In your world the big guys are even more free to abuse the little guy; now the big guys are instead free to infringe on the little guy's patents without compunction, because the little guy dare not sue for infringement. God knows the big guy will spend a lot to defeat your infringement claim...and now not only is your case hard to win, if you lose, you are completely screwed.
Almost everything I see on slashdot about fixing the patent system would actually make it worse, particularly for the little guy people here so love to defend. There are certainly problems, but they take a hell of a lot more thought than you're putting in to fix them.
50-90% (depending on project) of what physics grad students do is programming. It's definitely reasonable for a physics nerd to set up an SQL database. Whether that's the right way to spend their time and effort organizing the data is another question.
But local conservation of energy also holds... Every bit of energy at a point flowed into that point from its immediate surroundings. Draw a box around the device, measure carefully, and you will find every joule in that motor flowed into the box through its walls in some form--or was already there when you drew the box. This is the "strong form" of conservation of energy, while global conservation of energy is the "weak form".
Entropy is indeed a globally increasing quantity, which can be reduced locally as you stated well with your sun/earth analogy. That doesn't get this guy's device off the hook, though.
> your belief for it to be correct. Bernoulli's principle works every time an airplane flies. You do not need to
> believe in it for it to work. THAT is the reason why science has come to dominate the way we think today - it works.
it works, *bitches*.
Yes, both the "on" (channelrhodopsin + blue light) and the "off" (halorhodopsin + yellow light) work on millisecond timescales, just like neurons normally do. The halo paper itself in PLoS one has a great image of being able to assassinate a single spike in a neuron being fired at a typical rate. You can also record a neuron's normal firing pattern and "play it back" with incredible fidelity using blue light to cause the firing.
That's what blue light and channelrhodopsin is for! I think it might be mentioned in TFA... If not, well, it's the exact same idea, only instead of hyperpolarizing like yellow light+halo, it depolarizes and causes action potentials to fire, which is activating the neuron.
Although, bear in mind that *not* firing is saying something to the brain, just like firing says something else to the brain. "Active" vs. "inactive" isn't always the way to think about it. The function of huge numbers of interneurons is to inhibit other neurons from firing!
Actually, the yellow light (and blue light mentioned for stimulation) is targeted directly onto the neurons... It is not shined on the eyes and processed by the visual systems, so the two effects are unrelated.
Ah, how charming. "Not to be accusatory...pedantic ass"
I was referring to accuracy of language and understanding, not accuracy of the data. Having worked as an astrophysicist (with enormous error bars all over the place), I realize how much one can learn from imprecise information.
Now, no matter one's error bars, this person demonstrated an extreme carelessness with their interpretation of the data. This damages his credibility in the eyes of readers.
Invest in a dictionary? I'm a physics grad student at MIT. I know what I'm talking about.
I should have (by my own advice) been more clear about the point to which I was objecting.
You should not have flamed a comment you didn't understand by a person you don't know.
I'm making no attempt to address the larger issue at all. Whether or not you are right, you are undermining the credibility of your arguments by making extremely elementary mistakes. In a topic where so many people have no idea what they're talking about, you really must be air-tight in your logic and grasp of the facts if you want to get noticed. When I do try to make a convincing argument for something, the absolute last thing I want is someone who is poor-spoken or ignorant agreeing with me.
I gave you a basic piece of advice, but I get an accusatory flame response for my troubles. That's also not a good way to build credibility. Even if I were being a flamebait jerk about things, rising to that bait will never make you or what you're trying to say look better.
Another reason not to flame--or even try hard too hard to convince someone who disagrees--is that if they invest something in defending their position, they will never change that position. None of the people who posted a comment on that article will ever change their mind about global warming's causes, because they've put the time and publicity into supporting their position (probably not for the first time on this thread). The readers who've never taken a verbal or logical beating over the issue may very well change their minds because they've got less invested in their belief.
Couldn't decide whether to mod this insightful or flamebait, as it's definitely both... I guess I'll take a third way. The urge to expand comes from far more than our delusions of grandeur about ourselves. It's not some "chosen people" sort of thing--at least not now, not for most people. Eventually everything on the Earth will die, and those humans with the means and desire to avoid this fate will leave. They and their genes will survive, just like those species survived on Earth that branched out and avoided calamities that wiped out their former home environments.
Details of the theory aside, evolution as a concept is the theory I believe in most in all of science--and I'm a physics grad student, so that's no small confession. That is because it follows from logical arguments, irrespective of the world you live in. It is not only compatible with everything we know about science, it is probably true *independent* of the laws of physics. Regardless of the value of the fine structure constant, the validity of string theory, or the response of the oceans to absorbing 10^12J of heat, one can still say, "the organism best suited to its environment will be the most likely to propagate into the future." The independence of evolution from scientific laws and parameters is a very, very powerful concept.
