You know who else is a lame superhero is Spider Man. He can't shoot lasers or fly. He has no cool gadgets. He's not an alien. He fights a guy who dresses up as an evil elf, for crying out loud. Plus, their idea of a director is to get some guy who worked on "Xena: Warrior Princess" fer cryin' out loud.
That was my thinking, anyhow, until I saw the first Spider-Man... and I'm happy to say that I was completely wrong on all counts. It stripped away all the crap surrounding a lot of superhero comics and got back to the basics, which was a story about Peter Parker. Likewise, Spider-Man 2 spends much of it's time watching Peter mope around alone in a New York City apartment... it focused on character, it focused on story, it focused on the humanity of the superhero. It's the story of a guy who's been bitten by a radioactive spider, sure, but it's a believable portrait of a guy who's been bitten by a radioactive spider.
Superman's a kind of straight guy, sure. And in the end-of-the-century nihilism of the late 90's, it may have made sense to try to reinvent him, because he didn't seem all that relevant. But these days... the world is such a darker place in the past five years, he seems a lot more relevant. I think the success of Spider-Man post-9/11 isn't a coincidence. Done right, the story of a goody-goody like Superman could be a powerful one. I think the thing to remember is, being Superman wouldn't be easy. Physically, it's a cinch. Emotionally and psychologically, it would be damn hard. I mean, the guy is an alien in the purest sense of the word. He's completely cut off from the rest of humanity when he's in that costume. He's cut off as Clark Kent because he can't tell them who he really is. But every damn day he's out there trying to save our asses all the same. Isn't that an interesting story?
I have this image of a computer virus taking over every computer on earth, then using our antennas and satellite to repeatedly broadcast the message "ENLARGE your COPULATORY TENTACLES! Tentaculis®, SAND WORM extract, and Dilithium Sulfide, it really works and without a prescription! Pills CHEAP from GalacticPharm@AlphaRegulonV.com" for light years around.
Then an armada of warships bearing atomizer rays and a bunch of very annnoyed aliens arrives...
According to Wikipedia, the "it may not be right, but it's right there!" reference:
It was originally developed during World War II in 1942 under the name "Duck Tape" as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition casings. Permacel, then a division of Johnson & Johnson, used a rubber-based adhesive to help the tape resist water and a fabric backing to facilitate ripping. Because of these properties, it was also used to quickly repair military equipment, including jeeps, guns, and aircraft. After the war, the housing industry boomed and people started using duct tape for many other purposes. The name "duct tape" came from its use on heating and air conditioning ducts...
Ironically, however, the Nintendo game "Duck Hunt" was originally supposed to be about shooting ducts. Nintendo reasoned that the piping theme developed in their Super Mario Brothers franchise would translate well to a shooting game and secure Nintendo's hold on the lucrative piping-based video game market. However, due to a typo in the memo sent to the development team, however, "Duct Hunt" evolved into an entirely different game concept.
For many people, applying this solution would seem to require thousands of dollars to acquire additional real estate. Solution is to build a stand for the power supply, and this string is an example.
Personally I don't see what's so interesting about this whole solve-a-problem-using-string story. Now MacGuyver, there's a guy who knows how to use string. I mean, in one episode of MacGuyver, MacGuyver builds a helicopter using string. And a little bit of duck tape, of course.
Or are at work and are doing something elsewhere and aren't constantly looking at their screen. Perhaps they hide their taskbar alerts for AIM because they aren't supposed to be using IM clients at work. Their boss might know that a flashing taskbar item is an IM but a flashing mouse button might not be known yet?
Odds are, if you need to sit down and think hard to come up with circumstances where a new feature would be useful... it's not really all that useful.
My impression of Texas: Texans are more proud of being Texans, than they are proud of being Americans. And they are pretty damn proud of being Americans.
-----
One day, there's a Texan in the bar, bragging about Texas. "Things are big in Texas", he says. "The cows are huge in Texas. The oil fields," he says, "are huge in Texas. The ranches are big in Texas. EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas."
To which an Alaskan replies, "If you don't shut up, we're gonna split Alaska in two and make you guys the THIRD largest state."
The US is a large country. The "lifestyle of the US" does differ from region to region. To travel to "most places in the US" and get a good appreciation of each would take years. I'm sure Canada is similar.
Very true. I've been visiting NYC a lot in recent years and have really come to like it. It's extremely active, extremely alive, very intense, and people are direct, which I find refreshing. And they're actually not all that hostile, I've even heard New Yorkers tell me that the city has gotten nicer in the past 10 years. On the other hand, I don't know if I could live there 24/7/365. I also spent a few years in San Francisco and really didn't like it for some reason: sure the people were artsy and alternative, but in a way that seemed pretentious and fake. Just my take on things. For the time being I'm in Alberta. It's got it's plusses and minuses.
On the plus side, it's wholesome. Students seem to use less drugs and alcohol than in the states, despite (or because of?) the fact that alcohol is legal for 18-year-olds to drink. I get in a lot less trouble than I used to. I get to do the work I want to. Crime is low, the air is good. Coyotes and grouse run wild just a couple blocks north of the city core. People aren't as knife-in-your-back competitive. Canadians are more into cooperation and compromise than Americans, and it's useful to get exposed to that way of working things.
