Oh, I don't disagree. See my comment about it taking time however. When all your practical experience tells you that situation X will lead to event Y, then it takes a great deal of practice not to expect Y when confronted with X.
By all means, do what you must to ignore me.
Whatever gave you the idea that I'm ignoring you? You were acting like the proverbial armchair quarterback, proffering unsolicited and misdirected advice over an internet forum. I'll take the advice of those in a position to make intelligent firsthand observations, thanks.
If I wanted to ignore you, I'd have simply left the thread alone.
Not really. It's irrelevant.
This is a slashdot discussion, not a psych class. Check the thread topic - public school vs. home school. We've gone offtopic, which I think is your doing more than mine, but that is where we began, right? Ergo, if you have something insightful or interesting to add to the thread, other than amateur night at the psych ward, then that would be the topic to add it to.
You seem to have drawn an awfully large conclusion there.
Change takes time. Experience cannot be unlearned; altering one's worldview is not merely a matter of deciding one day to ignore the last X years of your life. If you have even the basic psychological knowledge required to make the kind of conclusions you're making (and you have the air of an armchair quarterback to me, so perhaps you don't), then you already know this.
As for myself, I've mellowed considerably since I graduated, and I'm far less a cynic now than I was. To use your terminology, my "worldview" as it stood when I graduated has gradually become less valid. That does not however make my memory of the public school system any happier.
My point was directed more about the state of the school system than myself; I'm doing better, whereas I see no reason to think it's improved since I left, nor any reason to think it does it's students any good. Do you have anything at all to say on that topic?
And as a side note, I'd tend to say that holding a cynical view of things like the public school system isn't a matter of having an invalid worldview. If something is broken and faulty, then it a cynic is right to consider it as such, despite his cynicism.
The arguement being presented is that school "socializes" it's victi^H^H^H students. Ergo, they become more able to function in society, having learned to deal with other people.
Except school doesn't actually do that. There are thousands of better venues in life for meeting people and learning to socialize. What school does do is teach you a deep cynicism with regard to people and society. That's if you're lucky. I didn't go to a violent school, but there were at least a few suicides I heard about, and some of my old friends wound up deadbeats or doing McJobs. Being crammed into a free-for-all environment with their peers didn't do them a lick of good.
The ability to deal with people with a certain amount of optimism is a useful trait for functioning in society. Charm can get you places where other skills and traits can't. Cynicism, OTOH, isn't terribly useful. It's not useless, it's just not the best way of interacting with others. Note that these two possiblities are not mutually exclusive, but it's much harder to fake charm if you view other people with suspicion and pessimism.
If the anti-home schooling arguement were valid, then home schooled kids would be unprepared for the world and public schooled kids would know how to deal with people. Instead, in at least some cases, you get the opposite - my brother has better people skills than I do, despite our similar nature.
Since correlation =! causation, the most correct statement is that home schooling and public schooling do not offer any obvious social advantage over each other. And it is possible, though not easy to prove, that home schooling is better from a socializing perspective, as it doesn't teach it's students to hate each other. That was essentially my only point.
From experience, my family in no way resembles that distribution.
For one thing, it says firstborn tend to be overacheivers - I'm a born slacker. For another it says intelligence goes down with second and third children, which (taken in the context of my family, where I went to public school and my brother was home schooled) would indicate that home schooling made my bro smarter, in addition to being less cynical and more social. Talk about a raw deal for me!
I'd say that those theories either only apply in the most general average sense, or else the two of us are exceptions to the rule. At a guess, it's the former; none of the families I know fit that entire distribution of personality and capability.
I doubt that home schooling vs. public schooling actually made a huge difference. I do know however, that most of my dislike of the human species can be traced back to high school. What gets on my nerves is people saying that this somehow "prepared me for the real world"; it did nothing of the sort.
For one thing, I can plainly see another person similar to me who was not thusly prepared, and suffered no negative consequences, so obviously school can't have done me that much good in preparing for reality. For another, school bears little or no resemblance to reality, and dealing with the challenges there prepares you for nothing. Cynicism is not a useful trait, whereas charm (which requires a certain ability to like a complete stranger) is in fact a real world skill.
