Ultimately, the critical mistake of U.S. policy during the latter part of the 20th century was to think that the enemy of our Enemy (and that's how we really seemed to think about it; Enemy with a capital 'E,' that's E that rhymes with C and that stands for Communism) was our friend.
I hear this kind of statement a lot. People wag their finger at the US and essentially say, "silly Americans - the enemy of your enemy is not your friend". The decision to aid the enemy of your enemy is a tricky one - it can go either way, and if it ends badly, people will talk about the underlying flaw of assuming the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Obviously, caution is the key here - not a blanket statement about not helping the enemy of your enemy. One thing I never hear people talk about in this context is whether or not the West should've helped the USSR during World War 2. The Nazis were an expanding threat, but the USSR was also an enemy (though not as immediate of a threat). At the same time, the USSR was also the enemy or our enemy (the Nazis). So, which is it? If people want to say, "the enemy of your enemy is not your friend", are they willing to stand up and say that we should not have helped the USSR fight the Nazis in World War 2?
Fox News: "It's been recently discovered that, in fact, the Clinton Administration had deleted Bush's emails during their second term. The Democrats, as usual, are to blame and need to be held accountable."
------
On a similar note, I read this quote today by Lee Iacocca regarding the Bush administration: "Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have."
Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.
They vote, they help elect our leaders, they get on school boards, they affect what laws get enacted in our country.
> If you explore these areas, and find out that the HIV has actually never been seen, just the antibodies...
Uh, right. You know that the we've sequenced the HIV virus, right? Not only has it been sequenced, but it's been sequenced so many times that we can see the evolution of it's genetic code over time, and can tell which people infected which people. We can tell that the "Libyan seven" are innocent. We can tell that HIV evolved from SIV (the simian version of HIV) multiple times.
Re: Libyan Seven
"By looking at the genome sequence of the virus found in children at Bambino Gesu hospital, we established that the estimated date of the most common recent ancestor for each cluster predated March 1998, sometimes by several years." http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1974 040,00.html
"The story revolves around Dr. David Acer, a Florida dentist who died in 1990 from complications of AIDS. Dr. Acer's death would have been far from remarkable at the time -- the AIDS epidemic was quite visible by the late 1980s, and one death earned no more attention than any other. Dr. Acer's story, however, extends beyond his private life and into his practice. You see, Dr. Acer had multiple patients that had been diagnosed as infected with HIV within a couple of years of his death." Sequence analysis of HIV in his patients shows that he infected his patients. http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/2006/06/phylogeny_ friday_9_june_2006_1.php
Sure they may be dangerous, *but you haven't lived* until you've driven your Power Wheels Motorcycle through a barrage of uranium tipped lawn jarts while navigating an obstacle course of hammocks.
The system isn't actually creating living cells. It's laying existing cells down into a pattern to form tissues. The title, "Create Living Cells With an Inkjet Printer" seems to imply that it's putting together molecules to form cells. (Is it "printing" the nucleotide sequences of DNA and RNA, "printing" mitochondria, "printing" amino acid sequences so that they form working 3-dimensional proteins, placing sugars and hormones inside those cells? Is it laying down a thin cell-wall with species-specific proteins embedded in that wall?) The answer is no, it's not doing any of that. We aren't capable of doing that, and even if we were, it would require a massive database of information that's much larger than the data stored in the human genome.
Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report that the world has some 3.74 trillion barrels of oil left -- enough to last 122 years at current consumption rates and triple the amount estimated by "peak oil" theorists.
Sounds like their analysis is rather simplistic. They looked at the *current* consumption rates, assumed that consumption rates would be static for the next 122 years, and then said we've got plenty of oil for 122 years. Nevermind the fact that places like China and India are quickly increasing their oil consumption.
World oil consumption rose by about 1.2 million barrels per day in 2005, after an increase of 2.6 million barrels per day in 2004.
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html
Overall, global oil consumption is expected to grow by about 1.4 percent each year over the next 25 years - roughly a 40% increase. If those rates hold steady, we'll be using twice the oil in 50 years. Based on increasing oil consumption, that 122 years shrinks down to something like 80 years.
Further, their report assumed a bunch of new oil discoveries, and that we'll be extracting known, but expensive-to-extract oil deposits in shale and other places. Nevermind that these alternatives routinely rank in the $70-$100 per barrel range.
