Tad parinoid aren't we? Just because I think it is manslaughter/murder to kill a fleeing theif does not mean I am giving aid and comfort to theives. There are other ways to live and still keep law and order, hiding behind a gun beacuse of an irrational fear is statistically the most dangerous for your family and the general public at large.
I don't for a second think I can change your mind but here in Australia self defense is not a valid reason for having a weapon of any description, hand guns are rare and carry strict licensing conditions, semi-auto's banned, serious hunters and target shooters are well catered for. Violent home invasions do occur but are also rare enough to be national front page news, even in the roughest of suburbs the doors have not been kicked down, in fact in many places they are not even locked!
But the real proof that thieves don't run amok in a society with such alien gun laws is the price of insurance. I pay ~$250AU for house + contents insurance that I have never used in the 25yrs I have had it. How much do you pay, and what will your attitude cost you if you shoot someone fleeing with your $50 DVD player?
Why yes, I have donated to ammnesty's campaing against the samll arms trade and yes you have the right to support the small arms trade through membership of the NRA.
Pay attention to the sig, there are many forms of cages, fear is the darkest.
"Oh, the poor guy was so stupid that he managed not to find anything to steal and so was running away already... so let's just let him go?"
If he was running away how can the F&S possibly claim self defense? Running away is not "threatening" behaviour, it sounds very much like F&S were motivated by revenge and are therefore guilty of murder or at least manslaughter.
Even though my partner admires Richard Dawkins work, she belives in a benevolent God and claims that angels spoke to her when she feel asleep at the wheel. The important thing to remeber is that we are all trying to answer the same existential questions.
"The thing defined as "wrench" has some properties, that I can measure with my eyes and my brain. There is no leap of faith."
You have a strong faith that your eyes and brain are functioning "normally", and I'm not arguing otherwise.
"I don't understand the correlation you seem to be trying to refute."
I am just pointing out that the only thing you can prove is that you exist (I think therfore..), however you can only prove it to yourself. Science does not offer absolute answers but by definition it is the most rational "world view".
"I can measure it." - Accurately? On a quantum or continuous scale? Three body problem solved?
"fields such as religion are based on the faith that "there is a correct answer, and it is X""
No, religion is based on the faith God(s) exist, what you describe is dogma.
"The faith required to believe in mathematics is far more limited than the faith required, for example, to believe in God."
Faith is binary, you either belive X without evidence or you don't. Granted in the present day western world it is much easier to belive a biology text than it is to belive a religious text.
Bingo and well said! Everyone should be able to justify to themselves why they belive what they do, but anyone who follows the recursive assumptions long enough winds up at a logical wall where they have no other option than to say "I belive X without any proof". My own perceptions are all I have to go on, I simply don't percive the need for a God to complicate the question.
I think working out that at some stage everyone must have blind faith in something is a kind of relief, the same feeling of relief can be found through religion but to me "finding God" is the spiritual equivalent of a "get rich quick" scheme.
The faith that what you hold is actually a spanner, the faith that gravity will keep working after you drop it, the faith that apples and tables exist, the faith that mathematics is a consistent system of axioms (probably not, re: Godel). In short, faith in a single predictable reality common to all.
I don't (dis)belive in God, and religion is simply social dogma in disguise. I cannot "prove" God does(n't) exist and nor can you. The same goes for any form of "reality", you cannot even prove to me that you exist outside my thought processes, it is an assumption (ie: faith). BTW: Can you point me to a scientific hypothesis that is not based on an assumption.
Both science and religion are based on faith, religion uses it to control civilizations, science uses it to satify our curiosity, wisdom can come from either. What is common to many followers of either "creed" is arrogance and an overwhelming feeling of awe at the universe that surrounds us.
"So, Philosophy tries to take reality and break it down into its individual elements."
What you describe is a single philoshpy known as reductionisim. Scientific reductionisim is why you find science and philosophy so similar. The basic difference is religion looks for God, philosopy looks for truth and science looks for proof, everything else is an art.
"The 'skills' you learn as part of philosophy, however, are related to developing internally consistent complex logical 'systems' (for lack of a better word) by carefully designing/choosing a few axioms."
Godel put a stop to that nonsense along time ago.:)
"...the CS world I think is too big to study generically"
I disagree, but I do acknowledge you illustrated your point by "mixing and matching" a theory with it's different implementations.
