I remember hearing about Roofing Shingle Solar Panels being manufactured about 2 years ago. The idea is that the PV's can be used as actual roofing tiles. No ugly panels above the roof. (Personally, I've always wondered why everybody puts up BLACK shingles. It turns your attic into a blast furnace, and makes cooling your house in the summer more expensive. [Even then I could never stay out of the attic as a kid!])
Sorry, I cannot remember who was making them, and I do not know how much they cost. That I have not heard more about them since is a bad sign. But you could still check them out.
I dunno. How about "dollys" or carts like they use in retail for stocking the shelves?
Roll it up to the car, pull the battery (on rollers) onto the cart, push that to the recharger / whatever, push the battery in. Roll it up to the charged battery, push / pull it onto the cart, push the cart up to the car and push it in. Make sure it's secure, close it, charge the customer.
Doesn't seem like much of a hurtle.
Besides, you talk like gas / service stations don't have any experience with lifting and moving extremely heavy objects. Like engines.
The same single battery pack may not be sufficient for different models and different uses, but why not have larger / more power consuming vehicles (not just cars, but trucks, forklifts [many of which are already electric], etc.) just take more of the standard battery pack?
If it leaves them with "more" power than "required", that just means more mileage / power per "tank" / fillup.
The batteries could even have connectors on them that are normally closed, but will open when another battery is pushed up against it. Allowing the chaining of batteries to provide more amps, not just more voltage.
Rather like our C's, D's, AA's and AAA's work now.
We in the US have a similar setup for propane grill canisters. You buy one, then when it's empty, you take it to a regular gas-station (most have a stock of full propane tanks), and you exchange it for a full one plus a fee (usually $10 or so).
I don't see the need for adding the complexity of a lease specific to the battery. You buy the car, it comes with a charged battery, when it's time to recharge, you take it to a gas/charging station an exchange it plus a fee.
Of course, this doesn't eliminate the possibility of the owner also purchasing a trickle charger for overnight / storage charging.
a riot at Foxconn's Taiyuan plant [in China], reportedly over guards beating up a worker
Good for them! Now if they can just start standing up for all their mistreated and underpaid workers, maybe they'll push wages high enough to bring some jobs back to the US!
China wouldn't build any if they couldn't sell any.
It's called enabling. Don't pretend that the West doesn't do it.
Just like "fences" don't steal, but they enable theft, and why even if you didn't help uncle Joe kill someone, but you hid him, or helped hide the body, you'll still be charged with murder. It's called being an "accessory after the fact".
Anybody who buys something made by slave / inmate / child labor is guilty of supporting the practice.
Just as the drug trade would stop if it couldn't find a market.
But both are correct uses in the english language. Despite your use.
I cannot tolerate milk because I am lactose intolerant. Not because I don't like it, and not because I don't like lactose. I actually LIKE milk and milk products, and have no views on lactose.
Not to diminish what happened here, but WTF would a non-Islamic family want to live there in the first place?
Stupid reasons like: Place of their birth. Land of their forefathers. Where their friends are. Where their community is. Where their loved ones are. Where their lives are. etc.
Even if you can't make it through my entire post, I want to leave you with one idea: These are the people that vote.
"YOUR moral positions may be more flexible than you think. Researchers... used a 'magic trick' to reverse a person's responses to... moral issues[.].. [A]bout half... [never] detect[ed] the changes, and a full 53%... argued [passionately against their] original [beliefs, at least once during the test]."
First, they did NOT use anything that approached the sophistication or subtlety of a 'magic trick'. They literally lifted a trick straight out of old Bugs Bunny cartoons: Take what someone says, change a couple words so that it contradicts what it originally meant, repeat it back to them and watch them adopt it. The only difference between the cartoons and real life, apparently, is that the cartoons eventually catch on!
Call it the 'Warner Brothers" or the "Bugs Bunny Debating Strategy".
