has been making very nice draw on monitors for a few years now, which do quite well for hi-res drawings, we have one here that gets drawn on for several hours/day, for 6 months, no sign of wearing out yet.
I think the limit is in how well the handwriting recognition software works, not in the hardware.
Who typically carry 10-40lbs of books around campus. As more and more textbooks are available on CD, this will enable folks to carry just a sinlge 2-4lb tablet with their text CD/DVDs.
Plus the ability to digitize notes, and later then search, edit, catagorize and store the notes, well when I was a science student I would have loved to have that ability (esp. areas like science & engineering where diagrams and drawings are frequently part of the notes, not so nice to do on a laptop, not to mention 100 students writing is much less distracting than 100 students typing).
I'd say numerous smaller markets exist as well in sales, medicine, presentors, etc., basically anywhere folks now use paper notepads or folders of similar size.
It also seems to me that with a docking station adding more functionality (2nd monitor, key board, etc.) one could see many laptops replaced by dockable tablets.
I know I am going to be looking at a few of these the next time I get authorized to get more laptops at work, if they are capable enough to edit presentations/present with, I'd love one!
There is more than enough food for everyone on the planet, the problem is a political one of distribution, not a technological one of production.
And if we didn't, well, either we'd have to stop having kids or this planet is going to get VERY crowded and very dead.
There is plenty of room for trillions of people in the solar system, there is no reason to turn away from longer & healthier lives to save space.
Re:A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse.
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
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· Score: 2
A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse
Just is a way of saying that the mouse shows the results of the human gene (we generally have two copies of each gene, so only mice with two copies of the human gene (homozygous) would show the full effects of the human gene, while mice with one mouse gene and one human gene (heterozygous) may not show the effects of the human gene (this is a bit oversimplified, some genes only have one copy, esp. in males, and researchers have many ways of seeing the effects of two different versions of a gene).
not homozygous lethal or cause sterility in a single copy state
"Homozygous lethal": the effects of the gene in the homozygous state kill the developing animal. Obvioulsy, such genes won't make good study targets for this technique. Sterility is not a real problem in most cases, as you can easily generate new homozygotes from the heterozygotic parents, unless of course you are studying a gene related to fertility:-).
Unless using blastocysts from immunologically crippled mice
This gets a bit confusing:
Where he is confusing: Immune cells are trained to recognize self/non-self when they are formed: ones that recognize normal cells of the organism are killed off. So if the mouse has the human cells from birth, they should be reconized by the mouse's immune system as normal. Rejection of transplanted tissue happens when new tissue is transplanted into an adult.
Where he has a point: However, when transplanting cells between species, there can be such big differences that all of the host's (mouse) immune cells reject the doner (human) cells in a catostrophic allergic reaction (not technically part of the self/non-self recognition process). This happens with certain cell surface markers on pig cells, which is why pig organs cannot (presently) be transplanted into people.
But we have been making mice with with human immune systems since the 1980s, so this is not really the "gotcha" for this research that scientistguy imples.
So while there is some point to mentioning that there is such a thing as rejection of foreign tissue, this seems to more a problem with 'adult'(post-embryonic) transplants & I don't think it really has much to do with the issues raised in the article.
Stem cells come from blastocysts, collections of generic human cells that have not even begun to differentiate. There are thousands of such balls of cells left over from the attempts of couples to have children via in vitro fertilization.
Stem cell researchers think they could use cells from these excess IVF embryos to save human beings from heart disease, paralysis, diabetes, etc.
Or we can listen to folks who claim these balls of cells should have the rights of citizens, and...dump them out?
Seems like the real way to "protect the weak" would be to protect sick and dying Americans from the fantasy that a frozen ball of generic cells is a human being.
Which is having the effect of a ban
on
Human-Mouse Hybrids?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Since federal funding is critical to basic research in the US & since the "78" magically moral lines turned out to be more like 5 or 6 that are actually viable.
Private funding is nearly nonexistent - federal monies can only support research on existing stem cell lines - and obtaining the cells themselves remains exceedingly difficult even for top researchers because of political and intellectual property disputes or the poor quality of the cells themselves.
Of the 78 stem cell colonies worldwide the Bush administration has said are eligible for federally funded research, only about a dozen are in good enough shape to experiment on. Even fewer - perhaps four lines - are being shared and sent to other researchers interested in breaking into a field already clouded with political, ethical and scientific questions.
