I always wondered... what the hell was Guinan doing on a Ship of War? Why would a Ship of War have a bartender? From all I could see in that episode, Guinan was the ONLY civilian? I think that was the only weak point in the plot...
What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous?
I think the danger was noted and that ships were instructed to fly at Warp 9 only when necessary. Also, I think Voyager and Enterprise-E had "fabric of space-time friendly" warp engines. Newer designs took out the danger...
But yeah, your other points stand... what happened to Metaphasic shielding. Many times when they went "OMFG WTF!! WE R TEH DOOM3d!! WE R falling into teh sun!111!", I thought "Damnit, just use those damn metaphasic shields".
You make an excellent point. They come up with some amazing new techonologies but then they seem to forget about them in the next episode.
Kartes went on to attack the company's critics. Doesn't this all boil down to open-source people thinking they have the right to break laws by violating patent rights, but when developers use legal code, open-source people think they have the right to make their own laws. I've never quite understood this concept of open source and exactly where it came from," he said.
The problem is that a lot of the "IE Only" apps also use a lot of IE Only css stuff, IE Only DOM, and IE Only extensions (like filters). So changing the User Agent string would let you in, but the site or app may not work the way you want it to.
I had the same problem with an older version of my website. It very IE specific (DOM, CSS, Filters...) and even if you could fool the site, nothing would show up on Mozilla or Firefox.
I guess for Berman, Enterprise was his "baby". And what a terrible, terrible, ugly monster it was in the beginning. He was slowly moving away from Star Trek into "Star Trek, the Berman Way". DS9, was lukewarm until Piller got hold of it, and Berman turned his attention to Voyager. And Voyager has some REALLY terrible episodes that fuck with the canon. Remember "Transwarp"? OMG LOL!11!! Warp 10 si teh rox0rz!11!! I mean... WHAT THE FUCK?!
Things wrong with Enterprise:
a) Theme song. Ok, I know some of you like it. But the VERY first time I saw it, my initial gut reaction was "eww... why not an instrumental theme like the other Trek series"?
b) Deliberate pandering to the young "omg i wanna screw teh hot chick in star trek lolololol" demographic. Jolene Blalock was used as a vulcan sex symbol instead of just a vulcan. Hell, if they were doing that, they could have shown more of Hoshi too... I thought she was way more sexy (as was evident in the mirror universe episodes). But anyway, this was stupid.
c) Cheesy, stupid jokes and terrible lines. I remember one episode (can't remember) where Archer is so tired that he says something about T'Pol's "boobs". Yeah that's right... "hahahaha he said boobs! hahahahaha!". PLEASE GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!
d) Temporal cold war. 'Nuff said.
e) The show turned into an action series. That's it. Trek was never meant to be JUST an action series. I mean, hell. I love the cool space ship battle scene as much as the next fan, but come on... just action? And then there's the moral clichees. That was tried in TOS, perfected in TNG (and then it got old). There were still things they could do in Enterprise as far as moral stuff goes. They did that in certain areas (like a nascent form of the Prime directive).
Things right with enterprise:
a) Almost anything post Manny Coto.
The show had a LOT of potential. Instead of concentrating on a stupid arc like the Temporal Cold war, the entire series, or at least, most of it should have been about the formation of the federation. Seasons 3 and 4, IMHO were really good. I got turned off after the first few episodes, and I only watched seasons 1 and 2 after I saw a few episodes of season 3. Season 1 should have shown some normal episodes with the crew exploring the galaxy, season 2 should have been the Xindi attack and humanity realizing "you know what, the galaxy is a fucking terrible place! We need strength in numbers!" and season 3 starting an arc about the formation of the federation.
I am sad to see Enterprise go in a way, because I kinda got into it during Season 3. Season 4 seems so hurried and I can see how much potential it has - especially with Coto at the helm.
We need to get Dumb and Dumber out of the captain's chair. They only ruin Trek./rant off.
The reviews have all been positive so far, and the consensus appears to be that this is the best film of the prequels and it should satisfy fans who were unhappy with the first two
Oh boy! Oh boy! Does this mean we get to see Jar-Jar Binks die in a horrible way? Will he be killed by Anakin? Personally, it would make my day if I heard Jar Jar say something like this:
Ah but they will jump and scream and shout until they are red in the face and talk about how evolution is wrong because something can't come from nothing. Therefore, God must have created the universe... it's perfectly ok for him to create something out of nothing. Their attempts at using logic make me laugh because their position is inherently illogical and therefore even hyppocritical. They talk about the supposed "lack of logic" in evolution, but ignore the illogical basis of their own position.
