Doesn't the rabies virus sort of do the same thing? By making the animal agressive, it makes it more likely that the host will bite another animal, and the virus will be passed on.
I'm starting to wonder if the Onion has too. Lately it just seems like they're trying too hard, and not succeeding. The articles seem sort of mediocre, that recent "Future Onion" issue was a clever concept which utterly failed to be funny, and their web site has just gone through a complete redesign with the result is that it is (a) hideous- I'm talking face-burned-with-acid hideous- and (b) really difficult to read or navigate.
Merriam Webster's defines a theory as "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena." Intelligent design doesn't qualify- it hasn't been tested (it's arguable whether it's even testable at all), it isn't accepted, and it explains absolutely nothing. It doesn't explain who the designer is or how the designer designed things, how the design was implemented, why, or when. It's the complete and total absence of a theory.
Which is the beauty of it. Creationists learned from the Young Earth Creationism disaster- as soon as you start making testable statements like "the earth is 6000 years old" scientists will disprove you and show what a bunch of idiots you are. So you avoid making testable statements at all costs.
I've observed three sets of populations where high sociopathic scores seem to confer an advantage:
a) law school b) the US presidency c) the ghetto...
I am a poor but honest lawyer, so I live in the hood. A lot of my neighbors are crackheads or alcoholics. Substance abuse seems to turn people into sociopaths, ready to lie or cheat or steal to get a quick fix
Shit... so all we Democrats need to do to finally find someone who can win the presidency is nominate a crackhead?
this comes from someone who hasn't watched TV in several years
Exactly, though. I watched last year's presidential debates on my computer- but only because I didn't have a TV. If I'd had a TV, I would have used that; the resolution was pretty crappy. Admittedly, I could stop, pause, and rewind... but then, you can do the same thing with TiVo.
In general, I think the trend is not towards consolidation of devices- it's towards proliferation of devices- iPods, digital cameras, cell phones, PlayStations, TVs, PDAs, desktops, and laptops are all coexisting, rather than driving each other extinct. Basic Adam Smith division of labor: functionality is improved by having parts specialized to particular tasks. My computer has a nifty built-in calculator, for instance, but I still use a calculator when I need to do some quick arithmetic. It's too much of a pain in the ass to switch back and forth between windows on my desktop when I'm trying to enter in figures, and using a mouse to click virtual buttons isn't as quick and easy as using a calculator. Hell, I've got two calculators- one for work and one for home- because they're so cheap.
Likewise, accessing TV through your computer is going to mean a more difficult TV viewing experience- as in, "Great, I can't watch my Simpsons because I got a virus". For college students with limited space, limited money and a CS major down the hall who can fix your problems, watching TV on the PC might be a good solution. But for the average American who just wants to plop down on the couch after a long day, crack open a beer, and turn off all thought processes, I don't see it catching on. A machine dedicated solely to TV is just going to give you better performance for your buck than a machine which is trying to do a lot of other stuff.
You're also going to need something that allows you to save and tag all this GPS data so that you can decipher it when you do get back to a computer.
Pencil and paper works fine for recording GPS coordinates, or you can just save your points in the GPS unit itself(entry-level Garmin units save several hundred data points, high-end units can hold thousands). Probably both would be good in case someone rips off your GPS. The interface on the cheap (~100$) Garmin units is annoying and poorly designed (you end up doing everything with four buttons), but it works for letting you name and save your points. Even entry-level units are really accurate (down to 15 meters or less), which I assume is more than enough if you simply want to put a village on a map.
When I was in Madagascar, bigger towns had batteries for sale in the markets, though they were of inferior quality, so you're best off bringing a bunch of your own. Also, GPS units really tend to suck power pretty fast, to conserve power you're best off turning it on only for a few minutes at a time- when you need to figure out which direction to head, and when you want to mark a point. Best thing to do might be to borrow one and take it out hiking a bit and see how it works.
Just saying don't believe the hype about the so called "Hydrogen economy" being environmentally driven.
For industry, the advantage of hydrogen is that it's so far in the future: it means they don't have to make changes now. There are a lot of things we could do right now to cut down on foreign oil dependency and greenhouse gas emissions: require better fuel efficiency from new cars, move more quickly towards hybrid vehicles, put in more commuter trains and subways, make cities better designed for walking and cycling. But auto makers and oil companies would lose out. So instead, they throw a few million bucks at hydrogen technologies, and that lets them say "see, we really give a shit!" and then keep building monstrosities of excess like the Hummer 2.