Second, it just proves what everybody knows anyway (but never think applies to themselves). That most people are idiots and don't come to a conclusion (even moral ones) by thinking about them, because that is hard. They merely accept the most convenient and least challenging (those that don't suggest that their lifestyle or what they feel is wrong or unjust) opinions and beliefs (the conclusions) of the people around them (family, friends, and/or authority figures) and build the supporting arguments for them (if at all) DOWN from those conclusions, rather than starting with thought and logic and using that to build UP to a conclusion.
It proves this by showing that people are unable to recognize EVEN THEIR OWN conclusions from the concepts and arguments behind those ideas and beliefs, even while they are expressing them, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THEIR OWN because they never put any serious thought into them.
A person who thinks about what he / she says and believes will recognize that what he / she is saying doesn't match up with his / her conclusions and beliefs because he / she is THINKING about WHAT HE / SHE IS SAYING. After that, it merely takes the courage to admit that he/she had made a mistake or misunderstood something, then take the opportunity to restate his actual opinions / beliefs.
So, a more accurate title would be:
PROVED: People are idiots and don't have any reason or logic behind even their most cherished and deeply held moral codes.
or
PROVED: People are idiots who simply accept the least emotionally challenging concepts and morals of those around them.
Again, I'd like to stress: These people vote, and are actually probably the MOST LIKELY people to vote.
If for no other reason than people with the strongest beliefs (and are the most willing to force those beliefs on others) are those who are the least likely to have actually logically thought about them. If they'd thought long and hard about them, they'd actually realize that there is always the possibility that they are wrong. Where as if you simply accept an answer, you only need to think "He wouldn't lie or mislead me!" or "He's always been right in the past, so he must be right now."
One last thing. Have you ever made this statement? "You think too much". If so, this article is probably about you. Now, what are you going to do about it?
I don't believe that Americans came from the British, because there are still British people. Clearly Americans came from a Creator, and we owe him the decency to stop claiming that many Americans are simply the descendants of Europeans.
right there with you man.
Um, I think this was meant for you:
by skovnymfe (1671822)
Man I really can't tell if you're serious or not. On one note it seems like you're just spewing shit for the fun of it, but looking at your previous posts, either you're fond of spewing shit or you actually mean what you're saying. Damn.
What's wrong with the summary? We no longer needed to get those nutrients from meat -- we could survive solely on plant life.
[Sarcastic drivel snipped] I can survive on plant life. I chose not (ergo I'm not vegetarian). Meaning capacity(vegetarianism) -> trait(vegetarian) == FALSE
True. But an unused capacity is still capacity. Meaning that you have the capacity [or are allowed] to become a vegetarian. Besides, a 180k-Year-Old Mutation [still] Allow[s, but does not force] Humans To Become Vegetarians
True, correlation neither implies or proves causation.
So you're saying that scientists conclusions are wrong, and that something else allows humans to digest the fats in plant-flesh? Do you have anything to base this on other than the fact that correlation does not prove causation?
Because correlation many not prove causation, but neither does it disprove it.
Besides, I think I can safely assume that the scientists have more knowledge and expertise in their chosen field than some random person on/. spouting insults and trying to impress with big words and Latin phrases.
Because neither bluster nor contempt prove anything more than insecurity on the part of the blusterer.
Another truism: Our society too complex, our combined knowledge too vast for any single individual to test every theory and bit of knowledge that we have collected, and that some reliance on experts is necessary lest we find ourselves living our lives only to verify knowledge discovered by others. Contributing nothing of value ourselves.
vegetarians in the "third world"... don't eat red meat because it is too expensive...
Which means that they are not vegetarians.
...but some do eat fish and poultry when it is available.
Again, meaning they are not vegetarians.
Vegetarians reject the consumption of meat, for one reason or another. Either it's bad for you, or it's not natural, or it's morally abhorrent, or it's torture, or it's murder.
Vegetarianism is a choice and a philosophy, not an accident of birth, a measure of wealth, location, or citizenship.
People who eat meat, or would if they could, are, by definition, simply NOT vegetarians.
Of course today this process no longer is effective.