Bush's extremely restrictive funding guidelines not only had the practicle effect of stopping the research in the US, but also sent a strong message to investors: the Religious Right has the power to severely restrict this technology, despite the claims of scientists that it might lead to cures for some of the biggest killers of humankind.
In such a climate, very little venture funding is being released, after all it's one thing to bet whether a new technology will work out or not, it's quite another thing to bet whether you will lose your money because Falwell decides your technology is immoral...
Which was the point I was trying to make, thanks! (I thought "little nuclear reactors" would make it pretty clear I was pointing out the "gray goo" idea ignores the basic problems of energy source and heat dissapation).
But you're right, with folks seriously going off about the dangers of molecule sized diamond tanks, they might not notice the sarcasm tags around the nano-nukes:-)
"Nanotech" is all very small technology, things don't become "self assembling" just by being small.
In many proposals, assemblers are made largely of carbon in the form of solid crystals.
Next you've paint a hollywood sci-fi picture of little diamond monsters, but avoid the essential questions of energy source & heat dissapation (tiny diamond fans for their tiny diamond pentiums?). How much energy does it take to make these little diamond plates, and what method are the little jewells using to extract that energy? You mention "many proposals", but can't provide a link to one?
Only nanotech has teeth made of diamond crystals, it can be ultimately voracious, and our immune systems won't be able to touch it.
Ooo, I'm scared now. You go from "some proposals involve diamond crystals" to voracious knids with diamond teeth, again, typical hollywood sci-fi with a basic failure to understand physics: your little diamond monsters will cook in their own waste heat before they can move and reproduce fast enough to devour a housefly, much less a human being.
You are tasty and tender, and don't forget it.
Actually, I'm neither, and when someone uses hyperbolic FUD in an argument rather than logic backed up with facts, it's pretty clear to me that their argument is nothing but an attempt to stoke fear, uncertainty, and despair.
The fear,.. that someone would make tiny robots that would breed out of control and become a social problem.
The Trouble with Aibos...
Wots in the Turbo Lift? Aiieeee!
But wouldthey play by the same rules of physics?
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
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· Score: 2
Nanotech doesn't play by the same rules as currently extant terrestrial biology.
They would probably do better if they did, after all terrestrial biology does a very good job of extracting the available energy & raw materials and turning it into new terrestrial biology.
Nanites could, in theory, do just that, by using raw materials in the air and the earth to reproduce.
Huh? What "theory" is going to free them from the need for an energy source? Are they powered by minature nuclear reactors then?
It all depends on (A) how they are programmed,
Ahh, then they will have nano-scale Pentium 8s with AI 2020 pre-installed on nano-scale terrabyte hard drives?
I mean if they are "going to be programmed" they need processors to run the programs, memory to hold the programs, and a power source and cooling system for the above. Even given quantum computing, it seems pretty unlikey you are going to pack all that into a little bit of goo that can also defend itself against a predatory nematode.
I mean think about it, where are the self assemblers going to get their energy and raw materials from?
If they are made of metal, it's going to take a bunch of energy and/or time for one to make another, being "nano" doesn't get you a free pass from 2lot.
If they are made of flesh, then they are not going to be very tough, not any tougher than rats or starlings anyway.
So you have can fast replicators that aren't very tough or you can have slow replicators that are more tough. Either way, it's pretty hard to get something bad enough to cause human beings serious trouble.
I mean we have tank making factories that are pretty much automated now, if we made tanks that could make other tanks in the field, they would still need tons of steel, plastics, energy, etc. delivered to them, and (lacking things like cranes, assembly lines, forms, etc) probably would be a whole lot less efficient than making a tank in a factory anyway.
I'm not saying that the technology should be unregulated, but I am saying that the 'end is near' prophecies like Joy's are not born out by the facts & probably do more harm than good in the search for responsible and reasonable controls.
If you know anything about bacteria, the idea of us designing machines that can outcompete bacteria at the bacterial scale is ridiculous.
If you don't know anything about bacteria, and imagine bacteria sized self assembling little armored tanks with superior memory and AI to bacteria, that can somehow extract energy from their environment faster and more efficiently than bacteria (maybe with little nuclear engines?) the idea makes alot of sense.