Good point. But it's only the certain christian groups in the United States and certain muslim groups in Turkey that form the bulk of the creationist movement.
The movement is strongest only in these two countries. Check out Harun Yahya's website and for a more balanced view, check him out in wikipedia. His real name is Adnan Oktar, and the man writes a lot of books trashing evolution and other religions as well. He claims to have written all his books, but I doubt it.
One the stupidest arguments I've heard against creationism is that "Hitler used natural selection and darwinism to justify the holocaust, therefore anyone who believes in Evolution is a Nazi" or something stupid to that effect. Evolution is not a moral doctrine and doesn't profess to be so. Anyone who tries to make it so, is boneheaded. People have done some awful things in the name of Christianity. So is it ok to go ahead and label all Christians as Bad People?
Also, creationists always talk about these wonderful books that they have that disprove evolution. Right. That's because Creationists write books for creationists. None of these books will ever pass a scientific peer review, because they're all trash.
I consider myself a somewhat religious person, and I do believe in God. But I also believe that religion has NO PLACE in the school system. We need to come down on morons who try to force religion and that too THEIR religion down the throats of others, and who also have the gall to proclaim it as science.
Hey, I have no problem with people having faith in their religion, or believing things according to faith. But that's all it is - faith.
If you want to teach creationism, do it in religious studies class, not science. Creationism or whatever euphemism you want to use (Intelligent Design) has no scientific basis at all. So by all means, if you want to teach it go ahead, but please don't do it in a science class. If you are willing to consider it as science, then I propose we should teach creation myths of every single culture in science class. I mean seriously... in this day and age it surprises me that people try to push creationism as a science.
Anyway, here is a good site that includes rebuttals to a lot of creationist arguments:
Just wanted to add one more thing. Intel definitely does need to change their approach and they are starting to... They are going to a more platform-based approach.
Seems like this guy doesn't like Intel very much. I mean, from such non-biased gems like:
If I am not mistaken, Intel was the first to tout the great advantages of dual-core technology and how this would literally change our computing lives. Well, I believe that if you are going to start promoting dual-core when it's still in the engineering state, you might as well engineer something worthwhile...
I am aware that Intel might not have to worry all that much due to their monopolistic relationships with thundering OEMs like Dell, HP and Sony, but that still doesn't justify their continuity to produce unimpressive products...
But anyway, what is his point? Let's look at one of his premises:
So, we all know Intel's recent history with its desktop processors. They were sub-par, to say the least. The Prescott chips were plagued with thermal issues, performance lags due to the use of 31 stage pipelines, high prices and the fact that they couldn't come anywhere close to what AMD had to offer. Yes, they excelled in video and audio encoding applications, but Intel P4 architecture has always been known to do well in such applications, so this was no surprise.
and
AMD, on the other hand, had quite an advantage over Intel in gaming benchmarks and other applications where Athlon 64 chips have led the charts with significantly higher numbers.
Ok, so? Intel is good at video encoding, and AMD is good at games. He sounds more like an AMD fanboy than anything else. It would have been helpful if he gave us some numbers and taken a less hostile tone.
I'll be the first to say that yes, Intel has had issues with their chips - especially the thermal issues with Prescott. But Intel is more than just a company that makes processors. He seems to be bashing intel just because of their processors while ignoring their achievements in other areas. For example, their Grantsdale chipset has been doing pretty well.
He doesn't seem to have enough data on his side to make such a dire prediction. It's more like "OMG lol!!11!! AMD si teh rox0rz!!! intel si t3h D00m3d!!11!!"
Now that I've gotten over my "Tempe/ASU Pride", I'll try to make some observations.
I think this is pretty good first of all (like I already stated). More cities should take the cue and follow Tempe. First, I think other cities in AZ should do it to. Preferrably bordering cities like Chandler, Scottsdale and Mesa and even Phoenix Metro.
Chandler should team up with Intel (Intel drives a lot of Chandler's economy) to use WiMAX (something Intel is pushing anyway) around the city. That would be something I'd like to see.
I also like the amount of choice and competition this move is offering. The pricing is really competitive. I like the fact that you get to choose between different providers - it certainly will help fuel good, healthy competition and you won't get stuck with just one person. It will definitely make the companies do their best to provide good service. Just having one wouldn't give any incentive.
