The capability will always be there. Everything has dual uses. I railed against people putting restrictions on basic science over dual use in the past if you have read any of it.
Metallurgy gives us the turf cutting plow and the machine gun.
I'm not against metallurgy.
Or in this case, researching dangerous microbes. Such research gives us not only insight into how to combat the other guy's bioweapons, but how to combat MomNature's dirty tricks.
I am against the development of bioweapons as they are a greater potential threat than nukes. Specifically and only the deliberate practical weaponization and practical manufacture of bioweapon distribution systems for deployment.
Going back to the quote I made about the scientific magi and the princes from "A Canticle for Liebowitz" there are those in the Military Industrial Complex, to quote Ike, who think that we could tailor bioweapons to attack a certain gene sequence. As if the only the residents of a geopolitical area have only that gene sequence and nobody outside. When I heard of this stupid fantasy decades ago during the Cold War, I was dumbstruck by the simplistic thinking taken seriously. As if things are ever that neat.
I have given this much thought over the past 30 years, from when I started giving it any thought, and I stick by my statement. The development of bioweapons should be outlawed by treaty and nobody should ever build them. Those who do would be war criminals due to their manufacture (and I'm including heads of state too) and should inhabit the equivalent of Spandau prison, or the gallows.
The vast majority of Ebola spread occurs through bodily fluids.
But that's the thing about Ebola - it's a haemorrhagic (I spelled that right on the first try!) fever, where the patient leaks bodily fluids everywhere, and a weaponised version of Ebola, if unleashed, would overwhelm any kind of equipped first responders due to sheer numbers of victims should an actual attack actually happen.
While the sanitation part of Bubonic Plague is not as applicable today, the latter, the 1918 virus, is even more apropos.
People are so much more mobile than they were back in 1918, with so many more people on the move. Instead of the flu having to hitch a ride with a passenger on a steamship, taking a week to get across the Atlantic, we have people flying between continents in the matter of hours.
A 1918 flu epidemic could very well be much worse today.
>To kill anyone who would make and use these weapons, is to kill all ambitious world leaders.
Then maybe we should start polishing the blade on Dr. Guillotine's machine.
I could draw another literary allusion for you: the story of the priests (of science) and princes in "A Canticle for Liebowitz" when it came to unleashing the fires of Hell, twice.
It was said that God, in order to test mankind which had become swelled with pride as in the time of Noah, had commanded the wise men of that age, among them the Blessed Leibowitz, to devise great engines of war such as had never before been upon the Earth, weapons of such might that they contained the very fires of Hell, and that God had suffered these magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince, "Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m'Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought."
But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself, If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy those others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.
Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.
While it is probably inevitable, we shouldn't just throw up our hands and give up.
Anyone who actively develops bioweapons is a criminal. He or she is a direct hazard to humanity and needs to be removed from society as soon as possible. We have seen what happens when a particularly virulent illness from MomNature herself wreaks havoc, like the 1918 flu or Bubonic Plague. To deliberately take something such as Ebola and weaponize it shocks the conscience. Unlike nuclear weapons which simply level cities and cause localised radioactive areas, bioweapons are the gift that keeps on giving and do indeed go wildly out of control once they are deployed. This is not idle speculation. We proved it with smallpox blankets.
If you develop bioweapons, you need to be in jail, or dead.
The big picture depends largely on interbreeding. While I have simplified it, I'm not wrong, just not detailed to your satisfaction. This is slashdot. It is not a place for writing one's doctoral dissertation on taxonomy.
I am deliberately ignoring your "Genetic Fallacy" argument because you keep glossing over the fact that OEC and YEC come from the exact same place, just that one group disagrees over the time span.
They are grouped together because when you get down to it, they are the same thing - an interpretation of a few lines of the Bible.
Now put up or shut up. Show me where OEC comes from if not the Bible.
Go play with IE in Metro mode and tell me that Metro is just the start screen.
Where did this idea come from that Metro is just the start screen? I've seen people who are totally ignorant claim this, and then I've seen dyed-in-the-wool Windows White Knights 4 Lyfe who should know better, claim this. It's not. It's a whole new interface paradigm.
>Are these isolated populations or different species?
Given enough time (a few thousand years) divergence will happen. There is no question about it. We see it time and again in species that were once one species, and became separated by a river or ocean (Darwin's finches for example).
But Creationism is not science. It's not testable. It doesn't even come close to the testability of abiogenesis hypotheses. It is based on a Biblical interpretation. It is NOT SCIENCE.
With regards to your last sentence:
That is the same "la la la" fingers-in-ears that I get from Bible literalists.
And btw, I'm not the one who picked your name. You did.
Well, no, "Creationism" as it's commonly-used is a deliberate invalid collapsing into one word two different and non-dependent notions, first that the universe was created, and second the entirely distinct notion that it is 6000 years old.
No. Creationism is the conflating of the Creation Stories (two of them) as science, or trying to use them as a basis of a weird frankenstein-monster of bad logic posing as science. like Intelligent Design trotted out by the Discovery Institute.
arguing semantics instead of the facts on the ground Aristotle
See, the problem with Aristotle is that a bunch of his stuff was simply gedankenexperiments to explain the world. Many of them wildly false.