The distinction you draw between philosphy and mathematics can be summed up as "truth is a stronger notion than proof" (re:Godel). But it is usefull to keep in the back of your mind that everything we do, even in mathematics, is based on faith.
"Just as we cannot see our faces with our own eyes, is it not inconceivable to expect that we cannot mirror our complete mental structures in the symbols which carry them out? All the limitative theorems of mathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally."
Personally I belive mathematics is so stunningly successfull because the mind is a mathematical artifact that emerges from the rythmic interactions inside our brain and nervous system. ( It also explains why humans have a universal love of music. ) But no matter how firmly my "internal dialoge" tells me that death will bring nothingness, my mind still considers itself seperate from my body and belives it is imune to the second law of thermodynamics. My mind long ago dismissed the idea of a God that "just is" as logically redundant, I prefer the notion that I "just am" because I emerged from a universe that "just is".
As for TFA: If someone can't find deep philosophical questions in computer science, they either have no "soul" or they don't understand it.
When I did my BSc in computer science as a 30yr old in the late 80's, there was hardly a mention of philosophy. The AI component completely ignored the basic questions of what is "consiousness" and "intelligence", just as the physics component avoided the metaphysical aspects of quantum theory.
OTOH: They did teach us the names behind the concepts and made attempts to give historical context to people like Ada Lovelace.( The "Pacal" language is also a tribute to a mathematician). Philosopical "clues" are scattered everywhere in the IT world, an educated person should have no problems following them, iff they are interested! And isn't that what a degree is all about: To give the student a "body of knowlage" in the form of facts and concepts so they can go on to ponder or research their own questions, even in "unrelated" displinces like science and philosophy?
That sounds like a plausible explanation for the whole thing, the chances of someone writing a "killer app" for a dinky MS competion are practically nil. MS may be "evil" but they are not stupid.
"How about they share the source...publish an SDK...not trying to patent...opening up the specs...giving us the source...stop crippling your.."
Nothing wrong with asking MS for free stuff (except maybe the social embarrasment of begging), but why the howls when you think they are doing the same thing to you?
"Yeah, make us..."
Perhaps you have the MS brain chip implant, but speaking for myself: MS cannot make me do anything. By the same logic I cannot make MS do anything they don't want to do.
"an energy storage medium instead of an energy source"
Crude oil stores energy from the sun, so fucking what? The only true "energy sources" I can think of are fussion, fission and tidal, none of them seem suitable for a mazda.
"And it better be recharging."
..or else what?
"how many times can it be recharged before it becomes a tank of worthless glass?"
Considering the holes are made to only let hydrogen pass through, then I would say untill the balls wall wears out or breaks. Filtering broken balls with a mechanical sieve should be fairly straight forward.
"fearmongering about the explosive danger of hydrogen"
Hydrogen has a lot to do with why petrol is flamable, look up redox reaction. Hydrogen gas is far more explosive than crude oil and will leak straight through the walls of most pipes and containers. The difficulty and danger in handling IS the major drawback, collecting glass balls is childs play in comparison to storing/transporting hydrogen under pressure.
"Just another article that adds weight to my feeling that hydrogen is a con"
People often feel that way when they don't understand the basics.
BTW: The Hindenburg was not a ballon, the hydrogen was not under pressure, it was simply pumped into the cavity until the ship floated. The explosion was anologous to leaving the gas turned on until your house inevitably explodes.
My point has nothing to do with how "good" or "bad" coffee is for the human body. I (and many others) are just asking you to keep YOUR morals out of OUR bodies, ok!
BTW: Why do you give a shit if drugs "stifle productivity", last time I checked employers have the right to sack workers who turn up drunk or stoned.
Amature astronomers often contribute to science but are not always interested in the formalities of academia, just the fact that a technique _seems_ to work is enough for post grads to take notice and give it a try. The two groups have a long history of complementing each other.
Most "amatures" seem to use the technology to "smell the roses", making images that rival the hubble in beauty. There is nothing really scientific about the images themselves, but then again the "blue marble" wasn't really all that scientific either.
"What's going on at the moment is a determined push (pusch?) to centralise our patient data so that it is no longer in the hands of individual practices."
That is exactly what the "cancelled" project was aiming to do, except it was opaque to govt. busybodies, thus the busybodies demanded key escrow, didn't get it, and subsequently "scrapped" the idea.
