Surely for something like this, it's not even the case that you'd need instructions. A quick hit on Wikipedia tells me that Ricin occurs in Castor beans and the pulp of about eight beans contains enough to kill an adult human. Well I thought ricin came from rice (don't know why), but once you've crossed that bit of ignorance, it surely can't be that hard to derive ricin, can it? Buy castor beans, pulp them up and try a few experiments at getting a solution out of them. You can test it on mice bought from any old pet store. (I wouldn't, I'm vegetarian, but I'm presuming some terrorists have fewer reservations about animal testing). That's assuming that the information isn't already out there. I quick search finds that the process for extracting ricin is actually FILED AT THE US PTO. It's a matter of public record! Hillarious!:D
I think every other student has a copy of the Anarchist cookbook. Big deal. Terrorist used to mean someone that scared people to get their ends from the government. These days "terrorist" means someone used by the government to scare you with.
You have a misunderstanding of the nature of high intelligence and creativity. I scored an I.Q. of 162 and I can say with some authority (and slight regret) that this has only partially translated into practical brilliance. Genius involves hard work. Even the magicians like Richard Feynman are the product of long study and hard work. Education provides four necessary things for "geniuses". It provides the basic material that a creative person uses as their building blocks. It provides a starting point that is further along than starting without it (avoiding re-invention of wheels and the classic "standing on the shoulders of giants"). It provides a supporting body of people to work with and manage details and explore ones hypotheses and cul de sacs. And it provides a community in which people may flourish and establish themselves and consult with peers. There is no separate category marked "true genius" except in popular perception. There is only a spectrum with hard-working and talented people reaching for the shiny end of that spectrum with differing levels of success. Contrary to your statement, greater education enables people to better reach the levels that you call "true genius".
You seem to have entirely failed to grasp my point. You say that if you have more people than you need to achieve something then you're overstaffed. My point, clearly stated, is that we should be questioning whether we can set our sights higher, rather than strive to limit ourselves.
I also strongly disagree with his point and I'll explain why: If a society finds itself with an overabundance of qualified, educated people, the correct response is not to try and cut down on the overabundance, but to start doing more interesting things. It seems to me that after starting off with a promising few centuries, the USA has suddenly decided that the guiding principle of its society should be maintenance of the status quo, rather than progress.
Of course maintaining the status quo doesn't work when the rest of the world is forging ahead. In practice it translates into falling behind. If basic needs are being met (which they are), then surplus capacity should be directed. This guy's argument is that capacity should be reduced for the sake of preserving the existing wealth distribution as it is.
Points taken. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a large groundswell of people such as myself (and yourself) who consider ourselves environmentalists in a very real sense, but don't get called as such by the media or even actual political parties and campaigning groups that prefer to identify Environmentalist = Us.
Let's call it Greenpeace and/or the Sierra Club, or some intersection thereof
Greenpeace are to environmentalists, what the Taliban are to Islam or Stalin was to Socialism. I know I'm coming a little close to the No True Scotsman problem when I dimiss them, but I'd say most "real" environmentalists are sick to death of them. They're against whaling - that's good and I approve of them fucking up that industry as much as possible, and they make some decent points about GM crops (in amongst their more dubious points about GM crops) but most of them should stat the Hell out of debates on the environment generally.
Temperatures dropping for 30 years in the face of rising greenhouse gases without some other factor
Good luck with that. The planet's climate is massively complicated. To the degree that we don't even know for sure what might or might not even count as a factor. And who is even to say that 30 years is the right time period to pick? It could take more than that for a particular oceanic system or biological impact to show what it's long term effect would be. Falsifying AGW? Very far from easy, which is one of the points the GP made.
Yeah, I always find it hilarious when people suggest money as the motivation for climatologists.
I don't. Having known a number of senior academics, I can tell you that what is going through half of their heads is "money". And the other half is "publicity / fame". Well, most of them. The mathematicians all seemed to be in it for the love of disappearing into their own private world and fairly oblivious to everything else. But a lot of academics? Yes - they'll start publishing on anything that will currently get them published / grants. And the woolier the subject, the more this seems to be the case. It's silly to compare the money a career academic can make (quite plausibly in the £40k / US$50k, which a lot of people actually consider a pretty comfortable salary, thankyouverymuch), with big industry money and say that money couldn't be a motivation for climatologists. So the size of the pies is different... That doesn't mean it ain't a motivation.