And the divide is rather hard to cross unless you've had at least a college level micro-bio course or done equivalent research.
(though I would disagree with the 'green' part, the 'grey goo' is already here, and it is inside us, but it more white to transluscent than green:-).
By getting an electric motor for my bike-since I moved to the flats and my work is on the hill, I can't come in all sweaty, and so stopped riding for a while.
But the electric motor (Currie Pro Drive) solved that, I peddle along with it, but don't have to break a sweat to climb the hill.
It helps some with the cars since I can accelerate pretty quickly. Anyway, I don't think electric bikes are THE alternative, OTOH I drive my car like once a week now:-).
I agree that requiring them to implement filtering is a bad idea, but I don't think we should prohibit them from enacting filtering if that's what the local community wants.
If I felt that my child was mature enough to have access to areas of the library that had more mature topics, the library should be willing to honor my request that my child have access to that information. Print or Internet.
Aside from the expense (which will likely force many libraries to simply not provide internet access) the current crop of filters don't work very well, so you are getting false security and asking everyone else to accept reduced functionality at the same time.
Perhaps a better idea would be to add the ability to avoid pRon sites and to shut them down if she hits them by accident to the list of skills a child should have before being left unsupervised in a public library...
the existing nanny software restricts many non-Porno sites & is expensive and difficult to administer.
So the upshot will be that many libraries will have to cancel internet access altogether if forced to comply.
Now if the law included a nationwide site license for the nanny software & money to libraries for set up & support, then it would be a simpler decision between do we support porn in the library or not.
However, the decision the USSC is facing is more along the lines of do we allow libraries to provide internet access or not.
OK, so a bacteria can develop a resistance to antibiotics. How do you make a step from that to SOUP THAT BECAME A HUMAN BEING???
Same way you step from dropping a ball from a tower to the force that keeps the moon up there all pretty like.
*sigh* but if the bible said the invisible hand of God kept the moon up, no doubt fundamentalists would try to stop it from being taught until someone orbitted a moon sized mass around an earth sized mass in the lab.
See the same kind of reasoning is used to go from small changes in small amounts of time to big changes in big amounts of time wrt to evolution as wrt gravity, but somehow the folks clamoring that evolution is an assumption don't say the same thing about gravity.
Even though there is certainly as much evidence for the theory of evolution as there is for the theory of gravity.
I guess that is the main thrust of my question, and it is why I have a problem with the current view of our early history. It makes me wonder if purhaps there could be errors with our dating methods and the assumptions made in generating the time-table that is currently taught in history corriculum.
I would say that the error is more likely in your assumption that writing is a relatively easy thing to figure out how to do, especially for a people who move around chasing animals and/or following naturally ripening fruit.
Instead, I would say it's more likely that ability to read and write complex ideas is probably the most difficult thing humans ever learned how to do, & folks would probably not even begin such a task until they had discovered numerous other technologies (like how to make a knife out of a rock) that sound simple until you actually try them.
Seems to me that 25,000 years is not very long at all for folks to take to invent writing, especially since one generation would have a pretty hard time telling the next generation everything they had learned until they had come up with a decent alphabet.
Because man evolved from more primitive roots, he must have had a very primitive culture because the higher intelligence had not yet developed.
That evolution is a progression from "primitive" to "advanced" is not the actual scientific view, though it is a popular one. The fact is, a lion is not more "primitive" than a human, actually, in many ways it is more specialized than humans are.
A good book to read on the subject is Stephen J. Gould's Wonderful Life, where he examines the idea of progressivism, and shows that often more specialized, highly evolved species are the ones that die out when the environment changes, while more "primitive", less advanced species are often better able to adapt their less specialized bodies and behaviors to changing environment.
As far as progress in human history, many things do seem to have improved, but this is an example of the evolution of ideas, which, once writing came along, could be transmitted and improved on in each generation.
But you are correct on one point, most of the evidence appears clear that humans have not become more intelligent in the past 100,000 years or so, & since are brain size is limited by the size of a woman's pelvis it's not likely we will get any more intelligent, at least not until we stop reproducing through live birth:-).
one way you can tell the serious scientific papers, documentaries, & books is that they are generally quite clear to note what is based on hard evidence and what is educated guesswork.