Of course, there's all sorts of fun to be had determining what constitutes "best suited to its environment"--perhaps it's best suited because it can build a giant rocket and get OUT--and determining how something "propagates into the future"--does it live as long as a turtle or reproduce quickly like a bacterium? One could even see how far one could extend the definition of "organism" and still have this statement hold. I suspect quite far. In these questions is where science lives, figuring out the fascinating and sometimes very important details. But however important it may be, it will always be in some sense a "mop-up" operation for figuring out the special cases of the logical necessity that is evolution.
I'm currently a (male) course 8 grad student at MIT, working in the Media Lab. My group is very much a counterexample to this theory. We're roughly 50% women, and we're doing bleeding edge stuff that will either fall on its face or change the world. One interesting thing to note is that the women in the group aren't testosterone-laden, cut-throat man-wannabe's, either. They're intelligent women with the courage to try something that might fail. I watched a lot of men walk away from this incredible opportunity out of fear for their future.
Now, all this (Harvard and MIT women in general) is not where the issue starts. It may well be that female grad students tend to shy away from the scariest projects, but that possible tendency could be purely due to social norms. I can't be sure and neither can anybody else, because no woman or man has ever grown up without social norms.
What I do know is that in any research lab I've been in, the women there have pulled their weight and done good work. Also--and I think this is a point that often gets overlooked--I find the atmosphere and social interactions to be much better than a sausage fest. Obviously, a more cohesive working environment makes for better work output.
A couple other things about MIT and Harvard: MIT doesn't have a med school, but it does have two brain institutes, a genomics institute, a health science and technology program, various types of bioengineering... It does a lot of medical things in partnership with Harvard's med school. Med students' research isn't usually going to change the world. It's the MD-PhDs that want to do research foremost that will do that, and they very often get the PhD end of that from MIT.
Harvard *definitely* does science of all kinds. They are all things to all people. Well, the people who can't get into MIT anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
In your world the big guys are even more free to abuse the little guy; now the big guys are instead free to infringe on the little guy's patents without compunction, because the little guy dare not sue for infringement. God knows the big guy will spend a lot to defeat your infringement claim...and now not only is your case hard to win, if you lose, you are completely screwed. Almost everything I see on slashdot about fixing the patent system would actually make it worse, particularly for the little guy people here so love to defend. There are certainly problems, but they take a hell of a lot more thought than you're putting in to fix them.
50-90% (depending on project) of what physics grad students do is programming. It's definitely reasonable for a physics nerd to set up an SQL database. Whether that's the right way to spend their time and effort organizing the data is another question.
...but it does sound like more fun than Boatmurder
But local conservation of energy also holds... Every bit of energy at a point flowed into that point from its immediate surroundings. Draw a box around the device, measure carefully, and you will find every joule in that motor flowed into the box through its walls in some form--or was already there when you drew the box. This is the "strong form" of conservation of energy, while global conservation of energy is the "weak form".
Entropy is indeed a globally increasing quantity, which can be reduced locally as you stated well with your sun/earth analogy. That doesn't get this guy's device off the hook, though.
> your belief for it to be correct. Bernoulli's principle works every time an airplane flies. You do not need to
> believe in it for it to work. THAT is the reason why science has come to dominate the way we think today - it works.
it works, *bitches*.
Yes, both the "on" (channelrhodopsin + blue light) and the "off" (halorhodopsin + yellow light) work on millisecond timescales, just like neurons normally do. The halo paper itself in PLoS one has a great image of being able to assassinate a single spike in a neuron being fired at a typical rate. You can also record a neuron's normal firing pattern and "play it back" with incredible fidelity using blue light to cause the firing.
That's what blue light and channelrhodopsin is for! I think it might be mentioned in TFA... If not, well, it's the exact same idea, only instead of hyperpolarizing like yellow light+halo, it depolarizes and causes action potentials to fire, which is activating the neuron.
Although, bear in mind that *not* firing is saying something to the brain, just like firing says something else to the brain. "Active" vs. "inactive" isn't always the way to think about it. The function of huge numbers of interneurons is to inhibit other neurons from firing!
Actually, the yellow light (and blue light mentioned for stimulation) is targeted directly onto the neurons... It is not shined on the eyes and processed by the visual systems, so the two effects are unrelated.