I'm getting the impression that what I remember as a "victory" for privacy was just one more forgotten skirmish in a long running battle.
BTW: The problem is not liberals, conservatives or even rastafarians. It is individuals with the self-righteous idea that political power exists to forcefully impose one set of "correct" morals that will allegedly make the world "a better place" (even if they have to execute those who do not comply). eg: Taliban and kite flying, war on social problem X, war on resource rich country Y, coporate welfare,....
Oh what the hell, pass the bong and lock up those trouble-making fucks who call themselves "coffee drinkers".
A quick google and it would appear that perhaps an individual project was canceled, I have no idea where I read it in the first place (probably BBC or Gaurdian).
It seems the UK govt have been trying to introduce a key escrow scheme since at least 1996. Here is an article about proposed snooping laws in 1999, it doesn't specifically mention NHS but it would apply to all govt. departments if you consider the quote...
"These ministerial powers could compel key escrow as a condition for approval as a "Registered Cryptography Service Provider," said Caspar Bowden, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research.".
I'm not sure what the laws say right now, back in the 80's the US, UK and Australian governments classified encryption algorithims as armaments (weapons), exporting encryption technology was very tightly controlled by all three countries.
There was also a NHS patient database project in the UK that was cancelled in the 90's, due mainly to doctors refusing the governments key escrow demands.
Governments have always wanted to "know everything", I doubt if it will ever change.
Before we can have "algorithmic control over the mixture and separation of proteins", we need a way to indetify the protiens and tie it to the switching mechanisim. In TFA the researchers used coloured protiens and appear to have switched each "junction" manually. Having said that, it's a neat trick!
OTOH: Early model computers used manually operated telephone switches.
"The older tribal/feaudal systems tended to ritualize their combat reducing it's impact on those involved because of practical reasons."
I was talking about pre-historic societies of which very little remains except maybe in parts of SE Asia or the amazom. A much larger percentage of stone age skulls have fractures than do more recent societies (such as the romans, myans, ect). I agree that in the middle-ages war had become somewhat ritualized and nobles were captured for ransom more often than killed in battle, but the peasants who fought for their king were seen as much more expendable than a modern day western draftee. If you want a modern day comparison the warlords in the central asian "***stan" countries are somewhat similar to the feaudal system of middle-ages Europe. The "cannibals" in the papuan highlands are probably the last of the stone age societies.
"Most wars of antiquity have been fought by full time soldiers."
No, they were organised by full timers such as royal gaurds or mecenary generals, although there are some noteable exceptions such as the Mongols and to a lesser degree the Romans. It's true it took more labourers to work the fields to provide for a full-time warrior class. To compensate wars were usually scheduled to avoid planting and harvest times (raiding villagers during harvest is a strategy still used in modern day Africa).
I do agree that the reason most modern armies became full time is as you state (ie: technology advanced to a state where we can now easily afford them). Wether they are an effective answer to the "part-timers" in places like Iraq and Sudan is another question alltogether. The real bite in the tail is that a modern military machine runs on oil, loose access to oil and you become an international "nobody".
"World war I and II were by far the most destructive human engineered events since the romane of the three kindoms in china."
Sampling the number of victims during a particular war can only be used to compare one war against another war, and there is no doubt modern weapons and effective communications can wipe people out at an unprecedented rate. However, I am talking about the percentage of the entire population, ie: an individuals overall chance of being killed by their own species, be it stoned to death, electric chair or an enemy warrior.
The "wars to end all wars" didn't work, but combined they killed less than 10% of the global population (a low figure by neolithic standards, 10-35%, and anthropologists are only counting deaths by caved in skulls ). Nobody really won WW2, the security council is a mexican stand-off due to the nature of our weapons so wars have become more and more restrained (or fought via lesser proxy tribes, eg: vietnam, korea). We do have vastly more destructive power today, but if we had not restrained ourselves with the cold war we would have destroyed civilization during the 50's and 60's. Capitalisim in it's present "costless ecology" form is distracting us from the impending "twin harvest problems" and hampering any form of restraint being placed on tribal proxies (currently China has Sudan and everyone is pushing to get control of Iran, Nigeria and the caspian sea area ). There are signs the S.Americans are turning against this "protection racket" and are succesfully standing up for themselves, it's yet to be seen how the US will cope with a cocca chewing, "new-socialist" S. America controlling a healthy portion of the planets remaing oil and gas.
