Re:Plenty of Radioactive items...
on
United Nuclear
·
· Score: 1
Beta radiation cannot penetrate through your clothes
That's a bit of an overgeneralization. It depends on the energy of the beta. "Hard" beta from P-32 will penetrate about a third of an inch in tissue. It will also produce secondary gamma if it hits metal.
Yes, that's my point - there is more dignity in one who overcomes their desires (regardless of their sexuality) than there is one who lives in subjugation to them. For some reason, however, the homosexual community seems oblivious to this
Why should homosexuals be any different from heterosexuals in this respect? After all, for a person with heterosexual desires, overcoming one's desires would mean having exclusively homosexual sex, or not having sex at all. But most people with heterosexual desires "live in subjugation to their desires," and persist in having sex with the opposite sex.
It is the struggle to overcome the desires of the flesh which makes mankind more dignified than animals. An animal has no freedom, no free will - it can do only what it's carnal desires dictate. And this is the problem with homosexuality in humans - in order to engage in homosexuality, a person presents himself as a slave to his carnal desires, giving them free reign over his mind and body. Rather than living in freedom, as he was designed, he lives in slavery to his desires, with dignity scarcely above that of an animal.
This sounds ridiculous. By your argument, the vast majority of people who have never in their lives felt even the slightest physical attraction to their own sex are somehow less "dignified" than the minority who do and struggle against it.
What separates mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom is that man has both free will and moral knowledge. Because of such, God expects better behavior from us than from animals - while a dog may eat its own feces out of carnal curiousity, such behavior would be undignified, and outright life-threatening for a human. The differences in design between humans and animal species mean that behavior suitable for animal species is undignified and wrong when practiced by humans.
Actually, the "design" of humans is similar enough to that of dogs that the hazard of feces-eating is no different. It sounds like what you are saying is that humans are "designed" to share the same natural behaviors as other closely related animals, but are then commanded not to indulge in them. Sounds downright perverse, verging on the sadistic.
I agree that a gene which predisposes someone toward homosexuality may propagate through the methods you mentioned; however, this is possible only because of the "side effects" of a given gene combination induce homosexuality.
Or, more simply, homosexual traits can be passed on when the primary role of a gene is something other than homosexuality. However, it follows from logic that one who is strictly homosexual (as opposed to bisexual) would never pass on their genes to the next generation. Hence, a "strictly-gay" gene would not exist, but rather, homosexuality would be the result of a particular genetic combination.
Genes code for proteins, not behaviors, which emerge indirectly as a result of complex interactions among proteins. So the notion of a "strictly gay" gene does not make much sense, biologically speaking. I'm sure that a Creator could have designed things in such a way that genes code for individual behaviors, but biology is more constrained, because behaviors have to arise by evolution.
However, fundamentalists often have a difficult time understanding why God would create a person with tendencies to sin. Though this is easily explained by the doctrine of original sin (that is, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God...), not all of them make the connection.
However, if God is all that homophobic, it is difficult to understand why He would have made homosexual behavior so common in numerous animal species, since nonhuman animals presumably are not subject to original sin.
Re:ADD Version
on
The Red Queen
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Homosexuality is the result not of genetic predisposition, but rather of mental illness
Calling something an "illness" is just semantics. Simply applying a pejorative term does not explain why homosexual behavior is so common, not merely in humans but in many other species. And by the way, vulnerability to real diseases, such as those caused by viruses and bacteria is influenced by genetic predisposition.
The fact that homosexuals would have self-selected themselves out of the gene pool long ago shows evolution to be false
Except that there are many, many ways in which genes that favor homsexual behavior can be maintained under natural selection:
1) Heterozygote advantage: A gene may promote homosexuality when homozygous, but confer a reproductive advantage on heterozygotes (similar to the way heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria).
2) Nepotism: Homosexuals could propagate their genes by assisting their blood relatives.
3) Sex-specific effects: A gene could, for example, confer enhanced reproductive success when present in females, but homosexual behavior when present in males, or vice versa.
4) Multi gene effects: A gene might might induce homosexual behavior when present with certain alleles of other genes, but confer enhanced reproductive success when present with different alleles.
If Creation is true marriage (1 Man/1 Woman) is from God and therefore is right and good.
This is foolish in two ways:
1) Natural selection has no morality. That which survives is not morally better than that which dies out.
2) Studies reveal that a monogomous relationship between 1 female/1 male is actually rare in nature. Most species are promiscuous or cheat on their spouses, just like us. Homesexuality is also rather common.
Here's a hint. When you're pinned, kicking your feet up doesn't actually pop the guy up and off you so you're free.
What, you mean it isn't a real sport? I am shocked, shocked.
I take it that you didn't understand what I meant when I said that professional wrestling was "highly choreographed" and referred to pro wrestlers as "stunt men".