You mean is no longer as effective. Dead is still dead.
For the moment anyway.
When a mutation causes something that is less favourable, e.g. reduced fertility, it originally would have meant that individual had less offspring and the mutation would die off. But today the individual gets treatment,
The vast majority of people living today do not have access to modern medicine, let alone fertility treatments. Even the poor in North America have access to better (or more expensive) medicine than the average person in the world, and THEY definitely don't have access to expensive and actually inefficient, fertility treatments.
Also, smarter people "cleverly plan their lives" and have few children at a late age, while dumber people become pregnant as teens and have lots of children. This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people.
Actually throughout most of history and in some parts of the world today, having large families at an early age is/was an advantage for the survival of the species. Basically so many of the children die[d] at a young age, and so many women died in childbirth, that it was better to have lots of children at a young age while the chance of complications were lower. And without effective treatments for disease and injury, the best plan was to play the numbers and overwhelm the odds with sheer population size.
Also, in those same environments, large and extended families were / are also a successful survival strategy for the parents. When the parents are no longer able to provide for and take care of themselves, having many adult children means that there are more resources and people available for your care and upkeep. In those environments the wealth of the aged can be measured by the number of their progeny.
It just so happens that we in the 1st world have created an artificial environment for ourselves that facilitates the attainment, storage, and accumulation of masses of wealth not previously possible. (A cow, a traditional and trans-cultural wealth repository, stored in a room out of site, will die, it's value lost to the saver. A big gold coin, or paper bill will not. Even better, when invested the portable / storeable / generic (if you only have a chicken, you can only buy from someone who wants a chicken) / liquid wealth called 'money' can actually gather to it'self even more wealth.) More effective medicine means an environment where most children survive to adulthood, makeing large families with lots of children a huge drain on their parents resources, not the "Money in the Bank", they used to be. Also, not so much anymore, but in our recent past, parents living in 1st world countries would eventually move in with one of their children and spouse. They would usually still have some savings, but even more importantly, because of the more easily attained wealth, one child would often be able to support his parents with little or no help from his siblings. Making any more children than one or two an unprofitable, and needlessly expensive, investment of the parents. But all this, in the sweep of human history, is recent and new activity.
As a side-note: As lives have even further lengthened, prices continued to rise, and medicine has advanced in effectiveness, ageing has become an expensive prospect that drains savings, empties nest-eggs, and bankrupts families. Making the practice of "moving in with the kids" far less attractive to those kids. In the past few decades that practice has been depreciated in favor of the even more artificial, impersonal, and cold-blooded "warehousing" of the elderly. `Clever` for the kids and their kids, without a doubt. But devastating for the parents. (Go volunteer at one if you don't believe me.)
The vast majority of the mutations that are widespread through the population are either benign or beneficial.
True, but he's got a point there. In genetics, as in everything, it's always easier to destroy than build. And a random change is much more likely to be detrimental than benign or advantageous.
So how do they know it was a mutation?
Because some folks have it, and other folks don't.
Actually, wasn't every change, at one point or another, a mutation?
one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.
It doesn't happen suddenly.
Not unless there is a sudden change in environment that massively favors carriers of a previously benign, or even disadvantageous, mutation. Say the sudden introduction of previously unknown predators (via a new ice-bridge, suddenly clear mountain passes, or migration forced by sudden drought) might mean the environment suddenly favors the carriers of a mutation that makes the prey smaller, so they can burrow underground away from the predators, or bigger and heavier, and more intimidating to the predators. It's not that the environment causes the proper mutations necessary to adapt to it. It's that the environment weeds out those mutations that are an active hindrance to the survival of their carriers. Carriers of currently benign mutations will be randomly killed or pass on their genes, with no regard to the mutation at all, until or unless it becomes an advantage or hindrance to the carriers.
