The linked article doesn't really communicate the selling point, which is that these reactors are very small; the whole thing fits in a roughly 1 x 2 meter package (larger when you deploy the fold-radiators). It's true that one wouldn't be enough to power a large base, but NASA isn't planning anything like a base with a greenhouse for growing food - these things are basically meant to provide power for the astronaut's lander/trailer when it's dark outside. They just need to run the life support systems and radios.
Ah yes, I too remember being mystified by the "Write a long block of text is cursive, DO NOT PRINT!!!!!" thing on the GRE. The only explanation I can concoct is that they wanted it in case there was some dispute over the identity of the test-taker, in which case they could perhaps do some sort of bullshit "handwriting analysis."
The obvious problem is that there are a LOT of places where people drive where you can't get good GPS signals (it's often impossible to pick up GPS signals in downtown areas with skyscrapers all around, for example). Do their plans include a way to magically make GPS receivers pick up signals where they currently can't?
Also, what's to stop me from simply covering my GPS in grounded foil or something?
The thing is, Madoff's returns weren't that unbelievable. He was careful to always have slightly high-than-normal (but plausible) returns. That's a big part of the reason why so many extremely knowledgeable, competent investors were suckered by him. There were some other firms that very carefully studied his trading strategy so as to try to copy his success, and some of them eventually concluded that he was probably crooked, but it wasn't at all obvious to most people.
It's not like he was promising 15% returns/year, or some other outlandish amount that would raise people's suspicions. It was more like everyone else was achieving 5%-6%, and he was claiming 5.5%-6.5%.
The puzzling thing is, she didn't respond to HGH treatment at all - which seems to indicate that whatever is happening, it's more complicated than some pathway that sits above the HGH pathway malfunctioning and so not causing the HGH pathway to trigger on time. If that were the case, then one would expect her body to respond to the HGH when she finally started getting it - but she didn't.
Insensitivity to HGH isn't consistent with the symptoms this girl displays. For one thing, the brain's development shouldn't be affected by any HGH-related problems. People who are HGH-insensitive or HGH-deficient have normal brains in abnormally small bodies. This girl's brain, however, seems to be that of a 1.5 year old. It appears that there is some sort of "higher level" problem that is causing almost all development to proceed slowly, even though her endocrine system is normal.
Although they talk about it being an investment in the article, I get the strong impression it's intended more as a travel souvenir. I mean come on, the vending machines are in airports.
If I decide what characteristics I want my new shirt to have before I go shopping and then look over the random assortment of shirts at the store until I find one that meets my requirements, I do not think that I have "designed" my shirt, even though I am likely to end up with a shirt that is better (or at least, more desirable to me) than if I tell a store clerk "Go get me a shirt and ring it up, I don't care what kind."
There seems to me to be a difference between "designing" a baby with genetic engineering or some such vs. simply screening a bunch of fertilized eggs and selecting the one you want. But of course, if the media called it "screening" rather than "designing," people wouldn't get nearly as worked up about it - and they know this, so they go with the more provocative language.
This is only a problem if there's a significant intrinsic motivation to begin with. I don't know about you, but when I was in grade school my primary motivation was the knowledge that my parents would punish me if I performed too poorly. There were a few topics that I would probably have learned about on my own out of personal interest, but for most subjects I had no real intrinsic motivation anyway.
Hell, suppose a band that normally charges $50/ticket at their concerts decides to do a free concert. Are all those hundreds or thousands of people who get to see the show for free now liable for the taxes on their "gift"?
This is the worst case scenario and it happens more than people without children realize.
No, actually, it doesn't. On average there are about 100-150 children kidnapped by strangers each year in the US, out of a population of about 75 million children. For comparison, there are about 2500 children killed in car accidents each year. Your child is statistically about 20 times more likely to die in a traffic accident while you are driving him to or from school than to be abducted while walking to or from school.
Why would they be forced to wear stars, anyway? That doesn't make any sense. I would imagine they would be forced to wear some sort of volcano symbol. Either that or a DC-8 pin, but then people might mistake them for pilots or something.