Virtually every single person in this article thread, and in TFA itself, is using non-scientific evidence, especially anecdotes. See the post further down by some AC about "Lauren" the college dropout he taught who was home-schooled. It therefor stands that, if nobody is linking studies/research at all, one anecdote is as good as another. Your only valid counterpoint would be a scientifically credited link; as it stands my direct experience is more valid than your uninformed opinion (neither of us is being scientific).
What proof is there anyway? Even if you could study the students (this is being done BTW, my brother was tracked by one such study), then any data gathered over the last few decades will be skewed by the number of religion based home schooling.
As for comparisons between the two of us, we're damn similar people. Close to the same intelligence, similar academic performance (I test better, he get's his assignments done more often), similar personality. Why do I dislike people far more than him? I was taught froma very early age that people are scum. He never learned that lesson.
However, learning that lesson did me no practical good, whereas ignorance has actually benefitted him. We have wound up at about the same place in life as well, so arguements that I must have a better job/higher education/whatever don't fly.
And even if he were more gregarious than me, all you've proved is that, in our case, which system we went through had no positive or negative impact on our lives. Ie, home schooled kid fairs no worse than public schooled kid when all other variables are as close to identical as possible. Which would still be an arguement in favour of home schooling.
Couldn't have put it better myself. Where the hell are my mod points when I need them?
I went through the public school system; my younger brother was home schooled. Guess which one of us is the cynic? Saying he "wasn't taught what the real world is like" is a compliment; it's better not to see injustice as "normal", just because that's the way things looked growing up.
As a side note, he's become the more gregarious of the two of us. I'd say anyone who assumes you need public school in order to become socialized is either completely ignorant of what they're talking about, or else their cross section of "home schooled" kids are the previous generation of religious kids who were taken out of school by their parents.
Bah, you kids. In MY day, we didn't have any fancy "automatic weapons", we had to use pointy rocks tied to sticks, called "spears", and we liked it! We had to walk to the school cave uphill both ways! Over glaciers!
Teen pregnancy? In my day, if you didn't have kids by the time you were 15, you were out of the tribe (either you're sterile, or you don't put out - either way, we don't want you). Science class was learning how to bash rocks together to make fire, shop class was learning how to make our pointy rocks sharper, and sex-ed was a matter of learning the difference between a mammoth and a woman (you mate with one and kill the other - the people who got it wrong were violently beaten and had to marry the mammoth).
Of course, comp-sci was done in COBOL even back in those days. Now there's something truely primative. I can't tell you what a pain in the ass it is to make a database using only COBOL language and piles of rocks. God help you if the rocks got out of order...
Eh, I'm not in a position to judge. I doubt you are either though.
Got a link for that pig/elephant thing? It sounds more like an april fools joke to me, but stranger things have happened.
As for the "we have too many scientists" meme, according to different people we have too many of just about everything. We have too many lawyers; they can't find legitimate work, so they chase ambulances as a way of finding new clients to lauch frivolous lawsuits with. We have too many politicians, so they end up finding new and annoying ways to interfere with people's lives. We have too many white and blue collar workers, so they get downsized. We have too many students and professors, so the permanent positions in universities all have long waiting lists. We have too many people willing to work for Walmart, so they treat their employees like crap knowing they can be replaced.
What don't we have in overabundance? Seriously, I can't think of many jobs where people complain of a shortage. I'm inclined to think that where there is an overabundance of something, it's a sign that the job market overcorrected for a previous shortage.
In the case of people like scientists, I'd say there's room enough for plenty. For every scientific question we answer, two more take it's place. As long as we consider those questions worth answering, scientists will have jobs. There can be too many mediocre scientists (which I think is more in line with what you're talking about), but then the solution is to raise the bar for entry and wait for the tenured ones to die off or retire.
I've heard about a half dozen varients, including the "kinky" one. I've been told the original quote uses "perverted", but I've never bothered to find out (it's been attributed to more than one person; I think that version was the Marquis de Sade).
I prefer the one in my sig, since it's got a nice symmetry to it - e(r/x)otic. Plus it sounds funnier to me when said this way:-)
I think we could all stand to learn a thing or two from the 'non-techies.'
