Unless you're bill gates, your "home theater" isn't even close to that 3-story high screen.
You have a smaller screen, but you sit much closer to it. It's all relative. Get a good projector and throw a 3 metre screen size on your wall, and you won't be complaining.
What you miss out on are the three teenage girls behind you talking non-stop through the whole movie, and someone setting off a stinkbomb towards the end...
There's only one cinema where I live that has something more, and that's a converted stage theatre which shows classic/cult flicks and has a crowd of almost pure cinephiles. Sit in the first row of the dress circle and watch one of the old classics projected from 70mm reels and that's something else. But your suburban multiplex? bleh.
First of all, dolphin has to realize that the net is an obstacle. Second, he has to understand that he is in danger if he remains inside the net. Third, he has to understand that it's safe outside the net. Fourth he has to understant that the net ends above the surface (where he can't see well enough to determine if the net is there). And on top of all he should realize that jumping out of water can be useful for escape. None of those things even remotely can be derived from a dolphin's experience, so from his point of view he is dealing with unknown and seemingly unrelated things.
I think that's over-complicating the issue. To go back to the contentious point that started this whole/. story, a goldfish will attempt to leave the confines of an enclosed space by jumping out of it. Presumably that's an innate (albeit somewhat curious) response, and not any indication of intelligence or otherwise - but it's not an uncommon behaviour. Most animals that are trapped - even (and indeed, especially) if they've never known entrapment before, will try to escape. It doesn't need a large amount of reasoning - it's just instinct. I still think it's rather fascinating that dolphins don't try it - but then again, maybe it's because they're over-analysing the situation?:)
Claims (off the cuff or not) that dolphins' brains are by design worse than brains of small cold-blooded animals such as fish, make no sense at all
Once again, the poor guy never said that! He never directly compared the brains of dolphins and any form of fish - merely observed the lack of an escape response by dolphins and compared that to fish. It's a dumb thing to say, certainly - but not as terminally stupid as what the story headline accused him of!
It just makes me wonder if the author is smart enough to do the supposedly valid part of his research properly.
Well, as I pointed out earlier, he's published a lot of papers on neurobiology and some of those have been cited a fair few times. Not that that means anything very much (hell, all of the citations could be ones condemning his research for all I know!)... but I have some sympathy for people who suggest an unusual interpretation of data and get canned by their conservative peers as a result (in fact, I went to a seminar today by a Nobel laureate (Barry Marshall) who'd had exactly that experience when he first submitted his research on Heliobacteria and stomach ulcers...) Remember that if people didn't sometimes challenge the accepted wisdom and convention, there'd be very little progress in science at all - I'm sure I don't need to point out to you the many other prominent examples in the history of science that illustrate this! Now, Manger may well be a crackpot and off his nut... but there's no way you or I or anyone else can tell this without reading in full what he has to say.
Thanks for the mirror-recognition article - there's a whole bunch of citations in the discussion that provide more evidence for high levels of dolphin cognitive ability.
But no one actually made such a claim -- that dolphins are smarter than all animals with smaller brains, or that brain size alone determines intelligence. No one even claimed that dolphins' and primates' brains are similar enough to justify such a comparison, so if he is opposing something, it's a strawman.
Well, you can't on the one hand link to an article describing mirror-recognition by dolphins, and on the other claim that no-one's ever claimed dolphins were intelligent! In fact, there's a most relevant sentence in the Marino 1998 abstract that states, "These findings may have implications for comparative models of the relative importance of brain size versus brain organization for the evolution of intelligence." Unfortunately my institute clearly doesn't subscribe to that journal and I can't get the full text of the article and discover what those implications are...
Escaping from the net would be an equivlent of a dog figuring out that "invisible fence" collar is controlled by a transmitter, and turning it off, or for a human to figure out that a wall of smoke in the middle of a room is a portal to some other place.
This isn't my area of research at all, but I'd have to disagree with your statement - escaping from a net is merely exploring all possible avenues for escape, not making a connection between unrelated objects. Dolphins regularly jump out of water, they are not aware of whether the net extends out of the water or not, there are no other means of escape - trying to jump over the net is the logical extension of this. It's a fairly big step in reasoning, though - I'm not saying that if a dolphin can't work it out then it's stupid.
If dolphins were able to "reason" about fishing nets at that extent, they would be able to recognize lost or abandoned nets, pick them up, and use them to catch fish.
Not at all - that's tool use, and is something very different again.