The correct comparison to make is not between a scientist arguing in favour of AGW and unrelated jobs in big industry, but between that same scientist and another one arguing against the popular and accepted theory / movement (which tends to go down very badly). Then you can see whether or not money is a plausible motivation. Not saying it would be - people don't need to be corrupt - but I'm pointing out that it's ridiculous to laugh away such an idea.
The academic community works frighteningly like Slashdot - people shuffle round reinforcing each other's ideas like a giant echo chamber, until another meme takes hold and replaces the current favourite. And as I say, the woolier the subject, the more this is so. Mathematicians - very little susceptibility. Physics noticeably more so. Then you work your way along the spectrum to get to things like Educationalists which are almost entirely fad-driven. Climate science is far from as bad as that - there's a lot of solid science in it, but it's distinctly further along than maths and to the right of most areas of Physics, for example. There is plenty of room for dubious motivation in that academic community, I'm sorry to say.
I'm not saying we shouldn't critique it. But, as with evolution, General Relativity and the like, it would be nice if the naysayers weren't either cranks or con artists.
Nice parting shot - 'naysayers are cranks or con artists'. I'm afraid that supports what he's saying. If you read through and story about AGW on/., what you see are a lot of skeptics questioning facts and a lot of believers throwing around insults, accusations of corruption, idiocy or being supporters of the Republican party. The difference is pretty dramatic. Also, there are endless strawmen used against skeptics. Repeatedly anyone who expresses skepticism of that the bulk of global warming can be shown to be caused by man are then presumed to be saying there is no global warming. People doubting AGW are then presumed to have some particular political slant for the mass consumption of fossil fuels. For example, I have significant doubts about AGW, and am highly pro-nuclear and renewable resources. But for other environmental and political reasons than AGW. Yet I say one thing against AGW on/. and I am suddenly showered in comments about peak oil, my SUV driving and any other assumptions people here want to make about who I am and what I believe.
The GP is right. If someone doubts AGW on/. or elsewhere, then for every one supportable counter argument someone posts that references the facts, another five will post commenting on the skeptic's intelligence, political bias and even, hillariously, that they must be in the pay of the Oil industry. I've even seen my legitimate comments deleted from a national newspaper's website (the Independent, in the UK), not for any tone or rudeness, but for actually pointing out genuine mistakes (not just debatable conclusions) in the article writer's piece. If Science were a matter of polite, focused discussion, rather than about factual accuracy, then the AGW proponents here on/. would have lost the debate long ago. As it is about factual accuracy, then all the hate and insults many of them produce really just contribute nothing.
But Greens hate nuclear power.
How do you define "green"? I suppose you would make part of that definition "opposed to nuclear power", but that just makes the term meaningless. I consider myself "green" and a staunch environmentalist and I'm strongly in favour of nuclear power. Lots of it, right now, please. Some people who call themselves environmentalists are opposed to nuclear power. They're dying off though. Many of us have been pro-nuclear power all along.
And I think skaet's point was that staying safe by not getting shot at isn't applicable to everyone's line of work. I.e. The GP saying "just stay out of the way" isn't going to help a soldier or a police officer much.
A chiropractor is definitely [b]not[/b] just as qualified as a GP to make diagnoses. An [b]osteopath[/b] is - they're kind of a specialist sub-doctor. An osteopath sometimes knows more about their area than a doctor does and they certainly have more practical experience outside doctors that have it as their particular area. GP's will refer patients to an osteopath, and vice versa, depending on what's wrong or what needs doing. Chiropractors are outside this loop. They are at best, specialist masseurs, at worst, dangerous to your health. I think osteopaths aren't well known in the USA, but chiropractors are. Never confuse the two - especially in front of an osteopath. The difference in study and learning is enormous.
The iPad is great and I've been waiting for something like this for ages - a light, convenient tablet without attached keyboard or mouse. Perfect for all sorts of situations. As soon as someone other than Apple make one, I'm going to grab it.
If you want an exciting life, go skydiving with your prospective girlfriend instead of s3x0r. You will live a lot longer and have a lot more fun.
Flaws with your post:
1. You describe falling out of a plain strapped to another guy as more fun than sex.
2. You neglect the possibility that one can have sex whilst sky-diving.
3. Your logic presumes that it's an either / or. If you're doing so much sky-diving that you don't have time for sex, well...
4. Sky-diving is massively more costly than having sex. If you think otherwise, then you need to meet a different sort of girl.
5. People die during sky-diving and not many people do it. Few people die during sex and everybody does it. Statistically, your suggestion of living a lot longer through sky-diving is screwy. Have sex a few hundred times a year, or jump out of a plane a few hundred times a year.
