they were going extinct...I haven't bought a dinosaur egg for ages. In fact I've noticed that all the remaining ones I have are so old that have started to smell...
...this can give online games like ET an whole new dimension...Fuel Depot where every inch is conquered with a drop of sweat mixed with tears...in the end the neighbor downstairs calls the cops...
That just really weird reasoning, the process of conception and the physical growth of an embryo after that are rather well know and documented, the process also is not all that different from cloning. So I really don't expect a clone to be ay different from a 'normal' human being.
Well tell that to something like (warning number being pulled out of my rear) 65% of the population on this planet that believes in some Diving Entity ordaining a spirit upon inception/birth/$insert_your_favorite_moment_here in the human being and then said spirit surviving death in order to be judged in something called after-life(tm)...
I think you are missing the great implications clones will have into that sacred idea. If clones, who will be a total human inception outside the norm the said Divine Entity has imposed on us (always according to the 65%), are proved to be identical to people then there are only two explanations:
a) The Divine Entity blessed them with a soul as well in a moment of compation and Infinite Love(tm).
b) There is no Divine Entity at the end of the cash register...
Or do you really think that nutjobs make up a significant portion of humankind?
I'm a cynic so that's an affirmative. Install yourself on a comfortable chair at a busy point somewhere close to where you live, and observe people, really observe how they behave. Then pick up any newspaper and read the consequences...
If there was a spirit, then it would be logical to assume it is the result of sentience. That being so, any clone of a human would have one.
Heh, but you have to admit the terrifying conclusion of such an assertion. If cloned human beings are manufactured one day and they act, live, breathe, behave just like anyone of us, including having religious worries/sensitivities, then that means that the act of acquiring a "spirit" is internal and not divinely ordained... GASP!
Imagine a world after this makes a frontline news story...
Yes, I totally see your point. Ask the Vietnamese, they can vouch for the humanism and compassion in napalm form they received by your country! What you are comparing is apples and oranges because it suits you, and your nationalistic "morality" (brings back Emma Goldman's statement about patriotism but I'll leave it out).
What happened over the years is not US becoming a benevolent hegemon (only american citizens believe that, I wonder why?) but the public opinion becoming less and less tolerant over aggression and war as an idea and as a solution. So when some Blackwater thugs murder in cold blood some innocent passersby in Iraq, that makes big news all over the world and generates horrible publicity for US that forces your country to either control the attrocity information tighter or cut down on attrocities. In the time of WWI or II an incident like that wouldn't even make it to the back pages of newspapers.
In other words, don't attempt to take credit for what you are not entitled to. It is not your country that is a more moral empire, it is the rest of the world that has developed higher standards of morality to keep it sane...
How do you even remotely make the connection between one single old professor complaining about his students and a general trend across the entire population?
I concur the parent-post statement. I was about to make a comment on exactly that point. As a physics graduate student I had to teach loads and loads of students and their math/physics/analytical skills were a depressing sight to see. So at least as far as highschool level is concerned I definitely think that they are getting worse and worse and their SAT scores are getting easier and easier (stabilizing the national test average or increasing it) and giving the illusion that US kids are getting better and better in science-related areas.
Now having gone through the graduate program myself (as a foreign student) in the end all of them that made it (americans and foreigners) had a comparable level of science training, although there were visible pressures in the graduate program to become "lighter" and more accommodating to the hard struggling american students (struggling to catch up).
So in the end the graduate program delivers the goods to all, but the number of casualties who either dropped out or did something lighter (Masters) was overwhelmingly dominated by the american students. This is a real pressure exerted on any graduate University program (where performance is judged among other things on the number of PhD students per year) to lighten up. How long can they hold on to stricter standards remains to be seen...
Oh, so we should get people excited about whatever science uninformed laymen like yourself find more "verifiable," because it doesn't have a silly word like "string" and instead has sweet words like "quantum."
You are trolling obviously but just for the record if you had bothered to read my opening post carefully you would have discovered that I'm a physicist myself and my complain is not about string theory as a theory (if it's right, great, if not, oh well) but going into the lengths of teaching an unverified theory to the public.
There! I'm pretty sure you can grasp this simple concept without resorting to defamatory or insulting personal comments. Give it a try to ascend one more step into civility, you might find it more pleasing...
Presumably you mean quantum mechanics here, or general relativity; rather than quantum gravity?
Nope there is a field called quantum gravity as well which quantizes the classical Einstein general relativity equations and is the serious counterpart to the "string theory" crowds. In my humble opinion (my area is not cosmology or astrophysics) that is verifiable solid science, instead of beautiful but wrong ideas...