Anyway - I'm pretty convinced that dolphins are intelligent creatures, and Manger may well be a bit loopy when it comes to dissing dolphins for not jumping over things to escape (if his remarks weren't made off the cuff, and seized upon by a desperate journalist for sensationalist value - it's been known to happen!). But I still think his research sounds interesting - there's clearly been quite a lot written about the different composition of dolphin brains, but the idea of a selective link between water temperature and brain volume appears new, and is at least something that merrits reading the article before slamming it as stupid!
That would be admitting that dolphins are as smart as they are observed to be smart -- what is smarter than most of animals, and this is already observed.
Can you cite some references as regards this? There's certainly an assumption in the community that dolphins are intelligent animals, but I couldn't find anything documenting this other than anecdotal stories... Please understand, I'm not saying that they're not intelligent, just healthily sceptical.
If he is trying to refute claims that dolphins are "more intelligent" than apes and humans, I think, he would have hard time finding someone making such a claim
Ah, but you see, dolphins actually have a relatively larger cranial volume than any primate other than man (Marino , 1998, and cf. Marino et al, 2000 which states that the relative size is in fact greater than that of humans). So if intelligence was directly related to brain size then such claims ought to stand. And I guess that's the whole point of Manger's article - dolphins might be highly socially organised animals, but their level of intellect is not as great as their brain size alone would suggest. (And from the abstract, one of the reasons for that surrounds the different cellular composition of the dolphin brain, which is especially interesting considering the Marino, et al, 2000 paper cited above)
however dolphins' behaviour is definitely more complex compared to othe sea animals, and this is a well-researched area.
Fair enough - but I'd be interested to see studies regarding more than social behaviour: learning and problem-solving, for example. There must have been studies on this, I'm just having a hard time finding them... There seems to be a naive assumption by the general public, at least, that dolphins do have a level of intellectual ability approaching humans and primates, but it's hard to discover whether this is based on hard scientific evidence or the romantic notions of society.
Also dolphins don't know that the net ends above the surface -- to derive that they would have to understand its purpose, gathering food for land-dwelling humans.
No they wouldn't! It's just a barrier - its purpose is irrelevant. The issue is how an animal deals with that barrier (*). But your point about not being able to detect the net (either by echo location or sight) seems valid enough (although after swimming into it enough times you'd reckon they'd work it out - again, it's a question of the ability of the animal to reason rather than just interact with their environment...)
(*) A dolphin - if aware at all - should be well aware of the fact that the sea surface is not the end of its spatial confines. Trap a human in a room with a pool of water, completely enclosed to the water boundary, and it's highly likely that the human will dive under the water in order to see if the walls continue, or if there is a hidden way out.
If he didn't make a claim that dolphins are stupid, that would be "no neural basis for the observed high intellectual abilities of cetaceans".
Well, no - that would be making a claim that dolphins are smart. He's merely stating that it is often asserted that this is the case, and while he may not believe it himself he hasn't actually stated his position in the abstract (you're just inferring it from his impartial clarification). There are many shades of grey between "high intellectual abilities" and "dumber than a goldfish"...
Incidentally, I did a quick literature search to see what had been written about dolphins and high intelligence, and can't find all that much. If anyone knows of any actual scientific studies on dolphin intelligence (and I'm sure there's been heaps, but all I can find are a few articles relating to social structure and social intelligence... ironically, a search for "cetacean intelligence" in PubMed only brings up Paul Manger's own abstract!) then I'd be interested to see them...
I have to say, I'm rather fascinated by the "why don't dolphins jump over fishing nets" thing! You've got to admit, it would be a simple solution to their dilemma if they're trapped without a means of escape: they certainly know how to jump out of the water well enough... (although I wonder if the problem with fishing nets is more one of being entangled in them?)
This is a claim that dolphins and whales are stupid, and that their intelligence is "assertion" and "belief" of researchers -- what is separate from the claim that large brains developed for the reason other than need for complex behavior, what driven development of, say, primates.
Actually, that's not true - "These data are assimilated to demonstrate that there is no neural basis for the often-asserted high intellectual abilities of cetaceans" merely states that the brain structure does not necessarily imply a high level of intelligence. In the same vein, "These observations provide an alternative to the widely held belief of a correlation between brain size and intelligence in cetaceans" is simply pointing to an alternative reason for the evolution of a large brain. If brain size is not related to intelligence, then it also follows that intelligence is not related to brain size.