This network will also teach some valuable lessons about security. I'm sure there are a bunch of script kiddies at ASU who would love to try all kinds of crap on the network. It would definitely provide a good security stress test for the network.
Just wanted to say Good job. I wish they did it while I was actually living in Tempe and not when I moved out to Chandler after I graduated from ASU. Otherwise I wouldn't have had to leech from my neighbor. Crap... did I just say that out loud? Uh I mean, I was sharing his connection. Yeah.
Season 3 tried to bring in a good story arc (it was good). Season 4 is pretty good, but it's too little, too late.
Seasons 3 and 4 are what seasons 1 and 2 should have been like. That Cold War temporal thing when NO WHERE.
The first seasons didn't have very gripping episodes. You had the same moral dilemmas and tired clichees and the blatant use of T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) as a sex symbol to attract testosterone-pumped young males. This is something she herself didn't like - Blalock wanted T'Pol to have more depth.
But anyway... Enterprise was interesting at first. It was interesting to see starfleet outmatched against pretty much everyone they met and how they dealt with the situation.
It is certainly sad, but I guess they had their chance. Blame the Diabolical Duo Berman and Bragga. They have the negative Midas effect. Anything they touch turns to crap. Which is why the first few seasons of DS9 were also not that great. It didn't get interesting until Michael Piller took it over and Berman turned his attention to Voyager. The actors in Enterprise, I think, did a decent job.
Harvard Student: Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, The RIAA's attorney would certainly want you to believe that I downloaded copyrighted material through the internet2. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself! But ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: Ladies and gentlemen this [pointing to a picture of Chewbacca] is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee--an eight foot tall Wookiee--want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
And so on and so forth...
Phantoms in the Brain
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
If you find material like this interesting, you'll also find Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the mysteries of the Human Mind and The Man who mistook his wife for a hat: And other clinical tales by V. S. Ramachandran and Oliver Sacks. I've read the first one and Amazon is shipping the second one to me. Ramachandran goes into detail about Phantom limbs and phantom pain, vision processing by the brain, and gleans information about the brain by examining patients who have different kinds of neurological disorders. He makes some really amazing and intuitive hypotheses and tries out some amazingly simple, yet brilliant experiments to figure how exactly certain parts of the brain work.
I used to have an account with Namezero. I tried many times to contact them, with no avail. They never answered any of my questions (through their website) or replied to any of my emails. I did a whois lookup on them to get a number and called them on that number. There were no returned called. I eventually just ended up saying "fuck you" to them and went with network solutions. I got them to transfer my stuff over to them because Namezero actually used to be a reseller or something for network solutions and I actually ended up with them because I had no one else to get in touch with. They went ahead and transferred me. A few weeks after the transfer a representative from Namezero contacted me apologizing profusely and saying that I should come back to them and that they would provide better service. In addition to reporting them to the better business bureau, I told them to fuck off. The best thing to do is just go with someone else AND report them.
dont care how "super" the pathogen is, an autoclave will kill it.
I know I'm being pedantic, but autoclaves don't kill everything... they don't "kill" prions. Then again, prions aren't actually bugs. However, I don't think prions hide out in your keyboard... unless you've been eating people's brains raw and the didn't wash your hands before using your keyboard.
When you mentioned creationists, I just had to bring this up. Creationists frequently talk about the Eye being proof of "intelligent design", or the evidence of God's Hand. They actually fail to realize the flaws in the human eye. For example:
Photoreceptors are backward
Images formed upside down
Blind spot, causing deficiencies (although the brain adapts) in vision.
You don't see any of these deficiencies in an octopuses' eye. So God's supposed "crowning creation" has worse vision than the lowly octopus?
However useful sex may be now that we've got it, that doesn't tell us anything about how it got started
Well, I recall reading somewhere that there is an evolutionary basis. In organisms that reproduce asexually, there is a direct copying from the parent to the child. A retrovirus (or some other parasite) could easily include its genetic code into the host, thereby continuing into the next generation. In sexual reproduction, you have two copies that merge, well half of each. This reduces the chance for parasites to hijack the reproduction mechanism, enabling us to stay one step ahead of them.
Slashdot Mirror
I always wondered... what the hell was Guinan doing on a Ship of War? Why would a Ship of War have a bartender? From all I could see in that episode, Guinan was the ONLY civilian? I think that was the only weak point in the plot...
What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous?