On the minus side... it's so damn wholesome (one of my former profs, who married a Canadian, called it "oppressively wholesome"). It's nice to be able to get in a bit of trouble once in a while, and America is just a more edgy, trouble-making kind of a place. Alberta is not quite square, it's *cubical*. Sure, the people are extremely polite and tolerant. But there's a world of difference between polite and nice, and there's a world of difference between being tolerant and being accepting. I don't find the people here to be all that polite, or all that accepting. Most of all, the place is... boring. People seem to find their little ruts and get stuck in them. It's like America was supposed to be in the 50s. Parts of the city are beautiful, but the sprawl of the suburbs is an eyesore- like this suburban oilslick spreading out across the prairies. Also, Alberta has a very mercenary mindset, in that sense it's got some of the worst qualities of America. Still, it beats the shit out of the South Side of Chicago (but then, so does any place I've lived). Even with forty degree below winters. Anyhow, I'm sure I've offended some people. I tend to do that a lot, I'm opinionated and pessimistic.
Oh yeah, another thing you have to deal with in Canada is Canadian insecurity. Canadians are really into listening to Canadian music and reading Canadian books and going to a Canadian store like Tim Horton's: it's this defensive reaction to the insecurity and identity crisis they feel living next to the States and consuming our culture (or lack thereof). They constantly feel the need to defend themselves as not being an extension of the United States- it's a sort of mix of dislike and envy, sort of like a little brother syndrome. Of course, Canada is its own country with it's own culture. That being said, being a white, middle-class Canadian is not that different from being a middle-class white American, when compared to, say, black vs. white America. I was on BART in San Fran listening to a black youth telling a story to his buddies: "Nigger say this, nigger do that, nigger niggered that..." the general gist of it was a guy talking about someone installing a car stereo (as far as I could follow). However, the language, the mannerisms, the culture animating the discussion- listening in on their conversation I might have well been in a separate continent.
My favorite part about Alberta is its rural areas. People are nicer. Great wildlife and geology. Nothing beats hiking through the badlands in winter, finding dinosaur teeth strewn everywhere, hearing the choruses of coyotes sound off at dusk.
This kind of silly mockery is just what they want. You're playing into the ninjas hands. Their silent, black-gloved, throwing-star-throwing, killing-stuff-with-their-bare-hands, ninja hands.
Think about it. It all makes sense. Kennedy had connections to the old Black Government, the one lacking ninja skills. That's why he was killed. Johnson, his successor? Ninja. Total ninja. Sure, he comes off like a Texas farmboy. That is the brilliance of it all. It must have taken years of high-level ninja training to be able to hide his ninja skills so brilliantly. Civil rights legislation? Johnson was worried that segregation would keep out Asian ninjas. Many of the best ninjas are Asian. Because they invented ninja skills. Nixon? Part of the conspiracy, but clearly part of the non-ninja faction. If he were ninja, he wouldn't have gotten caught during Watergate. Clinton? Not a ninja. Hillary, though... cold blooded killer. Highest level ninja.
Proving yet again that former Canadian ministers are no less looney than the former secretaries/administration officials of past American presidencies.
Past presidencies? What about the current one? If you put this guy in charge of the White House, could you possibly get a government that was any more detached from reality? The White House is busy pushing Creationism, claiming that Iraq isn't a total disaster while the generals draw up plans for withdrawals, lauding Brown for doing a "heck of a job" while completely bungling the hurricane response, claiming that America is all about freedom while locking up people without trial and torturing them, and still trying to draw a connection between Iraq and 9-11.
Well, actually, the NSA has significantly better databases and snooping tech than you are indicating. The NSA is definitely in the black (mostly). Insofar as modern mafias are tightly integrated with intelligence communities, your reference to ninjas almost makes sense.
Of course it makes sense. What is the defining characteristic of a Shadow Government? It operates in the shadows. How does a Shadow Government enforce its will and crush opposition? Covert assassinations. Who else is more qualified to run a Covert Black Shadow operation than a cadre of elite ninjas? Of course, it did not start out that way. Initially the ninjas were merely hired guns. I mean in the figurative sense. Ninjas don't use guns. After all they are ninjas. But eventually The Powers That Be found that instead of controlling the ninjas, the ninjas controlled them. The ninjas tended to move up in the power structure while the higher echelons of the Shadow Government tended to die or disappear with unusual frequentcy. The result? Shadow Coup. This took many years and yet it was over before they knew what had happened and who had done it.
Think about it. Who could assassinate Kennedy without leaving a trace of their hand? Who could kill Princess Di and not be caught? Ninjas.
If a reviewer used rhetoric, sarcasm, illogical arguements, innacurate facts, or rejected your manuscript on the basis of typos, you should have complained to the editor. Any editor worth a damn would see the problem, send your paper for another reviewer for review, and stop sending any more submissions to the offending reviewer. That's how the system is ment to work.
I put up with this kind of stuff for a few rounds of review, real turn-the-cheek kind of a thing. Finally, I took a couple of weeks, sat down, revised my manuscript, and carefully dissected every single point the reviewer made, citing evidence, theory, and papers. I conceded a few things, and made a couple changes, but mostly implied that the reviewer was bullshitting and didn't know what the hell he was talking about- because that's what was going on. It was a risky move: I'm an unknown from an unknown university, he's a tenured Ivy League prof with a Harvard PhD, so all else being equal, who's the editor gonna side with? But I was tired of spending all this time battling bullshit, so I did the intellectual equivalent of dragging this guy out behind the pub and working him over with a two-by-four.
The paper was accepted for publication, without further review.
So yes, it did work... eventually. But I went through five journals and a total of seven submissions before getting accepted. The whole process gave me a new appreciation for Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_. And I really took heart by looking at examples of persistence rewarded, like Lynn Margulis. Her Serial Endosymbiosis Theory (the idea that chloroplasts and bacteria were once free-living organisms) was rejected a dozen times(!), before finally ending up in Journal of Theoretical Biology. Now it's in every biology textbook and nobody would even think of questioning it. So after being rejected by the fourth journal, I could tell myself, "well, I'm still only a third of the way towards Margulis' score!"