Non-techies......like the troll that started this thread for example?
Average human beings are about equal when it comes to stupidity, regardless of education or profession. There is an even distribution of jerks, trolls, morons and idiots in most walks of life. If you're suggesting that techies need humiltiy, then you're preaching to the wrong crowd; few on earth seems to care about that particular trait, techie or otherwise. The people who do care about humility don't need to be preached to, and the ones that don't aren't going to listen.
As for the statement that there were no techies 100 years ago, the OP and the GP were both talking about all forms of geek, including scientists (in fact the most telling remark by the troll was refering to sciece as "opinion"), and there were scientific minds as far back as ancient Greece. Us geeks may not be neccesary, but then again neither are humanities majors; the only absoluteley neccesary people in any society are the food providers (farmers, hunter/gaterhers, etc).
Have sex as early and often as possible. Sex makes people cool! Don't use a condom either; real men pull out! Drink hard and drive fast. You'll live forever, don't worry! The bong is your best friend. Listen to his years of wisdom.
Seriously, who the hell thinks school does kids a lick of good? Teaching kids = good, socializing kids = good, throwing kids into an enviroment of peer pressure and rampant apathy = BAD. If you can somehow meet the first two without getting into the third, then what's the problem? I'll admit that "online" schooling might not help much with getting kids used to socializing, but there's gotta be better ways to do that then to drop them into a free for all full of their peers.
I think the entire current school system needs a rehaul. I'm not sure what it oughta be, but what it is is a waste. Half the people I grew up with have horrible memories of the place; the other half are dropouts.
If they do break the 0*C barrier, it'll likely be at the cost of the patient's life. At the point where water freezes, cell's rupture from the ice crystals forming within. I don't know how the hell they could get around that, unless they can somehow dehydrate the body and rehydrate it on revival (freeze dried pork, yum!)
OTOH, what needs to survive? If you've got someone that's barely one step above a cadaver, but could be restored given time, then stopping their heart (and therefor any further hemmorage) and suspending the body to prevent oxygen starvation and cell death might be just the right idea.
Once you're no longer dealing with a ticking clock, the possibilities for systematic restoration open up; ie, you could make some of the repairs while they're still suspended, and tie them into life support systems before waking them in order to give their body time to heal.
If the subject "dies" in the freezing process, then all you have to worry about is making sure they freeze fast enough to prevent brain damage/death.
Also, you can never rule out the possibility that under those conditions a prisoner might kill himself. The solution used in the known space books is actually pretty ingenious, and an ethical nightmare.
...I seem to recall Larry Niven wrote about the possible (mis)uses of suspended animation in his Known Space series of books.
One of Niven's ideas was of using executed criminals as a source for organ replacement; this led to the eventual application of the death penalty for most crimes. The general idea was that this would be made possible by using suspended animation to keep the organs alive and healthy for long periods after the "donor" had been killed, so that a suitable match might be found. Your new liver might come from someone who died years ago, and whose parts were kept in storage until a matching donor like yourself had need of them.
Niven also introduced the idea that illegal organ harvesting could also happen; "organleggers" kidnap and disassemble people to provide a black market service. He was writing this in the 60's, and since then there have been signs of both situations (legal and illegal execution as a source of organs) happening in thw world.
Assuming we could keep body parts alive in suspended animation after the host is dead, we could do exactly what Niven described. The question is, will we?
That's a perfect example of the trouble in game balancing.
In KotOR, the swords were meant as a way to counter Jedi/Sith characters, since a blaster does absolutely nothing vs a lightsaber (or worse than nothing if you get hit on the rebound). The blades surviving a lightsaber strike doesn't make much sense, given that we've seen sabers cut through solid metal doors, and since nobody seems to wear suits made out of whatever the blades use, but leave that aside.
For the sword wielder to have a snowball's chance in hell in a melee, the swords have to be powerful and the non-Jedi has to be armoured. This yields the counter-intuitive situation whereby bladed weapons are better than blasters - they're essentially lightsabers without the deflection. While it was a damn good game in most respects, that was the one area I had some serious problems with suspension of disbelief.