I think the danger was noted and that ships were instructed to fly at Warp 9 only when necessary. Also, I think Voyager and Enterprise-E had "fabric of space-time friendly" warp engines. Newer designs took out the danger...
But yeah, your other points stand... what happened to Metaphasic shielding. Many times when they went "OMFG WTF!! WE R TEH DOOM3d!! WE R falling into teh sun!111!", I thought "Damnit, just use those damn metaphasic shields".
You make an excellent point. They come up with some amazing new techonologies but then they seem to forget about them in the next episode.
From the publish.com article:
Kartes went on to attack the company's critics. Doesn't this all boil down to open-source people thinking they have the right to break laws by violating patent rights, but when developers use legal code, open-source people think they have the right to make their own laws. I've never quite understood this concept of open source and exactly where it came from," he said.
Evidently not.
The problem is that a lot of the "IE Only" apps also use a lot of IE Only css stuff, IE Only DOM, and IE Only extensions (like filters). So changing the User Agent string would let you in, but the site or app may not work the way you want it to.
I had the same problem with an older version of my website. It very IE specific (DOM, CSS, Filters...) and even if you could fool the site, nothing would show up on Mozilla or Firefox.
Blargh... what I meant post Berman...!
I guess for Berman, Enterprise was his "baby". And what a terrible, terrible, ugly monster it was in the beginning. He was slowly moving away from Star Trek into "Star Trek, the Berman Way". DS9, was lukewarm until Piller got hold of it, and Berman turned his attention to Voyager. And Voyager has some REALLY terrible episodes that fuck with the canon. Remember "Transwarp"? OMG LOL!11!! Warp 10 si teh rox0rz!11!! I mean... WHAT THE FUCK?!
/rant off.
Things wrong with Enterprise:
a) Theme song. Ok, I know some of you like it. But the VERY first time I saw it, my initial gut reaction was "eww... why not an instrumental theme like the other Trek series"?
b) Deliberate pandering to the young "omg i wanna screw teh hot chick in star trek lolololol" demographic. Jolene Blalock was used as a vulcan sex symbol instead of just a vulcan. Hell, if they were doing that, they could have shown more of Hoshi too... I thought she was way more sexy (as was evident in the mirror universe episodes). But anyway, this was stupid.
c) Cheesy, stupid jokes and terrible lines. I remember one episode (can't remember) where Archer is so tired that he says something about T'Pol's "boobs". Yeah that's right... "hahahaha he said boobs! hahahahaha!". PLEASE GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!
d) Temporal cold war. 'Nuff said.
e) The show turned into an action series. That's it. Trek was never meant to be JUST an action series. I mean, hell. I love the cool space ship battle scene as much as the next fan, but come on... just action? And then there's the moral clichees. That was tried in TOS, perfected in TNG (and then it got old). There were still things they could do in Enterprise as far as moral stuff goes. They did that in certain areas (like a nascent form of the Prime directive).
Things right with enterprise:
a) Almost anything post Manny Coto.
The show had a LOT of potential. Instead of concentrating on a stupid arc like the Temporal Cold war, the entire series, or at least, most of it should have been about the formation of the federation. Seasons 3 and 4, IMHO were really good. I got turned off after the first few episodes, and I only watched seasons 1 and 2 after I saw a few episodes of season 3. Season 1 should have shown some normal episodes with the crew exploring the galaxy, season 2 should have been the Xindi attack and humanity realizing "you know what, the galaxy is a fucking terrible place! We need strength in numbers!" and season 3 starting an arc about the formation of the federation.
I am sad to see Enterprise go in a way, because I kinda got into it during Season 3. Season 4 seems so hurried and I can see how much potential it has - especially with Coto at the helm.
We need to get Dumb and Dumber out of the captain's chair. They only ruin Trek.
I think you mean eight hex digits for a full IP4 address:
Dotted Decimal (normal) - 207.142.131.235
Dotted Hexadecimal - 0xCF.0x8E.0x83.0xEB
Dotted Octal - 0317.0216.0203.0353
Decimal - 3482223595
Hexadecimal - 0xCF8E83EB
The reviews have all been positive so far, and the consensus appears to be that this is the best film of the prequels and it should satisfy fans who were unhappy with the first two
Oh boy! Oh boy! Does this mean we get to see Jar-Jar Binks die in a horrible way? Will he be killed by Anakin? Personally, it would make my day if I heard Jar Jar say something like this:
"Ahhhh!!! Mee-sa skins-a burning! AAHHHH!!!"