The rise of a new species can be facilitated by an extinction event that leaves only a few of the species alive, maybe even those that weren't the normally most suited to competing with the rest of their species, but were spared death because they avoided most of their species because of their mutation, and simply weren't present at the fire / flood / eruption / whatever. In that eventuality their mutation[s], whatever it/they was/were, suddenly became an overwhelming advantage, literally THE factor pivotal in the survival of the species. Even if it is in every other situation an actual determent to their survival. If the surviving gene pool is small, and the survivors closely related, the resulting spike the mutations carried by their young could go far in towards the creation of a distinct species.
How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?
Just to be clear, it doesn't.
Not normally, but again, if the only survivors (or just a large percentage of them) of some event are those that have the gene, it is at that point, and could be in the future, a large factor in population.
You do know... when you see "hydrolyzed soy protein" or "autolyzed yeast extract" [they]...were included for their high MSG load [while allowing]... the manufacturer to avoid [listing]... MSG in the ingredients.
Slashdot Mirror
there'll be a parking space somewhere within half a mile or so
Not if everybody uses this strategy!
Imagine the traffic congestion because everybody is too cheap to park!
Imagine the empty stadium parking! Imagine ticket prices for everything skyrocketing! [Even higher!]
Too many people (including cities) make too much off of parking for lawmakers to allow it, even if it becomes technically feasible.
I remember hearing about Roofing Shingle Solar Panels being manufactured about 2 years ago. The idea is that the PV's can be used as actual roofing tiles. No ugly panels above the roof. (Personally, I've always wondered why everybody puts up BLACK shingles. It turns your attic into a blast furnace, and makes cooling your house in the summer more expensive. [Even then I could never stay out of the attic as a kid!])
Sorry, I cannot remember who was making them, and I do not know how much they cost. That I have not heard more about them since is a bad sign. But you could still check them out.
oil will never run dry, there are centuries of supply of fossil fuel
Your two statements, one on each side of your comma, contradict each other.
Centuries_Of_Supply != Unlimited_Supply
To break it down a little more finely:
InGroup (Limited_Supply, Centuries_Of_Supply) == True
InGroup (Limited_Supply, Will_Never_Run_Dry ) == False
InGroup (Unlimited_Supply, Will_Never_Run_Dry ) == True
But thank-you for playing, and better luck next time!
(You know, if driving is "dangerously lethal", maybe cars in general just aren't for you.)
I think he meant "lethally dangerous". ;)
I dunno. How about "dollys" or carts like they use in retail for stocking the shelves?
Roll it up to the car, pull the battery (on rollers) onto the cart, push that to the recharger / whatever, push the battery in.
Roll it up to the charged battery, push / pull it onto the cart, push the cart up to the car and push it in. Make sure it's secure, close it, charge the customer.
Doesn't seem like much of a hurtle.
Besides, you talk like gas / service stations don't have any experience with lifting and moving extremely heavy objects. Like engines.
The same single battery pack may not be sufficient for different models and different uses, but why not have larger / more power consuming vehicles (not just cars, but trucks, forklifts [many of which are already electric], etc.) just take more of the standard battery pack?
If it leaves them with "more" power than "required", that just means more mileage / power per "tank" / fillup.
The batteries could even have connectors on them that are normally closed, but will open when another battery is pushed up against it. Allowing the chaining of batteries to provide more amps, not just more voltage.
Rather like our C's, D's, AA's and AAA's work now.
Actually, the battery need not even be leased.
We in the US have a similar setup for propane grill canisters. You buy one, then when it's empty, you take it to a regular gas-station (most have a stock of full propane tanks), and you exchange it for a full one plus a fee (usually $10 or so).
I don't see the need for adding the complexity of a lease specific to the battery. You buy the car, it comes with a charged battery, when it's time to recharge, you take it to a gas/charging station an exchange it plus a fee.
Of course, this doesn't eliminate the possibility of the owner also purchasing a trickle charger for overnight / storage charging.
a riot at Foxconn's Taiyuan plant [in China], reportedly over guards beating up a worker
Good for them! Now if they can just start standing up for all their mistreated and underpaid workers, maybe they'll push wages high enough to bring some jobs back to the US!