It's a good example of what happens when you can't make the game both consistant with the reality it's supposed to depict and balanced. In the movies, lightsabers are unbeatable weapons; if this were true in the game, then you'd have zero use for any non-Jedi/Sith characters (and that's almost true regardless). So they dumb the sabers down to standard melee weapons - no more killing in a single swipe. But that still leaves anyone without a saber in a bad way, given that they can't very well shoot the Jedi, so instead the add swords which give them a fighting chance. In making these changes they end up moving away from how combat looked in the movies, but retaining at least some balance.
"I've wanted to do the two-slit experiment for years, but my wife won't let me!"
To which the reply was:
"Good luck with that. Try explaining to her afterwards that you couldn't tell which slit you came through. You'll be sleeping next to the particle collider for a month."
Don't know where this came from though; it's not original to me...
Not one foolish emotional vegetarian, but rather many. Nor am I just talking veggies; I've met people who had a problem with eating beef and chicken, but not, for example, pork (I mean, huh? Pigs are the most human-like of our food animals...) Note that this person wasn't a vegetarian, merely a guilt-ridden omnivore. Similarly, I've met people who had a problem with fur, but not leather, people who claim to love animals, but are utterly disgusted by pests like rats and raccoons, etc.
However, as I've said, I am quite willing to respect those whose beliefs are logically consistant and rational, even if I disagree with their essential ideals. Nor do I particularly care what other people choose to believe, I just can't find it in me to take them seriously if they haven't thought their outlook through. To give an example I don't have an issue with someone who's for animal rights but not a vegetarian - that person might well be working from the perspective that there's nothing wrong with eating animals, however making them suffer is bad. Similarly I could respect someone who's vocally opposed to medical testing on primates, but couldn't care less about rats, as they could be assuming that primate intelligence and their relationship to humans grants them special status.
Note, however, that the above examples are far away from the typical PETA types. I have met veggies and animal rights folk who's beliefs I respect (many of the examples above are drawn from RL), but I've met many more who'll ask you if you can stand to watch a poor cute bunny suffer. If I had met more rational and less emotional people in that category, then I wouldn't accuse them of playing favourites based on appearance.
I am actually surpirsed someone took the time to make a site for lobsters, and somewhat impressed. Assuming the site isn't meant to be a joke, it's an example of internally consistant morals; someone who cares more for the fact these creatures are alive than the fact they're butt ugly.
Wouldn't it be simpler, in the case you specified, to do the designs on a computer instead and then use the aforementioned "genetic programming techniques"? Why involve an organism at all?
Assuming the bacteria themselves aren't going to be used in the finished product, then what possible gain is there in using them in both design and construction? If you must have an evolved element in the design (and I do see the advantage here), then it makes far more sense to develop the blueprints for whatever it is you want ahead of time using genetic computer modeling and then just use the bacteria to make the finished product. Cheaper and probably faster than doing it the old fashioned way.
However, the arguement that "they're intelligent, so they deserve special protection" (which I agree with BTW), doesn't really apply to anything other that cetacians and primates.
Want to pull people's heartstrings? Show them a picture of a cute little lab rat getting electrocuted. Or a rabbit, or a guinee pig, or pretty much anything that's percieved to be cuddly.
I'm all for protecting animals that are approaching humans in terms of intelligence. That covers dolphins, whales, chimpanzees, gorrilas and other similarly bright mammals. After all, if the only thing we have that makes us special is our brain, then it stands to reason that another living thing with a brain that is close to our own ought to have some special status. What I find irritating is the degree to which other animals are either considered important or irrelevant based on aesthetics.
If someone beleives that all animals deserve protection, then they should be just as protective of octopi and vultures as they are of rabbits and cows. Putting aesthetics first and caring far more about animals based on appearance is hypocritical.
The day I see a "save the lobsters" campaign is the day I'll change my views. I may not agree with someone who thinks lobsters are worth protecting, but I'll credit him as being morally consistant and impartial, both admirable traits.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, their cojones are in free-fall while in orbit; once they're back on earth and under gravity, then obviously they weigh more.