No point in trying to get folks exited about science until it is well documented and in every 5th grader's textbook. Come to think of it, we really ought drop gravity out of them books to, just to safe.
Arguing about the obvious but I will because I'm still in my morning news reading break... No dear AC my problem is not about getting folks exited about science. My problem is getting folks exited about wrong science. There is plenty of right/verified science out there (quantum gravity being one of them) that could get folks excited and be worth it. Telling them about wrong/unverified science is plain cheating to their intelligence (and a waste of their time) to say the least...but it sure sounds good and looks good and feels good...so...
scientific value vs. politics = 0 - 2 (field day today for politics)
...I'm a physicist and frankly I don't see the reason why should somebody waste time explaining a theory to the vast public that hasn't been proved right for over than 30 years now. It's quite beautiful (from the seminars I have attended) but... not verified by experiement...so... let's create some hype for the masses to consume and maybe publish a book or two and some opeds with the NYT!
Scientific value vs. politics = 0 - 1 this morning...
I already have 3+ GHz machines so why would I want to have the cost of a superconduction magnet and the cooling that goes with it to get a machine that is slower than an Intel P?
Because that is called progress! Back in the old days, the multiplication tables and a proficient abacus operator could beat any proto-computer out there. Does that mean that we shouldn't even have built them? You seem to forget the direct linage connecting your 3+ GHz computer with Bell's invention of the transistor that could not even calculate anything...
Primary science does not care about applied engineering, let alone consumer oriented performance. If we demonstrate that the quantum computing idea works in at least one system, the rest will be history within a very short time.
Funny how people think that fascism is related to loud patriotic parades, exposition of insignia and group thinking, oppression of freedom and... well you get the idea, when it can just metastasize from within the society, perfectly legal (if it is not, new "sponsored" legislation will make it so) creeping up not on freedom itself but on its "pricelessness".
Do you want to be free? There is a price for it (brought to you by $favorite_company). Did you just glance while walking down the street at the store window TV playing Super Bowl? You owe $favorite_company money my friend! Our new eye movement, eye direction-focus detectors never lie. Your eyes were focused on the TV screen for 0.134s, thus you owe us royalties buddy...
Oh, I know how all this will end alright...and it won't be pretty...
And then there will be a mysterious drop in the foreign students/researchers numbers willing to go free fingering procedures/harassment and a slight panic attack when graduate programs dry up from this absolutely necessary foreign brain power, but at that point it will be a bit too late to reverse the tide and reexamine the procedures. The panic attack will eventually subside simultaneously washing away the basic notion that people want to come to the US because "well, naturally, we are the greatest nation on the galaxy and for that reason alone".
Finally US will be a fortress, no barbarians ad portas, DHS employees scratching themselves all day wondering where did the people go, while the rest of the world will be riding the cutting-edge wave of technology/R&D/innovation with the newly absorbed and relocated brain-power arriving at their coffers.
Hmmmmm, immigration's and history's perfect revenge, I like it...
I wonder what part of GDP that amounts to...probably priceless?
This article is incredibly short-sighted and unreasonably pessimistic
I completely agree, but (OK I confess I didn't have the stamina to go through TFA carefully) it appears that he is just highlighting the technological shortcomings of traveling in space and covering distances in reasonable time scales. But colonization is synonymous to aggressively usurping and appropriating terrain without prior proof of ownership or entitlement (save some Divine Mandate but let's not go there humans are still killing each other over that).
I would like to know how the human race with their allegedly superior space-traveling ships and war fighting equipments will be able to withstand and persevere a war of attrition with some stubborn "terrorist"-race refusing to give up their territory, when even in human history there has not been not even one example of a liberation-guerrilla struggle not having won and achieved their objectives in the end over the oppressive colonizer. Not even one!
The native indians of america did not identify themselves as a political entity claiming rights over the land. They wanted to deny progress and maintain the stillness of time and their way of living which was impossible under the pressures of modernity.
...how in any democracy on this planet, even in the banana republics, if a politician is caught receiving money from a private or corporate entity it is a huge scandal that will inexorably lead to the demise of that politician, and in this country it is celebrated and institutionalized under the banner of "fund-raising".
What is really even more weird and always laughable is how people are always ready to defend this type of "democracy" even with their lives... tsk tsk tsk tsk *shaking head*...
I wonder whether these scientists lose any sleep over how their research advances will contribute to the future of our societies.
If scientists ever paused to think for the possibilities of potential abuse of their intellectual effort, progress as we know it would come to a grinding halt. Back to Neanderthal times...