But that's also the classic refuge of the crank: point out the examples of unappreciated genius. "They reject my idea... but they also rejected continental drift! Everyone says I'm crazy and there's no evidence for the Chupucabra, but people thought the first stuffed platypus specimen was a fake and wouldn't believe the evidence!" Sure, it's possible that you're right and everyone else is wrong, like with Margulis. It's also possible you're a freakin' loon. Without too much knowledge of the specific subject of your paper, how is the editor supposed to tell the difference between science which provokes hostility because it's dead wrong/plain bad, and science which is right, but provokes hostility because people are narrow minded and dogmatic? For that matter, if you're confident in your work, and the reviewers hate it, somebody's perception of reality is tweaked: how do you make sure you're not the one with the warped perception? Back when I was still trying to get this paper accepted, I liked to joke "They laughed! They all laughed!" in a classic Evil Scientist voice... it helped me keep sane, but it also made me a bit uncomfortable because I was giving voice to the doubts: "am I really crazy for thinking this?"
Seriously though... what's the easiest way to tell when you're an undeservedly unappreciated Archimedes, and when you're a deservedly unappreciated Archimedes Plutonium?
Seriously, what is people's perception of Public Library of Science right now? More importantly, how do you think it will be perceived five years from now, versus Proceedings of the Royal Society?
The reason I ask is that I've currently got an MS sent out for review. If it gets rejected, my next move is to either send it to Proceedings of the Royal Society B:Biological Sciences, or to PLOS Biology.
The magic number I've been looking at is Impact Factor, which is supposed to be the number of times a paper gets cited in a year. Proceedings B has a 2004 Impact Factor of 3.65 (for comparison, Nature's is a whopping 32, which is why most scientists would be willing to pimp their own grandmother for a chance to get published there). PLOS Biology, however, has an Impact Factor of 13.9, which suggests that just a couple years after starting, it's getting cited four times as often as Proceedings B. These factors don't say everything about a journal (some subject areas, like molecular biology, are just more active than, say, archaeology, so a good journal in one field can have a lower Impact Factor than a crappy journal in another). Still, it suggests to me that PLOS biology might make a better venue than Proceedings B and is more likely to get your work noticed. Anyone out there have any thoughts?
Well, maybe, except you should consider that the U.S. black government has significantly more science and technology than exists in the public eye. This is not tin-foil-hat material, it is real and significant.
Its true. There is a Black Covert Secret Shadow Government. Its run by an elite council of high-level ninjas and a central database computer with the names and addresses of all the people in the world. They coordinate their efforts in broad daylight and nobody even notices. They control the oil prices and the stock market and what comes on TV when. They control everything. You all think you are all so smart and you all laugh but really they are laughing at you because you are so ignorant and naive and because believe all the lies when they tell lies you on the radio and TV and books and radio so go ahead and laugh.
You wouldn't believe the technology they are hiding from us. Teleportation. Crops that can feed the whole world three times over. Limitless free electric field energy. Alien mind-control parasites. Genetically engineered mutant supersoldiers with psychic powers who can think you dead from fifty feet away. Trees that grow missiles and ammunition to fuel their wars. Frictionless sandpaper. Beer that makes you smart and funny, instead of just thinking you are. TV remote controls that never get lost.
You think you know so much and have it all figured out. But go ahead and keep doing that Because thats just the way they like it.
A collaborative reviewing system like Slashdot's would probably work better than the status quo in the academic world. Especially 'metamoderation'.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to hold up Slashdot as some kind of a model, but some aspects of the system are definitely worth looking at. The idea of reviewing the reviewers is a good one.
I've repeatedly had to deal with hostile reviewers who, when they didn't have any evidence or logic to back up their claims, resort to rhetoric, sarcasm, illogical arguments, inaccurate facts, and the nitpicking of typos. I've also had some good reviewers who have pointed out legitimate flaws in my work and made useful suggestions on how to improve it, and really helped me improve my papers. There ought to be some way to discourage the first and reward the second, but the system of anonymous reviewers means you're pretty much unaccountable for what you say. How, is the question.
The system can work wonders on a paper, I'll admit. But it's also given too much importance. The Origin of Species is one of the most important and influential books in human history, and it remains the single most important book in evolutionary biology. Yet it wasn't peer reviewed, and I seriously wonder how well Darwin's theory would have fared if he had been subjected to peer review.
The point isn't that the eggs were paid for (by Roh, not Hwang; I misread that part) the ethics of that are debatable, and at the time it was legal. What's sketchy is that Hwang's Nature article implies that the eggs weren't paid for. If you want to purchase eggs, go ahead and do it, but don't lie about it.
Hwang denies knowing about this part and claims he was baffled where all these eggs were coming from. I suppose it's possible he had nothing to do with this and didn't think to question his good luck... although it does raise the question of exactly who came up with the roughly $30,000 that would be needed to pay 20 women $1,430 apiece for their ova. However, at the same time you've got some of his underlings donating their ova... and he also claims to be ignorant of that as well.
If they were confident of their case they'd fire him.
Not necessarily. If he resigns he can say he's innocent and just doing it for the greater good. But firing him means that they'd have to admit that wrongdoing occurred. And that raises uncomfortable questions, like "why didn't you guys know about this stuff?", or even worse, "did you guys know about this stuff?" and "why didn't you do something about this sooner, like in 2004 when the first allegations came out?" Also, he may have some leverage. Assuming he was involved in this stuff, then I'd imagine people must have been pulling strings, bending rules, or at least looking the other way instead of asking tough questions. The agreement would probably be that they'll give him a (relatively) graceful exit and in return he will keep his mouth shut.