Ah but they will jump and scream and shout until they are red in the face and talk about how evolution is wrong because something can't come from nothing. Therefore, God must have created the universe... it's perfectly ok for him to create something out of nothing. Their attempts at using logic make me laugh because their position is inherently illogical and therefore even hyppocritical. They talk about the supposed "lack of logic" in evolution, but ignore the illogical basis of their own position.
Good point. But it's only the certain christian groups in the United States and certain muslim groups in Turkey that form the bulk of the creationist movement.
The movement is strongest only in these two countries. Check out Harun Yahya's website and for a more balanced view, check him out in wikipedia. His real name is Adnan Oktar, and the man writes a lot of books trashing evolution and other religions as well. He claims to have written all his books, but I doubt it.
One the stupidest arguments I've heard against creationism is that "Hitler used natural selection and darwinism to justify the holocaust, therefore anyone who believes in Evolution is a Nazi" or something stupid to that effect. Evolution is not a moral doctrine and doesn't profess to be so. Anyone who tries to make it so, is boneheaded. People have done some awful things in the name of Christianity. So is it ok to go ahead and label all Christians as Bad People?
Also, creationists always talk about these wonderful books that they have that disprove evolution. Right. That's because Creationists write books for creationists. None of these books will ever pass a scientific peer review, because they're all trash.
I consider myself a somewhat religious person, and I do believe in God. But I also believe that religion has NO PLACE in the school system. We need to come down on morons who try to force religion and that too THEIR religion down the throats of others, and who also have the gall to proclaim it as science.
Hey, I have no problem with people having faith in their religion, or believing things according to faith. But that's all it is - faith.
If you want to teach creationism, do it in religious studies class, not science. Creationism or whatever euphemism you want to use (Intelligent Design) has no scientific basis at all. So by all means, if you want to teach it go ahead, but please don't do it in a science class. If you are willing to consider it as science, then I propose we should teach creation myths of every single culture in science class. I mean seriously... in this day and age it surprises me that people try to push creationism as a science.
Anyway, here is a good site that includes rebuttals to a lot of creationist arguments:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cefac.htm
Just wanted to add one more thing. Intel definitely does need to change their approach and they are starting to... They are going to a more platform-based approach.
Seems like this guy doesn't like Intel very much. I mean, from such non-biased gems like:
If I am not mistaken, Intel was the first to tout the great advantages of dual-core technology and how this would literally change our computing lives. Well, I believe that if you are going to start promoting dual-core when it's still in the engineering state, you might as well engineer something worthwhile...
I am aware that Intel might not have to worry all that much due to their monopolistic relationships with thundering OEMs like Dell, HP and Sony, but that still doesn't justify their continuity to produce unimpressive products...
But anyway, what is his point? Let's look at one of his premises:
So, we all know Intel's recent history with its desktop processors. They were sub-par, to say the least. The Prescott chips were plagued with thermal issues, performance lags due to the use of 31 stage pipelines, high prices and the fact that they couldn't come anywhere close to what AMD had to offer. Yes, they excelled in video and audio encoding applications, but Intel P4 architecture has always been known to do well in such applications, so this was no surprise.
and
AMD, on the other hand, had quite an advantage over Intel in gaming benchmarks and other applications where Athlon 64 chips have led the charts with significantly higher numbers.
Ok, so? Intel is good at video encoding, and AMD is good at games. He sounds more like an AMD fanboy than anything else. It would have been helpful if he gave us some numbers and taken a less hostile tone.
I'll be the first to say that yes, Intel has had issues with their chips - especially the thermal issues with Prescott. But Intel is more than just a company that makes processors. He seems to be bashing intel just because of their processors while ignoring their achievements in other areas. For example, their Grantsdale chipset has been doing pretty well.
He doesn't seem to have enough data on his side to make such a dire prediction. It's more like "OMG lol!!11!! AMD si teh rox0rz!!! intel si t3h D00m3d!!11!!"
I, for one, welcome our feeble younger brother overlords.