Here's a graphic of their sources of oil: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington//160120 61.htm
It says:
1.08 trillion barrels already consumed
0.76 trillion barrels available from conventional sources
1.07 trillion barrels yet to be discovered
1.91 trillion barrels available from unconventional sources
In other words, of the 3.74 trillion barrels they're talking about, 30% is assumed to exist (we just haven't found it yet), and 50% is from unconventional sources (ranging from expensive to extremely expensive). Only 20% of their 3.74 trillion barrel estimate comes from known, economical sources! That means that known, conventional sources are expected to run out in 24 years - and that's according to current consumption rates, so 24 years is an overestimate. We'd better hope that lots of new oil is discovered and put into production before then (it takes about 10 years to get a new oil well up and running to full capacity), and we'll be switching to more and more expensive unconventional sources in the meantime.
Remember - peak oil doesn't say when the oil will run out, it talks about the interplay between cost, consumption, and economics.
What about:
- inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats
- massive moral issue of allowing an autonomous device to kill humans without specific targeting by a human operator
- probable violations of laws of war and humanitarian laws as a result of the above
These are all the same issues that you have with landmines. Since it would be deployed facing the DMZ, we're talking about aiming into an area that is already heavily mined, fenced-in, and well known to be a "no go" zone for soldiers and civilians. One advantage that it has over landmines is that it's easier to remove it from an area when it's time to pack-up and go. Landmines, on the other hand, stick around for decades after the war has ended because no one is quite sure where all of them are, and there's not enough impetus for governments to do the large amounts of work to clear mined areas (tedious work that requires throughness) when there are so many other governmental problems begging for money (like healthcare, sanitation, refuge problems, that typically occur during and after a war).
On a side note, I've linked to the video from my own site and included a video of a similar system made by the Australian military. http://www.empiresofsteel.com/devdiary/?p=56
It amazes me that this kind of thinking gets anywhere at all.
Keep in mind that the media does a really poor job of reporting on scientific topics, and are often prone to sensationalist and simplistic interpretations. (Which can be blamed on poor reporting and the desire to make money by sensationalizing and "dumbing down" things for readers.)
The real story is that genetic analysis found alleles most concentrated in europeans that appear to have entered the gene pool around 37,000 years ago. The alleles, themselves, appear to be quite a bit older than 37,000 years. Since neanderthals were living in the same geographical area where we now find these alleles in humans, and because the timing matches up (humans and neanderthals both lived in europe 37,000 years ago) it's guessed that the human gene pool might've gotten these alleles from neanderthals.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/ 2006/1106/1?rss=1http://johnhawks.net/weblog/2006/11/08#introgressi on_faq_2006
Actually, you don't need to do some external test to figure out if the gene (actually an allele) does anything useful (as opposed to say, schizophrenia). There are genetic tests that can be done to see how quickly the allele has spread through a population. If it spreads faster than chance (and this allele has done that), it's a reasonable conclusion that the allele does something useful for survival or reproduction. What that "something" is, isn't quite clear. Since the gene is involved in the brain development, it's assumed that the allele helps the brain in some way. Of course, if this gene has some role somewhere else in the body, it's entirely possible that the allele helps survival or reproduction in a way that has nothing to do with the brain or intelligence.
Of course, you could go with the Republican route and tie up the Democrat's phone lines so that they can't give rides old and handicapped voters rides to the voting booths.
2002: In New Hampshire, Democrats setup a phone line where disabled or elderly voters can call to get a ride to the polls. On election day, they are mysteriously jammed with calls from people hanging up. Legitimate voters can't get through. After some investigation, they trace the calls back to "GOP Marketplace" in Virginia. Republicans are convicted and admit that they did it to stop Democrats from getting to the polls. James Tobin, New England regional director of the Republican National Committee is convicted. http://bigbrassballs.wordpress.com/tag/gop-scandal s/phone-jamming/ http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/17/wednesd ay/index.html?eref=sitesearch
We only JUST mapped out the 3% that encodes protiens (the genes).
Actually, we mapped the entire sequence, of which 3% codes for genes.
Science does not know what the rest of the DNA does or does not do. There is certainly no study that I can find that offers proof that it is unused.