It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Eg: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter", in your case I think/hope it pretty much means the same thing as "rooting for the terrorists".
It doesn't matter if your child was killed by a motar rocket, a hijacked jet, napalm, a zionist sniper in uniform, an islamist bomb in a black burrka, a machette weilding tribesman, a left over landmine...: they all produce the same (seemingly) non-sensical result.
Government's (formal tribes) do reduce the percentage of dead and disabled when compared to pre-historic tribal anarchy. But this is just because there are fewer tribes to fight with each other, the fundemental "tribal instinct" is still the driving force. The big tribes are so large now, (and the weapons so sophisticated), that they cannot go to war and "win" without destroying themselves in the process. So they temper their public tribal agression and "agree to disagree" at a club they call "the security council", meanwhile they continue to arm smaller proxy tribes and incite them to attack each other. Regardless of intesity, THIS IS 1984.
In the end every society is ruled by force and is just "three meals" away from anarchy, I don't belive we have the power to change the social instincts of our own species, and if we did it would probably be banned! However, I belong to a generation of middle-aged men who have not (directly) participated in war and never had to worry about my children or myself being drafted. During my lifetime we have, "ducked and covered", "touched the stars", "seen the blue marble" and started a global conversation amoungst ourselves called "the internet". We have also become aware that our species faces two intractable and immediate problems, "peak oil" and "the sixth great extinction".
The scientific "elephant in the room" is that humanity is headed for a sharp "population correction" during this century, either self-imposed or starvation/war driven. I hope my grandchildren can avoid the permenant destruction of a global "Easter Is" senario and continue to evolve toward a self-regulating peacefull population where rules are few and force is minimal. Maintaining the right to "root for the terrorists" on the internet can only help speed the welcome of our new meek overlords.
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Tad parinoid aren't we? Just because I think it is manslaughter/murder to kill a fleeing theif does not mean I am giving aid and comfort to theives. There are other ways to live and still keep law and order, hiding behind a gun beacuse of an irrational fear is statistically the most dangerous for your family and the general public at large.
I don't for a second think I can change your mind but here in Australia self defense is not a valid reason for having a weapon of any description, hand guns are rare and carry strict licensing conditions, semi-auto's banned, serious hunters and target shooters are well catered for. Violent home invasions do occur but are also rare enough to be national front page news, even in the roughest of suburbs the doors have not been kicked down, in fact in many places they are not even locked!
But the real proof that thieves don't run amok in a society with such alien gun laws is the price of insurance. I pay ~$250AU for house + contents insurance that I have never used in the 25yrs I have had it. How much do you pay, and what will your attitude cost you if you shoot someone fleeing with your $50 DVD player?
Why yes, I have donated to ammnesty's campaing against the samll arms trade and yes you have the right to support the small arms trade through membership of the NRA.
Pay attention to the sig, there are many forms of cages, fear is the darkest.
"Oh, the poor guy was so stupid that he managed not to find anything to steal and so was running away already... so let's just let him go?"
If he was running away how can the F&S possibly claim self defense? Running away is not "threatening" behaviour, it sounds very much like F&S were motivated by revenge and are therefore guilty of murder or at least manslaughter.
Even though my partner admires Richard Dawkins work, she belives in a benevolent God and claims that angels spoke to her when she feel asleep at the wheel. The important thing to remeber is that we are all trying to answer the same existential questions.
"The thing defined as "wrench" has some properties, that I can measure with my eyes and my brain. There is no leap of faith."
You have a strong faith that your eyes and brain are functioning "normally", and I'm not arguing otherwise.
"I don't understand the correlation you seem to be trying to refute."
I am just pointing out that the only thing you can prove is that you exist (I think therfore..), however you can only prove it to yourself. Science does not offer absolute answers but by definition it is the most rational "world view".
"I can measure it." - Accurately? On a quantum or continuous scale? Three body problem solved?
Ouch, corrected by an AC. What is worse is the AC is right.
"fields such as religion are based on the faith that "there is a correct answer, and it is X""
No, religion is based on the faith God(s) exist, what you describe is dogma.
"The faith required to believe in mathematics is far more limited than the faith required, for example, to believe in God."