I mean, look at the Judith Miller saga. She was a total screwup- she cocked up the WMD story, she got too close to her sources and started becoming a mouthpiece for them instead of objectively evaluating their views, she didn't keep her editors informed of how she was involved in the Plame case... the New York Times should have thrown her out the door a long time ago. Instead, she resigned. Likewise, Jayson Blair, the guy who made up a bunch of stories in the Times? Resigned. If you really want to get rid of someone, you need to give them an easy way out or they'll fight you tooth and nail.
Actually, yes, I screwed up and misread the Nature article- Hwang didn't pay out of his own pocket; the fertility expert, Roh, did- $1,430 per subject (OK, so where did he get all that money from? It says 20 women, that's almost 30,000 dollars). But something just smells wrong: the first allegations of graduate students donating eggs came out in 2004, they are then retracted, and only now it turns out there was a basis to this? That sounds like a coverup, not at all like people who are eager to clear the air over some honest mistakes. And my guess is a lot of people have an interest in supporting Hwang's version of the facts, particularly if these kinds of abuses were widespread. Finally, I think if this was really just an honest mistake on his part- instead of a scandal threatening to blow sky-high- his collaborator wouldn't have moved like he did to cut ties. When the rats start jumping off the ship, you start looking for leaks. Likewise, it sounds like he's being forced to resign. That sounds like serious damage control.
if so, you probably have never done research. its way too complex especially in the medical sciences field for one person to have first hand knowledge.
I am a researcher, which is why I find his excuse so laughable. It's a fairly strict hierarchy, and if I bent the rules or got myself into an ethical tar pit like this without asking my advisor first, he'd have my head. It's not impossible that a student could pull a stunt like donating her own ova for her advisor's research without asking for permission, if he kept her on a long enough leash and didn't pay attention what she was up to. Still, (A) you'd have to be running a pretty dysfunctional lab for that to happen, so it's your own damn fault if it does (knock on wood and pray I never eat those words by having a graduate student who gets me in hot water...). (B), it would take a lot of initiative and sticking your neck out to pull a stunt like that. Maybe his lab has a different culture, but in general I find that graduate school tends to discourage serious independence and initiative, not encourage it. Like I said, you live or die according to your advisor's whims, so you're not going to do anything that might piss him off without asking permission first. Overall, I find it far more likely that an advisor pressured his student into donating eggs than that a student would provide her own eggs and lie to her advisor.
Anyway, the reason I'm pissed off is over the idea of an advisor screwing over a graduate student, because I've been there. I had a narcissitic, abusive, borderline insane advisor; a big shot who got in popular magazines and everything. I know how bad things can get- and how little you can do about it. There are some incredible, wonderful people in science, but there are also some really devious bastards.
I think the good Dr has been a rather unfortunate here, by the sounds of it his researchers are entirely to blame.
According to Dr. Hwang... who has already proven himself a less-than reliable source, since he's admitted to lying about the issue of paying for ova. Who, if he is guilty of misconduct, has a great deal to gain from pleading ignorance and pinning the blame on others. Furthermore, if he's guilty and he goes down, he probably takes a lot of people with him, and it does a major blow to the prestige of South Korea's medical research program, so there would be a strong incentive for other people to back up his version of events whether it's true or not. Anyhow, who knows I suppose... but something just doesn't smell right to me. Part of it is the way this whole thing is being handled- first a graduate student comes out and says she donated eggs, then she retracts the statement, but now we find out a year later this kind of stuff was going on? This smacks of coverup- not candor. It does not inspire confidence in the Good Dr.
It'd be nice to think that scientists weren't capable of being corrupted, but the truth is they are as human and as fallible as anyone else. That's another reason I tend to doubt his version of the facts. Maybe that's cynical, but on the other hand, it's only cynical if it's wrong. Anyhow, if you'd like to take a look at the facts yourself, here's a couple of other articles.
But in this case Dr Hwang was unaware of this, so it does make me ask - "whats the big deal?"
He says he was unaware of it. However, Hwang also paid for the eggs- about 1,400 dollars per donor, from his own pocket- but claimed in his _Nature_ paper that the eggs were from volunteers. So he's already been caught lying about how he conducts his research, why should we believe him now?
Furthermore, at least one of the women he took eggs from was one of his graduate students. Now, as a grad student you basically depend on your advisor for everything: funding, office space, research opportunities, help with your PhD, a successful defense of your PhD, letters of recommendation for jobs and scholarships. No academic relationship is as open to abuse as the relationship between a graduate student and supervisor, because the advisor has so much power and the student, so little. Asking Jane Doe off the street for her ova is one thing- she can say "no", and what can you do about it? Asking your graduate student is another thing entirely: she knows you can do any number of things to crush her career, so she's pressured to say yes. It's a disgusting abuse of power and this creep should never work again. Sure, innocent until proven guilty and all... but the fact that he's resigning and his collaborator is rushing to distance himself is pretty telling.
Finally I find his defense pretty ludicrous. He said they went behind his back to donate eggs? That's not much of a defense, to say that you ran such a sloppy operation and did such a piss-poor job of conducting your research that you didn't even realize your own students were donating their ova. That, and it's just a little hard to swallow.
I'll either use the skills my parents taught me, or simply abandon my children and allow them to be raised by their elderly grandparents.
Wolves. I've heard that sometimes if you abandon your kids, wolves will adopt them and raise them as their own. Plus, that'd so be cool- like, maybe you'd be at this party, and this lady would be like, "MY son goes to Yale and he's going to be a high-powered lawyer. What does YOUR son do?", and you'd be like, "So freakin' what, lady? My son was raised by freakin' WOLVES. He can rip a moose's throat out with his bare teeth and he made alpha male at fifteen."
With the current singal-to-noise ratio, we are slowly coming closer to that of TV.
I'd like to reply to this post, but I have to deal with that wacky next door neighbor. And seeing as it's getting near the holiday season, I should probably go and learn a valuable lesson about life and the real meaning of Christmas from a homeless person I randomly encounter on the street.