This stuff has been called "junk DNA", although most biologists are actually more careful about calling it that. They refer to is as "noncoding DNA" - it doesn't get converted into proteins. There are sections of the DNA that are non-coding and do provide functionality - promoters and suppressors, for example. These have been known for a long time. The amount of non-coding DNA that has a known function is very low (perhaps less than 1% of the non-coding DNA). There has been some evidence that sections of this DNA doesn't do anything (no biologists would claim that all non-coding DNA is non-functional, although most biologists think that most non-coding DNA does nothing). The evidence? There are pieces of genes which have been altered so much that they are non-functional (we can find their working versions elsewhere in the genome). There are pieces of viruses that have become mixed with our genome (as the original poster pointed out). When doing cross-species comparisons of these regions, they show rates of mutation in line with neutral drift (this is contrasted with working genes which tend to be highly conserved between species). There was even an experiment done a few years ago where a scientist removed 2.8 million base pairs of DNA from a mouse (apparently junk DNA based on it's rates of mutation in cross-species comparisons). The mice appeared to function normally despite the removal. The last example does not prove the DNA is non-functional, but it shows that it's functionality is somewhere between non-functional and non-obvious functionity. The moral of the story: I don't think people should call it "junk DNA" (especially when refering to all non-coding DNA), but people shouldn't jump on the occasional evidence of newly found functionality (often of some tiny section of the non-coding DNA) to claim that there's no such thing as useless DNA in our genome.
Personally I have seen enough examples to believe Democrats routinely steal enough votes to gain a 1 or 2 point advantage in any national election and substantially more in certain local races. But we Republicans simply spot em the handicap and go on to win elections.
You need to read more. There are plenty of cases of Republicans doing shifty things.
LAS VEGAS -- Elections officials have rebuffed an attempt by a former GOP operative to purge about 17,000 Democrats from the voter rolls in the battleground state of Nevada, where the two presidential candidates are in a dead heat. Dan Burdish, former head of the state Republican Party, filed a challenge last week claiming the Democrats should be removed from the rolls because they were inactive voters. When asked why he did it Burdish told the press, "I am looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135334,00.html
2004: The State of Florida compiled a list of 47,000+ felons to be barred from voting. Jeb Bush struggled to keep this list secret. After a lawsuit to make the list public, it was discovered that African American felons (who tend to vote Democrat) made-up 50% of the list, including a number of African-Americans who had regained the right to vote, while hispanics (who tend to vote Republican) made up only 61 of the 47,000 felons on the list.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/01/florida. elections/http://www.leanleft.com/archives/2004/07/27/3244/
Clint Curtis testifies under oath that Florida Representative Tom Feeney asked him to create a voting machine that could secretly switch the vote to whomever is pre-chosen to win an election.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/09/video_testimo ny_of_v.html
2002: In New Hampshire, Democrats setup a phone line where disabled or elderly voters can call to get a ride to the polls. On election day, they are mysteriously jammed with calls from people hanging up. Legitimate voters can't get through. After some investigation, they trace the calls back to "GOP Marketplace" in Virginia. Republicans are convicted and admit that they did it to stop Democrats from getting to the polls. James Tobin, New England regional director of the Republican National Committee is convicted.
http://bigbrassballs.wordpress.com/tag/gop-scandal s/phone-jamming/http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/17/wednesd ay/index.html?eref=sitesearch
What I find funny is the line "The average I.Q. has been increasing for decades", because if it has, someone dropped the ball.. The average IQ is 100, by definition if IQ. That's what the tests are normalized for.
People who take tests normalized decades ago tend to score more than 100. The older the test is, the higher people tend to score.
Lookup the Flynn Effect for more information:
"The Flynn effect is the continued year-on-year rise of IQ test scores, an effect seen in most parts of the world, although at greatly varying rates. It was named by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve after the New Zealand based political scientist James R. Flynn, its discoverer. The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_Effect
My comment about mitochondrial DNA was refering to the fact that neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has variations that human mitochondrial DNA does not. Your mitochondrial DNA is very similar to your mothers mitochondrial DNA. Based on that, we can make statements about whether or not you are her descendent. Since neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has variations and mutations that are not found in humans, it means that there was very little interbreeding going on (perhaps there was a little bit, but it has been lost in the subseqent millenia). No humans have ever been found that have neanderthal-type mitochondrial DNA.