It relies on the ordinary people to safeguard their societies from degenerating but that is an entire different subject (requires getting off the couch alot), and since I can already see the political-zombies approaching to offer their caned insight into the matter it's time for me to split...
...it only took a Hercules calling up his nephew Iolaus to neutralize Hydra by the "scorch-the-neck-stumps-after-decapitation" method (patent pending you mofos)...
But can they beat a station wagon full of backup tapes (or DVDs or whatever) yet?
Hmmm, let's see: Let's have maximum capacity DVD's at 9GB and for the sake of this exercise let's say the station wagon's capacity is 1000 DVDs so we have 9000GB moving around. Let's say the 20,000 mile distance will be covered at top speed (breaking speed limits in all states) at 100miles/h that results in 200 hours
of deliverance time so:
Should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine the validity of the information?
In a country where if somebody sticks a screwdriver in his eye can turn around and sue the manufacturer for failing to specifically mention in the instructions that he could not do that, it is only a natural extrapolation to have school boards decide what is patriotic, what is right, what is wrong, what is permissible what is acceptable, what is cool.
In fact, it is the reverse dynamic: Aren't you conditioned from the early age to yield to proper authority and the experts, obey in general arbitrary decisions? Do you know how many times I've heard "I don't support that decision but I have to stand by our Dear Leader"? Do you think it is accidental that this educational system produces these surreal responses?
Do you think it would be easy to manipulate people with critical faculties intact? Do you think it would be easy to convince them they need useless shit to buy? No it wouldn't. That's why it is mui importante to get them early, as early as possible to get used to yielding to arbitrary authoritative standards and make sure you teach them how wonderful almost fictitious people fought and gave their lives for their somewhat distant, never to be exercised without proper permission rights...
I think I should read Franz Kafka again...
Finally they learned something from the Briish...
on
AIDS Can Fight AIDS
·
· Score: 1
...divide and conquer...master this art and you can be an Overlord...
And to put some gasoline onto the fire here, I say with fervor that those who chase the pedophiles are almost certainly pedos themselves. I mean who else has the biggest kiddie porn collections but the kiddie porn crusaders? Think about it. Kick in a door of a righteous preacher and he's always closeted with the demons he rails most against.
Ahhhhh, if only I had mod points for you, what a perfectly true statement...
Slashdot Mirror
If you download...you're an idiot... if you think otherwise you're an idiot...
In fact Nicolas, you have to try really hard today to prove you are not an idiot...
they were going extinct...I haven't bought a dinosaur egg for ages. In fact I've noticed that all the remaining ones I have are so old that have started to smell...
...this can give online games like ET an whole new dimension...Fuel Depot where every inch is conquered with a drop of sweat mixed with tears...in the end the neighbor downstairs calls the cops...
That just really weird reasoning, the process of conception and the physical growth of an embryo after that are rather well know and documented, the process also is not all that different from cloning. So I really don't expect a clone to be ay different from a 'normal' human being.
Well tell that to something like (warning number being pulled out of my rear) 65% of the population on this planet that believes in some Diving Entity ordaining a spirit upon inception/birth/$insert_your_favorite_moment_here in the human being and then said spirit surviving death in order to be judged in something called after-life(tm)...
I think you are missing the great implications clones will have into that sacred idea. If clones, who will be a total human inception outside the norm the said Divine Entity has imposed on us (always according to the 65%), are proved to be identical to people then there are only two explanations:
a) The Divine Entity blessed them with a soul as well in a moment of compation and Infinite Love(tm).
b) There is no Divine Entity at the end of the cash register...
Or do you really think that nutjobs make up a significant portion of humankind?
I'm a cynic so that's an affirmative. Install yourself on a comfortable chair at a busy point somewhere close to where you live, and observe people, really observe how they behave. Then pick up any newspaper and read the consequences...
If there was a spirit, then it would be logical to assume it is the result of sentience. That being so, any clone of a human would have one.
Heh, but you have to admit the terrifying conclusion of such an assertion. If cloned human beings are manufactured one day and they act, live, breathe, behave just like anyone of us, including having religious worries/sensitivities, then that means that the act of acquiring a "spirit" is internal and not divinely ordained... GASP!
Imagine a world after this makes a frontline news story...
... quite fascinating...
The total loss of life is very low in comparison.
Yes, I totally see your point. Ask the Vietnamese, they can vouch for the humanism and compassion in napalm form they received by your country! What you are comparing is apples and oranges because it suits you, and your nationalistic "morality" (brings back Emma Goldman's statement about patriotism but I'll leave it out).