Whatever gave you the idea that I'm ignoring you? You were acting like the proverbial armchair quarterback, proffering unsolicited and misdirected advice over an internet forum. I'll take the advice of those in a position to make intelligent firsthand observations, thanks.
If I wanted to ignore you, I'd have simply left the thread alone.
This is a slashdot discussion, not a psych class. Check the thread topic - public school vs. home school. We've gone offtopic, which I think is your doing more than mine, but that is where we began, right? Ergo, if you have something insightful or interesting to add to the thread, other than amateur night at the psych ward, then that would be the topic to add it to.
You seem to have drawn an awfully large conclusion there.
Change takes time. Experience cannot be unlearned; altering one's worldview is not merely a matter of deciding one day to ignore the last X years of your life. If you have even the basic psychological knowledge required to make the kind of conclusions you're making (and you have the air of an armchair quarterback to me, so perhaps you don't), then you already know this.
As for myself, I've mellowed considerably since I graduated, and I'm far less a cynic now than I was. To use your terminology, my "worldview" as it stood when I graduated has gradually become less valid. That does not however make my memory of the public school system any happier.
My point was directed more about the state of the school system than myself; I'm doing better, whereas I see no reason to think it's improved since I left, nor any reason to think it does it's students any good. Do you have anything at all to say on that topic?
And as a side note, I'd tend to say that holding a cynical view of things like the public school system isn't a matter of having an invalid worldview. If something is broken and faulty, then it a cynic is right to consider it as such, despite his cynicism.
Ok, let me rephrase.
The arguement being presented is that school "socializes" it's victi^H^H^H students. Ergo, they become more able to function in society, having learned to deal with other people.
Except school doesn't actually do that. There are thousands of better venues in life for meeting people and learning to socialize. What school does do is teach you a deep cynicism with regard to people and society. That's if you're lucky. I didn't go to a violent school, but there were at least a few suicides I heard about, and some of my old friends wound up deadbeats or doing McJobs. Being crammed into a free-for-all environment with their peers didn't do them a lick of good.
The ability to deal with people with a certain amount of optimism is a useful trait for functioning in society. Charm can get you places where other skills and traits can't. Cynicism, OTOH, isn't terribly useful. It's not useless, it's just not the best way of interacting with others. Note that these two possiblities are not mutually exclusive, but it's much harder to fake charm if you view other people with suspicion and pessimism.
If the anti-home schooling arguement were valid, then home schooled kids would be unprepared for the world and public schooled kids would know how to deal with people. Instead, in at least some cases, you get the opposite - my brother has better people skills than I do, despite our similar nature.
Since correlation =! causation, the most correct statement is that home schooling and public schooling do not offer any obvious social advantage over each other. And it is possible, though not easy to prove, that home schooling is better from a socializing perspective, as it doesn't teach it's students to hate each other. That was essentially my only point.
From experience, my family in no way resembles that distribution.
For one thing, it says firstborn tend to be overacheivers - I'm a born slacker. For another it says intelligence goes down with second and third children, which (taken in the context of my family, where I went to public school and my brother was home schooled) would indicate that home schooling made my bro smarter, in addition to being less cynical and more social. Talk about a raw deal for me!
I'd say that those theories either only apply in the most general average sense, or else the two of us are exceptions to the rule. At a guess, it's the former; none of the families I know fit that entire distribution of personality and capability.
I doubt that home schooling vs. public schooling actually made a huge difference. I do know however, that most of my dislike of the human species can be traced back to high school. What gets on my nerves is people saying that this somehow "prepared me for the real world"; it did nothing of the sort.
For one thing, I can plainly see another person similar to me who was not thusly prepared, and suffered no negative consequences, so obviously school can't have done me that much good in preparing for reality. For another, school bears little or no resemblance to reality, and dealing with the challenges there prepares you for nothing. Cynicism is not a useful trait, whereas charm (which requires a certain ability to like a complete stranger) is in fact a real world skill.
You're trolling. But what the hell.