Not sure I agree. Frequently, when going through the journals, I see stuff that is either (a) total crap, or (b) true, but overblown (modesty doesn't get you very far in academia). A good example would be the "argument" over the evolution of birds. There has been an "argument" raging for the past 25 years over whether birds evolved from dinosaurs or not... except there hasn't been.
Pretty much since the early 1980s the evidence has been very strongly in favor of dinosaurs giving rise to birds, and then they found feathered dinosaurs in China, which pretty much clinched it. But some people just would not relent- they'd invested too much time, effort, and pride in saying dinosaurs weren't birds to change their minds and say "shit, I was wrong". So they kept publishing studies which argued birds weren't dinosaurs (which is almost certainly false) and kept saying that it was "conclusive" proof (which is definitely overblown). Yet the scientific journals and the scientific journalists actually encouraged these guys long after most people realized they were wrong- after all, "Scientists virtually unanimous: birds come from dinosaurs" isn't as exciting as "Scientists bitterly divided: did birds come from dinosaurs?"
That's just one example. Given how divisive debate can be in science, it's hardly surprising to find that many studies contradict each other, or that scientists overstate the implications of their work.
Well, Antarctica has thus far avoided militarization. Apparently, the Antarctic treaty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty forbids any military operations, though it does allow the military to operate there. The U.S. hasn't made an official claim, but operates an air base smack on top of the South Pole.
So it may be too soon to say where things will go in space. Potentially, treaty agreements might prevent militarization, and it would probably be in everybody's interests to have this happen. On the other hand, the U.S. has hedged its bets on Antarctica- we do a lot of research there, reserve the right to make a future claim, and the C-130s taxi over every other nation's claim when they take off (since the claims are wedges which converge at the South Pole) so it's clear that the U.S. is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent... if it ever needs to.
Concerning war, even bands of chimps wage crude wars against each other, which suggests that the behavior is very ancient- millions of years old. So somehow, I doubt that looking down on the earth from space and getting an impression of tranquility and oneness is going to make us suddenly wake up and stop killing each other. War will always be with us I'm sure. However, the question is whether warfare will be as common and destructive in the future as it is now. Primitive hunter-gatherer societies have been romanticized a lot, but supposedly life in these societies is pretty rough and the odds of a violent death are much higher than in modern industrialized nations, our sophisticated weaponry and standing armies notwithstanding.
I think part of the problem is a serious lack of competition. Unless you're willing to pay a few thousand dollars a year for private school, you're stuck with what the government provides you. That eliminates a lot of pressure on the public schools to improve- it's hard for people to take their business elsewhere. It's the basic problem with a lot of government-run programs: the school doesn't get rewarded for success, and there's limited accountability when it fails.
There are very few people prepared to die for their art. But even fewer are prepared to learn to draw.
That's a good one. I've had similar experiences in the arts- many art teachers just sort of let you run off and draw to your heart's content. That's great and you need some of that, but a couple years ago I finally went and took an elementary drawing class from one of the art schools in San Francisco and they taught me the basics of values, composition, highlights, focal points, how to cast shadows, positive/negative space and the incredible versatility of charcoal as a medium- I love computers and use them a lot in my art, but nothing beats charcoal for the ability to express yourself quickly, boldly, subtly.
It helped my drawing immensely to understand those things, and it's also improved my appreciation of art- now instead of looking at Hokusai's Great Wave and saying "cool" I can say (at least in part) why it's so beautiful- it's use of positive and negative space, the dynamic lines and focal point, effective use of contrast and values, and soforth. I appreciate the painting even more, and when I draw or do an illustration, I can try to swipe a few of his tricks. It's a fine line, of course. On the one hand, you want to learn as much as you can from the people who have come before you. On the other hand, you want to be able to do new things and break the rules when you need to. New words aren't a bad thing, as long as they increase our ability to express ourselves, rather than obscure what we think and feel.
Actually, the correct term is not "weasel words". It's "mustelid lexicography".
Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_ is another great guide to writing. It lives its message: the book says to be short and to the point, and so the book is actually short and to the point.It goes from the basics like joining sentences to the principles of composition and clear writing. Anyone who wants to be a writer, whether as a journalist, novelist, or academic, needs to pick up a copy.