What happened over the years is not US becoming a benevolent hegemon (only american citizens believe that, I wonder why?) but the public opinion becoming less and less tolerant over aggression and war as an idea and as a solution. So when some Blackwater thugs murder in cold blood some innocent passersby in Iraq, that makes big news all over the world and generates horrible publicity for US that forces your country to either control the attrocity information tighter or cut down on attrocities. In the time of WWI or II an incident like that wouldn't even make it to the back pages of newspapers.
In other words, don't attempt to take credit for what you are not entitled to. It is not your country that is a more moral empire, it is the rest of the world that has developed higher standards of morality to keep it sane...
Nahhh, only benevolent and wise entities can lead the sheep. We need overlords...
How do you even remotely make the connection between one single old professor complaining about his students and a general trend across the entire population?
I concur the parent-post statement. I was about to make a comment on exactly that point. As a physics graduate student I had to teach loads and loads of students and their math/physics/analytical skills were a depressing sight to see. So at least as far as highschool level is concerned I definitely think that they are getting worse and worse and their SAT scores are getting easier and easier (stabilizing the national test average or increasing it) and giving the illusion that US kids are getting better and better in science-related areas.
Now having gone through the graduate program myself (as a foreign student) in the end all of them that made it (americans and foreigners) had a comparable level of science training, although there were visible pressures in the graduate program to become "lighter" and more accommodating to the hard struggling american students (struggling to catch up).
So in the end the graduate program delivers the goods to all, but the number of casualties who either dropped out or did something lighter (Masters) was overwhelmingly dominated by the american students. This is a real pressure exerted on any graduate University program (where performance is judged among other things on the number of PhD students per year) to lighten up. How long can they hold on to stricter standards remains to be seen...
Oh, so we should get people excited about whatever science uninformed laymen like yourself find more "verifiable," because it doesn't have a silly word like "string" and instead has sweet words like "quantum."
You are trolling obviously but just for the record if you had bothered to read my opening post carefully you would have discovered that I'm a physicist myself and my complain is not about string theory as a theory (if it's right, great, if not, oh well) but going into the lengths of teaching an unverified theory to the public.
There! I'm pretty sure you can grasp this simple concept without resorting to defamatory or insulting personal comments. Give it a try to ascend one more step into civility, you might find it more pleasing...
Presumably you mean quantum mechanics here, or general relativity; rather than quantum gravity?
Nope there is a field called quantum gravity as well which quantizes the classical Einstein general relativity equations and is the serious counterpart to the "string theory" crowds. In my humble opinion (my area is not cosmology or astrophysics) that is verifiable solid science, instead of beautiful but wrong ideas...
No point in trying to get folks exited about science until it is well documented and in every 5th grader's textbook. Come to think of it, we really ought drop gravity out of them books to, just to safe.
Arguing about the obvious but I will because I'm still in my morning news reading break... No dear AC my problem is not about getting folks exited about science. My problem is getting folks exited about wrong science. There is plenty of right/verified science out there (quantum gravity being one of them) that could get folks excited and be worth it. Telling them about wrong/unverified science is plain cheating to their intelligence (and a waste of their time) to say the least...but it sure sounds good and looks good and feels good...so...
scientific value vs. politics = 0 - 2 (field day today for politics)
...I'm a physicist and frankly I don't see the reason why should somebody waste time explaining a theory to the vast public that hasn't been proved right for over than 30 years now. It's quite beautiful (from the seminars I have attended) but... not verified by experiement...so... let's create some hype for the masses to consume and maybe publish a book or two and some opeds with the NYT!
Scientific value vs. politics = 0 - 1 this morning...
I already have 3+ GHz machines so why would I want to have the cost of a superconduction magnet and the cooling that goes with it to get a machine that is slower than an Intel P?
Because that is called progress! Back in the old days, the multiplication tables and a proficient abacus operator could beat any proto-computer out there. Does that mean that we shouldn't even have built them? You seem to forget the direct linage connecting your 3+ GHz computer with Bell's invention of the transistor that could not even calculate anything...
Primary science does not care about applied engineering, let alone consumer oriented performance. If we demonstrate that the quantum computing idea works in at least one system, the rest will be history within a very short time.
Ahhhhh, progress!!!
Funny how people think that fascism is related to loud patriotic parades, exposition of insignia and group thinking, oppression of freedom and... well you get the idea, when it can just metastasize from within the society, perfectly legal (if it is not, new "sponsored" legislation will make it so) creeping up not on freedom itself but on its "pricelessness".
Do you want to be free? There is a price for it (brought to you by $favorite_company). Did you just glance while walking down the street at the store window TV playing Super Bowl? You owe $favorite_company money my friend! Our new eye movement, eye direction-focus detectors never lie. Your eyes were focused on the TV screen for 0.134s, thus you owe us royalties buddy...