While we're on the subject of editorial idiocy, I just saw an article at NYTimes.com entitled "Web Logs Test Chinese Sensors" Hm, did they also test Chinese phasers and photon torpedoes? I guess the Times is hiring slashdot editors now... Anyhow, back to the subject of/. As I see things, the basic problem is lack of accountability. The Slashdot editors aren't accountable for doing a lousy job, unlike we lowly readers, who can be punished (or rewarded) with mod points, so there's no one to smack them upside the head when they post advertisements or, say, delusional pseudoscience (yeah, I'm talking to you, ScuttleMonkey). An article-mod system would be great of course... but people have been suggesting that since I got on this site, so I suspect it ain't gonna happen any time soon.
But I don't really see what you can do... except stop visiting the site. I doubt they pay attention to these posts, but they must pay attention to the number of hits they get. If people stop coming as often, perhaps they'll sit up and take notice. Personally I read and post a lot less frequently than I did a few months ago, partly I'm busy, partly it's gotten old for me, and partly yes, it's going downhill in a number of respects. And I think the time is ripe for some other web site to come in and do what Slashdot does, only better. Slashdot has a great idea, but they haven't implemented any major changes in a while, and they haven't addressed any of the major complaints of the readership.
In related news, the cyborg collective known as the Borg announced that they will open up the proprietary format used to convert biological entities to subcomponents of their organomechanical hive mind. This format specifies the synaptic-microprocessor relay standard used to effectively combine biological and cybernetic functions into a single, integrated carbon/silicon organo-electronic entity.
The move is viewed as an attempt by the Borg to stave off anti-trust litigation recently launched against the Borg by the Federation and the bloodthirsty lawyers of the Klingon Empire.
Slashdot Mirror
That was my thinking, anyhow, until I saw the first Spider-Man... and I'm happy to say that I was completely wrong on all counts. It stripped away all the crap surrounding a lot of superhero comics and got back to the basics, which was a story about Peter Parker. Likewise, Spider-Man 2 spends much of it's time watching Peter mope around alone in a New York City apartment... it focused on character, it focused on story, it focused on the humanity of the superhero. It's the story of a guy who's been bitten by a radioactive spider, sure, but it's a believable portrait of a guy who's been bitten by a radioactive spider.
Superman's a kind of straight guy, sure. And in the end-of-the-century nihilism of the late 90's, it may have made sense to try to reinvent him, because he didn't seem all that relevant. But these days... the world is such a darker place in the past five years, he seems a lot more relevant. I think the success of Spider-Man post-9/11 isn't a coincidence. Done right, the story of a goody-goody like Superman could be a powerful one. I think the thing to remember is, being Superman wouldn't be easy. Physically, it's a cinch. Emotionally and psychologically, it would be damn hard. I mean, the guy is an alien in the purest sense of the word. He's completely cut off from the rest of humanity when he's in that costume. He's cut off as Clark Kent because he can't tell them who he really is. But every damn day he's out there trying to save our asses all the same. Isn't that an interesting story?
Then an armada of warships bearing atomizer rays and a bunch of very annnoyed aliens arrives...
It was originally developed during World War II in 1942 under the name "Duck Tape" as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition casings. Permacel, then a division of Johnson & Johnson, used a rubber-based adhesive to help the tape resist water and a fabric backing to facilitate ripping. Because of these properties, it was also used to quickly repair military equipment, including jeeps, guns, and aircraft. After the war, the housing industry boomed and people started using duct tape for many other purposes. The name "duct tape" came from its use on heating and air conditioning ducts...
Ironically, however, the Nintendo game "Duck Hunt" was originally supposed to be about shooting ducts. Nintendo reasoned that the piping theme developed in their Super Mario Brothers franchise would translate well to a shooting game and secure Nintendo's hold on the lucrative piping-based video game market. However, due to a typo in the memo sent to the development team, however, "Duct Hunt" evolved into an entirely different game concept.
Damn I hated that stupid dog.
Personally I don't see what's so interesting about this whole solve-a-problem-using-string story. Now MacGuyver, there's a guy who knows how to use string. I mean, in one episode of MacGuyver, MacGuyver builds a helicopter using string. And a little bit of duck tape, of course.
Odds are, if you need to sit down and think hard to come up with circumstances where a new feature would be useful... it's not really all that useful.
-----
One day, there's a Texan in the bar, bragging about Texas. "Things are big in Texas", he says. "The cows are huge in Texas. The oil fields," he says, "are huge in Texas. The ranches are big in Texas. EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas."
To which an Alaskan replies, "If you don't shut up, we're gonna split Alaska in two and make you guys the THIRD largest state."
Very true. I've been visiting NYC a lot in recent years and have really come to like it. It's extremely active, extremely alive, very intense, and people are direct, which I find refreshing. And they're actually not all that hostile, I've even heard New Yorkers tell me that the city has gotten nicer in the past 10 years. On the other hand, I don't know if I could live there 24/7/365. I also spent a few years in San Francisco and really didn't like it for some reason: sure the people were artsy and alternative, but in a way that seemed pretentious and fake. Just my take on things. For the time being I'm in Alberta. It's got it's plusses and minuses.
On the plus side, it's wholesome. Students seem to use less drugs and alcohol than in the states, despite (or because of?) the fact that alcohol is legal for 18-year-olds to drink. I get in a lot less trouble than I used to. I get to do the work I want to. Crime is low, the air is good. Coyotes and grouse run wild just a couple blocks north of the city core. People aren't as knife-in-your-back competitive. Canadians are more into cooperation and compromise than Americans, and it's useful to get exposed to that way of working things.