Virtually every single person in this article thread, and in TFA itself, is using non-scientific evidence, especially anecdotes. See the post further down by some AC about "Lauren" the college dropout he taught who was home-schooled. It therefor stands that, if nobody is linking studies/research at all, one anecdote is as good as another. Your only valid counterpoint would be a scientifically credited link; as it stands my direct experience is more valid than your uninformed opinion (neither of us is being scientific).
What proof is there anyway? Even if you could study the students (this is being done BTW, my brother was tracked by one such study), then any data gathered over the last few decades will be skewed by the number of religion based home schooling.
As for comparisons between the two of us, we're damn similar people. Close to the same intelligence, similar academic performance (I test better, he get's his assignments done more often), similar personality. Why do I dislike people far more than him? I was taught froma very early age that people are scum. He never learned that lesson.
However, learning that lesson did me no practical good, whereas ignorance has actually benefitted him. We have wound up at about the same place in life as well, so arguements that I must have a better job/higher education/whatever don't fly.
And even if he were more gregarious than me, all you've proved is that, in our case, which system we went through had no positive or negative impact on our lives. Ie, home schooled kid fairs no worse than public schooled kid when all other variables are as close to identical as possible. Which would still be an arguement in favour of home schooling.
Couldn't have put it better myself. Where the hell are my mod points when I need them?
I went through the public school system; my younger brother was home schooled. Guess which one of us is the cynic? Saying he "wasn't taught what the real world is like" is a compliment; it's better not to see injustice as "normal", just because that's the way things looked growing up.
As a side note, he's become the more gregarious of the two of us. I'd say anyone who assumes you need public school in order to become socialized is either completely ignorant of what they're talking about, or else their cross section of "home schooled" kids are the previous generation of religious kids who were taken out of school by their parents.
Bah, you kids. In MY day, we didn't have any fancy "automatic weapons", we had to use pointy rocks tied to sticks, called "spears", and we liked it! We had to walk to the school cave uphill both ways! Over glaciers!
Teen pregnancy? In my day, if you didn't have kids by the time you were 15, you were out of the tribe (either you're sterile, or you don't put out - either way, we don't want you). Science class was learning how to bash rocks together to make fire, shop class was learning how to make our pointy rocks sharper, and sex-ed was a matter of learning the difference between a mammoth and a woman (you mate with one and kill the other - the people who got it wrong were violently beaten and had to marry the mammoth).
Of course, comp-sci was done in COBOL even back in those days. Now there's something truely primative. I can't tell you what a pain in the ass it is to make a database using only COBOL language and piles of rocks. God help you if the rocks got out of order...
Eh, I'm not in a position to judge. I doubt you are either though.
Got a link for that pig/elephant thing? It sounds more like an april fools joke to me, but stranger things have happened.
As for the "we have too many scientists" meme, according to different people we have too many of just about everything. We have too many lawyers; they can't find legitimate work, so they chase ambulances as a way of finding new clients to lauch frivolous lawsuits with. We have too many politicians, so they end up finding new and annoying ways to interfere with people's lives. We have too many white and blue collar workers, so they get downsized. We have too many students and professors, so the permanent positions in universities all have long waiting lists. We have too many people willing to work for Walmart, so they treat their employees like crap knowing they can be replaced.
What don't we have in overabundance? Seriously, I can't think of many jobs where people complain of a shortage. I'm inclined to think that where there is an overabundance of something, it's a sign that the job market overcorrected for a previous shortage.
In the case of people like scientists, I'd say there's room enough for plenty. For every scientific question we answer, two more take it's place. As long as we consider those questions worth answering, scientists will have jobs. There can be too many mediocre scientists (which I think is more in line with what you're talking about), but then the solution is to raise the bar for entry and wait for the tenured ones to die off or retire.
I've heard about a half dozen varients, including the "kinky" one. I've been told the original quote uses "perverted", but I've never bothered to find out (it's been attributed to more than one person; I think that version was the Marquis de Sade).
:-)
I prefer the one in my sig, since it's got a nice symmetry to it - e(r/x)otic. Plus it sounds funnier to me when said this way
Average human beings are about equal when it comes to stupidity, regardless of education or profession. There is an even distribution of jerks, trolls, morons and idiots in most walks of life. If you're suggesting that techies need humiltiy, then you're preaching to the wrong crowd; few on earth seems to care about that particular trait, techie or otherwise. The people who do care about humility don't need to be preached to, and the ones that don't aren't going to listen.