Unfortunately, real wrestling looks pretty boring to anybody who isn't a wrestler. So instead of bridge-and-roll (which works), we see a theatrical version (the "kick the feet up" stunt that you deride), which looks a lot flashier, even though it wouldn't work in real life.
The problem with the "allergic" notion is that the nature of allergic reactions is determined by your immune system. You can get different allergic reactions depending upon which part of the immune system is triggered, but they are all part of the repertoire of "standard" allergic reactions, none of which include insantity.
No it's not. He'll get the patent. Nobody doesn't get a patent.
Really? The last time I applied for a patent, it came back with a long list of objections related to prior art. I did eventually get the patent after responding, but the objections were wrong. It seemed to me that the Patent Office was if anything overzealous in identifying prior art.
Yes, and on a pure MHz basis, both the Z80, commodore-64 and motorola 68000 would be even better per MHz.
Really? It seems unlikely to me that cpus without any floating point processors at all would have higher MFLOPS/MHz than a P4 or G4. Can you direct me to some benchmarks that show this?
Numbers were 0.096 P4 vs 0.105 G4 MFLOP/MHz for the non-vector comparison
As stated in NASA study,
It is interesting to note that the G4 and P4 systems have about the same normalized performance; this suggests that the lower clock speeds of G4 systems are the main reason they have lagged P4 systems for raw scalar floating point performance in Jet3D.
In other words, for the many uses that don't involve Altivec, the G4 and P4 actually are comparable on a MHz basis, despite the substantially different designs
I found it interesting that the G4 and P4 have similar MFLOP/MHz. This argues that (at least for this kind of test) the G4 is not more efficient per clock cycle than the P4, as some have tried to argue. On the other hand, it looks like the G5 is.
This is also a useful metric if you want to extrapolate performance of anticipated systems with higher clock speeds.
I don't think I ever saw a problem that was due to Conflict Catcher itself. Its automated search for extension conflicts was very effective, while doing this manually with Apple's Extensions Manager was a big chore. But of course, you had to have enough sense to know that the results were meaningless if your problem was not actually due to an extension conflict. And 3-way conflicts were still really difficult.
I think that they were a bit too slow joining the OSX bandwagon, and many of their old properties, such as Conflict Catcher, were tied pretty tightly to the old OS. And some features were added by other applications that obviated the need for some of their utilities. For example, Word and Mail now do on-the-fly spell checking and underline typos. This isn't quite as cool as Spellcatcher's instantaneous hash-driven spell checking, but it is close enough.
So what? Who would you rather have make the decision on the validity of the scientific evidence; a judge who at least has one or more post-graduat degree (even if that is not science related), or some Joe Schmuck who can barely add?
I think judges are reasonably well-qualified to apply the basic standards of Daubert. It doesn't demand a scientific expert, just somebody with some basic competence in logic and how to research a topic. Sure, judges are going to make some mistakes; after all, they occasionally make mistakes about the law. But they are still in a better position to make such a judgement than a jury with no background, preparation, or time to do the background research, stuck listening to a couple of paid, self-styled "experts".
I haven't heard of any cases of "corrupt cops getting information out of eBay to squeeze people." But I've heard of many, many cases of people being defrauded by eBay sellers, and I know people personally that this has happened to. My sister recently called me up because my nephew wanted to buy some stuff on eBay. What was she concerned about? Not the possibility that eBay might share his information with the cops. She was worried that he was going to get ripped off by a dishonest seller.
...is that they are beginning to be perceived as a hotbed of seller fraud. I'm not surprised that they are bending over backwards to cultivate good relationships with law enforcement.
LOTR was on our high-school's reading list for Eng. Lit. It wasn't a mandatory text then, but it certainly was 'advised' and this was before the Internet, let alone the film. The thing is that Tolkein was regarded as great Literature. He shared that reading list with others like Joyce.
However, LOTR has not enjoyed enduring popularity since its publication. Indeed, it was basically forgotten by the early 1960's. It's modern popularity was triggered by the publication of a "pirated" US paperback edition (actually perfectly legal, as it was out of copyright in the US), which led to a rediscovery of the work.
The HP phenomenon has yet to last a significant span of time. Dickens was a hack in his day and is still consider a hack by many, but at least his works have stood the test of time.
Still, the popularity of the Harry Potter series has lasted long enough that it is clearly more than a fad. Whether it will have enduring popularity over many decades depends upon many things, including cultural factors. The Lord of the Rings has been in and out of popularity multiple times since it was first published back in the 1940's. I read and loved The Hobbit as a child, and I was shocked when I discovered in my teens that a 3 volume sequel had been sitting sitting dusty and forgotten on the library shelves since before I was born.