I know, I'm dreaming. But it's not a bad one!
China wouldn't build any if they couldn't sell any.
It's called enabling. Don't pretend that the West doesn't do it.
Just like "fences" don't steal, but they enable theft, and why even if you didn't help uncle Joe kill someone, but you hid him, or helped hide the body, you'll still be charged with murder. It's called being an "accessory after the fact".
Anybody who buys something made by slave / inmate / child labor is guilty of supporting the practice.
Just as the drug trade would stop if it couldn't find a market.
... blasphemy laws just yet.
You'll have to wait a few more years yet.
Though I doubt that you'll appreciate the ones that we're most likely to enact even then.
In the mean time, why don't YOU enact and enforce some laws protecting religous minorities and punishing hate crimes against them?
Or do YOU believe Allah and his prophet to be too weak to withstand a few words and a few nonbelievers?
But both are correct uses in the english language. Despite your use.
I cannot tolerate milk because I am lactose intolerant. Not because I don't like it, and not because I don't like lactose. I actually LIKE milk and milk products, and have no views on lactose.
Not to diminish what happened here, but WTF would a non-Islamic family want to live there in the first place?
Stupid reasons like: Place of their birth. Land of their forefathers. Where their friends are. Where their community is. Where their loved ones are. Where their lives are. etc.
You know, total wackjobs.
Even if you can't make it through my entire post, I want to leave you with one idea: These are the people that vote.
"YOUR moral positions may be more flexible than you think. Researchers... used a 'magic trick' to reverse a person's responses to... moral issues[.].. [A]bout half... [never] detect[ed] the changes, and a full 53%... argued [passionately against their] original [beliefs, at least once during the test]."
First, they did NOT use anything that approached the sophistication or subtlety of a 'magic trick'. They literally lifted a trick straight out of old Bugs Bunny cartoons: Take what someone says, change a couple words so that it contradicts what it originally meant, repeat it back to them and watch them adopt it. The only difference between the cartoons and real life, apparently, is that the cartoons eventually catch on!
Call it the 'Warner Brothers" or the "Bugs Bunny Debating Strategy".
Second, it just proves what everybody knows anyway (but never think applies to themselves). That most people are idiots and don't come to a conclusion (even moral ones) by thinking about them, because that is hard. They merely accept the most convenient and least challenging (those that don't suggest that their lifestyle or what they feel is wrong or unjust) opinions and beliefs (the conclusions) of the people around them (family, friends, and/or authority figures) and build the supporting arguments for them (if at all) DOWN from those conclusions, rather than starting with thought and logic and using that to build UP to a conclusion.
It proves this by showing that people are unable to recognize EVEN THEIR OWN conclusions from the concepts and arguments behind those ideas and beliefs, even while they are expressing them, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THEIR OWN because they never put any serious thought into them.
A person who thinks about what he / she says and believes will recognize that what he / she is saying doesn't match up with his / her conclusions and beliefs because he / she is THINKING about WHAT HE / SHE IS SAYING. After that, it merely takes the courage to admit that he/she had made a mistake or misunderstood something, then take the opportunity to restate his actual opinions / beliefs.
So, a more accurate title would be:
PROVED: People are idiots and don't have any reason or logic behind even their most cherished and deeply held moral codes.
or
PROVED: People are idiots who simply accept the least emotionally challenging concepts and morals of those around them.
Again, I'd like to stress: These people vote, and are actually probably the MOST LIKELY people to vote.
If for no other reason than people with the strongest beliefs (and are the most willing to force those beliefs on others) are those who are the least likely to have actually logically thought about them. If they'd thought long and hard about them, they'd actually realize that there is always the possibility that they are wrong. Where as if you simply accept an answer, you only need to think "He wouldn't lie or mislead me!" or "He's always been right in the past, so he must be right now."
One last thing. Have you ever made this statement? "You think too much". If so, this article is probably about you. Now, what are you going to do about it?
Have you read any of the posts here on Slashdot?
