Check out pretty much any violence statistics. Here's a nice chart from Wired that also shows the release dates of some famous (or maybe notorious?) video games:
It just makes palm look like they are selling a low quality product (which in this regard, they are.) What sort of company wants to rely on private, undocumented interfaces in a direct competitor's product line in order to work?
Except, of course that the Pre does not require iTunes to work. It's simply a convenience to the user to help the sync their different files. This is one of the strengths of the Pre--it has broad cross-platform compatibility, with Google, with Exchange, with Facebook, with iTunes, etc. etc.
Apple is probably taking pursuing three tacts right now - trying to figure out how to legally stop Palm from doing this, promoting the perception that palm's software is a poor quality due to their broken reliance on a competitor's mobile syncing software, and creating a list of ways to break this compatibility (including new firmwares, and possibly cryptographic challenges against the ipod firmware binary).
It would be hard to promote the idea that Palm's difficulty in working with iTunes is due to poor quality on Palm's end. After all, the Pre worked just fine with iTunes until Apple changed iTunes to break it, and Palm restored compatibility in fairly short order. Legally, it is doubtful if Apple has any grounds to prevent them from doing so, since the Pre doesn't change the iTunes files to interfere with iTunes, and users are entitled to do what they want with their data. There is no user agreement that prohibits individual users from utilizing their data with other software or hardware. Short of taking away the current ability of Apple computer owners to use iTunes with data files in standard open formats such as mp3, it is hard to see how Apple could keep the Pre from syncing with iTunes one way or another. But as I noted, Apple's strategy has never been to try to create impregnable barriers, but rather to introduce inconveniences for users who aren't doing things the way that Apple wants. So it will probably go on like this: Apple will occasionally modify iTunes to reduce compatibility, and Pre owners will have the inconvenience of postponing updating iTunes until Palm updates the Pre's software.
I doubt if Apple expects to be able to keep Palm out on a long-term basis. Apple's strategy of protection seems to be not so much to try to create an impregnable barrier, but rather to introduce inconveniences for those who use their products in an "unapproved" way. So if you get a Palm Pre, you'll have to check the web before you update your iTunes to make sure that Apple hasn't disabled Pre sync, and then wait for Palm to get around to fixing it.
The reason they are talking about things like brain activity (and no neuroscientist can tell you what patterns of brain activity are good or bad) is they are trying to distract everybody from the fact that as videogames have gotten more realistically violent, real world violence and crime have dropped, and dropped most sharply in the very same demographic of young males that are the biggest consumers of videogames. Of course, that doesn't prove that videogames prevent violence, but it does prove that any hypothetical anti-social effect of videogames must be so small as to be absolutely swamped by other social and economic factors that influence violence and crime.
I have to wonder if it is even such bad law. Presumably, the law would have to be made more complicated to include exceptions for the case where the same corporate entity holds both a first and second mortgage, and complexity and exceptions can make loopholes and generate extra legal costs. For example, is it really a public benefit to make it cheaper for a company to hold both first and second mortgages on the same property? Is a bit of extra legal expense for Wells Fargo really a high price to pay for straightforward law? And since Wells Fargo is employing the lawyers on both sides, and is probably a valued client, they presumably have the clout to stop the lawyers from unnecessarily running up the billing hours beyond what is required to satisfy the formal legal requirements.
I have a longstanding theory that I admittedly have not done enough research into trying to find it I am way off base or not...but I firmly believe that all too often the physicatric community is so focused on Serotonin being what causes feelings of depresssion when quite often it could very well be the delicate Dopamine/GABA balancing act.
A long-standing puzzle is that SSRIs enhance serotonergic transmission pretty much immediately, yet it takes weeks for the effects on mood to emerge. Contrast that with stimulant drugs that enhance dopamine release or inhibit uptake, which enhance mood pretty much immediately (ask anybody who has tried cocaine). This has led to a widespread suspicion that it is not enhanced serotonin transmission per se that relieves depression, but rather some downstream regulatory change that occurs in response
To put this in perspective, there is some doubt that these "hot spots" are indicative of any genetic differences at all. The article is describing epigenetic phenomena (the still mysterious thing that turns genes on and off, either according to some bootstrap sequence or through sensing environmental changes in some unknown way.)
No, they aren't looking at epigenetic markers like DNA methylation, but standard single nucleotide polymorphisms--variations in DNA sequence. That does not exclude epigenetic mechanisms from playing a role in the disease process, but at this point that is sheer speculation.
This is definitely not happening under the direct control of genes, since it is the genetic structures themselves that are being acted on.