As for the statement that there were no techies 100 years ago, the OP and the GP were both talking about all forms of geek, including scientists (in fact the most telling remark by the troll was refering to sciece as "opinion"), and there were scientific minds as far back as ancient Greece. Us geeks may not be neccesary, but then again neither are humanities majors; the only absoluteley neccesary people in any society are the food providers (farmers, hunter/gaterhers, etc).
Don't forget:
Have sex as early and often as possible. Sex makes people cool! Don't use a condom either; real men pull out!
Drink hard and drive fast. You'll live forever, don't worry!
The bong is your best friend. Listen to his years of wisdom.
Seriously, who the hell thinks school does kids a lick of good? Teaching kids = good, socializing kids = good, throwing kids into an enviroment of peer pressure and rampant apathy = BAD. If you can somehow meet the first two without getting into the third, then what's the problem? I'll admit that "online" schooling might not help much with getting kids used to socializing, but there's gotta be better ways to do that then to drop them into a free for all full of their peers.
I think the entire current school system needs a rehaul. I'm not sure what it oughta be, but what it is is a waste. Half the people I grew up with have horrible memories of the place; the other half are dropouts.
And let's not forget the sordid fate of Pac-Man
If they do break the 0*C barrier, it'll likely be at the cost of the patient's life. At the point where water freezes, cell's rupture from the ice crystals forming within. I don't know how the hell they could get around that, unless they can somehow dehydrate the body and rehydrate it on revival (freeze dried pork, yum!)
OTOH, what needs to survive? If you've got someone that's barely one step above a cadaver, but could be restored given time, then stopping their heart (and therefor any further hemmorage) and suspending the body to prevent oxygen starvation and cell death might be just the right idea.
Once you're no longer dealing with a ticking clock, the possibilities for systematic restoration open up; ie, you could make some of the repairs while they're still suspended, and tie them into life support systems before waking them in order to give their body time to heal.
If the subject "dies" in the freezing process, then all you have to worry about is making sure they freeze fast enough to prevent brain damage/death.
Living people age. Stored organs don't.
Also, you can never rule out the possibility that under those conditions a prisoner might kill himself. The solution used in the known space books is actually pretty ingenious, and an ethical nightmare.
...I seem to recall Larry Niven wrote about the possible (mis)uses of suspended animation in his Known Space series of books.
One of Niven's ideas was of using executed criminals as a source for organ replacement; this led to the eventual application of the death penalty for most crimes. The general idea was that this would be made possible by using suspended animation to keep the organs alive and healthy for long periods after the "donor" had been killed, so that a suitable match might be found. Your new liver might come from someone who died years ago, and whose parts were kept in storage until a matching donor like yourself had need of them.
Niven also introduced the idea that illegal organ harvesting could also happen; "organleggers" kidnap and disassemble people to provide a black market service. He was writing this in the 60's, and since then there have been signs of both situations (legal and illegal execution as a source of organs) happening in thw world.
Assuming we could keep body parts alive in suspended animation after the host is dead, we could do exactly what Niven described. The question is, will we?
And just like my ex, if you want to do any business in her, you need to pay the mob...
/.ers don't have girlfriends :-P)
(Note: the above is purely in jest; everyone knows
That's a perfect example of the trouble in game balancing.
In KotOR, the swords were meant as a way to counter Jedi/Sith characters, since a blaster does absolutely nothing vs a lightsaber (or worse than nothing if you get hit on the rebound). The blades surviving a lightsaber strike doesn't make much sense, given that we've seen sabers cut through solid metal doors, and since nobody seems to wear suits made out of whatever the blades use, but leave that aside.
For the sword wielder to have a snowball's chance in hell in a melee, the swords have to be powerful and the non-Jedi has to be armoured. This yields the counter-intuitive situation whereby bladed weapons are better than blasters - they're essentially lightsabers without the deflection. While it was a damn good game in most respects, that was the one area I had some serious problems with suspension of disbelief.