I will not even address the semantics BS.
>your username - empiric, as in empirical, as in science and testable hypotheses.
I find that most ironic. Do you wear that appellation as a joke?
Or do you wear it in the second sense of the word, a charlatan or quack?
>But isn't that more a matter of geographic distribution rather than lack of interest or ability?
What, exactly, is your problem with this?
The ability to freely (without human intervention) interbreed and produce fertile offspring is central to the definition of what a species is. No interbreeding can come from various factors - oestrus times, physical separation, genetic separation, etc. Physical separation, over time, leads to genetic separation, and that's what we have between bonobos and chimps in addition to physical separation.
Thus they are different species for two reasons, not just one.
Nobody knows if they can cross-breed and produce fertile offspring. Nobody has tried to cross-breed them. If they cannot, then they are separate species in a third way.
yet whenever the Lumia handsets are reviewed in the mainstream press they are often highly praised.
Because ZDNET is generally where these glowing reviews are published and ZDNET is basically owned by Microsoft, and then you get the people like Robert Enderle who will say anything after the check clears.
I thought this was obvious for the past *tries to remember* 20 years. Yes, I know that predates the actual ZDNET, but I'm including Ziff-Davis publishing.
So explain how a criminal who is going to kill someone with malice aforethought is going to fucking worry whether he's committing a class C felony as he's doing the act when the penalty may very well get him executed?
What would stop someone who knows some guy with a machine shop from etching *different* numbers on the end of a firing pin with a die-sinking EDM?
This law is worse than useless. It gives a false sense of security that law enforcement can look at shell casing and identify who owned the gun used in a crime.
Slashdot Mirror
>But it can be supported by evidence through scientific processes.
No, no it can't. Because "God Did it" is not a testable hypothesis.
--
BMO
Someone here gets it.
Welcome to my friends list.
--
BMO
The capability will always be there. Everything has dual uses. I railed against people putting restrictions on basic science over dual use in the past if you have read any of it.
Metallurgy gives us the turf cutting plow and the machine gun.
I'm not against metallurgy.
Or in this case, researching dangerous microbes. Such research gives us not only insight into how to combat the other guy's bioweapons, but how to combat MomNature's dirty tricks.
I am against the development of bioweapons as they are a greater potential threat than nukes. Specifically and only the deliberate practical weaponization and practical manufacture of bioweapon distribution systems for deployment.
Going back to the quote I made about the scientific magi and the princes from "A Canticle for Liebowitz" there are those in the Military Industrial Complex, to quote Ike, who think that we could tailor bioweapons to attack a certain gene sequence. As if the only the residents of a geopolitical area have only that gene sequence and nobody outside. When I heard of this stupid fantasy decades ago during the Cold War, I was dumbstruck by the simplistic thinking taken seriously. As if things are ever that neat.
I have given this much thought over the past 30 years, from when I started giving it any thought, and I stick by my statement. The development of bioweapons should be outlawed by treaty and nobody should ever build them. Those who do would be war criminals due to their manufacture (and I'm including heads of state too) and should inhabit the equivalent of Spandau prison, or the gallows.
I'm not kidding.
--
BMO
Did I stutter?
Of course I think so.
--
BMO
Oh, well, nevermind then. I've been in a thread about weaponization and got confused.
--
BMO
The vast majority of Ebola spread occurs through bodily fluids.
But that's the thing about Ebola - it's a haemorrhagic (I spelled that right on the first try!) fever, where the patient leaks bodily fluids everywhere, and a weaponised version of Ebola, if unleashed, would overwhelm any kind of equipped first responders due to sheer numbers of victims should an actual attack actually happen.
--
BMO
>OEC "comes from" God.
No, no it doesn't. It comes from Man.
Logic, you fail it. I'm done here.
--
BMO
While the sanitation part of Bubonic Plague is not as applicable today, the latter, the 1918 virus, is even more apropos.
People are so much more mobile than they were back in 1918, with so many more people on the move. Instead of the flu having to hitch a ride with a passenger on a steamship, taking a week to get across the Atlantic, we have people flying between continents in the matter of hours.
A 1918 flu epidemic could very well be much worse today.
--
BMO
>To kill anyone who would make and use these weapons, is to kill all ambitious world leaders.
Then maybe we should start polishing the blade on Dr. Guillotine's machine.
I could draw another literary allusion for you: the story of the priests (of science) and princes in "A Canticle for Liebowitz" when it came to unleashing the fires of Hell, twice.
While it is probably inevitable, we shouldn't just throw up our hands and give up.
--
BMO
>IS maintaining strains so you can develop treatments creating a bioweapon?
Does this really need to be answered? Really?
Oh fuck, I'll say it.
No, no it's not and I don't know how the fuck you read that into my message.
Christ on a toothpick.