I can't believe that almost got through senior year of college without ever having read this book, which is ridiculous- there's this idea in America that you don't need to learn the rules and basics of your craft anymore, whether its art or writing or whatever- well, that idea is bullshit. I'm all for breaking loose and breaking all the rules, but it helps to know the rules in the first place. And for every one Jack Kerouac who can write brilliant drug-fuelled free-form prose, there are a dozen people who really need to pick up Strunk and White, and Orwell's _Politics and the English Language_ Essay and learn to string two words together (I'm firmly in the second camp).
The other question is, are they just fixing the last problem? OK, great, wonderful, now we can watch out for debris. But what if the bigger problem is that the design is just inherently more dangerous than it needs to be, so now, instead of the O-rings or tiles failing, something else will go catastrophically wrong?
Of course the guy is going to have a bias towards MS. Otherwise there would be no way in Hell he'd ever be there (or he's already there, considering how one looks at it).
I can just picture how they'll be sure to give everyone an objective view of their competitor:
"Now, here's a machine running Linux. See that icon sitting there on the desktop? Now, if you double-click that, it will annihilate all of space and time in a single instant. Is that really the type of thing you want built into the OS all your employees are using? Also, did I mention that Microsoft-sponsored studies indicate a strong causal connection between Linux and the bubonic plague? Although I'm told the OS is becoming quite popular among people who beat their wives and kick cute little puppies."
Re:I smell a rat! and It'll be on budget for 1.5M
on
Sci-Fi on the Cheap
·
· Score: 4, Funny
PS. Dear SciFi. the idea of mutant screenwriting monkeys is available for a modest sum.
Well, my idea is to combine two Steven Spielberg movies: dinosaurs attacking and killing humans (Jurassic Park) with aliens attacking and killing humans (War of the Worlds).
See, there are these dinosaurs who have been hanging out in the Amazon and now they've gotten pissed off about the destruction of the rainforest and they're gonna take over. But just as they go on the rampage, alien robots come down from space, and they want to take over the planet too!
So the dinosaurs and aliens start fighting, but then decide that's pointless. They decide to settle their differences with a contest: a kill-a-thon. Whoever can kill more humans during 24 hrs. of carnage and rampage can rule the entire planet. Dinosaurs plus robots? It's like Spielberg, squared... minus his directing ability of course. There are two running body counts on the screen, one for dinosaurs and one for robots.
Title: "DINOSAURS VS. ROBOTS"
Budget: 2 million.
Plus, I already have a concept for the sequel: it's called "DINOSAURS VS. ROBOTS... VS. ZOMBIES!".
These scanners still can see through clothing, but they can't see through all materials. This means that (a) there's a security hole
This is why we need special full body cavity search robots placed at the entrance to every subway, airport, mall, and government building in the United States!
But as a trial, I propose that we start by installing these machines at the entrances to the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon, and the Department of Homeland Security.
-- Terrorism may have turned the United States into a nation of fear and aggression, but it won't succeed in Europe.
I am just so sick of people saying that the United States is irrationally aggressive and paranoid. And if you don't stop calling us aggressive and fearful, I'm gonna break every goddamn bone in your freakin' hands and then strangle a whole litter of puppies. Just as soon as Homeland Security tells me its OK to go outside.
Last night, I put Johnny Cash's _American IV_ on my stereo for the first time. I'm not really sure how it fits into Gibson's ideas. It supports some of his thesis and disagrees with it in other ways.
The first song- "The Man Comes Around"- uses samples and "remixes" of the Book of Revelations. So it supports Gibson's idea of remixing. But then, isn't the Book of Revelations sort of a "remix" itself, in that the King James Version (or whichever version Cash is sampling and alluding to) is a modification of the original text? And for that matter, I'm perfectly happy with the Cash version- I simply want to appreciate it, not alter it- which doesn't seem to fit with Gibson's idea that we're all going to be remixing what everyone else has done. The other truly kick-ass song on the CD is Cash's version of NIN's "Hurt". I suppose you could call it a "remix" to have the Man in Black sing Trent Reznor's lyrics and play NIN on acoustic guitar, but artists have been performing songs or reciting poems written by other artists since recorded history began.