Comparing mtDNA of these Neanderthals to mtDNA of living people from various continents, researchers have found that the Neanderthals' mtDNA is not more closely related to that of people from any one continent over another. This was an unwelcome finding for anthropologists who believe that there was some interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans living in Europe (which might have helped to explain why modern Europeans possess some Neanderthal-like features); these particular anthropologists instead would have expected the Neanderthals' mtDNA to be more similar to that of modern Europeans than to that of other peoples. Moreover, the researchers determined that the common ancestor to Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens lived as long as 500,000 years ago, well before the most recent common mtDNA ancestor of modern humans. This suggests (though it does not prove) that Neanderthals went extinct without contributing to the gene pool of any modern humans.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neanderthals/mtdna.ht ml
Some anthropologists have argued that people evolved at least partly from the Neanderthals. The opposing theory is that modern humans evolved in Africa, then spread outward, overwhelming earlier hominids including Neanderthals. The short, squat Neanderthals inhabited much of Europe from about 100,000 years ago until dying out about 28,000 years ago.
"Neanderthal DNA is distinct from modern humans," Goodwin says, "and there are no examples of humans having Neanderthal-type DNA." http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Goodwin_00.html
While I agree with your rant about fundamentalists, I'd mention that other Christians have no problem with this idea. In C.S.Lewis' novel Perelandra, the main character is informed that species do come to an end, and that to wish otherwise is pretty dysfunctional.
I don't disagree with that. There's a number of theologies that can accomodate the existence/extinction of neanderthals. Unfortunately, some theists (like literal six-day creationists) insist believing that they understand of the mind of God and, therefore, insist on defining their ideas of truth so narrowly that they have a hard time explaining the realities around us. It's primarily at those people that my comment is aimed.
Well actually (credientials: BSc physical anthropology) there is still quite a bit of debate as to whether or not they interbred with us.
Yes, I do realize there is a debate. By in large, I'm on the "probably didn't interbreed" side, which is why I wrote: "were separate linages who didn't interbreed to any significant degree (and probably not at all)" rather than flat-out stating that humans and neanderthals didn't/couldn't interbreed. While I'm only familiar with the mitochondial evidence, it seems a little hard to believe that humans and neanderthals interbreed with each other based on the fact that the neanderthal mitochondrial DNA shows variations that we don't find in humans. Of course, any examination of mitochondrial DNA won't tell us if neanderthal males and humans females had fertile children.
On the other hand, if they ever find the neantherthal DNA, if it exists. I wonder how they are going to spin it to claim that it supports evolution.
Well, creationists have been claiming that neanderthals were actually just humans. Enough DNA studies have been done on neanderthals to show that human mitochondrial DNA and neanderthal mitochondrial DNA is actually rather different - much smaller than the difference between humans and chimps, but different enough to show that humans and neanderthals were separate linages who didn't interbreed to any significant degree (and probably not at all). A more extensive study, I'm sure, will reinforce this fact, and creationists will continue ignoring the facts as usual. Apparently, creationists don't like the idea of God creating such a human-like creature because it harms the uniqueness of human-beings, it also raises questions about why God would create a "dead-end" species such as the neanderthals. Of course, evolution has no problem with the existence of neanderthals as a separate species.
> What a boob. To post a chart that goes back 400,000 years and suggest this is "geological" time.
Ouch. A "boob"! I don't think I've been called that since second grade.
Please. If there is NO CORRELATION, then the chart would not look like this. It would look like to completely independent lines. It does not. Second, other factors may have been magnitudes larger or smaller - for example, the brightness of the sun might've been significantly different 500 million years ago. That's whats great about my 400,000 year chart. Those other factors may have varied, but its much more plausible to suggest smaller variation over the past 400,000 years than the last 500 million.
> Hide your head in shame and take some geology bud.
Figure out what the word "correlation" means and tell me that my 400,000 year chart doesn't show it.
It's clear what the articles author is trying to imply - there is no correlation at all between CO2 and global temperatures. Suck it up and admit that he's wrong and he's seeking to misinform the public.
There are times when I read an article, when they say something demostrably untrue and it makes me think the whole article is questionable. Here's an example from this article:
"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame."
Don't tell me something that I know is wrong because it's only going to discredit your competency and make me wonder what over half-truths and outright lies are contained in the article.
I don't quite understand how allowing companies to priorize content is going to help the situation he describes. Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is on and Coldplay releases its latest song online? Well, what will happen is that Victoria's Secret and Capital Records are going to pay AT&T to prioritize THEIR content and everyone else still gets screwed. AT&T love this situation, of course, because they're hoping that other companies will suddenly jump in to protect THEIR network bandwidth against Victoria's Secret and Capital Records.
I'm guessing that they're using sprites because they were concerned about drawing large numbers of soldiers in full 3D. Doing it all in 3D would take lots of lots of polygons, and would require a high-powered graphics card to run decently.
the whiny US companies who just want to sit on their butts and collect royalties from the billions of masses
What an ironic and contradictory statement. If US companies are just sitting on their butts collecting royalties, then how did they develop the technology that China wants to rip-off in the first place?
