we finally agree. We are talking about full-blown papers that are published, and that the (more stringent) American M.S., American Ph.D., Russian Candidate, and Russian Doctorate all then have to write a thesis based on those full-blown published papers and then defend it against a panel of professors. You are making my point for me. The more stringent American M.S. is roughly equivalent to a Russian Candidate, and likewise an American Ph.D. is roughly equivalent to a Russian Doctorate.
4. Besides being irrelevant it runs counter to our respective statements. It is you who declared that an American Ph.D. is equal to Russian highschool or "incomplete highest" while I have stated repeatedly that the American Ph.D. and Russian Doctorate degrees are roughly equivalent.
1. Moscow State University has a Specialist degree: "Most of the University faculties teach domestic students according to the Specialist programme (5 years) and grant Specialist Diploma." (from their website).
2. Well roundedness built into a rigid class structure? Unlikely. The idea of pick and choose courses in the arts and humanities (which often are discrete units with no "dependency tree") is to study outside the field of one's specialization according to one's own interests. Without some broadening of the mind a university education is no different than a trade school. The idea of selecting a couple classes from a limited number of in-field courses is to allow students some degree of specialization--these classes are usually taken in the last year of study. Does that mean that the American undergraduate education is the best way to go? No, but one must wonder at the large number of foreign students we have.
3. I'm not talking about some essay, I'm talking about papers as in those that get printed in academic journals like Biochemistry or Science or Cell. You take one of those papers and add a bit that you cut for page limits or some additional figures and a broader intro, and you've got a (more stringent) American M.S. thesis, which is roughly the equivalent to a Candidate thesis. You take 2-3 first author papers plus supporting author stuff and the hodgepodge everybody generates that never quite gets in print and you have a Ph.D. thesis, the rough equivalent of a Russian Doctorate.
Look, I know what I'm talking about. I've already got my M.S. and am pursuing a Ph.D. so I've got a pretty good look at how the American system works. I've worked in labs that have had Russian grad students and post-docs; some of my current lab's collaborators are Russian expatriates while some others are currently still in Russian universities, so I'd say I've got a pretty good handle on what the Russians are capable of and what they had to do for their degrees. You on the other hand have betrayed complete ignorance of the American postgraduate education system, best exemplified by your equating of an Amercian Ph.D. with a Russian highschooler or "incomplete highest." You said you spent time in Russia so I imagine you have a Russian 5-year diploma or something like it and I would take your word for how Russian undergraduate education works. However from your comments on academic publications it's clear that you have no experience with them. Since academic publication is such a major part of the work of a postgraduate student, I find it doubtful that you have any experience with postgraduate education, Russian or otherwise. I don't know where you've gotten your warped view on postgraduate education and I frankly don't care. Unless you're able to make some point to support your view this discussion is over as far as I am concerned.
The quality of American secondary education is not what it should be, and so more Americans are taking at the university what they should be learning in high school. This simply lengthens the amount of time that students will spend in the university, ie they can't apply say trigonometry towards their engineering degree but instead take it then two or more years of calculus and advanced math. This is the reason why time spent by Americans in American universities has creeped up to five years, and so there has been no real loss of quality at the B.S. level...yet, anyway. As for degree requirements, there are the classes that are explicitly required for your major--which make up the bulk of your training, plus a number of in-field courses you select from a limited number of electives, and a few credits from social sciences and humanites; the goal being a more "well rounded" education and an individual getting to explore his/her interests while still getting intensive training in a given field. An American B.S. is just a little shy of a Russian Specialist degree, from what I was able to gather from a brief search on the web looking at Russian university sites. An American M.S. has variable quality and can include anything from just one year of intensive course work making it equal to a Russian Specialist degree to 2-3 years culminating in the defense of a thesis and likely getting a publication or two (at least in the sciences anyway) making the more stringent American M.S. the rough equivalent of a Russian Candidate degree in time, effort, and accomplishments.