I have no idea why those two claims are mixed -- you don't have to prove that dolphins are stupid to support a hypothesis that their brains developed because smaller brain of a warm-blooded animal can't survive in cold water
I don't think that the researcher was actually trying to prove that dolphins are stupid - that's my point (I imagine that the Reuters article was deliberately sensationalised to make it sell - it would fit with my own experience with science journalists! A dry article noting that dolphin brain evolution has selectionary pressures other than intelligence alone is hardly going to make in into the papers; an article claiming that dolphins are dumber than fish is far more likely to pass muster...)
I seem to be defending this guy, which I'm not really trying to do; I'm simply trying to stop people from criticising peer-reviewed research on the simple basis that it goes against the grain. He may well be a nutcase - but I can't tell without reading the article itself. From the abstract it sounds an interesting article and it got accepted into a fairly highly ranked journal... it deserves better than being lumped under the "Whacky scientist reckons goldfish are smarter than dolphins" banner (a claim the poor guy never made, but which was only made by the story poster).
From PubMed... Note that nowhere in the abstract is the claim made that dolphins are stupid; it merely suggests that intelligence is not the driving force behind their large brain size. (Unfortunately I don't have access to the article itself, so who knows what claims he makes in the body of the text... but the abstract sounds logical enough)
An examination of cetacean brain structure with a novel hypothesis correlating thermogenesis to the evolution of a big brain.
* Manger PR.
School of Anatomical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 7 York Road, Parktown, 2193, Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa. mangerpr@anatomy.wits.ac.za
This review examines aspects of cetacean brain structure related to behaviour and evolution. Major considerations include cetacean brain-body allometry, structure of the cerebral cortex, the hippocampal formation, specialisations of the cetacean brain related to vocalisations and sleep phenomenology, paleoneurology, and brain-body allometry during cetacean evolution. These data are assimilated to demonstrate that there is no neural basis for the often-asserted high intellectual abilities of cetaceans. Despite this, the cetaceans do have volumetrically large brains. A novel hypothesis regarding the evolution of large brain size in cetaceans is put forward. It is shown that a combination of an unusually high number of glial cells and unihemispheric sleep phenomenology make the cetacean brain an efficient thermogenetic organ, which is needed to counteract heat loss to the water. It is demonstrated that water temperature is the major selection pressure driving an altered scaling of brain and body size and an increased actual brain size in cetaceans. A point in the evolutionary history of cetaceans is identified as the moment in which water temperature became a significant selection pressure in cetacean brain evolution. This occurred at the Archaeoceti - modern cetacean faunal transition. The size, structure and scaling of the cetacean brain continues to be shaped by water temperature in extant cetaceans. The alterations in cetacean brain structure, function and scaling, combined with the imperative of producing offspring that can withstand the rate of heat loss experienced in water, within the genetic confines of eutherian mammal reproductive constraints, provides an explanation for the evolution of the large size of the cetacean brain. These observations provide an alternative to the widely held belief of a correlation between brain size and intelligence in cetaceans.
Well, Paul Manger is a real scientist who's published 50 articles, most if not all in neuroscience areas, some with pretty high numbers of citations, and quite a few of those articles are on cetaceans. The article that the story is based upon was published in Biological Reviews, which has an impact factor of 6 - it's clearly not a tin-pot cruddy journal which publishes any old crap. (and while IFs aren't as good a guide to a journal's credibility as our esteemed granting bodies would like us to believe, they do give some measure of an article's worth)
The news story, although bizarely linked to Aljazeera (!), is attributed to Reuters down the bottom. So it's not quite as "pure crap" as you might think - the odd comments about dolphins not jumping over nets are probably more a result of the journalist trying to make a snappy story out of it all, rather than being the sole basis of Paul Manger's research!
However, there is no evidence of one species becoming another and that is what would have to happen for a lower form to evolve into a human.
I'm afraid you're misinformed here. There is a vast amount of experimental evidence of speciation, ecological evidence of speciation, and fossil evidence of speciation. To claim otherwise is, well... specious!
Funnily enough, you may not have noticed, but the Catholic church is quite happy to accept evolution and still believe in god. The two are not mutually exclusive, and really you should be very concerned about your attitude to religion if you feel that they are. I think you'll find the late Stephen J. Gould's thoughts on the matter quite an interesting read if you're interested...
I've only been in the professional workforce for 4 years, but I've never heard anyone use "xerox" as a verb. Similarly, the only people who use "kleenex" instead of tissue seem to be over 40, and even then it's selective.