I used to have a subscription to PC Gamer. I remember reading some reviews of games where they trashed the game. I even remember one game getting an 8% rating. They said something like, "avoid this game at all costs".
Looking at the PC Gamer database of reviews, I looked up a review summaries. Here's what they look like:
20th Century Trivia Challenge - Rating: 23%
Highs: Some good questions; pretty interface.
Lows: British-related questions and humor will be lost on American audiences; questions and too-short video clips repeat quickly.
Bottom Line: Not worth your time or mony, even if you are British. It's just plain bad.
3-D Ultra Mini-Golf Deluxe - Rating: 43%
Highs: Great-looking graphics, cool animations and effects; True Putt mouse swing
Lows: Can't change views; once you win, there's no reason to play again.
Bottom Line: Even if you are desperate for some mini-golf, you can find something better.
3D Ultra Radio Control Racers - Rating: 25%
Highs: Inexpensive; some potential appeal to the young-uns.
Lows: Monotonous gameplay; terrible grinding noise instead of soundtrack.
Bottom Line: Shovelware best suited for a last-minute stocking stuffer gift for the kiddies.
And a list of ratings for the first 30 games in the PC Gamer database of reviews: 80%, 68%, 76%, 78%, 57%, 80%, 56%, 23%, 43%, 86%, 91%, 47%, 85%, 45%, 25%, 60%, 52%, 78%, 85%, 85%, 72%, 66%, 52%, 30%, 34%, 68%, 34%, 61%, 88%, 82%
So, they do give some bad reviews. Although, it may be true that game ratings are overinflated, or that game ratings have begun to be overinflated lately.
Slashdot Mirror
Ultimately, the critical mistake of U.S. policy during the latter part of the 20th century was to think that the enemy of our Enemy (and that's how we really seemed to think about it; Enemy with a capital 'E,' that's E that rhymes with C and that stands for Communism) was our friend.
I hear this kind of statement a lot. People wag their finger at the US and essentially say, "silly Americans - the enemy of your enemy is not your friend". The decision to aid the enemy of your enemy is a tricky one - it can go either way, and if it ends badly, people will talk about the underlying flaw of assuming the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Obviously, caution is the key here - not a blanket statement about not helping the enemy of your enemy. One thing I never hear people talk about in this context is whether or not the West should've helped the USSR during World War 2. The Nazis were an expanding threat, but the USSR was also an enemy (though not as immediate of a threat). At the same time, the USSR was also the enemy or our enemy (the Nazis). So, which is it? If people want to say, "the enemy of your enemy is not your friend", are they willing to stand up and say that we should not have helped the USSR fight the Nazis in World War 2?
Fox News: "It's been recently discovered that, in fact, the Clinton Administration had deleted Bush's emails during their second term. The Democrats, as usual, are to blame and need to be held accountable."
------
On a similar note, I read this quote today by Lee Iacocca regarding the Bush administration:
"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have."
Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.
They vote, they help elect our leaders, they get on school boards, they affect what laws get enacted in our country.
> If you explore these areas, and find out that the HIV has actually never been seen, just the antibodies...
4 040,00.html
_ friday_9_june_2006_1.php
Uh, right. You know that the we've sequenced the HIV virus, right? Not only has it been sequenced, but it's been sequenced so many times that we can see the evolution of it's genetic code over time, and can tell which people infected which people. We can tell that the "Libyan seven" are innocent. We can tell that HIV evolved from SIV (the simian version of HIV) multiple times.
Re: Libyan Seven
"By looking at the genome sequence of the virus found in children at Bambino Gesu hospital, we established that the estimated date of the most common recent ancestor for each cluster predated March 1998, sometimes by several years."
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,197
"The story revolves around Dr. David Acer, a Florida dentist who died in 1990 from complications of AIDS. Dr. Acer's death would have been far from remarkable at the time -- the AIDS epidemic was quite visible by the late 1980s, and one death earned no more attention than any other. Dr. Acer's story, however, extends beyond his private life and into his practice. You see, Dr. Acer had multiple patients that had been diagnosed as infected with HIV within a couple of years of his death." Sequence analysis of HIV in his patients shows that he infected his patients.
http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/2006/06/phylogeny
Sure they may be dangerous, *but you haven't lived* until you've driven your Power Wheels Motorcycle through a barrage of uranium tipped lawn jarts while navigating an obstacle course of hammocks.