The general idea of an American Ph.D. degree in the sciences is the individual has made a significant and original contribution to his/her field. To put a number to it, this means 2-3 first author publications or more and often a couple supporting author publications and absolutely no less than four years of work, more realistically 5-7 (my own program averages 6-6.5 years after the B.S.), culminating in the defense of a thesis. Along the way a student teaches, takes classes, passes qualifying exams and an advancement to candidacy exam (here you defend a pair of original research proposals--along the line of a grant application--in a 3+ hour long oral exam with a panel of five profs), does research, research, and more research, presents findings at scientific conferences, writes and publishes papers. There are no shortcuts to the Ph.D., not at any worthwhile university. An American Ph.D. is clearly more than a Russian Candidate; I could take my first first-author paper, add the stuff we cut to get it under page limits and have a thesis for the more stringent American M.S. with no real difficulty and defend it with even less, the result being equivalent to a Russian Candidate, yet less than an American Ph.D. I take that paper, the stuff we cut, the work I did on other publications, my current work, plus what I've got planned out for the next 18 months or so (which I expect will result in two more first-author papers) combine it all into a thesis, defend it, and it's an American Ph.D. Obviously more than a Russian Candidate, and roughly equivalent to the Russian Doctorate. To call an American Ph.D. equivalent to a Russian high school diploma or "incomplete highest" is so far off-base it's insulting--unless Russian high schoolers routinely get published in the scientific literature.
"most of American "Ph.D" would have their education level listed as "Secondary school" or "Incomplete highest" in Russia."
It takes 4 years to get a B.S. followed by 5-7 years after the B.S. to get the Ph.D. for a whopping total of 9-11 years. A Russian candidate is similar to an American Ph.D. candidate or a M.S., with the former passing an advancement to candidacy exam and the latter usualy completing a master's thesis. Likewise a Russian doctor is similar to an American one, with both having defended a thesis and passed through candidacy and both have been in school for similar lengths of time. Yet you think that an American Ph.D. only rates as a less than 5-year's worth of work "incomplete highest" or even just secondary school in Russia? Bullshit. It's you who shouldn't "diss things that you have no freaking idea about."
Yeah, they convinced people that redwood is beautiful, sturdy, weather-resistant wood perfect for making outdoor decks. In reality redwood decks are nothing but unsightly brittle and thin grey toothpicks with a thick layer of sawdust under them in at best five years. I haven't worked with the stuff all that much, but it is terrible wood for anything more than veneer--and indoor use only at that. Hell, it's not all that good at holding up trees for that matter either. But all the home owner associations and gated communities and similar fascist groups get it written into the community regulations that they get to fine you if you use anything other than crappy-ass redwood for your deck. Really good materials are plastic/wood scrap composites like Trex, which is mostly made out of recycled plastic bags, reclaimed pallets and waste wood. Looks a damn sight better after ten years than redwood does after two.
You can look at it that they are in fact modeling DNA computers on "normal" computers. So far, they've managed to make a number of logic gates. In the article in Nature Biotechnology, this group has made YES, NOT, AND, and ANDANDNOT gates. Other groups have made similar molecular gates, but this is the most advanced thing to date. As for replacing your silicon PC, my $0.02 says it ain't gonna happen.
While the scientific community has been metric for decades, American engineering definitely isn't. Before I switched majors midway through college to biochemistry, I was majoring in mechanical engineering. While we had to be proficient in both "English" and metric systems the majority of the homework and exams were "English," which reflected the state of the industry. A couple of my old college pals are mechanical engineers and rarely use metric, ditto with the chemical engineers. According to my family members who are engineers at petrochemical plants, no American facility is metric. Who would want to be the first to switch over? All of a sudden your valves and pipes and whatnot aren't the same as anyone else's and probably have to be imported. What would happen if you had to shut down the plant and wait two days for a part? It could cost 10's of millions. Another example that I ran into myself was that I needed to custom build an apparatus for an experiment I was running. When I say "mil" I mean millimeter, but when a metalworker hears "mil" they mean 1/1000 of an inch--which comes out about a factor of 40 smaller!
Thanks for providing some information on different types of (semi?)guilty pleas, but it might not be relevant. Considering how exactly he was imprisoned, don't you think it would be easy to pressure him to give the full-blown guilty plea as opposed to nolo or Alford? It's not exactly like his constitutional rights were fully protected at any time since his arrest. There will be doubts about whether or not he did what he plead guilty to until all documents related to his case are released to the public, which we all know won't happen anytime soon.