I think it depends on your locality. "Xerox" is gradually dropping out of use as photocopies drop out of use - most things get printed, and when you print out something for yourself, you might also print someone a copy. Thus "copy" has replaced that verb. "Kleenex" still seems fairly prevalent. I might ask someone if they've got a tissue, or I might ask if they've got a kleenex - the words are synonymous in my mind at least.
But Google's now got the same problem that Xerox and Kleenex had: there really isn't any other decent search engine around, so suggesting that someone googles something is literally suggesting that they use Google's search engine. I doubt that the few oddities who use Yahoo or MSN (god forbid!) to search would talk about googling something, although it'd be interesting to know. Funnily enough, I don't recall anyone ever verbifying Lycos or Alta Vista back in the day - maybe they just didn't roll off the tongue the way google does.
But what I *really* want to know is how Google can trademark a number in the first place...:)
Couldn't it be argued that the accretion disk includes the Kuiper Belt?
But on that basis, every little asteroid/icy blob/pebble in the asteroid belt, Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt should be called a planet.
Do you know just how many of those little things there are??? And you do realise that Joe Public isn't going to be happy until they all have a freakin' name, don't you?
Anyway, you atheists and general critics of the Bible better get used to being on the defensive. As science advances, you're going to find more and more similarities between science and the Bible and will have to accept the fact that many of the things "discovered" by science were already known to Christians thousands of years ago.
Hmmm... perhaps now would be a good time to link to Stephen Jay Gould's idea of non-overlapping magisteria between science and religion.
It's unfair? This is just a simple comparison of browser features, that's all. It's aim is not to award prizes, but to point out what's present and what's lacking. I'll quote from the final paragraph of the article:
"These are all fine apps; we recommend you give them each a spin--it's a free download, after all--and stick with the one you find the most comfortable. Just keep in mind that IE7 is still beta (and you'll need to check the Show Updates box in Control Panel's Add Remove Programs window if you want to remove it), and Firefox is even earlier beta. For most users, it probably makes sense to wait for a later beta for Firefox and go ahead and try IE7 with a little caution."[my emphasis]
Personally, I find it amusing/illuminating/sad that the fact that Firefox is OSS is never mentioned. Surely it's something that's at least of passing interest to a self-designated tech site? *sigh*
I have this theory that Kim Beazley is the last surviving member of the DLP - his sole aim is to keep the Labor Party out of power as long as he possibly can.
What Australia needs is some form of opposition, something that Labor is certainly not providing right now. They've sold principles for pragmatism, and ideology for idiocy - trying to fight Howard in an area in which the Liberal Party will always win.
You were obviously very unlucky. One thing nearly all Ubuntu newcomers do (and wisely so) is to boot the LiveCD first to find out if their hardware supports Ubuntu before installing it.
And in fact, with Dapper, this is now default: you now actually run the installer from the GNOME desktop on the live CD. You have to use a different iso image to go through the old install process. It's a good thing, too - it takes all the guesswork out of hardware compatibility.
And the best thing of all - how many distros let you surf the web while you're installing them? I was emailing friends as I installed the system: by far the most pleasant install I've ever done!:)
WP for Linux was nearly as bad, and they never publicised it or supported it
Actually, IIRC, there was a lot of excitement back in the day - in the Linux community at least - about WP8 for Linux. It was a sign that a big company was taking an interest in Linux software - and what was more, they were offering it for free! Remember, we're talking early 1999 here, before even StarOffice was a free download. We had visions of Corel+Linux ripping MS to shreds - and after all, GNOME 1.0 had also just come out... we finally had a GUI file manager and a desktop!! MS didn't stand a chance!
The only problem was... well, WordPerfect for Linux was buggy as hell and ugly as sin. It crashed so regularly and spectacularly that even MS would have shied away in awe. Not even Linux aficionados could find a nice thing to say about it, and stories about the software eating up important MS-Word-compatible documents (that us Linux fanatics thought we'd finally be able to write under Linux) were legion.
Ah well... there were always the early betas of AbiWord to get excited about instead...;-)
However, when I use Outlook to fetch my mail from Gmail via POP, I wonder just what Google is getting out of this arrangement. Microsoft gets my money from the Outlook purchase. Gmail gets... what, exactly?
google is not a replacement for communication, and it is pathetic to tell people to google instaed of at least offering a link.