It's hardly the scientist's fault that journalists desperate for an eyecatching headline often leave out the qualifications on the educated guesses.
& journalists certainly know that DEADLY GAMMA RAYS sell more papers/video tapes than discussions of mtDNA and genetic drift...
in the long term are probably more good than harm for our economies, I would say.
We know burning oil causes health problems, and we know the supply is not going to be sufficient for the next century, so getting going with cleaner and more efficient forms of energy is a good idea.
And of course the nations that get going on this idea soonest will be the ones selling the power to the ones that just muddle along trying to find a few more barrels of heroin *cough* I mean oil...
So while orbital solar, better photovotaic ground based solar, pebble bed fission, etc. are expensive to research and get started with, the folks who get good at it can turn around and sell it to the rest of the world as the oil runs low and folks get tired of breathing gas fumes instead of air...
in the solar system. And of course we have only barely begun to farm and colonize the seas of Earth.
And I think the very greatest resource is human intelligence, so the more folks we have, the better chance we have of finding solutions for our various problems.
In the near term, we should certainly be working on helping the developing world implement cleaner forms of energy, sources of building materials, and better farming methods for the developing world.
The current course seems to be dominated by blind faith in some invisible hand, which seems to me just replacing "God" with the "free market" rather than a sensible attempt to find and implement the best solutions.
I think it is about time that the dominant species on this planet (i.e. you and me) start taking some responsibility for climate change.
I agree with that, we need to figure out how to control the weather so that changes efforts to make a decent, healthy, and productive life to every human being don't enhance the wild swings of the natural cycle.
It's on page 4. Variable pitch is nice, it means the Vestas is more efficient accross a range of wind speeds, but my point was that at high wind speeds the turbines have to be shut down to prevent their being destroyed.
And it looks like fusion will need to use He3 to be efficient in the near term.
Long run, better forms of fusion may turn up, but it seems to me that if one assumes the tech. to make fusion efficient, one can also assume the tech to make SPS efficient, at which point why bother making your own little suns when you got a real big one for free?
The process for creating a fusion reactor has been mapped out since the 1970s -- however, it would require the equivalent of 7 fission reactors to start the reaction before it can sustain itself, and materials including a very large 3-foot thick shield of lithium.
Seems like your already well over the cost of a comparable solar satellite before you even get the reaction started, much less finding enough He3 to keep it going, not to mention the NIMBY problem when you tell folks you just need to build 7 new nuke plants to get it going...
Slashdot Mirror
has been making very nice draw on monitors for a few years now, which do quite well for hi-res drawings, we have one here that gets drawn on for several hours/day, for 6 months, no sign of wearing out yet.
I think the limit is in how well the handwriting recognition software works, not in the hardware.
Who typically carry 10-40lbs of books around campus. As more and more textbooks are available on CD, this will enable folks to carry just a sinlge 2-4lb tablet with their text CD/DVDs.
Plus the ability to digitize notes, and later then search, edit, catagorize and store the notes, well when I was a science student I would have loved to have that ability (esp. areas like science & engineering where diagrams and drawings are frequently part of the notes, not so nice to do on a laptop, not to mention 100 students writing is much less distracting than 100 students typing).
I'd say numerous smaller markets exist as well in sales, medicine, presentors, etc., basically anywhere folks now use paper notepads or folders of similar size.
It also seems to me that with a docking station adding more functionality (2nd monitor, key board, etc.) one could see many laptops replaced by dockable tablets.
I know I am going to be looking at a few of these the next time I get authorized to get more laptops at work, if they are capable enough to edit presentations/present with, I'd love one!
What, you mean old age?
Researchers are working on cures for heart disease, alzheimers, and cancer using stem cell techniques, which therapeutic cloning is an important component of, yes.
you mean starvation and malnutrition, right
There is more than enough food for everyone on the planet, the problem is a political one of distribution, not a technological one of production.
And if we didn't, well, either we'd have to stop having kids or this planet is going to get VERY crowded and very dead.
There is plenty of room for trillions of people in the solar system, there is no reason to turn away from longer & healthier lives to save space.