And sure, artists today build upon, are inspired by, steal from, improve upon, and desecrate previous works- how in the hell is this new? The Book of Genesis borrows the flood myth from _Gilgamesh_; William Shakespeare borrowed the story for _Hamlet_, the tune of the "Star Spangled Banner" is an old drinking song, and the English language is a "mash" of a Germanic tongue (Old English), French(the language of the Norman conquerors), Latin(the language of the scholars and scientists), and other tongues. Sure, we have new toys that make this easier than ever, but this is just the nature of art and culture.
I've noticed that in science, ideas with catchy or impressive sounding names tend to catch on better than those without- classic examples include Stephen Jay Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" or Kuhn's "paradigm shift". In fact, if you want to get credit for a big idea, it is vitally important that you come up with a catchy name for it. It should flow off the tongue and pen while managing to convey a sense of sophistication.
So, I've got this idea that a catchy name is important in the success or failure of concepts and hypotheses. Now, if only I could think of a catchy name for this idea, I could get credit for it!
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't the rabies virus sort of do the same thing? By making the animal agressive, it makes it more likely that the host will bite another animal, and the virus will be passed on.
I'm starting to wonder if the Onion has too. Lately it just seems like they're trying too hard, and not succeeding. The articles seem sort of mediocre, that recent "Future Onion" issue was a clever concept which utterly failed to be funny, and their web site has just gone through a complete redesign with the result is that it is (a) hideous- I'm talking face-burned-with-acid hideous- and (b) really difficult to read or navigate.
"Theory of intelligent design" is an oxymoron.
Merriam Webster's defines a theory as "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena." Intelligent design doesn't qualify- it hasn't been tested (it's arguable whether it's even testable at all), it isn't accepted, and it explains absolutely nothing. It doesn't explain who the designer is or how the designer designed things, how the design was implemented, why, or when. It's the complete and total absence of a theory.
Which is the beauty of it. Creationists learned from the Young Earth Creationism disaster- as soon as you start making testable statements like "the earth is 6000 years old" scientists will disprove you and show what a bunch of idiots you are. So you avoid making testable statements at all costs.
I am a poor but honest lawyer, so I live in the hood. A lot of my neighbors are crackheads or alcoholics. Substance abuse seems to turn people into sociopaths, ready to lie or cheat or steal to get a quick fix
Shit... so all we Democrats need to do to finally find someone who can win the presidency is nominate a crackhead?
I'd recommend picking up a copy of _Ship of Gold on the Deep Blue Sea_ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/037 5703373/qid=1122792507/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1/103 -2472859-5055837?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). It's a very cool story about a very geeky engineer who decides to find and salvage a ship sunk in two miles of water, carrying half a billion dollars in gold, using an ROV.
Yes, Canadian soldiers are elite and highly trained.
Both of them.
Exactly, though. I watched last year's presidential debates on my computer- but only because I didn't have a TV. If I'd had a TV, I would have used that; the resolution was pretty crappy. Admittedly, I could stop, pause, and rewind... but then, you can do the same thing with TiVo.
In general, I think the trend is not towards consolidation of devices- it's towards proliferation of devices- iPods, digital cameras, cell phones, PlayStations, TVs, PDAs, desktops, and laptops are all coexisting, rather than driving each other extinct. Basic Adam Smith division of labor: functionality is improved by having parts specialized to particular tasks. My computer has a nifty built-in calculator, for instance, but I still use a calculator when I need to do some quick arithmetic. It's too much of a pain in the ass to switch back and forth between windows on my desktop when I'm trying to enter in figures, and using a mouse to click virtual buttons isn't as quick and easy as using a calculator. Hell, I've got two calculators- one for work and one for home- because they're so cheap.
Likewise, accessing TV through your computer is going to mean a more difficult TV viewing experience- as in, "Great, I can't watch my Simpsons because I got a virus". For college students with limited space, limited money and a CS major down the hall who can fix your problems, watching TV on the PC might be a good solution. But for the average American who just wants to plop down on the couch after a long day, crack open a beer, and turn off all thought processes, I don't see it catching on. A machine dedicated solely to TV is just going to give you better performance for your buck than a machine which is trying to do a lot of other stuff.
Well, obviously the ATM machine is the machine which dispenses the ATMs.