I've taught maths in a secondary school, albeit for a short time. One thing that sets maths apart is that it's a steady progression. If you didn't grasp stage 1, you can't grasp stage 2. That's different to history or English or even, to a lesser extent, the sciences. You might not remember the formula for momentum, but you'll remember the volume of a sphere or whatever. But I've seen it happen with maths that someone doesn't quite get something but the rest of the class rolls on and they're left there wondering how others can grasp things that they can't. It's tragic to see and it can happen in quarter of an hour. Someone becomes someone who "doesn't get math" for want of being taken forward without having grasped some vital preliminary.
I've tried to undo this with some victims. Just explaining the above and then starting with something they don't understand and going back as far as is necessary to get to a point where they can pick up again and start moving forward, this time getting it. But I seldom get the chance to do this.
Maybe part of the reason for this research, if it stands up, is because there's a wider disparity in ability when you get to very young children, so its more likely that classes roll forward and leave some behind. But we should be very careful of taking a piece of research like this and drawing any hard conclusions about what is good or bad to teach. Personally, I started learning maths at pre-school level and it did me a lot of good. I doubt I'd be as good at it if I didn't get that early start. I strongly reject any belief that we have to choose between helping some achieve their full potential and looking after everyone: Help the best reach their potential, no child left behind, spend more care and resource on education. Why is the third path always left out of discussion?
There's a flaw in the analysis of the story - he attributes the greater rate of people willing to kill on order to the power of television. I'd like to know how he controlled for the selection bias of people inclined to go on game shows. I'd also be interested to know how people of modern western culture compare to people at the time Milgram did his original experiments. Have people become more obedient?
Ah yes, those. Nasty buggers. They caught me out (as they did a lot of people) and not happy was I when I found out about them. From your context, I understood you to be talking about something in HTML 5. Are you saying that HTML 5 somehow supports an equivalent to the Flash cookies? I'm not doubting you, I just am not sure how cookies in HTML 5 would / will differ from normal cookies now. Are you saying that HTML 5 allows cookies to be embedded in media?
It's about time we as a species started living in the water a bit more. I don't know why we'd approach underwater homes ahead of living on the surface first. I'm sure you'd get used to the rocking and a giant village on a raft would be great.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely for something like this, it's not even the case that you'd need instructions. A quick hit on Wikipedia tells me that Ricin occurs in Castor beans and the pulp of about eight beans contains enough to kill an adult human. Well I thought ricin came from rice (don't know why), but once you've crossed that bit of ignorance, it surely can't be that hard to derive ricin, can it? Buy castor beans, pulp them up and try a few experiments at getting a solution out of them. You can test it on mice bought from any old pet store. (I wouldn't, I'm vegetarian, but I'm presuming some terrorists have fewer reservations about animal testing). That's assuming that the information isn't already out there. I quick search finds that the process for extracting ricin is actually FILED AT THE US PTO. It's a matter of public record! Hillarious!
I think every other student has a copy of the Anarchist cookbook. Big deal. Terrorist used to mean someone that scared people to get their ends from the government. These days "terrorist" means someone used by the government to scare you with.
You have a misunderstanding of the nature of high intelligence and creativity. I scored an I.Q. of 162 and I can say with some authority (and slight regret) that this has only partially translated into practical brilliance. Genius involves hard work. Even the magicians like Richard Feynman are the product of long study and hard work. Education provides four necessary things for "geniuses". It provides the basic material that a creative person uses as their building blocks. It provides a starting point that is further along than starting without it (avoiding re-invention of wheels and the classic "standing on the shoulders of giants"). It provides a supporting body of people to work with and manage details and explore ones hypotheses and cul de sacs. And it provides a community in which people may flourish and establish themselves and consult with peers. There is no separate category marked "true genius" except in popular perception. There is only a spectrum with hard-working and talented people reaching for the shiny end of that spectrum with differing levels of success. Contrary to your statement, greater education enables people to better reach the levels that you call "true genius".
You seem to have entirely failed to grasp my point. You say that if you have more people than you need to achieve something then you're overstaffed. My point, clearly stated, is that we should be questioning whether we can set our sights higher, rather than strive to limit ourselves.
I also strongly disagree with his point and I'll explain why: If a society finds itself with an overabundance of qualified, educated people, the correct response is not to try and cut down on the overabundance, but to start doing more interesting things. It seems to me that after starting off with a promising few centuries, the USA has suddenly decided that the guiding principle of its society should be maintenance of the status quo, rather than progress.