Faith is binary, you either belive X without evidence or you don't. Granted in the present day western world it is much easier to belive a biology text than it is to belive a religious text.
Bingo and well said! Everyone should be able to justify to themselves why they belive what they do, but anyone who follows the recursive assumptions long enough winds up at a logical wall where they have no other option than to say "I belive X without any proof". My own perceptions are all I have to go on, I simply don't percive the need for a God to complicate the question.
I think working out that at some stage everyone must have blind faith in something is a kind of relief, the same feeling of relief can be found through religion but to me "finding God" is the spiritual equivalent of a "get rich quick" scheme.
"What "faith" is required?"
The faith that what you hold is actually a spanner, the faith that gravity will keep working after you drop it, the faith that apples and tables exist, the faith that mathematics is a consistent system of axioms (probably not, re: Godel). In short, faith in a single predictable reality common to all.
I don't (dis)belive in God, and religion is simply social dogma in disguise. I cannot "prove" God does(n't) exist and nor can you. The same goes for any form of "reality", you cannot even prove to me that you exist outside my thought processes, it is an assumption (ie: faith). BTW: Can you point me to a scientific hypothesis that is not based on an assumption.
Both science and religion are based on faith, religion uses it to control civilizations, science uses it to satify our curiosity, wisdom can come from either. What is common to many followers of either "creed" is arrogance and an overwhelming feeling of awe at the universe that surrounds us.
"So, Philosophy tries to take reality and break it down into its individual elements."
What you describe is a single philoshpy known as reductionisim. Scientific reductionisim is why you find science and philosophy so similar. The basic difference is religion looks for God, philosopy looks for truth and science looks for proof, everything else is an art.
"The 'skills' you learn as part of philosophy, however, are related to developing internally consistent complex logical 'systems' (for lack of a better word) by carefully designing/choosing a few axioms."
:)
Godel put a stop to that nonsense along time ago.
"...the CS world I think is too big to study generically" I disagree, but I do acknowledge you illustrated your point by "mixing and matching" a theory with it's different implementations.
The distinction you draw between philosphy and mathematics can be summed up as "truth is a stronger notion than proof" (re:Godel). But it is usefull to keep in the back of your mind that everything we do, even in mathematics, is based on faith.
Turing was an heroic genius betrayed by society. He stood on the shoulders of another underrated genius of the 20th century, Godel
I like this quote from Hofstadter, talking about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem
"Just as we cannot see our faces with our own eyes, is it not inconceivable to expect that we cannot mirror our complete mental structures in the symbols which carry them out? All the limitative theorems of mathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally."
Personally I belive mathematics is so stunningly successfull because the mind is a mathematical artifact that emerges from the rythmic interactions inside our brain and nervous system. ( It also explains why humans have a universal love of music. ) But no matter how firmly my "internal dialoge" tells me that death will bring nothingness, my mind still considers itself seperate from my body and belives it is imune to the second law of thermodynamics. My mind long ago dismissed the idea of a God that "just is" as logically redundant, I prefer the notion that I "just am" because I emerged from a universe that "just is".
As for TFA: If someone can't find deep philosophical questions in computer science, they either have no "soul" or they don't understand it.
When I did my BSc in computer science as a 30yr old in the late 80's, there was hardly a mention of philosophy. The AI component completely ignored the basic questions of what is "consiousness" and "intelligence", just as the physics component avoided the metaphysical aspects of quantum theory.
OTOH: They did teach us the names behind the concepts and made attempts to give historical context to people like Ada Lovelace.( The "Pacal" language is also a tribute to a mathematician). Philosopical "clues" are scattered everywhere in the IT world, an educated person should have no problems following them, iff they are interested! And isn't that what a degree is all about: To give the student a "body of knowlage" in the form of facts and concepts so they can go on to ponder or research their own questions, even in "unrelated" displinces like science and philosophy?
That sounds like a plausible explanation for the whole thing, the chances of someone writing a "killer app" for a dinky MS competion are practically nil. MS may be "evil" but they are not stupid.
"How about they share the source...publish an SDK...not trying to patent...opening up the specs...giving us the source...stop crippling your.."
Nothing wrong with asking MS for free stuff (except maybe the social embarrasment of begging), but why the howls when you think they are doing the same thing to you?