A homozygous single copy murine immune mouse
Just is a way of saying that the mouse shows the results of the human gene (we generally have two copies of each gene, so only mice with two copies of the human gene (homozygous) would show the full effects of the human gene, while mice with one mouse gene and one human gene (heterozygous) may not show the effects of the human gene (this is a bit oversimplified, some genes only have one copy, esp. in males, and researchers have many ways of seeing the effects of two different versions of a gene).
not homozygous lethal or cause sterility in a single copy state
"Homozygous lethal": the effects of the gene in the homozygous state kill the developing animal. Obvioulsy, such genes won't make good study targets for this technique. Sterility is not a real problem in most cases, as you can easily generate new homozygotes from the heterozygotic parents, unless of course you are studying a gene related to fertility:-).
Unless using blastocysts from immunologically crippled mice
This gets a bit confusing:
Where he is confusing: Immune cells are trained to recognize self/non-self when they are formed: ones that recognize normal cells of the organism are killed off. So if the mouse has the human cells from birth, they should be reconized by the mouse's immune system as normal. Rejection of transplanted tissue happens when new tissue is transplanted into an adult.
Where he has a point: However, when transplanting cells between species, there can be such big differences that all of the host's (mouse) immune cells reject the doner (human) cells in a catostrophic allergic reaction (not technically part of the self/non-self recognition process). This happens with certain cell surface markers on pig cells, which is why pig organs cannot (presently) be transplanted into people.
But we have been making mice with with human immune systems since the 1980s, so this is not really the "gotcha" for this research that scientistguy imples.
Further, we already know that mice don't reject human stem cells (stem cells appear to be more or less immunologically blank).
So while there is some point to mentioning that there is such a thing as rejection of foreign tissue, this seems to more a problem with 'adult'(post-embryonic) transplants & I don't think it really has much to do with the issues raised in the article.
and Americans aren't microscopic.
Stem cells come from blastocysts, collections of generic human cells that have not even begun to differentiate. There are thousands of such balls of cells left over from the attempts of couples to have children via in vitro fertilization.
Stem cell researchers think they could use cells from these excess IVF embryos to save human beings from heart disease, paralysis, diabetes, etc.
Or we can listen to folks who claim these balls of cells should have the rights of citizens, and...dump them out?
Seems like the real way to "protect the weak" would be to protect sick and dying Americans from the fantasy that a frozen ball of generic cells is a human being.
Bush's extremely restrictive funding guidelines not only had the practicle effect of stopping the research in the US, but also sent a strong message to investors: the Religious Right has the power to severely restrict this technology, despite the claims of scientists that it might lead to cures for some of the biggest killers of humankind.
In such a climate, very little venture funding is being released, after all it's one thing to bet whether a new technology will work out or not, it's quite another thing to bet whether you will lose your money because Falwell decides your technology is immoral...
The idea makes, in fact, no sense at all
Which was the point I was trying to make, thanks! (I thought "little nuclear reactors" would make it pretty clear I was pointing out the "gray goo" idea ignores the basic problems of energy source and heat dissapation).
But you're right, with folks seriously going off about the dangers of molecule sized diamond tanks, they might not notice the sarcasm tags around the nano-nukes:-)
You lose it with this hyperbolic statement:
In short, you are the ideal food for nanotech.
"Nanotech" is all very small technology, things don't become "self assembling" just by being small.
In many proposals, assemblers are made largely of carbon in the form of solid crystals.
Next you've paint a hollywood sci-fi picture of little diamond monsters, but avoid the essential questions of energy source & heat dissapation (tiny diamond fans for their tiny diamond pentiums?). How much energy does it take to make these little diamond plates, and what method are the little jewells using to extract that energy? You mention "many proposals", but can't provide a link to one?
Only nanotech has teeth made of diamond crystals, it can be ultimately voracious, and our immune systems won't be able to touch it.
Ooo, I'm scared now. You go from "some proposals involve diamond crystals" to voracious knids with diamond teeth, again, typical hollywood sci-fi with a basic failure to understand physics: your little diamond monsters will cook in their own waste heat before they can move and reproduce fast enough to devour a housefly, much less a human being.
You are tasty and tender, and don't forget it.
Actually, I'm neither, and when someone uses hyperbolic FUD in an argument rather than logic backed up with facts, it's pretty clear to me that their argument is nothing but an attempt to stoke fear, uncertainty, and despair.
The fear, .. that someone would make tiny robots that would breed out of control and become a social problem.
The Trouble with Aibos...