Of course maintaining the status quo doesn't work when the rest of the world is forging ahead. In practice it translates into falling behind. If basic needs are being met (which they are), then surplus capacity should be directed. This guy's argument is that capacity should be reduced for the sake of preserving the existing wealth distribution as it is.
Points taken. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a large groundswell of people such as myself (and yourself) who consider ourselves environmentalists in a very real sense, but don't get called as such by the media or even actual political parties and campaigning groups that prefer to identify Environmentalist = Us.
Which is a shame.
See subject. Not difficult.
Greenpeace are to environmentalists, what the Taliban are to Islam or Stalin was to Socialism. I know I'm coming a little close to the No True Scotsman problem when I dimiss them, but I'd say most "real" environmentalists are sick to death of them. They're against whaling - that's good and I approve of them fucking up that industry as much as possible, and they make some decent points about GM crops (in amongst their more dubious points about GM crops) but most of them should stat the Hell out of debates on the environment generally.
Good luck with that. The planet's climate is massively complicated. To the degree that we don't even know for sure what might or might not even count as a factor. And who is even to say that 30 years is the right time period to pick? It could take more than that for a particular oceanic system or biological impact to show what it's long term effect would be. Falsifying AGW? Very far from easy, which is one of the points the GP made.
I don't. Having known a number of senior academics, I can tell you that what is going through half of their heads is "money". And the other half is "publicity / fame". Well, most of them. The mathematicians all seemed to be in it for the love of disappearing into their own private world and fairly oblivious to everything else. But a lot of academics? Yes - they'll start publishing on anything that will currently get them published / grants. And the woolier the subject, the more this seems to be the case. It's silly to compare the money a career academic can make (quite plausibly in the £40k / US$50k, which a lot of people actually consider a pretty comfortable salary, thankyouverymuch), with big industry money and say that money couldn't be a motivation for climatologists. So the size of the pies is different... That doesn't mean it ain't a motivation.
The correct comparison to make is not between a scientist arguing in favour of AGW and unrelated jobs in big industry, but between that same scientist and another one arguing against the popular and accepted theory / movement (which tends to go down very badly). Then you can see whether or not money is a plausible motivation. Not saying it would be - people don't need to be corrupt - but I'm pointing out that it's ridiculous to laugh away such an idea.
The academic community works frighteningly like Slashdot - people shuffle round reinforcing each other's ideas like a giant echo chamber, until another meme takes hold and replaces the current favourite. And as I say, the woolier the subject, the more this is so. Mathematicians - very little susceptibility. Physics noticeably more so. Then you work your way along the spectrum to get to things like Educationalists which are almost entirely fad-driven. Climate science is far from as bad as that - there's a lot of solid science in it, but it's distinctly further along than maths and to the right of most areas of Physics, for example. There is plenty of room for dubious motivation in that academic community, I'm sorry to say.
Nice parting shot - 'naysayers are cranks or con artists'. I'm afraid that supports what he's saying. If you read through and story about AGW on /., what you see are a lot of skeptics questioning facts and a lot of believers throwing around insults, accusations of corruption, idiocy or being supporters of the Republican party. The difference is pretty dramatic. Also, there are endless strawmen used against skeptics. Repeatedly anyone who expresses skepticism of that the bulk of global warming can be shown to be caused by man are then presumed to be saying there is no global warming. People doubting AGW are then presumed to have some particular political slant for the mass consumption of fossil fuels. For example, I have significant doubts about AGW, and am highly pro-nuclear and renewable resources. But for other environmental and political reasons than AGW. Yet I say one thing against AGW on /. and I am suddenly showered in comments about peak oil, my SUV driving and any other assumptions people here want to make about who I am and what I believe.
/. or elsewhere, then for every one supportable counter argument someone posts that references the facts, another five will post commenting on the skeptic's intelligence, political bias and even, hillariously, that they must be in the pay of the Oil industry. I've even seen my legitimate comments deleted from a national newspaper's website (the Independent, in the UK), not for any tone or rudeness, but for actually pointing out genuine mistakes (not just debatable conclusions) in the article writer's piece. If Science were a matter of polite, focused discussion, rather than about factual accuracy, then the AGW proponents here on /. would have lost the debate long ago. As it is about factual accuracy, then all the hate and insults many of them produce really just contribute nothing.
The GP is right. If someone doubts AGW on
But Greens hate nuclear power.