The system isn't actually creating living cells. It's laying existing cells down into a pattern to form tissues. The title, "Create Living Cells With an Inkjet Printer" seems to imply that it's putting together molecules to form cells. (Is it "printing" the nucleotide sequences of DNA and RNA, "printing" mitochondria, "printing" amino acid sequences so that they form working 3-dimensional proteins, placing sugars and hormones inside those cells? Is it laying down a thin cell-wall with species-specific proteins embedded in that wall?) The answer is no, it's not doing any of that. We aren't capable of doing that, and even if we were, it would require a massive database of information that's much larger than the data stored in the human genome.
"Sounds more like killing the paitient to cure the disease."
No, "killing the patient" would involve the elimination of humankind, or the destruction of life on earth in order to stop global warming.
Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report that the world has some 3.74 trillion barrels of oil left -- enough to last 122 years at current consumption rates and triple the amount estimated by "peak oil" theorists.
0 61.htm
Sounds like their analysis is rather simplistic. They looked at the *current* consumption rates, assumed that consumption rates would be static for the next 122 years, and then said we've got plenty of oil for 122 years. Nevermind the fact that places like China and India are quickly increasing their oil consumption.
China's petroleum imports are expected to grow fourfold from 2003 to 2030 Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html
World oil consumption rose by about 1.2 million barrels per day in 2005, after an increase of 2.6 million barrels per day in 2004. Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html
Overall, global oil consumption is expected to grow by about 1.4 percent each year over the next 25 years - roughly a 40% increase. If those rates hold steady, we'll be using twice the oil in 50 years. Based on increasing oil consumption, that 122 years shrinks down to something like 80 years.
Further, their report assumed a bunch of new oil discoveries, and that we'll be extracting known, but expensive-to-extract oil deposits in shale and other places. Nevermind that these alternatives routinely rank in the $70-$100 per barrel range. Here's a graphic of their sources of oil: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington//16012
It says:
1.08 trillion barrels already consumed
0.76 trillion barrels available from conventional sources
1.07 trillion barrels yet to be discovered
1.91 trillion barrels available from unconventional sources
In other words, of the 3.74 trillion barrels they're talking about, 30% is assumed to exist (we just haven't found it yet), and 50% is from unconventional sources (ranging from expensive to extremely expensive). Only 20% of their 3.74 trillion barrel estimate comes from known, economical sources! That means that known, conventional sources are expected to run out in 24 years - and that's according to current consumption rates, so 24 years is an overestimate. We'd better hope that lots of new oil is discovered and put into production before then (it takes about 10 years to get a new oil well up and running to full capacity), and we'll be switching to more and more expensive unconventional sources in the meantime.
Remember - peak oil doesn't say when the oil will run out, it talks about the interplay between cost, consumption, and economics.
What about:
- inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats
- massive moral issue of allowing an autonomous device to kill humans without specific targeting by a human operator
- probable violations of laws of war and humanitarian laws as a result of the above
These are all the same issues that you have with landmines. Since it would be deployed facing the DMZ, we're talking about aiming into an area that is already heavily mined, fenced-in, and well known to be a "no go" zone for soldiers and civilians. One advantage that it has over landmines is that it's easier to remove it from an area when it's time to pack-up and go. Landmines, on the other hand, stick around for decades after the war has ended because no one is quite sure where all of them are, and there's not enough impetus for governments to do the large amounts of work to clear mined areas (tedious work that requires throughness) when there are so many other governmental problems begging for money (like healthcare, sanitation, refuge problems, that typically occur during and after a war).
On a side note, I've linked to the video from my own site and included a video of a similar system made by the Australian military.
http://www.empiresofsteel.com/devdiary/?p=56
It amazes me that this kind of thinking gets anywhere at all.
/ 2006/1106/1?rss=1
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/2006/11/08#introgressi on_faq_2006
Keep in mind that the media does a really poor job of reporting on scientific topics, and are often prone to sensationalist and simplistic interpretations. (Which can be blamed on poor reporting and the desire to make money by sensationalizing and "dumbing down" things for readers.)