On the minus side... it's so damn wholesome (one of my former profs, who married a Canadian, called it "oppressively wholesome"). It's nice to be able to get in a bit of trouble once in a while, and America is just a more edgy, trouble-making kind of a place. Alberta is not quite square, it's *cubical*. Sure, the people are extremely polite and tolerant. But there's a world of difference between polite and nice, and there's a world of difference between being tolerant and being accepting. I don't find the people here to be all that polite, or all that accepting. Most of all, the place is... boring. People seem to find their little ruts and get stuck in them. It's like America was supposed to be in the 50s. Parts of the city are beautiful, but the sprawl of the suburbs is an eyesore- like this suburban oilslick spreading out across the prairies. Also, Alberta has a very mercenary mindset, in that sense it's got some of the worst qualities of America. Still, it beats the shit out of the South Side of Chicago (but then, so does any place I've lived). Even with forty degree below winters. Anyhow, I'm sure I've offended some people. I tend to do that a lot, I'm opinionated and pessimistic.
Oh yeah, another thing you have to deal with in Canada is Canadian insecurity. Canadians are really into listening to Canadian music and reading Canadian books and going to a Canadian store like Tim Horton's: it's this defensive reaction to the insecurity and identity crisis they feel living next to the States and consuming our culture (or lack thereof). They constantly feel the need to defend themselves as not being an extension of the United States- it's a sort of mix of dislike and envy, sort of like a little brother syndrome. Of course, Canada is its own country with it's own culture. That being said, being a white, middle-class Canadian is not that different from being a middle-class white American, when compared to, say, black vs. white America. I was on BART in San Fran listening to a black youth telling a story to his buddies: "Nigger say this, nigger do that, nigger niggered that..." the general gist of it was a guy talking about someone installing a car stereo (as far as I could follow). However, the language, the mannerisms, the culture animating the discussion- listening in on their conversation I might have well been in a separate continent.
My favorite part about Alberta is its rural areas. People are nicer. Great wildlife and geology. Nothing beats hiking through the badlands in winter, finding dinosaur teeth strewn everywhere, hearing the choruses of coyotes sound off at dusk.
Think about it. It all makes sense. Kennedy had connections to the old Black Government, the one lacking ninja skills. That's why he was killed. Johnson, his successor? Ninja. Total ninja. Sure, he comes off like a Texas farmboy. That is the brilliance of it all. It must have taken years of high-level ninja training to be able to hide his ninja skills so brilliantly. Civil rights legislation? Johnson was worried that segregation would keep out Asian ninjas. Many of the best ninjas are Asian. Because they invented ninja skills. Nixon? Part of the conspiracy, but clearly part of the non-ninja faction. If he were ninja, he wouldn't have gotten caught during Watergate. Clinton? Not a ninja. Hillary, though... cold blooded killer. Highest level ninja.
Past presidencies? What about the current one? If you put this guy in charge of the White House, could you possibly get a government that was any more detached from reality? The White House is busy pushing Creationism, claiming that Iraq isn't a total disaster while the generals draw up plans for withdrawals, lauding Brown for doing a "heck of a job" while completely bungling the hurricane response, claiming that America is all about freedom while locking up people without trial and torturing them, and still trying to draw a connection between Iraq and 9-11.
This fruit-loop would fit right in.
Of course it makes sense. What is the defining characteristic of a Shadow Government? It operates in the shadows. How does a Shadow Government enforce its will and crush opposition? Covert assassinations. Who else is more qualified to run a Covert Black Shadow operation than a cadre of elite ninjas? Of course, it did not start out that way. Initially the ninjas were merely hired guns. I mean in the figurative sense. Ninjas don't use guns. After all they are ninjas. But eventually The Powers That Be found that instead of controlling the ninjas, the ninjas controlled them. The ninjas tended to move up in the power structure while the higher echelons of the Shadow Government tended to die or disappear with unusual frequentcy. The result? Shadow Coup. This took many years and yet it was over before they knew what had happened and who had done it.
Think about it. Who could assassinate Kennedy without leaving a trace of their hand? Who could kill Princess Di and not be caught? Ninjas.
Now you're just being ridiculous.
I put up with this kind of stuff for a few rounds of review, real turn-the-cheek kind of a thing. Finally, I took a couple of weeks, sat down, revised my manuscript, and carefully dissected every single point the reviewer made, citing evidence, theory, and papers. I conceded a few things, and made a couple changes, but mostly implied that the reviewer was bullshitting and didn't know what the hell he was talking about- because that's what was going on. It was a risky move: I'm an unknown from an unknown university, he's a tenured Ivy League prof with a Harvard PhD, so all else being equal, who's the editor gonna side with? But I was tired of spending all this time battling bullshit, so I did the intellectual equivalent of dragging this guy out behind the pub and working him over with a two-by-four.
The paper was accepted for publication, without further review.
So yes, it did work... eventually. But I went through five journals and a total of seven submissions before getting accepted. The whole process gave me a new appreciation for Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_. And I really took heart by looking at examples of persistence rewarded, like Lynn Margulis. Her Serial Endosymbiosis Theory (the idea that chloroplasts and bacteria were once free-living organisms) was rejected a dozen times(!), before finally ending up in Journal of Theoretical Biology. Now it's in every biology textbook and nobody would even think of questioning it. So after being rejected by the fourth journal, I could tell myself, "well, I'm still only a third of the way towards Margulis' score!"