"Yeah, make us..."
Perhaps you have the MS brain chip implant, but speaking for myself: MS cannot make me do anything. By the same logic I cannot make MS do anything they don't want to do.
Insightfull- sheesh!
..or else what?
"an energy storage medium instead of an energy source"
Crude oil stores energy from the sun, so fucking what? The only true "energy sources" I can think of are fussion, fission and tidal, none of them seem suitable for a mazda.
"And it better be recharging."
"how many times can it be recharged before it becomes a tank of worthless glass?"
Considering the holes are made to only let hydrogen pass through, then I would say untill the balls wall wears out or breaks. Filtering broken balls with a mechanical sieve should be fairly straight forward.
"fearmongering about the explosive danger of hydrogen"
Hydrogen has a lot to do with why petrol is flamable, look up redox reaction. Hydrogen gas is far more explosive than crude oil and will leak straight through the walls of most pipes and containers. The difficulty and danger in handling IS the major drawback, collecting glass balls is childs play in comparison to storing/transporting hydrogen under pressure.
"Just another article that adds weight to my feeling that hydrogen is a con"
People often feel that way when they don't understand the basics.
BTW: The Hindenburg was not a ballon, the hydrogen was not under pressure, it was simply pumped into the cavity until the ship floated. The explosion was anologous to leaving the gas turned on until your house inevitably explodes.
My point has nothing to do with how "good" or "bad" coffee is for the human body. I (and many others) are just asking you to keep YOUR morals out of OUR bodies, ok!
BTW: Why do you give a shit if drugs "stifle productivity", last time I checked employers have the right to sack workers who turn up drunk or stoned.
Amature astronomers often contribute to science but are not always interested in the formalities of academia, just the fact that a technique _seems_ to work is enough for post grads to take notice and give it a try. The two groups have a long history of complementing each other.
Most "amatures" seem to use the technology to "smell the roses", making images that rival the hubble in beauty. There is nothing really scientific about the images themselves, but then again the "blue marble" wasn't really all that scientific either.
"What's going on at the moment is a determined push (pusch?) to centralise our patient data so that it is no longer in the hands of individual practices."
That is exactly what the "cancelled" project was aiming to do, except it was opaque to govt. busybodies, thus the busybodies demanded key escrow, didn't get it, and subsequently "scrapped" the idea.
I'm getting the impression that what I remember as a "victory" for privacy was just one more forgotten skirmish in a long running battle.
War on drugs: Be carefull what you wish for CaffineAddict2001! The evil coffee bean has been banned more than once.
BTW: The problem is not liberals, conservatives or even rastafarians. It is individuals with the self-righteous idea that political power exists to forcefully impose one set of "correct" morals that will allegedly make the world "a better place" (even if they have to execute those who do not comply). eg: Taliban and kite flying, war on social problem X, war on resource rich country Y, coporate welfare,....
Oh what the hell, pass the bong and lock up those trouble-making fucks who call themselves "coffee drinkers".
A quick google and it would appear that perhaps an individual project was canceled, I have no idea where I read it in the first place (probably BBC or Gaurdian).
It seems the UK govt have been trying to introduce a key escrow scheme since at least 1996. Here is an article about proposed snooping laws in 1999, it doesn't specifically mention NHS but it would apply to all govt. departments if you consider the quote...
"These ministerial powers could compel key escrow as a condition for approval as a "Registered Cryptography Service Provider," said Caspar Bowden, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research.".
I'm not sure what the laws say right now, back in the 80's the US, UK and Australian governments classified encryption algorithims as armaments (weapons), exporting encryption technology was very tightly controlled by all three countries.
There was also a NHS patient database project in the UK that was cancelled in the 90's, due mainly to doctors refusing the governments key escrow demands.
Governments have always wanted to "know everything", I doubt if it will ever change.
Before we can have "algorithmic control over the mixture and separation of proteins", we need a way to indetify the protiens and tie it to the switching mechanisim. In TFA the researchers used coloured protiens and appear to have switched each "junction" manually. Having said that, it's a neat trick!
OTOH: Early model computers used manually operated telephone switches.
"The older tribal/feaudal systems tended to ritualize their combat reducing it's impact on those involved because of practical reasons."