Now that I've gotten over my "Tempe/ASU Pride", I'll try to make some observations. I think this is pretty good first of all (like I already stated). More cities should take the cue and follow Tempe. First, I think other cities in AZ should do it to. Preferrably bordering cities like Chandler, Scottsdale and Mesa and even Phoenix Metro. Chandler should team up with Intel (Intel drives a lot of Chandler's economy) to use WiMAX (something Intel is pushing anyway) around the city. That would be something I'd like to see. I also like the amount of choice and competition this move is offering. The pricing is really competitive. I like the fact that you get to choose between different providers - it certainly will help fuel good, healthy competition and you won't get stuck with just one person. It will definitely make the companies do their best to provide good service. Just having one wouldn't give any incentive. This network will also teach some valuable lessons about security. I'm sure there are a bunch of script kiddies at ASU who would love to try all kinds of crap on the network. It would definitely provide a good security stress test for the network.
Just wanted to say Good job. I wish they did it while I was actually living in Tempe and not when I moved out to Chandler after I graduated from ASU. Otherwise I wouldn't have had to leech from my neighbor. Crap... did I just say that out loud? Uh I mean, I was sharing his connection. Yeah.
tcsh is a marked improvement over csh. csh is actually harmful. However my favourite is still bash. I might switch over to zsh though...
"Star Trek Enterprise is yet another Star Trek show since the original series to run a full six seasons."
:)
Maybe because it's getting cancelled after the fourth season?
Season 3 tried to bring in a good story arc (it was good). Season 4 is pretty good, but it's too little, too late.
Seasons 3 and 4 are what seasons 1 and 2 should have been like. That Cold War temporal thing when NO WHERE.
The first seasons didn't have very gripping episodes. You had the same moral dilemmas and tired clichees and the blatant use of T'Pol (Jolene Blalock) as a sex symbol to attract testosterone-pumped young males. This is something she herself didn't like - Blalock wanted T'Pol to have more depth.
But anyway... Enterprise was interesting at first. It was interesting to see starfleet outmatched against pretty much everyone they met and how they dealt with the situation.
It is certainly sad, but I guess they had their chance. Blame the Diabolical Duo Berman and Bragga. They have the negative Midas effect. Anything they touch turns to crap. Which is why the first few seasons of DS9 were also not that great. It didn't get interesting until Michael Piller took it over and Berman turned his attention to Voyager. The actors in Enterprise, I think, did a decent job.
Or how about:
Harvard Student: Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, The RIAA's attorney would certainly want you to believe that I downloaded copyrighted material through the internet2. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself! But ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: Ladies and gentlemen this [pointing to a picture of Chewbacca] is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee--an eight foot tall Wookiee--want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
And so on and so forth...
If you find material like this interesting, you'll also find Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the mysteries of the Human Mind and The Man who mistook his wife for a hat: And other clinical tales by V. S. Ramachandran and Oliver Sacks. I've read the first one and Amazon is shipping the second one to me. Ramachandran goes into detail about Phantom limbs and phantom pain, vision processing by the brain, and gleans information about the brain by examining patients who have different kinds of neurological disorders. He makes some really amazing and intuitive hypotheses and tries out some amazingly simple, yet brilliant experiments to figure how exactly certain parts of the brain work.
I used to have an account with Namezero. I tried many times to contact them, with no avail. They never answered any of my questions (through their website) or replied to any of my emails. I did a whois lookup on them to get a number and called them on that number. There were no returned called. I eventually just ended up saying "fuck you" to them and went with network solutions. I got them to transfer my stuff over to them because Namezero actually used to be a reseller or something for network solutions and I actually ended up with them because I had no one else to get in touch with. They went ahead and transferred me. A few weeks after the transfer a representative from Namezero contacted me apologizing profusely and saying that I should come back to them and that they would provide better service. In addition to reporting them to the better business bureau, I told them to fuck off. The best thing to do is just go with someone else AND report them.
dont care how "super" the pathogen is, an autoclave will kill it.
I know I'm being pedantic, but autoclaves don't kill everything... they don't "kill" prions. Then again, prions aren't actually bugs. However, I don't think prions hide out in your keyboard... unless you've been eating people's brains raw and the didn't wash your hands before using your keyboard.
You don't see any of these deficiencies in an octopuses' eye. So God's supposed "crowning creation" has worse vision than the lowly octopus?
However useful sex may be now that we've got it, that doesn't tell us anything about how it got started
Well, I recall reading somewhere that there is an evolutionary basis. In organisms that reproduce asexually, there is a direct copying from the parent to the child. A retrovirus (or some other parasite) could easily include its genetic code into the host, thereby continuing into the next generation. In sexual reproduction, you have two copies that merge, well half of each. This reduces the chance for parasites to hijack the reproduction mechanism, enabling us to stay one step ahead of them.
Also, it feels REALLY REALLY GOOD.