This does not really make sense. There is no prohibition of self-modifying code when it comes to molecular genetics. There is nothing at all to prevent genes from altering other genes. An example of DNA-modifying genes that has been widely used to create inducible and/or targeted genetic knockouts is Cre-lox recombination
The fact that a drug may be over-prescribed does not mean that it is without efficacy in appropriate conditions. The effectiveness of antidepressants in obsessive-compulsive disorder is clear and often dramatic. Similarly, there is strong evidence for efficacy of a variety of medications in some cases of bipolar disorder. While antidepressants may not be more effective than nonpharmacological therapy for depression on the average, that does not mean that everybody who responds to one will respond equally well to the other. Fears that people treated with stimulants for ADD will find themselves "hopelessly addicted to drugs" have failed to materialize (unless you consider continued treatment with ADD drugs to constitute being hopelessly addicted, in which case diabetics are hopelessly addicted to insulin). Moreover, untreated ADD is by itself a risk factor for drug abuse. I do think that there are valid concerns about the long-term safety and efficacy of stimulants for ADD, as the use of these drugs is based upon relatively brief clinical trials.
I am too. This has proved to be a very powerful technique in animal models. But establishing safety in the human could be a long process. And in many of these illnesses, it is still unclear what kind of genetic modification would be therapeutic. This will be a hard thing to determine, because the available animal models are of questionable relevance to human psychiatric illness.
Nevertheless, pharmacology has been remarkably effective, even if not curative, in treating psychiatric diseases. Despite their side-effects and their limited efficacy against "negative" symptoms, the neuroleptics are miracle drugs with respect to schizophrenia. And the antidepressents are also remarkably effective for some psychiatric conditions. Similarly, benzodiazepines are remarkably effective for anxiety.
I think that knockouts are a bit misleading here, in that they are so drastic, and also (at least for the older non-inducible knockout technology) are present at a time when the brain is relatively plastic and able to more able to compensate. I agree that behaviors are ultimately dictated by network properties, but such properties can be very sensitive to the behavior of receptors.
Would it not make more sense to educate the people taking the pills, instead of banning an effective pain reliever?
Short answer: NO
We have two alternatives: (1) Educate people to understand that a little bit of acetaminophen can enhance the pain relief from opiates, give then an opiate prescription and advise them to take a few Tylenol (with a clear warning that they can up the opiate dose, but not the Tylenol dose, if they aren't getting enough pain relief). The Failure Mode is that a few people who might benefit won't understand to do this, and will get slightly less effective pain relief, and perhaps take a bit higher dose of opiate than they would otherwise. But the hazards of opiates are generally less than the hazard of acetaminophen (2) Sell the drugs as a combo, and try to educate people to understand that they shouldn't take extra pills, no matter how much pain they are in. The Failure Mode is that people who take extra pills because they don't understand, or because the pain is so overwhelming that they can't think straight, destroy their livers.
And of course, there is also the abuse problem. Pain relievers are often abused, particularly by teenagers who are unlikely to understand and appreciate the risks of acetaminophen (it's just Tylenol, right? They wouldn't sell it over-the-counter if it wasn't safe!). It is unlikely that the acetaminophen ever dissuaded anybody from getting high on Vicodin. And while a pain pill habit is a bad thing, it is not nearly as bad as liver failure.
These combinations were always a stupid idea. The give only modest improvement in pain relief, they don't really prevent abuse (ask any teenager if the kids in his school are passing around "pain pills" to get high), and they result in a large number of cases of liver failure.
There is still a huge amount of diversity in neurotransmitter receptors due to subunit heterogeneity and splice variants, much of it still untapped in terms of highly selective small-molecule agonists and antagonists. In many cases, specific variants are confined to very small subregions of the brain or specific cell types, and there are also newer strategies such as targeting individual subunits with inhibitory RNAs, so I'm not as pessimistic as you. Nevertheless, there is no reason to imagine that every condition will be treatable by increasing or decreasing the activity of a specific neurotransmitter receptor population.
Targeting regulatory proteins with small molecule therapeutics is pretty much in its infancy, so it is hard to know how well that will work. Of course, there is also the gene therapeutic approach, which might work well against a regulatory flaw, but delivery and targeting remains a thorny problem.
We are at a frustrating stage of understanding, in which we are beginning to get an idea of what is going wrong, but our ability to actually fix things is still very limited.
Just to put this in perspective, this is not a gene, but just a region of a chromosome. And the association with any particular locus is weak, so it doesn't look like it is strong enough for diagnosis or prenatal testing. Even when the gene is identified, going from a gene to a treatment tends to be very difficult. We've know of genes for Huntington's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease for years, and while this has inspired a lot of promising research, so far this knowledge has not yet resulting any major improvements with respect to treatment or prevention.
Moreover, finding that the same genes are involved does not necessarily mean that the diseases are the same, because genes can be "broken" in multiple ways.