I was talking about pre-historic societies of which very little remains except maybe in parts of SE Asia or the amazom. A much larger percentage of stone age skulls have fractures than do more recent societies (such as the romans, myans, ect). I agree that in the middle-ages war had become somewhat ritualized and nobles were captured for ransom more often than killed in battle, but the peasants who fought for their king were seen as much more expendable than a modern day western draftee. If you want a modern day comparison the warlords in the central asian "***stan" countries are somewhat similar to the feaudal system of middle-ages Europe. The "cannibals" in the papuan highlands are probably the last of the stone age societies.
"Most wars of antiquity have been fought by full time soldiers."
No, they were organised by full timers such as royal gaurds or mecenary generals, although there are some noteable exceptions such as the Mongols and to a lesser degree the Romans. It's true it took more labourers to work the fields to provide for a full-time warrior class. To compensate wars were usually scheduled to avoid planting and harvest times (raiding villagers during harvest is a strategy still used in modern day Africa).
I do agree that the reason most modern armies became full time is as you state (ie: technology advanced to a state where we can now easily afford them). Wether they are an effective answer to the "part-timers" in places like Iraq and Sudan is another question alltogether. The real bite in the tail is that a modern military machine runs on oil, loose access to oil and you become an international "nobody".
"World war I and II were by far the most destructive human engineered events since the romane of the three kindoms in china."
Sampling the number of victims during a particular war can only be used to compare one war against another war, and there is no doubt modern weapons and effective communications can wipe people out at an unprecedented rate. However, I am talking about the percentage of the entire population, ie: an individuals overall chance of being killed by their own species, be it stoned to death, electric chair or an enemy warrior.
The "wars to end all wars" didn't work, but combined they killed less than 10% of the global population (a low figure by neolithic standards, 10-35%, and anthropologists are only counting deaths by caved in skulls ). Nobody really won WW2, the security council is a mexican stand-off due to the nature of our weapons so wars have become more and more restrained (or fought via lesser proxy tribes, eg: vietnam, korea). We do have vastly more destructive power today, but if we had not restrained ourselves with the cold war we would have destroyed civilization during the 50's and 60's. Capitalisim in it's present "costless ecology" form is distracting us from the impending "twin harvest problems" and hampering any form of restraint being placed on tribal proxies (currently China has Sudan and everyone is pushing to get control of Iran, Nigeria and the caspian sea area ). There are signs the S.Americans are turning against this "protection racket" and are succesfully standing up for themselves, it's yet to be seen how the US will cope with a cocca chewing, "new-socialist" S. America controlling a healthy portion of the planets remaing oil and gas.
"Maybe it's just the 15-year-olds."
It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Eg: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter", in your case I think/hope it pretty much means the same thing as "rooting for the terrorists".
It doesn't matter if your child was killed by a motar rocket, a hijacked jet, napalm, a zionist sniper in uniform, an islamist bomb in a black burrka, a machette weilding tribesman, a left over landmine...: they all produce the same (seemingly) non-sensical result.
Government's (formal tribes) do reduce the percentage of dead and disabled when compared to pre-historic tribal anarchy. But this is just because there are fewer tribes to fight with each other, the fundemental "tribal instinct" is still the driving force. The big tribes are so large now, (and the weapons so sophisticated), that they cannot go to war and "win" without destroying themselves in the process. So they temper their public tribal agression and "agree to disagree" at a club they call "the security council", meanwhile they continue to arm smaller proxy tribes and incite them to attack each other. Regardless of intesity, THIS IS 1984.
In the end every society is ruled by force and is just "three meals" away from anarchy, I don't belive we have the power to change the social instincts of our own species, and if we did it would probably be banned! However, I belong to a generation of middle-aged men who have not (directly) participated in war and never had to worry about my children or myself being drafted. During my lifetime we have, "ducked and covered", "touched the stars", "seen the blue marble" and started a global conversation amoungst ourselves called "the internet". We have also become aware that our species faces two intractable and immediate problems, "peak oil" and "the sixth great extinction".
The scientific "elephant in the room" is that humanity is headed for a sharp "population correction" during this century, either self-imposed or starvation/war driven. I hope my grandchildren can avoid the permenant destruction of a global "Easter Is" senario and continue to evolve toward a self-regulating peacefull population where rules are few and force is minimal. Maintaining the right to "root for the terrorists" on the internet can only help speed the welcome of our new meek overlords.