Of course, that's why I suggest that your parents should keep you away from bad influences! ;)
I don't believe that Americans came from the British, because there are still British people. Clearly Americans came from a Creator, and we owe him the decency to stop claiming that many Americans are simply the descendants of Europeans.
right there with you man.
Um, I think this was meant for you:
by skovnymfe (1671822)
Man I really can't tell if you're serious or not. On one note it seems like you're just spewing shit for the fun of it, but looking at your previous posts, either you're fond of spewing shit or you actually mean what you're saying. Damn.
can i haz teh dictionary?
Would you settle for a [cheazburger]?
What's wrong with the summary? We no longer needed to get those nutrients from meat -- we could survive solely on plant life.
[Sarcastic drivel snipped] I can survive on plant life. I chose not (ergo I'm not vegetarian).
Meaning capacity(vegetarianism) -> trait(vegetarian) == FALSE
True. But an unused capacity is still capacity. Meaning that you have the capacity [or are allowed] to become a vegetarian.
Besides, a 180k-Year-Old Mutation [still] Allow[s, but does not force] Humans To Become Vegetarians
Therefore, we could become vegetarians.
Petitio Principii
Are you suggesting that there is no proof of human vegetarians so that the title's only proof is it's own assertion?
Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc"
True, correlation neither implies or proves causation.
So you're saying that scientists conclusions are wrong, and that something else allows humans to digest the fats in plant-flesh?
Do you have anything to base this on other than the fact that correlation does not prove causation?
Because correlation many not prove causation, but neither does it disprove it.
Besides, I think I can safely assume that the scientists have more knowledge and expertise in their chosen field than some random person on /. spouting insults and trying to impress with big words and Latin phrases.
Because neither bluster nor contempt prove anything more than insecurity on the part of the blusterer.
Another truism: Our society too complex, our combined knowledge too vast for any single individual to test every theory and bit of knowledge that we have collected, and that some reliance on experts is necessary lest we find ourselves living our lives only to verify knowledge discovered by others. Contributing nothing of value ourselves.
True, humans can 'eat' grass, but don't have the stomached to extract nutrition from it.
Which is odd, because wheat is a grass. (Though we eat the seeds, not the stalks.)
Cooking and other pre-processing WAS a change in diet.
vegetarians in the "third world"... don't eat red meat because it is too expensive...
Which means that they are not vegetarians.
...but some do eat fish and poultry when it is available.
Again, meaning they are not vegetarians.
Vegetarians reject the consumption of meat, for one reason or another. Either it's bad for you, or it's not natural, or it's morally abhorrent, or it's torture, or it's murder.
Vegetarianism is a choice and a philosophy, not an accident of birth, a measure of wealth, location, or citizenship.
People who eat meat, or would if they could, are, by definition, simply NOT vegetarians.
I thought you said "Foxy Vegetarian". Now I'm dissapointed. :(
Of course today this process no longer is effective.
You mean is no longer as effective. Dead is still dead.
For the moment anyway.
When a mutation causes something that is less favourable, e.g. reduced fertility, it originally would have meant that individual had less offspring and the mutation would die off. But today the individual gets treatment,
The vast majority of people living today do not have access to modern medicine, let alone fertility treatments. Even the poor in North America have access to better (or more expensive) medicine than the average person in the world, and THEY definitely don't have access to expensive and actually inefficient, fertility treatments.
Also, smarter people "cleverly plan their lives" and have few children at a late age, while dumber people become pregnant as teens and have lots of children. This favours the propagation of genes that result in less clever people.
Actually throughout most of history and in some parts of the world today, having large families at an early age is/was an advantage for the survival of the species. Basically so many of the children die[d] at a young age, and so many women died in childbirth, that it was better to have lots of children at a young age while the chance of complications were lower. And without effective treatments for disease and injury, the best plan was to play the numbers and overwhelm the odds with sheer population size.