It's a bit odd to tell someone to google something that's available via apt-get. The Ubuntu kernel source package comes up clearly using synaptic and searching for "kernel" - and I should know, as it was the first package I installed when I put Ubuntu on my laptop (my laptop's ACPI needs a kernel patch for things to work correctly). The only thing remotely confusing was that the Ubuntu kernel.config wasn't supplied in the source directory - instead you have to copy it from/boot (and a note in the package info would have helpful as regards this!)
Anyway, if the OP was really treated as he says, then yes, the attitude is a problem - but considering the default reponse on any Debian-related forum is "apt-get", I suspect that that he either asked in completely the wrong place, or is mis-recalling the instructions given.
I believe that my driving is no worse with the cell phone since I drive one handed anyway, and I believe that for most phone conversations the drivers are no worse then those who are smoking, playing with the radio, or eating while they drive
I always thought that the problem stemmed from having a specific source of sound that you're concentrating on, located only at one ear. It's very different from using a handsfree speakerphone, or from talking to other people in the car, where both ears pick up the noise.
What I've noticed with a lot of drivers using their phones is that they consistently veer to one side of the road - generally the left side (presumably because they're holding the phone against their left ear). It's amazing to watch - they nearly run themselves off the road, and don't seem to realise that anything's wrong until they've hit, or almost hit, the curb. It's probably even more dangerous in America or continental Europe, where veering to the left will bring you into the path of oncoming traffic...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lectricit%C3%A9 _de_France will give you the energy stats for France. They are, however, widely documented (it's a common argument made by proponents of nuclear power), and I'm surprised you had any trouble finding them. Oil is rarely used for power stations, and I assume that France's notorious oil contracts were more related to petrol production; however, I may be wrong here.
People are storing nuclear waste right now. It's unlikely to be a problem - it's easy to shield and easy to bury, and - leading into your next point - it's not a gas at standard temp and pressure like CO2, so isn't going to leach out. Seriously - as a scientist I routinely work with radiation, and, handled properly, it's nothing to be frightened about. Nuclear power != atomic bombs; please don't associate dangers of one with the dangers of the other.
Why is CO2 sequestration a bad idea? Hmmm... let's see... maybe because it can't be sequestered for ever?? Pumping CO2 into rock at high pressure won't stop it seeping back out. All you're doing is delaying the problem, not solving it. Remember that as far as the atmosphere goes, CO2 isn't harmless - that's the whole point!
And money magically appearing? Not really, just restructuring a country's spending priorities.
I can't say I'm too concerned about having to store a few cubic metres of Uranium a year - it's not really that difficult and it's certainly not risky.
As for the ability to harness nuclear/renewable energy sources on a large scale, take a look at France's energy production: 80% from nuclear power, 16% from hydro, and the rest from other renewable sources. It can be done - we're just too scared to do it (well, that and the fact that the coal industry is a very powerful lobby group - which explains why governments are pouring vast amounts of research money into one of the most stupid ideas every dreamt up: underground CO2 sequestration)
That said, I'll happily support reducing emissions by reducing waste and increasing efficiency too! The thing that worries me is that most people seem to think that if they deny that there's a problem long enough, it'll magically go away.
Re. nuclear power: You can't make nuclear weapons from reactor fuel, and the amount of waste is actually very little. Sure, it weighs a lot, which is why anti-nuclear campaigners always quote mass, not volume. Think about the density of Uranium, and you'll realise why. As for its toxic nature, well, after a few hundred years it's no more toxic than natural deposits of Uranium. You do realise that there's radioactivity floating around everywhere, don't you? Our Earth's Uranium deposits are quite happily decaying even as we speak - we might as well make use of that process!
Ah, why do I even bother? It won't cause problems in my lifetime - I might just get to enjoy some mild winters in my old age and get to go swimming a bit more in the summer. Hopefully you don't want kids either, is all I can say. This whole thing sickens me.
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You have a smaller screen, but you sit much closer to it. It's all relative. Get a good projector and throw a 3 metre screen size on your wall, and you won't be complaining.
What you miss out on are the three teenage girls behind you talking non-stop through the whole movie, and someone setting off a stinkbomb towards the end
There's only one cinema where I live that has something more, and that's a converted stage theatre which shows classic/cult flicks and has a crowd of almost pure cinephiles. Sit in the first row of the dress circle and watch one of the old classics projected from 70mm reels and that's something else. But your suburban multiplex? bleh.