Pencil and paper works fine for recording GPS coordinates, or you can just save your points in the GPS unit itself(entry-level Garmin units save several hundred data points, high-end units can hold thousands). Probably both would be good in case someone rips off your GPS. The interface on the cheap (~100$) Garmin units is annoying and poorly designed (you end up doing everything with four buttons), but it works for letting you name and save your points. Even entry-level units are really accurate (down to 15 meters or less), which I assume is more than enough if you simply want to put a village on a map.
When I was in Madagascar, bigger towns had batteries for sale in the markets, though they were of inferior quality, so you're best off bringing a bunch of your own. Also, GPS units really tend to suck power pretty fast, to conserve power you're best off turning it on only for a few minutes at a time- when you need to figure out which direction to head, and when you want to mark a point. Best thing to do might be to borrow one and take it out hiking a bit and see how it works.
maybe they aren't.
For industry, the advantage of hydrogen is that it's so far in the future: it means they don't have to make changes now. There are a lot of things we could do right now to cut down on foreign oil dependency and greenhouse gas emissions: require better fuel efficiency from new cars, move more quickly towards hybrid vehicles, put in more commuter trains and subways, make cities better designed for walking and cycling. But auto makers and oil companies would lose out. So instead, they throw a few million bucks at hydrogen technologies, and that lets them say "see, we really give a shit!" and then keep building monstrosities of excess like the Hummer 2.
Not sure I agree. Frequently, when going through the journals, I see stuff that is either (a) total crap, or (b) true, but overblown (modesty doesn't get you very far in academia). A good example would be the "argument" over the evolution of birds. There has been an "argument" raging for the past 25 years over whether birds evolved from dinosaurs or not... except there hasn't been.
Pretty much since the early 1980s the evidence has been very strongly in favor of dinosaurs giving rise to birds, and then they found feathered dinosaurs in China, which pretty much clinched it. But some people just would not relent- they'd invested too much time, effort, and pride in saying dinosaurs weren't birds to change their minds and say "shit, I was wrong". So they kept publishing studies which argued birds weren't dinosaurs (which is almost certainly false) and kept saying that it was "conclusive" proof (which is definitely overblown). Yet the scientific journals and the scientific journalists actually encouraged these guys long after most people realized they were wrong- after all, "Scientists virtually unanimous: birds come from dinosaurs" isn't as exciting as "Scientists bitterly divided: did birds come from dinosaurs?"
That's just one example. Given how divisive debate can be in science, it's hardly surprising to find that many studies contradict each other, or that scientists overstate the implications of their work.
So it may be too soon to say where things will go in space. Potentially, treaty agreements might prevent militarization, and it would probably be in everybody's interests to have this happen. On the other hand, the U.S. has hedged its bets on Antarctica- we do a lot of research there, reserve the right to make a future claim, and the C-130s taxi over every other nation's claim when they take off (since the claims are wedges which converge at the South Pole) so it's clear that the U.S. is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent... if it ever needs to.
Concerning war, even bands of chimps wage crude wars against each other, which suggests that the behavior is very ancient- millions of years old. So somehow, I doubt that looking down on the earth from space and getting an impression of tranquility and oneness is going to make us suddenly wake up and stop killing each other. War will always be with us I'm sure. However, the question is whether warfare will be as common and destructive in the future as it is now. Primitive hunter-gatherer societies have been romanticized a lot, but supposedly life in these societies is pretty rough and the odds of a violent death are much higher than in modern industrialized nations, our sophisticated weaponry and standing armies notwithstanding.
I think part of the problem is a serious lack of competition. Unless you're willing to pay a few thousand dollars a year for private school, you're stuck with what the government provides you. That eliminates a lot of pressure on the public schools to improve- it's hard for people to take their business elsewhere. It's the basic problem with a lot of government-run programs: the school doesn't get rewarded for success, and there's limited accountability when it fails.
That's a good one. I've had similar experiences in the arts- many art teachers just sort of let you run off and draw to your heart's content. That's great and you need some of that, but a couple years ago I finally went and took an elementary drawing class from one of the art schools in San Francisco and they taught me the basics of values, composition, highlights, focal points, how to cast shadows, positive/negative space and the incredible versatility of charcoal as a medium- I love computers and use them a lot in my art, but nothing beats charcoal for the ability to express yourself quickly, boldly, subtly.