It's a good example of what happens when you can't make the game both consistant with the reality it's supposed to depict and balanced. In the movies, lightsabers are unbeatable weapons; if this were true in the game, then you'd have zero use for any non-Jedi/Sith characters (and that's almost true regardless). So they dumb the sabers down to standard melee weapons - no more killing in a single swipe. But that still leaves anyone without a saber in a bad way, given that they can't very well shoot the Jedi, so instead the add swords which give them a fighting chance. In making these changes they end up moving away from how combat looked in the movies, but retaining at least some balance.
Reminds me of an old physics joke:
"I've wanted to do the two-slit experiment for years, but my wife won't let me!"
To which the reply was:
"Good luck with that. Try explaining to her afterwards that you couldn't tell which slit you came through. You'll be sleeping next to the particle collider for a month."
Don't know where this came from though; it's not original to me...
Not one foolish emotional vegetarian, but rather many. Nor am I just talking veggies; I've met people who had a problem with eating beef and chicken, but not, for example, pork (I mean, huh? Pigs are the most human-like of our food animals...) Note that this person wasn't a vegetarian, merely a guilt-ridden omnivore. Similarly, I've met people who had a problem with fur, but not leather, people who claim to love animals, but are utterly disgusted by pests like rats and raccoons, etc.
However, as I've said, I am quite willing to respect those whose beliefs are logically consistant and rational, even if I disagree with their essential ideals. Nor do I particularly care what other people choose to believe, I just can't find it in me to take them seriously if they haven't thought their outlook through. To give an example I don't have an issue with someone who's for animal rights but not a vegetarian - that person might well be working from the perspective that there's nothing wrong with eating animals, however making them suffer is bad. Similarly I could respect someone who's vocally opposed to medical testing on primates, but couldn't care less about rats, as they could be assuming that primate intelligence and their relationship to humans grants them special status.
Note, however, that the above examples are far away from the typical PETA types. I have met veggies and animal rights folk who's beliefs I respect (many of the examples above are drawn from RL), but I've met many more who'll ask you if you can stand to watch a poor cute bunny suffer. If I had met more rational and less emotional people in that category, then I wouldn't accuse them of playing favourites based on appearance.
I am actually surpirsed someone took the time to make a site for lobsters, and somewhat impressed. Assuming the site isn't meant to be a joke, it's an example of internally consistant morals; someone who cares more for the fact these creatures are alive than the fact they're butt ugly.
Wouldn't it be simpler, in the case you specified, to do the designs on a computer instead and then use the aforementioned "genetic programming techniques"? Why involve an organism at all?
Assuming the bacteria themselves aren't going to be used in the finished product, then what possible gain is there in using them in both design and construction? If you must have an evolved element in the design (and I do see the advantage here), then it makes far more sense to develop the blueprints for whatever it is you want ahead of time using genetic computer modeling and then just use the bacteria to make the finished product. Cheaper and probably faster than doing it the old fashioned way.
Mind you, if you're into that sort of thing, it might be cheaper than paying a dominatrix...
However, the arguement that "they're intelligent, so they deserve special protection" (which I agree with BTW), doesn't really apply to anything other that cetacians and primates.
Want to pull people's heartstrings? Show them a picture of a cute little lab rat getting electrocuted. Or a rabbit, or a guinee pig, or pretty much anything that's percieved to be cuddly.
I'm all for protecting animals that are approaching humans in terms of intelligence. That covers dolphins, whales, chimpanzees, gorrilas and other similarly bright mammals. After all, if the only thing we have that makes us special is our brain, then it stands to reason that another living thing with a brain that is close to our own ought to have some special status. What I find irritating is the degree to which other animals are either considered important or irrelevant based on aesthetics.
If someone beleives that all animals deserve protection, then they should be just as protective of octopi and vultures as they are of rabbits and cows. Putting aesthetics first and caring far more about animals based on appearance is hypocritical.
The day I see a "save the lobsters" campaign is the day I'll change my views. I may not agree with someone who thinks lobsters are worth protecting, but I'll credit him as being morally consistant and impartial, both admirable traits.
So, does that make Dick Cheney the emperor?