I'd assume that the worst thing that would happen if and when the military traces an attack back to your hacked computer would be them confiscating your computer as evidence. Certainly annoying, but half these people buy a new computer every few years anyway because the old one "slowed down" or something, so it would hardly be an extraordinary inconvenience. It's not like they're going to prosecute some grocery store manager whose unpatched computer is riddled with viruses and rootkits. If nothing else, the mere presence of all the malware would probably creat instant reasonable doubt.
So did they subject your wife to some sort of extraordinary, non-fingerprint-related background check? Or do they just shrug and exempt people from the requirement if the person doesn't have fingerprints?
The problem is not the crackheads per se, it's the illegal activities that they engage in while attempting to acquire crack. Parent's point was that if crack were legal, much of the problems associated with crackheads would go away, even if the crackheads themselves did not.
Actually the main safety difference between industry and research labs is that in industry you mostly do the same things over and over, so over time kinks get ironed out and potential safety problems are identified and addressed. In research labs, on the other hand, you're CONSTANTLY doing new things and having to invent new procedures on the fly that will only be used once to synthesize a material that you're only going to use in one experiment, and then you're off to the next NEW thing. Try running an industrial planet where you make an entirely new set of products with new starting materials every day, and see how your safety record turns out...
Self-assembling is not the same as self-reproducing. The nanoparticles self-assemble into new materials, films, etc, but they can't produce new nanoparticles. It's like having a pile of bricks that will arrange themselves into a house, but you have to keep adding more bricks to the pile to keep it going.
There are plenty of other frequencies that water absorbs much better than 2.4 GHz. If microwave ovens worked in a band that water absorbed well, all the microwaves would be absorbed in the first few mm of your food and it would end up burnt on the outside while still cold on the inside. Microwave ovens are deliberately built to operate away from the best absorption frequencies, so that the waves can penetrate deep into the food before being absorbed. This allows the food the heat evenly even though you are dumping heat into it far faster than simple thermal conduction would distribute the heat through the food.
Slashdot Mirror
The linked article doesn't really communicate the selling point, which is that these reactors are very small; the whole thing fits in a roughly 1 x 2 meter package (larger when you deploy the fold-radiators). It's true that one wouldn't be enough to power a large base, but NASA isn't planning anything like a base with a greenhouse for growing food - these things are basically meant to provide power for the astronaut's lander/trailer when it's dark outside. They just need to run the life support systems and radios.
Ah yes, I too remember being mystified by the "Write a long block of text is cursive, DO NOT PRINT!!!!!" thing on the GRE. The only explanation I can concoct is that they wanted it in case there was some dispute over the identity of the test-taker, in which case they could perhaps do some sort of bullshit "handwriting analysis."
The obvious problem is that there are a LOT of places where people drive where you can't get good GPS signals (it's often impossible to pick up GPS signals in downtown areas with skyscrapers all around, for example). Do their plans include a way to magically make GPS receivers pick up signals where they currently can't?
Also, what's to stop me from simply covering my GPS in grounded foil or something?
The thing is, Madoff's returns weren't that unbelievable. He was careful to always have slightly high-than-normal (but plausible) returns. That's a big part of the reason why so many extremely knowledgeable, competent investors were suckered by him. There were some other firms that very carefully studied his trading strategy so as to try to copy his success, and some of them eventually concluded that he was probably crooked, but it wasn't at all obvious to most people. It's not like he was promising 15% returns/year, or some other outlandish amount that would raise people's suspicions. It was more like everyone else was achieving 5%-6%, and he was claiming 5.5%-6.5%.
...to your laser-blasted skeleton.
perhaps her body has always produced hgh?
She was found to be HGH deficient, but when they started giving it to her there wasn't any response.
The puzzling thing is, she didn't respond to HGH treatment at all - which seems to indicate that whatever is happening, it's more complicated than some pathway that sits above the HGH pathway malfunctioning and so not causing the HGH pathway to trigger on time. If that were the case, then one would expect her body to respond to the HGH when she finally started getting it - but she didn't.
Insensitivity to HGH isn't consistent with the symptoms this girl displays. For one thing, the brain's development shouldn't be affected by any HGH-related problems. People who are HGH-insensitive or HGH-deficient have normal brains in abnormally small bodies. This girl's brain, however, seems to be that of a 1.5 year old. It appears that there is some sort of "higher level" problem that is causing almost all development to proceed slowly, even though her endocrine system is normal.