Slashdot Mirror
Calling something an "illness" is just semantics. Simply applying a pejorative term does not explain why homosexual behavior is so common, not merely in humans but in many other species. And by the way, vulnerability to real diseases, such as those caused by viruses and bacteria is influenced by genetic predisposition.
The fact that homosexuals would have self-selected themselves out of the gene pool long ago shows evolution to be false
Except that there are many, many ways in which genes that favor homsexual behavior can be maintained under natural selection:
1) Heterozygote advantage: A gene may promote homosexuality when homozygous, but confer a reproductive advantage on heterozygotes (similar to the way heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria).
2) Nepotism: Homosexuals could propagate their genes by assisting their blood relatives.
3) Sex-specific effects: A gene could, for example, confer enhanced reproductive success when present in females, but homosexual behavior when present in males, or vice versa.
4) Multi gene effects: A gene might might induce homosexual behavior when present with certain alleles of other genes, but confer enhanced reproductive success when present with different alleles.
This is foolish in two ways:
1) Natural selection has no morality. That which survives is not morally better than that which dies out.
2) Studies reveal that a monogomous relationship between 1 female/1 male is actually rare in nature. Most species are promiscuous or cheat on their spouses, just like us. Homesexuality is also rather common.
As a matter of fact I have, quite a bit.
Here's a hint. When you're pinned, kicking your feet up doesn't actually pop the guy up and off you so you're free.
What, you mean it isn't a real sport? I am shocked, shocked.
I take it that you didn't understand what I meant when I said that professional wrestling was "highly choreographed" and referred to pro wrestlers as "stunt men".
Unfortunately, real wrestling looks pretty boring to anybody who isn't a wrestler. So instead of bridge-and-roll (which works), we see a theatrical version (the "kick the feet up" stunt that you deride), which looks a lot flashier, even though it wouldn't work in real life.
The problem with the "allergic" notion is that the nature of allergic reactions is determined by your immune system. You can get different allergic reactions depending upon which part of the immune system is triggered, but they are all part of the repertoire of "standard" allergic reactions, none of which include insantity.
I tend to think of email as a postcard; I don't use it to send anything that needs to be highly secure. If I did, I'd encrypt the message itself.
WD-40 can make a pretty decent bug spray for small applications
A physician told me that it is also a folk remedy for arthritis. Don't know if it works (although he seemed to think it did).
Really? The last time I applied for a patent, it came back with a long list of objections related to prior art. I did eventually get the patent after responding, but the objections were wrong. It seemed to me that the Patent Office was if anything overzealous in identifying prior art.
Really? It seems unlikely to me that cpus without any floating point processors at all would have higher MFLOPS/MHz than a P4 or G4. Can you direct me to some benchmarks that show this?
I'm talking about the non-vectorized benchmarks:
Numbers were 0.096 P4 vs 0.105 G4 MFLOP/MHz for the non-vector comparison
As stated in NASA study,
In other words, for the many uses that don't involve Altivec, the G4 and P4 actually are comparable on a MHz basis, despite the substantially different designsI found it interesting that the G4 and P4 have similar MFLOP/MHz. This argues that (at least for this kind of test) the G4 is not more efficient per clock cycle than the P4, as some have tried to argue. On the other hand, it looks like the G5 is.
This is also a useful metric if you want to extrapolate performance of anticipated systems with higher clock speeds.
I don't think I ever saw a problem that was due to Conflict Catcher itself. Its automated search for extension conflicts was very effective, while doing this manually with Apple's Extensions Manager was a big chore. But of course, you had to have enough sense to know that the results were meaningless if your problem was not actually due to an extension conflict. And 3-way conflicts were still really difficult.
I think that they were a bit too slow joining the OSX bandwagon, and many of their old properties, such as Conflict Catcher, were tied pretty tightly to the old OS. And some features were added by other applications that obviated the need for some of their utilities. For example, Word and Mail now do on-the-fly spell checking and underline typos. This isn't quite as cool as Spellcatcher's instantaneous hash-driven spell checking, but it is close enough.
I think judges are reasonably well-qualified to apply the basic standards of Daubert. It doesn't demand a scientific expert, just somebody with some basic competence in logic and how to research a topic. Sure, judges are going to make some mistakes; after all, they occasionally make mistakes about the law. But they are still in a better position to make such a judgement than a jury with no background, preparation, or time to do the background research, stuck listening to a couple of paid, self-styled "experts".
And they were able to do so because paying all of those claims based on junk science would have cost more than the company was worth.
...is that they are beginning to be perceived as a hotbed of seller fraud. I'm not surprised that they are bending over backwards to cultivate good relationships with law enforcement.
Most of whom quickly figure out that it is a lot simpler and safer to not bother stealing the goods at all, but simply rip off the buyer...
I doubt if anybody is going to get too upset about it, so long as it is 9 frames per second with "poor" image quality (according to the FAQ)