But that's also the classic refuge of the crank: point out the examples of unappreciated genius. "They reject my idea... but they also rejected continental drift! Everyone says I'm crazy and there's no evidence for the Chupucabra, but people thought the first stuffed platypus specimen was a fake and wouldn't believe the evidence!" Sure, it's possible that you're right and everyone else is wrong, like with Margulis. It's also possible you're a freakin' loon. Without too much knowledge of the specific subject of your paper, how is the editor supposed to tell the difference between science which provokes hostility because it's dead wrong/plain bad, and science which is right, but provokes hostility because people are narrow minded and dogmatic? For that matter, if you're confident in your work, and the reviewers hate it, somebody's perception of reality is tweaked: how do you make sure you're not the one with the warped perception? Back when I was still trying to get this paper accepted, I liked to joke "They laughed! They all laughed!" in a classic Evil Scientist voice... it helped me keep sane, but it also made me a bit uncomfortable because I was giving voice to the doubts: "am I really crazy for thinking this?"
Seriously though... what's the easiest way to tell when you're an undeservedly unappreciated Archimedes, and when you're a deservedly unappreciated Archimedes Plutonium?
Seriously, what is people's perception of Public Library of Science right now? More importantly, how do you think it will be perceived five years from now, versus Proceedings of the Royal Society?
The reason I ask is that I've currently got an MS sent out for review. If it gets rejected, my next move is to either send it to Proceedings of the Royal Society B:Biological Sciences, or to PLOS Biology.
The magic number I've been looking at is Impact Factor, which is supposed to be the number of times a paper gets cited in a year. Proceedings B has a 2004 Impact Factor of 3.65 (for comparison, Nature's is a whopping 32, which is why most scientists would be willing to pimp their own grandmother for a chance to get published there). PLOS Biology, however, has an Impact Factor of 13.9, which suggests that just a couple years after starting, it's getting cited four times as often as Proceedings B. These factors don't say everything about a journal (some subject areas, like molecular biology, are just more active than, say, archaeology, so a good journal in one field can have a lower Impact Factor than a crappy journal in another). Still, it suggests to me that PLOS biology might make a better venue than Proceedings B and is more likely to get your work noticed. Anyone out there have any thoughts?
Its true. There is a Black Covert Secret Shadow Government. Its run by an elite council of high-level ninjas and a central database computer with the names and addresses of all the people in the world. They coordinate their efforts in broad daylight and nobody even notices. They control the oil prices and the stock market and what comes on TV when. They control everything. You all think you are all so smart and you all laugh but really they are laughing at you because you are so ignorant and naive and because believe all the lies when they tell lies you on the radio and TV and books and radio so go ahead and laugh.
You wouldn't believe the technology they are hiding from us. Teleportation. Crops that can feed the whole world three times over. Limitless free electric field energy. Alien mind-control parasites. Genetically engineered mutant supersoldiers with psychic powers who can think you dead from fifty feet away. Trees that grow missiles and ammunition to fuel their wars. Frictionless sandpaper. Beer that makes you smart and funny, instead of just thinking you are. TV remote controls that never get lost.
You think you know so much and have it all figured out. But go ahead and keep doing that Because thats just the way they like it.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to hold up Slashdot as some kind of a model, but some aspects of the system are definitely worth looking at. The idea of reviewing the reviewers is a good one.
I've repeatedly had to deal with hostile reviewers who, when they didn't have any evidence or logic to back up their claims, resort to rhetoric, sarcasm, illogical arguments, inaccurate facts, and the nitpicking of typos. I've also had some good reviewers who have pointed out legitimate flaws in my work and made useful suggestions on how to improve it, and really helped me improve my papers. There ought to be some way to discourage the first and reward the second, but the system of anonymous reviewers means you're pretty much unaccountable for what you say. How, is the question.
The system can work wonders on a paper, I'll admit. But it's also given too much importance. The Origin of Species is one of the most important and influential books in human history, and it remains the single most important book in evolutionary biology. Yet it wasn't peer reviewed, and I seriously wonder how well Darwin's theory would have fared if he had been subjected to peer review.
Hwang denies knowing about this part and claims he was baffled where all these eggs were coming from. I suppose it's possible he had nothing to do with this and didn't think to question his good luck... although it does raise the question of exactly who came up with the roughly $30,000 that would be needed to pay 20 women $1,430 apiece for their ova. However, at the same time you've got some of his underlings donating their ova... and he also claims to be ignorant of that as well.
If they were confident of their case they'd fire him.
Not necessarily. If he resigns he can say he's innocent and just doing it for the greater good. But firing him means that they'd have to admit that wrongdoing occurred. And that raises uncomfortable questions, like "why didn't you guys know about this stuff?", or even worse, "did you guys know about this stuff?" and "why didn't you do something about this sooner, like in 2004 when the first allegations came out?" Also, he may have some leverage. Assuming he was involved in this stuff, then I'd imagine people must have been pulling strings, bending rules, or at least looking the other way instead of asking tough questions. The agreement would probably be that they'll give him a (relatively) graceful exit and in return he will keep his mouth shut.
I mean, look at the Judith Miller saga. She was a total screwup- she cocked up the WMD story, she got too close to her sources and started becoming a mouthpiece for them instead of objectively evaluating their views, she didn't keep her editors informed of how she was involved in the Plame case... the New York Times should have thrown her out the door a long time ago. Instead, she resigned. Likewise, Jayson Blair, the guy who made up a bunch of stories in the Times? Resigned. If you really want to get rid of someone, you need to give them an easy way out or they'll fight you tooth and nail.
if so, you probably have never done research. its way too complex especially in the medical sciences field for one person to have first hand knowledge.