Ah, how charming. "Not to be accusatory...pedantic ass" I was referring to accuracy of language and understanding, not accuracy of the data. Having worked as an astrophysicist (with enormous error bars all over the place), I realize how much one can learn from imprecise information. Now, no matter one's error bars, this person demonstrated an extreme carelessness with their interpretation of the data. This damages his credibility in the eyes of readers. Invest in a dictionary? I'm a physics grad student at MIT. I know what I'm talking about. I should have (by my own advice) been more clear about the point to which I was objecting. You should not have flamed a comment you didn't understand by a person you don't know.
I'm making no attempt to address the larger issue at all. Whether or not you are right, you are undermining the credibility of your arguments by making extremely elementary mistakes. In a topic where so many people have no idea what they're talking about, you really must be air-tight in your logic and grasp of the facts if you want to get noticed. When I do try to make a convincing argument for something, the absolute last thing I want is someone who is poor-spoken or ignorant agreeing with me. I gave you a basic piece of advice, but I get an accusatory flame response for my troubles. That's also not a good way to build credibility. Even if I were being a flamebait jerk about things, rising to that bait will never make you or what you're trying to say look better. Another reason not to flame--or even try hard too hard to convince someone who disagrees--is that if they invest something in defending their position, they will never change that position. None of the people who posted a comment on that article will ever change their mind about global warming's causes, because they've put the time and publicity into supporting their position (probably not for the first time on this thread). The readers who've never taken a verbal or logical beating over the issue may very well change their minds because they've got less invested in their belief.
600 +/- 400 is 200 to 1000. If you want to comment on science, you must be accurate, and you must convince your audience that you are accurate.
Couldn't decide whether to mod this insightful or flamebait, as it's definitely both... I guess I'll take a third way. The urge to expand comes from far more than our delusions of grandeur about ourselves. It's not some "chosen people" sort of thing--at least not now, not for most people. Eventually everything on the Earth will die, and those humans with the means and desire to avoid this fate will leave. They and their genes will survive, just like those species survived on Earth that branched out and avoided calamities that wiped out their former home environments.
Details of the theory aside, evolution as a concept is the theory I believe in most in all of science--and I'm a physics grad student, so that's no small confession. That is because it follows from logical arguments, irrespective of the world you live in. It is not only compatible with everything we know about science, it is probably true *independent* of the laws of physics. Regardless of the value of the fine structure constant, the validity of string theory, or the response of the oceans to absorbing 10^12J of heat, one can still say, "the organism best suited to its environment will be the most likely to propagate into the future." The independence of evolution from scientific laws and parameters is a very, very powerful concept.
Of course, there's all sorts of fun to be had determining what constitutes "best suited to its environment"--perhaps it's best suited because it can build a giant rocket and get OUT--and determining how something "propagates into the future"--does it live as long as a turtle or reproduce quickly like a bacterium? One could even see how far one could extend the definition of "organism" and still have this statement hold. I suspect quite far. In these questions is where science lives, figuring out the fascinating and sometimes very important details. But however important it may be, it will always be in some sense a "mop-up" operation for figuring out the special cases of the logical necessity that is evolution.
It was my understanding that *Leroy* Jenkins was one of the foremost experts on games in the US...
I'm currently a (male) course 8 grad student at MIT, working in the Media Lab. My group is very much a counterexample to this theory. We're roughly 50% women, and we're doing bleeding edge stuff that will either fall on its face or change the world. One interesting thing to note is that the women in the group aren't testosterone-laden, cut-throat man-wannabe's, either. They're intelligent women with the courage to try something that might fail. I watched a lot of men walk away from this incredible opportunity out of fear for their future.
Now, all this (Harvard and MIT women in general) is not where the issue starts. It may well be that female grad students tend to shy away from the scariest projects, but that possible tendency could be purely due to social norms. I can't be sure and neither can anybody else, because no woman or man has ever grown up without social norms.
What I do know is that in any research lab I've been in, the women there have pulled their weight and done good work. Also--and I think this is a point that often gets overlooked--I find the atmosphere and social interactions to be much better than a sausage fest. Obviously, a more cohesive working environment makes for better work output.
A couple other things about MIT and Harvard: MIT doesn't have a med school, but it does have two brain institutes, a genomics institute, a health science and technology program, various types of bioengineering... It does a lot of medical things in partnership with Harvard's med school. Med students' research isn't usually going to change the world. It's the MD-PhDs that want to do research foremost that will do that, and they very often get the PhD end of that from MIT.
Harvard *definitely* does science of all kinds. They are all things to all people. Well, the people who can't get into MIT anyway.