Also, in those same environments, large and extended families were / are also a successful survival strategy for the parents. When the parents are no longer able to provide for and take care of themselves, having many adult children means that there are more resources and people available for your care and upkeep. In those environments the wealth of the aged can be measured by the number of their progeny.
It just so happens that we in the 1st world have created an artificial environment for ourselves that facilitates the attainment, storage, and accumulation of masses of wealth not previously possible. (A cow, a traditional and trans-cultural wealth repository, stored in a room out of site, will die, it's value lost to the saver. A big gold coin, or paper bill will not. Even better, when invested the portable / storeable / generic (if you only have a chicken, you can only buy from someone who wants a chicken) / liquid wealth called 'money' can actually gather to it'self even more wealth.) More effective medicine means an environment where most children survive to adulthood, makeing large families with lots of children a huge drain on their parents resources, not the "Money in the Bank", they used to be. Also, not so much anymore, but in our recent past, parents living in 1st world countries would eventually move in with one of their children and spouse. They would usually still have some savings, but even more importantly, because of the more easily attained wealth, one child would often be able to support his parents with little or no help from his siblings. Making any more children than one or two an unprofitable, and needlessly expensive, investment of the parents. But all this, in the sweep of human history, is recent and new activity.
As a side-note: As lives have even further lengthened, prices continued to rise, and medicine has advanced in effectiveness, ageing has become an expensive prospect that drains savings, empties nest-eggs, and bankrupts families. Making the practice of "moving in with the kids" far less attractive to those kids. In the past few decades that practice has been depreciated in favor of the even more artificial, impersonal, and cold-blooded "warehousing" of the elderly. `Clever` for the kids and their kids, without a doubt. But devastating for the parents. (Go volunteer at one if you don't believe me.)
And mistake on our society's part, I'm sure.
mutations are so rarely beneficial
The vast majority of the mutations that are widespread through the population are either benign or beneficial.
True, but he's got a point there. In genetics, as in everything, it's always easier to destroy than build. And a random change is much more likely to be detrimental than benign or advantageous.
So how do they know it was a mutation?
Because some folks have it, and other folks don't.
Actually, wasn't every change, at one point or another, a mutation?
one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.
It doesn't happen suddenly.
Not unless there is a sudden change in environment that massively favors carriers of a previously benign, or even disadvantageous, mutation. Say the sudden introduction of previously unknown predators (via a new ice-bridge, suddenly clear mountain passes, or migration forced by sudden drought) might mean the environment suddenly favors the carriers of a mutation that makes the prey smaller, so they can burrow underground away from the predators, or bigger and heavier, and more intimidating to the predators. It's not that the environment causes the proper mutations necessary to adapt to it. It's that the environment weeds out those mutations that are an active hindrance to the survival of their carriers. Carriers of currently benign mutations will be randomly killed or pass on their genes, with no regard to the mutation at all, until or unless it becomes an advantage or hindrance to the carriers.
The rise of a new species can be facilitated by an extinction event that leaves only a few of the species alive, maybe even those that weren't the normally most suited to competing with the rest of their species, but were spared death because they avoided most of their species because of their mutation, and simply weren't present at the fire / flood / eruption / whatever. In that eventuality their mutation[s], whatever it/they was/were, suddenly became an overwhelming advantage, literally THE factor pivotal in the survival of the species. Even if it is in every other situation an actual determent to their survival. If the surviving gene pool is small, and the survivors closely related, the resulting spike the mutations carried by their young could go far in towards the creation of a distinct species.
How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?
Just to be clear, it doesn't.
Not normally, but again, if the only survivors (or just a large percentage of them) of some event are those that have the gene, it is at that point, and could be in the future, a large factor in population.
You do know... when you see "hydrolyzed soy protein" or "autolyzed yeast extract" [they]...were included for their high MSG load [while allowing]... the manufacturer to avoid [listing]... MSG in the ingredients.
I did not know that.
plums [have a]... light colored... yeast [on them]. I [use it in]... wine[s] and such
Don't you find wild yeasts give you inconsistent, and often bad, results?