Oh, I know how all this will end alright...and it won't be pretty...
And then there will be a mysterious drop in the foreign students/researchers numbers willing to go free fingering procedures/harassment and a slight panic attack when graduate programs dry up from this absolutely necessary foreign brain power, but at that point it will be a bit too late to reverse the tide and reexamine the procedures. The panic attack will eventually subside simultaneously washing away the basic notion that people want to come to the US because "well, naturally, we are the greatest nation on the galaxy and for that reason alone".
Finally US will be a fortress, no barbarians ad portas, DHS employees scratching themselves all day wondering where did the people go, while the rest of the world will be riding the cutting-edge wave of technology/R&D/innovation with the newly absorbed and relocated brain-power arriving at their coffers.
Hmmmmm, immigration's and history's perfect revenge, I like it...
I wonder what part of GDP that amounts to...probably priceless?
This article is incredibly short-sighted and unreasonably pessimistic
I completely agree, but (OK I confess I didn't have the stamina to go through TFA carefully) it appears that he is just highlighting the technological shortcomings of traveling in space and covering distances in reasonable time scales. But colonization is synonymous to aggressively usurping and appropriating terrain without prior proof of ownership or entitlement (save some Divine Mandate but let's not go there humans are still killing each other over that).
I would like to know how the human race with their allegedly superior space-traveling ships and war fighting equipments will be able to withstand and persevere a war of attrition with some stubborn "terrorist"-race refusing to give up their territory, when even in human history there has not been not even one example of a liberation-guerrilla struggle not having won and achieved their objectives in the end over the oppressive colonizer. Not even one!
The native indians of america did not identify themselves as a political entity claiming rights over the land. They wanted to deny progress and maintain the stillness of time and their way of living which was impossible under the pressures of modernity.
...you've got "nothing to hide"(tm) so you shouldn't worry. Our comrades are after the "bad guys"(tm) only...
...how in any democracy on this planet, even in the banana republics, if a politician is caught receiving money from a private or corporate entity it is a huge scandal that will inexorably lead to the demise of that politician, and in this country it is celebrated and institutionalized under the banner of "fund-raising".
What is really even more weird and always laughable is how people are always ready to defend this type of "democracy" even with their lives... tsk tsk tsk tsk *shaking head*...
I wonder whether these scientists lose any sleep over how their research advances will contribute to the future of our societies.
If scientists ever paused to think for the possibilities of potential abuse of their intellectual effort, progress as we know it would come to a grinding halt. Back to Neanderthal times...
It relies on the ordinary people to safeguard their societies from degenerating but that is an entire different subject (requires getting off the couch alot), and since I can already see the political-zombies approaching to offer their caned insight into the matter it's time for me to split...
...it only took a Hercules calling up his nephew Iolaus to neutralize Hydra by the "scorch-the-neck-stumps-after-decapitation" method (patent pending you mofos)...
But can they beat a station wagon full of backup tapes (or DVDs or whatever) yet?
Hmmm, let's see: Let's have maximum capacity DVD's at 9GB and for the sake of this exercise let's say the station wagon's capacity is 1000 DVDs so we have 9000GB moving around. Let's say the 20,000 mile distance will be covered at top speed (breaking speed limits in all states) at 100miles/h that results in 200 hours of deliverance time so:
station wagon data speed = 9000 GB / 200 hours = 45 GB / hour = 0.0125 GB / sec = 0.1 Gbit / sec
Nope the Japanese win!
Should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine the validity of the information?
In a country where if somebody sticks a screwdriver in his eye can turn around and sue the manufacturer for failing to specifically mention in the instructions that he could not do that, it is only a natural extrapolation to have school boards decide what is patriotic, what is right, what is wrong, what is permissible what is acceptable, what is cool.
In fact, it is the reverse dynamic: Aren't you conditioned from the early age to yield to proper authority and the experts, obey in general arbitrary decisions? Do you know how many times I've heard "I don't support that decision but I have to stand by our Dear Leader"? Do you think it is accidental that this educational system produces these surreal responses?
Do you think it would be easy to manipulate people with critical faculties intact? Do you think it would be easy to convince them they need useless shit to buy? No it wouldn't. That's why it is mui importante to get them early, as early as possible to get used to yielding to arbitrary authoritative standards and make sure you teach them how wonderful almost fictitious people fought and gave their lives for their somewhat distant, never to be exercised without proper permission rights...
I think I should read Franz Kafka again...
...divide and conquer...master this art and you can be an Overlord...