How do you define "green"? I suppose you would make part of that definition "opposed to nuclear power", but that just makes the term meaningless. I consider myself "green" and a staunch environmentalist and I'm strongly in favour of nuclear power. Lots of it, right now, please. Some people who call themselves environmentalists are opposed to nuclear power. They're dying off though. Many of us have been pro-nuclear power all along.
And I think skaet's point was that staying safe by not getting shot at isn't applicable to everyone's line of work. I.e. The GP saying "just stay out of the way" isn't going to help a soldier or a police officer much.
To nitpick further, presumably drag on the bullet eats some of the other end of the force by the time it reaches the target.
A chiropractor is definitely [b]not[/b] just as qualified as a GP to make diagnoses. An [b]osteopath[/b] is - they're kind of a specialist sub-doctor. An osteopath sometimes knows more about their area than a doctor does and they certainly have more practical experience outside doctors that have it as their particular area. GP's will refer patients to an osteopath, and vice versa, depending on what's wrong or what needs doing. Chiropractors are outside this loop. They are at best, specialist masseurs, at worst, dangerous to your health. I think osteopaths aren't well known in the USA, but chiropractors are. Never confuse the two - especially in front of an osteopath. The difference in study and learning is enormous.
The iPad is great and I've been waiting for something like this for ages - a light, convenient tablet without attached keyboard or mouse. Perfect for all sorts of situations. As soon as someone other than Apple make one, I'm going to grab it.
Sex is also more fun than correcting stranger's spelling on Slashdot.
Oh, I forget number 6. It's spelled 'sex' not 's3x0r'.
Flaws with your post:
1. You describe falling out of a plain strapped to another guy as more fun than sex.
2. You neglect the possibility that one can have sex whilst sky-diving.
3. Your logic presumes that it's an either / or. If you're doing so much sky-diving that you don't have time for sex, well...
4. Sky-diving is massively more costly than having sex. If you think otherwise, then you need to meet a different sort of girl.
5. People die during sky-diving and not many people do it. Few people die during sex and everybody does it. Statistically, your suggestion of living a lot longer through sky-diving is screwy. Have sex a few hundred times a year, or jump out of a plane a few hundred times a year.
First release candidate, codename: Smartypants.
I've taught maths in a secondary school, albeit for a short time. One thing that sets maths apart is that it's a steady progression. If you didn't grasp stage 1, you can't grasp stage 2. That's different to history or English or even, to a lesser extent, the sciences. You might not remember the formula for momentum, but you'll remember the volume of a sphere or whatever. But I've seen it happen with maths that someone doesn't quite get something but the rest of the class rolls on and they're left there wondering how others can grasp things that they can't. It's tragic to see and it can happen in quarter of an hour. Someone becomes someone who "doesn't get math" for want of being taken forward without having grasped some vital preliminary.
I've tried to undo this with some victims. Just explaining the above and then starting with something they don't understand and going back as far as is necessary to get to a point where they can pick up again and start moving forward, this time getting it. But I seldom get the chance to do this.
Maybe part of the reason for this research, if it stands up, is because there's a wider disparity in ability when you get to very young children, so its more likely that classes roll forward and leave some behind. But we should be very careful of taking a piece of research like this and drawing any hard conclusions about what is good or bad to teach. Personally, I started learning maths at pre-school level and it did me a lot of good. I doubt I'd be as good at it if I didn't get that early start. I strongly reject any belief that we have to choose between helping some achieve their full potential and looking after everyone: Help the best reach their potential, no child left behind, spend more care and resource on education. Why is the third path always left out of discussion?
There's a flaw in the analysis of the story - he attributes the greater rate of people willing to kill on order to the power of television. I'd like to know how he controlled for the selection bias of people inclined to go on game shows. I'd also be interested to know how people of modern western culture compare to people at the time Milgram did his original experiments. Have people become more obedient?
Ah yes, those. Nasty buggers. They caught me out (as they did a lot of people) and not happy was I when I found out about them. From your context, I understood you to be talking about something in HTML 5. Are you saying that HTML 5 somehow supports an equivalent to the Flash cookies? I'm not doubting you, I just am not sure how cookies in HTML 5 would / will differ from normal cookies now. Are you saying that HTML 5 allows cookies to be embedded in media?
Super cookies?
Mod parent +8 Actually Fucked Up.
Funny, mind you.
It's about time we as a species started living in the water a bit more. I don't know why we'd approach underwater homes ahead of living on the surface first. I'm sure you'd get used to the rocking and a giant village on a raft would be great.
Argh! Apologies - the last paragraph was not intended to be quoted - it was not from the article, those are my words.