The real story is that genetic analysis found alleles most concentrated in europeans that appear to have entered the gene pool around 37,000 years ago. The alleles, themselves, appear to be quite a bit older than 37,000 years. Since neanderthals were living in the same geographical area where we now find these alleles in humans, and because the timing matches up (humans and neanderthals both lived in europe 37,000 years ago) it's guessed that the human gene pool might've gotten these alleles from neanderthals. http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full
Actually, you don't need to do some external test to figure out if the gene (actually an allele) does anything useful (as opposed to say, schizophrenia). There are genetic tests that can be done to see how quickly the allele has spread through a population. If it spreads faster than chance (and this allele has done that), it's a reasonable conclusion that the allele does something useful for survival or reproduction. What that "something" is, isn't quite clear. Since the gene is involved in the brain development, it's assumed that the allele helps the brain in some way. Of course, if this gene has some role somewhere else in the body, it's entirely possible that the allele helps survival or reproduction in a way that has nothing to do with the brain or intelligence.
Of course, you could go with the Republican route and tie up the Democrat's phone lines so that they can't give rides old and handicapped voters rides to the voting booths.
l s/phone-jamming/ d ay/index.html?eref=sitesearch
2002: In New Hampshire, Democrats setup a phone line where disabled or elderly voters can call to get a ride to the polls. On election day, they are mysteriously jammed with calls from people hanging up. Legitimate voters can't get through. After some investigation, they trace the calls back to "GOP Marketplace" in Virginia. Republicans are convicted and admit that they did it to stop Democrats from getting to the polls. James Tobin, New England regional director of the Republican National Committee is convicted.
http://bigbrassballs.wordpress.com/tag/gop-scanda
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/17/wednes
Personally I have seen enough examples to believe Democrats routinely steal enough votes to gain a 1 or 2 point advantage in any national election and substantially more in certain local races. But we Republicans simply spot em the handicap and go on to win elections.
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http://www.leanleft.com/archives/2004/07/27/3244/
o ny_of_v.html
l s/phone-jamming/
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/17/wednesd ay/index.html?eref=sitesearch
You need to read more. There are plenty of cases of Republicans doing shifty things.
LAS VEGAS -- Elections officials have rebuffed an attempt by a former GOP operative to purge about 17,000 Democrats from the voter rolls in the battleground state of Nevada, where the two presidential candidates are in a dead heat. Dan Burdish, former head of the state Republican Party, filed a challenge last week claiming the Democrats should be removed from the rolls because they were inactive voters. When asked why he did it Burdish told the press, "I am looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135334,00.htm
2004: The State of Florida compiled a list of 47,000+ felons to be barred from voting. Jeb Bush struggled to keep this list secret. After a lawsuit to make the list public, it was discovered that African American felons (who tend to vote Democrat) made-up 50% of the list, including a number of African-Americans who had regained the right to vote, while hispanics (who tend to vote Republican) made up only 61 of the 47,000 felons on the list. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/01/florida
Clint Curtis testifies under oath that Florida Representative Tom Feeney asked him to create a voting machine that could secretly switch the vote to whomever is pre-chosen to win an election. http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/09/video_testim
2002: In New Hampshire, Democrats setup a phone line where disabled or elderly voters can call to get a ride to the polls. On election day, they are mysteriously jammed with calls from people hanging up. Legitimate voters can't get through. After some investigation, they trace the calls back to "GOP Marketplace" in Virginia. Republicans are convicted and admit that they did it to stop Democrats from getting to the polls. James Tobin, New England regional director of the Republican National Committee is convicted. http://bigbrassballs.wordpress.com/tag/gop-scanda
Lookup the Flynn Effect for more information: "The Flynn effect is the continued year-on-year rise of IQ test scores, an effect seen in most parts of the world, although at greatly varying rates. It was named by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve after the New Zealand based political scientist James R. Flynn, its discoverer. The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade...." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_Effect
My comment about mitochondrial DNA was refering to the fact that neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has variations that human mitochondrial DNA does not. Your mitochondrial DNA is very similar to your mothers mitochondrial DNA. Based on that, we can make statements about whether or not you are her descendent. Since neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has variations and mutations that are not found in humans, it means that there was very little interbreeding going on (perhaps there was a little bit, but it has been lost in the subseqent millenia). No humans have ever been found that have neanderthal-type mitochondrial DNA.