Wots in the Turbo Lift? Aiieeee!
Nanotech doesn't play by the same rules as currently extant terrestrial biology.
They would probably do better if they did, after all terrestrial biology does a very good job of extracting the available energy & raw materials and turning it into new terrestrial biology.
Nanites could, in theory, do just that, by using raw materials in the air and the earth to reproduce.
Huh? What "theory" is going to free them from the need for an energy source? Are they powered by minature nuclear reactors then?
It all depends on (A) how they are programmed,
Ahh, then they will have nano-scale Pentium 8s with AI 2020 pre-installed on nano-scale terrabyte hard drives?
I mean if they are "going to be programmed" they need processors to run the programs, memory to hold the programs, and a power source and cooling system for the above. Even given quantum computing, it seems pretty unlikey you are going to pack all that into a little bit of goo that can also defend itself against a predatory nematode.
I mean think about it, where are the self assemblers going to get their energy and raw materials from?
If they are made of metal, it's going to take a bunch of energy and/or time for one to make another, being "nano" doesn't get you a free pass from 2lot.
If they are made of flesh, then they are not going to be very tough, not any tougher than rats or starlings anyway.
So you have can fast replicators that aren't very tough or you can have slow replicators that are more tough. Either way, it's pretty hard to get something bad enough to cause human beings serious trouble.
I mean we have tank making factories that are pretty much automated now, if we made tanks that could make other tanks in the field, they would still need tons of steel, plastics, energy, etc. delivered to them, and (lacking things like cranes, assembly lines, forms, etc) probably would be a whole lot less efficient than making a tank in a factory anyway.
I'm not saying that the technology should be unregulated, but I am saying that the 'end is near' prophecies like Joy's are not born out by the facts & probably do more harm than good in the search for responsible and reasonable controls.
If you know anything about bacteria, the idea of us designing machines that can outcompete bacteria at the bacterial scale is ridiculous.
If you don't know anything about bacteria, and imagine bacteria sized self assembling little armored tanks with superior memory and AI to bacteria, that can somehow extract energy from their environment faster and more efficiently than bacteria (maybe with little nuclear engines?) the idea makes alot of sense.
And the divide is rather hard to cross unless you've had at least a college level micro-bio course or done equivalent research. (though I would disagree with the 'green' part, the 'grey goo' is already here, and it is inside us, but it more white to transluscent than green:-).
By getting an electric motor for my bike-since I moved to the flats and my work is on the hill, I can't come in all sweaty, and so stopped riding for a while.
But the electric motor (Currie Pro Drive) solved that, I peddle along with it, but don't have to break a sweat to climb the hill.
It helps some with the cars since I can accelerate pretty quickly. Anyway, I don't think electric bikes are THE alternative, OTOH I drive my car like once a week now:-).
Make great bike routes!
Don't like to peddle, get an electric bike, 20 miles for ~1cent of e.
& fresh air, yummm.
Aside from the expense (which will likely force many libraries to simply not provide internet access) the current crop of filters don't work very well, so you are getting false security and asking everyone else to accept reduced functionality at the same time.
Perhaps a better idea would be to add the ability to avoid pRon sites and to shut them down if she hits them by accident to the list of skills a child should have before being left unsupervised in a public library...
going to come from?
Maybe you haven't noticed, but most libraries are overworked and underfunded as it is.
Requiring them to purchase & maintain new software will likely lead to many canceling Internet Access altogether.
As far as your five year old, isn't she a little young to be wandering around the library by herself?
the existing nanny software restricts many non-Porno sites & is expensive and difficult to administer.
So the upshot will be that many libraries will have to cancel internet access altogether if forced to comply.
Now if the law included a nationwide site license for the nanny software & money to libraries for set up & support, then it would be a simpler decision between do we support porn in the library or not.
However, the decision the USSC is facing is more along the lines of do we allow libraries to provide internet access or not.
OK, so a bacteria can develop a resistance to antibiotics. How do you make a step from that to SOUP THAT BECAME A HUMAN BEING???
Same way you step from dropping a ball from a tower to the force that keeps the moon up there all pretty like.
*sigh* but if the bible said the invisible hand of God kept the moon up, no doubt fundamentalists would try to stop it from being taught until someone orbitted a moon sized mass around an earth sized mass in the lab.