A medical journal article on her can be found here: http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay-wright/publications/MechAgeDevel-Publication-4-1-09.pdf
The telomeres are normal, and match up with her actual chronological age.
Unless you have a hybrid with regenerative braking, in which case they are still taking energy that should have been "yours" from you.
Although they talk about it being an investment in the article, I get the strong impression it's intended more as a travel souvenir. I mean come on, the vending machines are in airports.
If I decide what characteristics I want my new shirt to have before I go shopping and then look over the random assortment of shirts at the store until I find one that meets my requirements, I do not think that I have "designed" my shirt, even though I am likely to end up with a shirt that is better (or at least, more desirable to me) than if I tell a store clerk "Go get me a shirt and ring it up, I don't care what kind."
There seems to me to be a difference between "designing" a baby with genetic engineering or some such vs. simply screening a bunch of fertilized eggs and selecting the one you want. But of course, if the media called it "screening" rather than "designing," people wouldn't get nearly as worked up about it - and they know this, so they go with the more provocative language.
This is only a problem if there's a significant intrinsic motivation to begin with. I don't know about you, but when I was in grade school my primary motivation was the knowledge that my parents would punish me if I performed too poorly. There were a few topics that I would probably have learned about on my own out of personal interest, but for most subjects I had no real intrinsic motivation anyway.
Or more usefully, have it just shunt the device to some generic little partition that it can look at and decide everything's legal.
Hell, suppose a band that normally charges $50/ticket at their concerts decides to do a free concert. Are all those hundreds or thousands of people who get to see the show for free now liable for the taxes on their "gift"?
This is the worst case scenario and it happens more than people without children realize.
No, actually, it doesn't. On average there are about 100-150 children kidnapped by strangers each year in the US, out of a population of about 75 million children. For comparison, there are about 2500 children killed in car accidents each year. Your child is statistically about 20 times more likely to die in a traffic accident while you are driving him to or from school than to be abducted while walking to or from school.
Why would they be forced to wear stars, anyway? That doesn't make any sense. I would imagine they would be forced to wear some sort of volcano symbol. Either that or a DC-8 pin, but then people might mistake them for pilots or something.
I'd assume that the worst thing that would happen if and when the military traces an attack back to your hacked computer would be them confiscating your computer as evidence. Certainly annoying, but half these people buy a new computer every few years anyway because the old one "slowed down" or something, so it would hardly be an extraordinary inconvenience. It's not like they're going to prosecute some grocery store manager whose unpatched computer is riddled with viruses and rootkits. If nothing else, the mere presence of all the malware would probably creat instant reasonable doubt.
So did they subject your wife to some sort of extraordinary, non-fingerprint-related background check? Or do they just shrug and exempt people from the requirement if the person doesn't have fingerprints?
The problem is not the crackheads per se, it's the illegal activities that they engage in while attempting to acquire crack. Parent's point was that if crack were legal, much of the problems associated with crackheads would go away, even if the crackheads themselves did not.
Actually the main safety difference between industry and research labs is that in industry you mostly do the same things over and over, so over time kinks get ironed out and potential safety problems are identified and addressed. In research labs, on the other hand, you're CONSTANTLY doing new things and having to invent new procedures on the fly that will only be used once to synthesize a material that you're only going to use in one experiment, and then you're off to the next NEW thing. Try running an industrial planet where you make an entirely new set of products with new starting materials every day, and see how your safety record turns out...
Self-assembling is not the same as self-reproducing. The nanoparticles self-assemble into new materials, films, etc, but they can't produce new nanoparticles. It's like having a pile of bricks that will arrange themselves into a house, but you have to keep adding more bricks to the pile to keep it going.
There are plenty of other frequencies that water absorbs much better than 2.4 GHz. If microwave ovens worked in a band that water absorbed well, all the microwaves would be absorbed in the first few mm of your food and it would end up burnt on the outside while still cold on the inside. Microwave ovens are deliberately built to operate away from the best absorption frequencies, so that the waves can penetrate deep into the food before being absorbed. This allows the food the heat evenly even though you are dumping heat into it far faster than simple thermal conduction would distribute the heat through the food.