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Comparing mtDNA of these Neanderthals to mtDNA of living people from various continents, researchers have found that the Neanderthals' mtDNA is not more closely related to that of people from any one continent over another. This was an unwelcome finding for anthropologists who believe that there was some interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans living in Europe (which might have helped to explain why modern Europeans possess some Neanderthal-like features); these particular anthropologists instead would have expected the Neanderthals' mtDNA to be more similar to that of modern Europeans than to that of other peoples. Moreover, the researchers determined that the common ancestor to Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens lived as long as 500,000 years ago, well before the most recent common mtDNA ancestor of modern humans. This suggests (though it does not prove) that Neanderthals went extinct without contributing to the gene pool of any modern humans. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neanderthals/mtdna.h
Some anthropologists have argued that people evolved at least partly from the Neanderthals. The opposing theory is that modern humans evolved in Africa, then spread outward, overwhelming earlier hominids including Neanderthals. The short, squat Neanderthals inhabited much of Europe from about 100,000 years ago until dying out about 28,000 years ago. "Neanderthal DNA is distinct from modern humans," Goodwin says, "and there are no examples of humans having Neanderthal-type DNA." http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Goodwin_00.html
> What a boob. To post a chart that goes back 400,000 years and suggest this is "geological" time.
Ouch. A "boob"! I don't think I've been called that since second grade.
Please. If there is NO CORRELATION, then the chart would not look like this. It would look like to completely independent lines. It does not. Second, other factors may have been magnitudes larger or smaller - for example, the brightness of the sun might've been significantly different 500 million years ago. That's whats great about my 400,000 year chart. Those other factors may have varied, but its much more plausible to suggest smaller variation over the past 400,000 years than the last 500 million.
> Hide your head in shame and take some geology bud.
Figure out what the word "correlation" means and tell me that my 400,000 year chart doesn't show it.
It's clear what the articles author is trying to imply - there is no correlation at all between CO2 and global temperatures. Suck it up and admit that he's wrong and he's seeking to misinform the public.
There are times when I read an article, when they say something demostrably untrue and it makes me think the whole article is questionable. Here's an example from this article:
a nning/New_Data/ a nning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif
"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame."
No correlation? This is clearly wrong. Here are charts that show a pretty nice correlation.
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Pl
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Pl
Don't tell me something that I know is wrong because it's only going to discredit your competency and make me wonder what over half-truths and outright lies are contained in the article.
I don't quite understand how allowing companies to priorize content is going to help the situation he describes. Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is on and Coldplay releases its latest song online? Well, what will happen is that Victoria's Secret and Capital Records are going to pay AT&T to prioritize THEIR content and everyone else still gets screwed. AT&T love this situation, of course, because they're hoping that other companies will suddenly jump in to protect THEIR network bandwidth against Victoria's Secret and Capital Records.
I'm guessing that they're using sprites because they were concerned about drawing large numbers of soldiers in full 3D. Doing it all in 3D would take lots of lots of polygons, and would require a high-powered graphics card to run decently.
the whiny US companies who just want to sit on their butts and collect royalties from the billions of masses
What an ironic and contradictory statement. If US companies are just sitting on their butts collecting royalties, then how did they develop the technology that China wants to rip-off in the first place?
I used to have a subscription to PC Gamer. I remember reading some reviews of games where they trashed the game. I even remember one game getting an 8% rating. They said something like, "avoid this game at all costs".
Looking at the PC Gamer database of reviews, I looked up a review summaries. Here's what they look like:
20th Century Trivia Challenge - Rating: 23% Highs: Some good questions; pretty interface. Lows: British-related questions and humor will be lost on American audiences; questions and too-short video clips repeat quickly. Bottom Line: Not worth your time or mony, even if you are British. It's just plain bad.
3-D Ultra Mini-Golf Deluxe - Rating: 43% Highs: Great-looking graphics, cool animations and effects; True Putt mouse swing Lows: Can't change views; once you win, there's no reason to play again. Bottom Line: Even if you are desperate for some mini-golf, you can find something better.
3D Ultra Radio Control Racers - Rating: 25% Highs: Inexpensive; some potential appeal to the young-uns. Lows: Monotonous gameplay; terrible grinding noise instead of soundtrack. Bottom Line: Shovelware best suited for a last-minute stocking stuffer gift for the kiddies.
And a list of ratings for the first 30 games in the PC Gamer database of reviews: 80%, 68%, 76%, 78%, 57%, 80%, 56%, 23%, 43%, 86%, 91%, 47%, 85%, 45%, 25%, 60%, 52%, 78%, 85%, 85%, 72%, 66%, 52%, 30%, 34%, 68%, 34%, 61%, 88%, 82%
So, they do give some bad reviews. Although, it may be true that game ratings are overinflated, or that game ratings have begun to be overinflated lately.
http://www.empiresofsteel.com/