See the same kind of reasoning is used to go from small changes in small amounts of time to big changes in big amounts of time wrt to evolution as wrt gravity, but somehow the folks clamoring that evolution is an assumption don't say the same thing about gravity.
Even though there is certainly as much evidence for the theory of evolution as there is for the theory of gravity.
Why is that?
I would say that the error is more likely in your assumption that writing is a relatively easy thing to figure out how to do, especially for a people who move around chasing animals and/or following naturally ripening fruit.
Instead, I would say it's more likely that ability to read and write complex ideas is probably the most difficult thing humans ever learned how to do, & folks would probably not even begin such a task until they had discovered numerous other technologies (like how to make a knife out of a rock) that sound simple until you actually try them.
Seems to me that 25,000 years is not very long at all for folks to take to invent writing, especially since one generation would have a pretty hard time telling the next generation everything they had learned until they had come up with a decent alphabet.
A good book to read on the subject is Stephen J. Gould's Wonderful Life, where he examines the idea of progressivism, and shows that often more specialized, highly evolved species are the ones that die out when the environment changes, while more "primitive", less advanced species are often better able to adapt their less specialized bodies and behaviors to changing environment.
As far as progress in human history, many things do seem to have improved, but this is an example of the evolution of ideas, which, once writing came along, could be transmitted and improved on in each generation.
But you are correct on one point, most of the evidence appears clear that humans have not become more intelligent in the past 100,000 years or so, & since are brain size is limited by the size of a woman's pelvis it's not likely we will get any more intelligent, at least not until we stop reproducing through live birth:-).
one way you can tell the serious scientific papers, documentaries, & books is that they are generally quite clear to note what is based on hard evidence and what is educated guesswork.
It's hardly the scientist's fault that journalists desperate for an eyecatching headline often leave out the qualifications on the educated guesses.
& journalists certainly know that DEADLY GAMMA RAYS sell more papers/video tapes than discussions of mtDNA and genetic drift...
in the long term are probably more good than harm for our economies, I would say.
We know burning oil causes health problems, and we know the supply is not going to be sufficient for the next century, so getting going with cleaner and more efficient forms of energy is a good idea.
And of course the nations that get going on this idea soonest will be the ones selling the power to the ones that just muddle along trying to find a few more barrels of heroin *cough* I mean oil...
So while orbital solar, better photovotaic ground based solar, pebble bed fission, etc. are expensive to research and get started with, the folks who get good at it can turn around and sell it to the rest of the world as the oil runs low and folks get tired of breathing gas fumes instead of air...
And I think the very greatest resource is human intelligence, so the more folks we have, the better chance we have of finding solutions for our various problems.
In the near term, we should certainly be working on helping the developing world implement cleaner forms of energy, sources of building materials, and better farming methods for the developing world.
The current course seems to be dominated by blind faith in some invisible hand, which seems to me just replacing "God" with the "free market" rather than a sensible attempt to find and implement the best solutions.
I agree with that, we need to figure out how to control the weather so that changes efforts to make a decent, healthy, and productive life to every human being don't enhance the wild swings of the natural cycle.
Current offshore rotors also can't handle very strong winds: They have to be swung out of the wind at wind speeds of 25 meters per second.
And from your own link, the stop speed of the Vestas is also 25m/s:
Operational data Cut-in wind speed: 4 m/s Nominal wind speed: 16 m/s Stop wind speed: 25 m/s Output (kW)
It's on page 4. Variable pitch is nice, it means the Vestas is more efficient accross a range of wind speeds, but my point was that at high wind speeds the turbines have to be shut down to prevent their being destroyed.
And it looks like fusion will need to use He3 to be efficient in the near term.
Long run, better forms of fusion may turn up, but it seems to me that if one assumes the tech. to make fusion efficient, one can also assume the tech to make SPS efficient, at which point why bother making your own little suns when you got a real big one for free?
The process for creating a fusion reactor has been mapped out since the 1970s -- however, it would require the equivalent of 7 fission reactors to start the reaction before it can sustain itself, and materials including a very large 3-foot thick shield of lithium.
Seems like your already well over the cost of a comparable solar satellite before you even get the reaction started, much less finding enough He3 to keep it going, not to mention the NIMBY problem when you tell folks you just need to build 7 new nuke plants to get it going...