It helped my drawing immensely to understand those things, and it's also improved my appreciation of art- now instead of looking at Hokusai's Great Wave and saying "cool" I can say (at least in part) why it's so beautiful- it's use of positive and negative space, the dynamic lines and focal point, effective use of contrast and values, and soforth. I appreciate the painting even more, and when I draw or do an illustration, I can try to swipe a few of his tricks. It's a fine line, of course. On the one hand, you want to learn as much as you can from the people who have come before you. On the other hand, you want to be able to do new things and break the rules when you need to. New words aren't a bad thing, as long as they increase our ability to express ourselves, rather than obscure what we think and feel.
Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_ is another great guide to writing. It lives its message: the book says to be short and to the point, and so the book is actually short and to the point.It goes from the basics like joining sentences to the principles of composition and clear writing. Anyone who wants to be a writer, whether as a journalist, novelist, or academic, needs to pick up a copy.
I can't believe that almost got through senior year of college without ever having read this book, which is ridiculous- there's this idea in America that you don't need to learn the rules and basics of your craft anymore, whether its art or writing or whatever- well, that idea is bullshit. I'm all for breaking loose and breaking all the rules, but it helps to know the rules in the first place. And for every one Jack Kerouac who can write brilliant drug-fuelled free-form prose, there are a dozen people who really need to pick up Strunk and White, and Orwell's _Politics and the English Language_ Essay and learn to string two words together (I'm firmly in the second camp).
The other question is, are they just fixing the last problem? OK, great, wonderful, now we can watch out for debris. But what if the bigger problem is that the design is just inherently more dangerous than it needs to be, so now, instead of the O-rings or tiles failing, something else will go catastrophically wrong?
I can just picture how they'll be sure to give everyone an objective view of their competitor:
"Now, here's a machine running Linux. See that icon sitting there on the desktop? Now, if you double-click that, it will annihilate all of space and time in a single instant. Is that really the type of thing you want built into the OS all your employees are using? Also, did I mention that Microsoft-sponsored studies indicate a strong causal connection between Linux and the bubonic plague? Although I'm told the OS is becoming quite popular among people who beat their wives and kick cute little puppies."
Well, my idea is to combine two Steven Spielberg movies: dinosaurs attacking and killing humans (Jurassic Park) with aliens attacking and killing humans (War of the Worlds). See, there are these dinosaurs who have been hanging out in the Amazon and now they've gotten pissed off about the destruction of the rainforest and they're gonna take over. But just as they go on the rampage, alien robots come down from space, and they want to take over the planet too!
So the dinosaurs and aliens start fighting, but then decide that's pointless. They decide to settle their differences with a contest: a kill-a-thon. Whoever can kill more humans during 24 hrs. of carnage and rampage can rule the entire planet. Dinosaurs plus robots? It's like Spielberg, squared... minus his directing ability of course. There are two running body counts on the screen, one for dinosaurs and one for robots.
Title: "DINOSAURS VS. ROBOTS"
Budget: 2 million.
Plus, I already have a concept for the sequel: it's called "DINOSAURS VS. ROBOTS... VS. ZOMBIES!".
This is why we need special full body cavity search robots placed at the entrance to every subway, airport, mall, and government building in the United States!
But as a trial, I propose that we start by installing these machines at the entrances to the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon, and the Department of Homeland Security.
I am just so sick of people saying that the United States is irrationally aggressive and paranoid. And if you don't stop calling us aggressive and fearful, I'm gonna break every goddamn bone in your freakin' hands and then strangle a whole litter of puppies. Just as soon as Homeland Security tells me its OK to go outside.
Oh, quit complaining how bad the editors are! I have complete confidence they'll have this fixed by the time the article is reposted as a dupe.
And sure, artists today build upon, are inspired by, steal from, improve upon, and desecrate previous works- how in the hell is this new? The Book of Genesis borrows the flood myth from _Gilgamesh_; William Shakespeare borrowed the story for _Hamlet_, the tune of the "Star Spangled Banner" is an old drinking song, and the English language is a "mash" of a Germanic tongue (Old English), French(the language of the Norman conquerors), Latin(the language of the scholars and scientists), and other tongues. Sure, we have new toys that make this easier than ever, but this is just the nature of art and culture.
So, I've got this idea that a catchy name is important in the success or failure of concepts and hypotheses. Now, if only I could think of a catchy name for this idea, I could get credit for it!
Al Qaeda doesn't need to come over here to kill Americans when we're shipping them to Zarqawi in unarmored humvees.