I think that's over-complicating the issue. To go back to the contentious point that started this whole
Once again, the poor guy never said that! He never directly compared the brains of dolphins and any form of fish - merely observed the lack of an escape response by dolphins and compared that to fish. It's a dumb thing to say, certainly - but not as terminally stupid as what the story headline accused him of!
Well, as I pointed out earlier, he's published a lot of papers on neurobiology and some of those have been cited a fair few times. Not that that means anything very much (hell, all of the citations could be ones condemning his research for all I know!)
Well, you can't on the one hand link to an article describing mirror-recognition by dolphins, and on the other claim that no-one's ever claimed dolphins were intelligent! In fact, there's a most relevant sentence in the Marino 1998 abstract that states, "These findings may have implications for comparative models of the relative importance of brain size versus brain organization for the evolution of intelligence." Unfortunately my institute clearly doesn't subscribe to that journal and I can't get the full text of the article and discover what those implications are
This isn't my area of research at all, but I'd have to disagree with your statement - escaping from a net is merely exploring all possible avenues for escape, not making a connection between unrelated objects. Dolphins regularly jump out of water, they are not aware of whether the net extends out of the water or not, there are no other means of escape - trying to jump over the net is the logical extension of this. It's a fairly big step in reasoning, though - I'm not saying that if a dolphin can't work it out then it's stupid.
Not at all - that's tool use, and is something very different again.
Anyway - I'm pretty convinced that dolphins are intelligent creatures, and Manger may well be a bit loopy when it comes to dissing dolphins for not jumping over things to escape (if his remarks weren't made off the cuff, and seized upon by a desperate journalist for sensationalist value - it's been known to happen!). But I still think his research sounds interesting - there's clearly been quite a lot written about the different composition of dolphin brains, but the idea of a selective link between water temperature and brain volume appears new, and is at least something that merrits reading the article before slamming it as stupid!
Can you cite some references as regards this? There's certainly an assumption in the community that dolphins are intelligent animals, but I couldn't find anything documenting this other than anecdotal stories
Ah, but you see, dolphins actually have a relatively larger cranial volume than any primate other than man (Marino , 1998, and cf. Marino et al, 2000 which states that the relative size is in fact greater than that of humans). So if intelligence was directly related to brain size then such claims ought to stand. And I guess that's the whole point of Manger's article - dolphins might be highly socially organised animals, but their level of intellect is not as great as their brain size alone would suggest. (And from the abstract, one of the reasons for that surrounds the different cellular composition of the dolphin brain, which is especially interesting considering the Marino, et al, 2000 paper cited above)
Fair enough - but I'd be interested to see studies regarding more than social behaviour: learning and problem-solving, for example. There must have been studies on this, I'm just having a hard time finding them
No they wouldn't! It's just a barrier - its purpose is irrelevant. The issue is how an animal deals with that barrier (*). But your point about not being able to detect the net (either by echo location or sight) seems valid enough (although after swimming into it enough times you'd reckon they'd work it out - again, it's a question of the ability of the animal to reason rather than just interact with their environment
(*) A dolphin - if aware at all - should be well aware of the fact that the sea surface is not the end of its spatial confines. Trap a human in a room with a pool of water, completely enclosed to the water boundary, and it's highly likely that the human will dive under the water in order to see if the walls continue, or if there is a hidden way out.
Somewhat more credibility than Aljazeera, though, methinks
(You'll note, if you read the rest of my comments, that I'm not claiming the article was a shining example of good journalism or anything
Well, no - that would be making a claim that dolphins are smart. He's merely stating that it is often asserted that this is the case, and while he may not believe it himself he hasn't actually stated his position in the abstract (you're just inferring it from his impartial clarification). There are many shades of grey between "high intellectual abilities" and "dumber than a goldfish"
Incidentally, I did a quick literature search to see what had been written about dolphins and high intelligence, and can't find all that much. If anyone knows of any actual scientific studies on dolphin intelligence (and I'm sure there's been heaps, but all I can find are a few articles relating to social structure and social intelligence
I have to say, I'm rather fascinated by the "why don't dolphins jump over fishing nets" thing! You've got to admit, it would be a simple solution to their dilemma if they're trapped without a means of escape: they certainly know how to jump out of the water well enough
Actually, that's not true - "These data are assimilated to demonstrate that there is no neural basis for the often-asserted high intellectual abilities of cetaceans" merely states that the brain structure does not necessarily imply a high level of intelligence. In the same vein, "These observations provide an alternative to the widely held belief of a correlation between brain size and intelligence in cetaceans" is simply pointing to an alternative reason for the evolution of a large brain. If brain size is not related to intelligence, then it also follows that intelligence is not related to brain size.