I am a researcher, which is why I find his excuse so laughable. It's a fairly strict hierarchy, and if I bent the rules or got myself into an ethical tar pit like this without asking my advisor first, he'd have my head. It's not impossible that a student could pull a stunt like donating her own ova for her advisor's research without asking for permission, if he kept her on a long enough leash and didn't pay attention what she was up to. Still, (A) you'd have to be running a pretty dysfunctional lab for that to happen, so it's your own damn fault if it does (knock on wood and pray I never eat those words by having a graduate student who gets me in hot water...). (B), it would take a lot of initiative and sticking your neck out to pull a stunt like that. Maybe his lab has a different culture, but in general I find that graduate school tends to discourage serious independence and initiative, not encourage it. Like I said, you live or die according to your advisor's whims, so you're not going to do anything that might piss him off without asking permission first. Overall, I find it far more likely that an advisor pressured his student into donating eggs than that a student would provide her own eggs and lie to her advisor.
Anyway, the reason I'm pissed off is over the idea of an advisor screwing over a graduate student, because I've been there. I had a narcissitic, abusive, borderline insane advisor; a big shot who got in popular magazines and everything. I know how bad things can get- and how little you can do about it. There are some incredible, wonderful people in science, but there are also some really devious bastards.
According to Dr. Hwang... who has already proven himself a less-than reliable source, since he's admitted to lying about the issue of paying for ova. Who, if he is guilty of misconduct, has a great deal to gain from pleading ignorance and pinning the blame on others. Furthermore, if he's guilty and he goes down, he probably takes a lot of people with him, and it does a major blow to the prestige of South Korea's medical research program, so there would be a strong incentive for other people to back up his version of events whether it's true or not. Anyhow, who knows I suppose... but something just doesn't smell right to me. Part of it is the way this whole thing is being handled- first a graduate student comes out and says she donated eggs, then she retracts the statement, but now we find out a year later this kind of stuff was going on? This smacks of coverup- not candor. It does not inspire confidence in the Good Dr.
It'd be nice to think that scientists weren't capable of being corrupted, but the truth is they are as human and as fallible as anyone else. That's another reason I tend to doubt his version of the facts. Maybe that's cynical, but on the other hand, it's only cynical if it's wrong. Anyhow, if you'd like to take a look at the facts yourself, here's a couple of other articles.
First, _Nature_'s take on it (man I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the _Nature_ office right now) http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051121/full/438405 a.html. Second, the NYTimes.com: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/international/as ia/25clone.html
He says he was unaware of it. However, Hwang also paid for the eggs- about 1,400 dollars per donor, from his own pocket- but claimed in his _Nature_ paper that the eggs were from volunteers. So he's already been caught lying about how he conducts his research, why should we believe him now?
Furthermore, at least one of the women he took eggs from was one of his graduate students. Now, as a grad student you basically depend on your advisor for everything: funding, office space, research opportunities, help with your PhD, a successful defense of your PhD, letters of recommendation for jobs and scholarships. No academic relationship is as open to abuse as the relationship between a graduate student and supervisor, because the advisor has so much power and the student, so little. Asking Jane Doe off the street for her ova is one thing- she can say "no", and what can you do about it? Asking your graduate student is another thing entirely: she knows you can do any number of things to crush her career, so she's pressured to say yes. It's a disgusting abuse of power and this creep should never work again. Sure, innocent until proven guilty and all... but the fact that he's resigning and his collaborator is rushing to distance himself is pretty telling.
Finally I find his defense pretty ludicrous. He said they went behind his back to donate eggs? That's not much of a defense, to say that you ran such a sloppy operation and did such a piss-poor job of conducting your research that you didn't even realize your own students were donating their ova. That, and it's just a little hard to swallow.
Maybe the electric motor is made out of paper, too? I mean dude, how hard could that be for a guy who can make a freakin' V-8 out of paper?
By "element of turkey" do you mean Turkonium (Tu), the Turkey atom?
I have Tourette's Syndrome, you #$@*& #@! @2©å#oe%, @!$%Ò £@f!* *&%(! &**$ &%$@# &%*!$ insensitive clod!
Wolves. I've heard that sometimes if you abandon your kids, wolves will adopt them and raise them as their own. Plus, that'd so be cool- like, maybe you'd be at this party, and this lady would be like, "MY son goes to Yale and he's going to be a high-powered lawyer. What does YOUR son do?", and you'd be like, "So freakin' what, lady? My son was raised by freakin' WOLVES. He can rip a moose's throat out with his bare teeth and he made alpha male at fifteen."
I'd like to reply to this post, but I have to deal with that wacky next door neighbor. And seeing as it's getting near the holiday season, I should probably go and learn a valuable lesson about life and the real meaning of Christmas from a homeless person I randomly encounter on the street.
While we're on the subject of editorial idiocy, I just saw an article at NYTimes.com entitled "Web Logs Test Chinese Sensors" Hm, did they also test Chinese phasers and photon torpedoes? I guess the Times is hiring slashdot editors now... Anyhow, back to the subject of /. As I see things, the basic problem is lack of accountability. The Slashdot editors aren't accountable for doing a lousy job, unlike we lowly readers, who can be punished (or rewarded) with mod points, so there's no one to smack them upside the head when they post advertisements or, say, delusional pseudoscience (yeah, I'm talking to you, ScuttleMonkey). An article-mod system would be great of course... but people have been suggesting that since I got on this site, so I suspect it ain't gonna happen any time soon.
But I don't really see what you can do... except stop visiting the site. I doubt they pay attention to these posts, but they must pay attention to the number of hits they get. If people stop coming as often, perhaps they'll sit up and take notice. Personally I read and post a lot less frequently than I did a few months ago, partly I'm busy, partly it's gotten old for me, and partly yes, it's going downhill in a number of respects. And I think the time is ripe for some other web site to come in and do what Slashdot does, only better. Slashdot has a great idea, but they haven't implemented any major changes in a while, and they haven't addressed any of the major complaints of the readership.
The move is viewed as an attempt by the Borg to stave off anti-trust litigation recently launched against the Borg by the Federation and the bloodthirsty lawyers of the Klingon Empire.