--
BMO
Anyone who actively develops bioweapons is a criminal. He or she is a direct hazard to humanity and needs to be removed from society as soon as possible. We have seen what happens when a particularly virulent illness from MomNature herself wreaks havoc, like the 1918 flu or Bubonic Plague. To deliberately take something such as Ebola and weaponize it shocks the conscience. Unlike nuclear weapons which simply level cities and cause localised radioactive areas, bioweapons are the gift that keeps on giving and do indeed go wildly out of control once they are deployed. This is not idle speculation. We proved it with smallpox blankets.
If you develop bioweapons, you need to be in jail, or dead.
--
BMO
The big picture depends largely on interbreeding. While I have simplified it, I'm not wrong, just not detailed to your satisfaction. This is slashdot. It is not a place for writing one's doctoral dissertation on taxonomy.
--
BMO
I am deliberately ignoring your "Genetic Fallacy" argument because you keep glossing over the fact that OEC and YEC come from the exact same place, just that one group disagrees over the time span.
They are grouped together because when you get down to it, they are the same thing - an interpretation of a few lines of the Bible.
Now put up or shut up. Show me where OEC comes from if not the Bible.
--
BMO
If Creationism is not Religion, Capital R, where did it come from?
Do I have to cut-and-paste the Dover PA School Board case here?
--
BMO
>"Metro" is the new start menu
No. No.. It's. Not.
Go play with IE in Metro mode and tell me that Metro is just the start screen.
Where did this idea come from that Metro is just the start screen? I've seen people who are totally ignorant claim this, and then I've seen dyed-in-the-wool Windows White Knights 4 Lyfe who should know better, claim this. It's not. It's a whole new interface paradigm.
Crikes.
--
BMO
I missed this in my previous message:
>Are these isolated populations or different species?
Given enough time (a few thousand years) divergence will happen. There is no question about it. We see it time and again in species that were once one species, and became separated by a river or ocean (Darwin's finches for example).
--
BMO
>I don't think toy poodles and great mastiffs have been labelled different species yet
They probably should be.
We consider canis lupus dingo a separate species from canis lupus familiaris, and they interbreed more often than most people think.
--
BMO
But Creationism is not science. It's not testable. It doesn't even come close to the testability of abiogenesis hypotheses. It is based on a Biblical interpretation. It is NOT SCIENCE.
With regards to your last sentence:
That is the same "la la la" fingers-in-ears that I get from Bible literalists.
And btw, I'm not the one who picked your name. You did.
--
BMO
Well, no, "Creationism" as it's commonly-used is a deliberate invalid collapsing into one word two different and non-dependent notions, first that the universe was created, and second the entirely distinct notion that it is 6000 years old.
No. Creationism is the conflating of the Creation Stories (two of them) as science, or trying to use them as a basis of a weird frankenstein-monster of bad logic posing as science. like Intelligent Design trotted out by the Discovery Institute.
arguing semantics instead of the facts on the ground
Aristotle
See, the problem with Aristotle is that a bunch of his stuff was simply gedankenexperiments to explain the world. Many of them wildly false.
I will not even address the semantics BS.
>your username - empiric, as in empirical, as in science and testable hypotheses.
I find that most ironic. Do you wear that appellation as a joke?
Or do you wear it in the second sense of the word, a charlatan or quack?
--
BMO
>But isn't that more a matter of geographic distribution rather than lack of interest or ability?
What, exactly, is your problem with this?
The ability to freely (without human intervention) interbreed and produce fertile offspring is central to the definition of what a species is.
No interbreeding can come from various factors - oestrus times, physical separation, genetic separation, etc. Physical separation, over time, leads to genetic separation, and that's what we have between bonobos and chimps in addition to physical separation.
Thus they are different species for two reasons, not just one.
Nobody knows if they can cross-breed and produce fertile offspring. Nobody has tried to cross-breed them. If they cannot, then they are separate species in a third way.
--
BMO
Young Earth Creationists scoff at any science related to genetics, no matter how it's presented.
OECs, less so, but Creationism as an "ism" that takes Biblical allegory and perverts it into something else.
--
BMO
>What reason is there to consider the Bonobo and Chimpanzee different species?
They don't interbreed.
HTH.
--
BMO
yet whenever the Lumia handsets are reviewed in the mainstream press they are often highly praised.
Because ZDNET is generally where these glowing reviews are published and ZDNET is basically owned by Microsoft, and then you get the people like Robert Enderle who will say anything after the check clears.
I thought this was obvious for the past *tries to remember* 20 years. Yes, I know that predates the actual ZDNET, but I'm including Ziff-Davis publishing.
--
BMO
This is what the aircraft safety people call "controlled flight into terrain" when one flies a plane into the ground.
Elop is one hell of a pilot.
--
BMO
So explain how a criminal who is going to kill someone with malice aforethought is going to fucking worry whether he's committing a class C felony as he's doing the act when the penalty may very well get him executed?
What would stop someone who knows some guy with a machine shop from etching *different* numbers on the end of a firing pin with a die-sinking EDM?
This law is worse than useless. It gives a false sense of security that law enforcement can look at shell casing and identify who owned the gun used in a crime.
--
BMO