I don't think that the researcher was actually trying to prove that dolphins are stupid - that's my point (I imagine that the Reuters article was deliberately sensationalised to make it sell - it would fit with my own experience with science journalists! A dry article noting that dolphin brain evolution has selectionary pressures other than intelligence alone is hardly going to make in into the papers; an article claiming that dolphins are dumber than fish is far more likely to pass muster
I seem to be defending this guy, which I'm not really trying to do; I'm simply trying to stop people from criticising peer-reviewed research on the simple basis that it goes against the grain. He may well be a nutcase - but I can't tell without reading the article itself. From the abstract it sounds an interesting article and it got accepted into a fairly highly ranked journal
Well, Paul Manger is a real scientist who's published 50 articles, most if not all in neuroscience areas, some with pretty high numbers of citations, and quite a few of those articles are on cetaceans. The article that the story is based upon was published in Biological Reviews, which has an impact factor of 6 - it's clearly not a tin-pot cruddy journal which publishes any old crap. (and while IFs aren't as good a guide to a journal's credibility as our esteemed granting bodies would like us to believe, they do give some measure of an article's worth)
The news story, although bizarely linked to Aljazeera (!), is attributed to Reuters down the bottom. So it's not quite as "pure crap" as you might think - the odd comments about dolphins not jumping over nets are probably more a result of the journalist trying to make a snappy story out of it all, rather than being the sole basis of Paul Manger's research!
I'm afraid you're misinformed here. There is a vast amount of experimental evidence of speciation, ecological evidence of speciation, and fossil evidence of speciation. To claim otherwise is, well
Funnily enough, you may not have noticed, but the Catholic church is quite happy to accept evolution and still believe in god. The two are not mutually exclusive, and really you should be very concerned about your attitude to religion if you feel that they are. I think you'll find the late Stephen J. Gould's thoughts on the matter quite an interesting read if you're interested
The investors wrote a cheque for $10^100??!! Boy, did they have faith!
I think it depends on your locality. "Xerox" is gradually dropping out of use as photocopies drop out of use - most things get printed, and when you print out something for yourself, you might also print someone a copy. Thus "copy" has replaced that verb. "Kleenex" still seems fairly prevalent. I might ask someone if they've got a tissue, or I might ask if they've got a kleenex - the words are synonymous in my mind at least.
But Google's now got the same problem that Xerox and Kleenex had: there really isn't any other decent search engine around, so suggesting that someone googles something is literally suggesting that they use Google's search engine. I doubt that the few oddities who use Yahoo or MSN (god forbid!) to search would talk about googling something, although it'd be interesting to know. Funnily enough, I don't recall anyone ever verbifying Lycos or Alta Vista back in the day - maybe they just didn't roll off the tongue the way google does.
But what I *really* want to know is how Google can trademark a number in the first place
But on that basis, every little asteroid/icy blob/pebble in the asteroid belt, Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt should be called a planet.
Do you know just how many of those little things there are??? And you do realise that Joe Public isn't going to be happy until they all have a freakin' name, don't you?
Hmmm
It's unfair? This is just a simple comparison of browser features, that's all. It's aim is not to award prizes, but to point out what's present and what's lacking. I'll quote from the final paragraph of the article:
"These are all fine apps; we recommend you give them each a spin--it's a free download, after all--and stick with the one you find the most comfortable. Just keep in mind that IE7 is still beta (and you'll need to check the Show Updates box in Control Panel's Add Remove Programs window if you want to remove it), and Firefox is even earlier beta. For most users, it probably makes sense to wait for a later beta for Firefox and go ahead and try IE7 with a little caution."[my emphasis]
Personally, I find it amusing/illuminating/sad that the fact that Firefox is OSS is never mentioned. Surely it's something that's at least of passing interest to a self-designated tech site? *sigh*
I have this theory that Kim Beazley is the last surviving member of the DLP - his sole aim is to keep the Labor Party out of power as long as he possibly can.
What Australia needs is some form of opposition, something that Labor is certainly not providing right now. They've sold principles for pragmatism, and ideology for idiocy - trying to fight Howard in an area in which the Liberal Party will always win.
And in fact, with Dapper, this is now default: you now actually run the installer from the GNOME desktop on the live CD. You have to use a different iso image to go through the old install process. It's a good thing, too - it takes all the guesswork out of hardware compatibility.
And the best thing of all - how many distros let you surf the web while you're installing them? I was emailing friends as I installed the system: by far the most pleasant install I've ever done!
Actually, IIRC, there was a lot of excitement back in the day - in the Linux community at least - about WP8 for Linux. It was a sign that a big company was taking an interest in Linux software - and what was more, they were offering it for free! Remember, we're talking early 1999 here, before even StarOffice was a free download. We had visions of Corel+Linux ripping MS to shreds - and after all, GNOME 1.0 had also just come out
The only problem was
Ah well
However, when I use Outlook to fetch my mail from Gmail via POP, I wonder just what Google is getting out of this arrangement. Microsoft gets my money from the Outlook purchase. Gmail gets... what, exactly?
Your goodwill, perhaps?
Wow! You don't believe in paragraphs, do you? :)
It's a bit odd to tell someone to google something that's available via apt-get. The Ubuntu kernel source package comes up clearly using synaptic and searching for "kernel" - and I should know, as it was the first package I installed when I put Ubuntu on my laptop (my laptop's ACPI needs a kernel patch for things to work correctly). The only thing remotely confusing was that the Ubuntu kernel
Anyway, if the OP was really treated as he says, then yes, the attitude is a problem - but considering the default reponse on any Debian-related forum is "apt-get", I suspect that that he either asked in completely the wrong place, or is mis-recalling the instructions given.
I always thought that the problem stemmed from having a specific source of sound that you're concentrating on, located only at one ear. It's very different from using a handsfree speakerphone, or from talking to other people in the car, where both ears pick up the noise.
What I've noticed with a lot of drivers using their phones is that they consistently veer to one side of the road - generally the left side (presumably because they're holding the phone against their left ear). It's amazing to watch - they nearly run themselves off the road, and don't seem to realise that anything's wrong until they've hit, or almost hit, the curb. It's probably even more dangerous in America or continental Europe, where veering to the left will bring you into the path of oncoming traffic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lectricit%C3%A9 _de_France will give you the energy stats for France. They are, however, widely documented (it's a common argument made by proponents of nuclear power), and I'm surprised you had any trouble finding them. Oil is rarely used for power stations, and I assume that France's notorious oil contracts were more related to petrol production; however, I may be wrong here.
... let's see ... maybe because it can't be sequestered for ever?? Pumping CO2 into rock at high pressure won't stop it seeping back out. All you're doing is delaying the problem, not solving it. Remember that as far as the atmosphere goes, CO2 isn't harmless - that's the whole point!
People are storing nuclear waste right now. It's unlikely to be a problem - it's easy to shield and easy to bury, and - leading into your next point - it's not a gas at standard temp and pressure like CO2, so isn't going to leach out. Seriously - as a scientist I routinely work with radiation, and, handled properly, it's nothing to be frightened about. Nuclear power != atomic bombs; please don't associate dangers of one with the dangers of the other.
Why is CO2 sequestration a bad idea? Hmmm
And money magically appearing? Not really, just restructuring a country's spending priorities.
I can't say I'm too concerned about having to store a few cubic metres of Uranium a year - it's not really that difficult and it's certainly not risky.
As for the ability to harness nuclear/renewable energy sources on a large scale, take a look at France's energy production: 80% from nuclear power, 16% from hydro, and the rest from other renewable sources. It can be done - we're just too scared to do it (well, that and the fact that the coal industry is a very powerful lobby group - which explains why governments are pouring vast amounts of research money into one of the most stupid ideas every dreamt up: underground CO2 sequestration)
That said, I'll happily support reducing emissions by reducing waste and increasing efficiency too! The thing that worries me is that most people seem to think that if they deny that there's a problem long enough, it'll magically go away.
Re. nuclear power: You can't make nuclear weapons from reactor fuel, and the amount of waste is actually very little. Sure, it weighs a lot, which is why anti-nuclear campaigners always quote mass, not volume. Think about the density of Uranium, and you'll realise why. As for its toxic nature, well, after a few hundred years it's no more toxic than natural deposits of Uranium. You do realise that there's radioactivity floating around everywhere, don't you? Our Earth's Uranium deposits are quite happily decaying even as we speak - we might as well make use of that process!
Ah, why do I even bother? It won't cause problems in my lifetime - I might just get to enjoy some mild winters in my old age and get to go swimming a bit more in the summer. Hopefully you don't want kids either, is all I can say. This whole thing sickens me.