The idea that there is a relationship between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is not actually new, as there are some people who exhibit characteristics of both disorders, and some people diagnosed with one respond to drugs that are commonly used to treat the other. So this basically adds a bit more evidence to a long-standing suspicion.
And real-world violence overall has decreased as video games have become more popular and more realistically violent, and decreased most sharply in the very demographic (young males) that are the heaviest consumers of videogames.
Does this conclusively prove that violent videogames are the root cause of our society becoming safer? No.
But what it does prove is that the pro-violence effect of videogames (if, indeed, there is any such effect at all) must be so small that it is utterly swamped by other social, economic, and demographic factors that impact rates of violent behavior.
But what else could be responsible for this spike in "spree-killings?" The only other thing that I could think of that would likely inspire such a cluster, would be if such events were widely reported and obsessed over in the media, with numerous fawning reports inquiring into the "motivations" of the killers.
Are you suggesting that men have the same incidence of HIV across the country? Are you suggesting that men refuse to use condoms in the same proportion across the country?
No, I am suggesting that STDs and unwanted pregnancies, are problems everywhere. Given variations in diagnosis and reporting, accurately determining exact incidence on a state-by-level would be time-consuming and probably expensive. I suppose that you could propose a federally-funded study study to do this, but you would have to convince a NIH study section that such a study has a realistic chance of yielding significant benefits for public health. That would be particularly difficult these days. The NIH budget has been tight for several years, and NIH study sections are highly critical--only the top few percent of grant proposals, judged by panels of expert scientists as having the best chance of yielding information that will benefit public heath, are receiving funding.
You're really mis-stating my argument, though. My argument is simply that I don't see a reason why most public services need to be provided by the federal government. I see why you took my comment about gathering like-minded individuals to the extreme, but what I was really trying to say is that if your state wants highways, then let it pay for highways.
I suppose that one could argue that if the benefits of a project accrue almost entirely to residents of a particular region, that it should be primarily funded by residents of that region. There are counter-arguments as well, but this seems quite irrelevant to the issue at hand. It is not as people only get pregnant in Alaska, or catch HIV in Milwaukee. And the knowledge attained from basic research is not a highway, it crosses state boarders, and is shared by all.
That is akin to asking if I favor removal of federal tax funding for public services in general.
Correct. You have made an argument that if a great cost-benefit justification can be made for a service, then it should be supported by voluntary donations rather than compulsory tax revenues.
If this argument has any validity at all, then it must apply to all services for which there is a great cost-benefit justification. So I am asking whether you really accept this argument, or whether you are merely using it as a club to beat on public projects that are not to your personal taste.
The example I raised was for national defense. To keep it simple, lets restrict it to those aspects of national defense for which you agree that there is a great cost-benefit analysis. Do you or do you not feel that those aspects of National Defense should be supported by private donation (presumably leaving the federal government to support those aspects of National Defense for which there is not a good cost-benefit justification)?
That doesn't explain why it has to be funded by federal tax dollars. If you can make such a great cost-benefit analysis, you'd think we wouldn't have to force people to pay for it.
So I take it that you are in favor of ending public funding for the military, and running it on voluntary donations? After all, you can make a great cost-benefit analysis for national defense, so it shouldn't be necessary to force people to pay for it. We can fund national defense from voluntary donations.
Or is that only a good argument when applied to something that you don't agree with?
If you think it's a good idea, then why don't you and like-minded individuals pay for the research?
I pay taxes too. So if it makes you happier, feel free to imagine that it is my tax dollars and those of other "like-minded" individuals that are paying for this project, while your tax dollars pay for the activities (of which I suspect there are quite a few) that you favor and I do not.
Or perhaps you have a reason why this must be funded by federal tax dollars?
You mean, aside from the fact that enhancing condom use will save you me, and everybody money by reducing costs associated with unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases such as Hep B and HIV? And aside from the fact that the research was approved by an expert peer review panel of scientists with the actual knowledge and experience to judge the scientific merit of the project and the benefits for public health?
I knew when I saw this news item that it would turn out to be dishonest. There is one very obvious reason why men don't like to wear condoms ("it doesn't feel as good...duh"). So I suspected immediately that this isn't actually what the study is about, and it's just a matter of a politician or lobbyist phrasing it this way to try to score a cheap shot at the expense of the public welfare. Because, of course, there is a huge public benefit to condoms: The reduce unwanted pregnancies, which often end up imposing a substantial financial and social burden on the public. And they reduce the spread of diseases that also end up costing the public money, not to mention placing those dear to us in peril--sometimes mortal peril.
And while men don't much like condoms, there are many reasons for them to want to use them--to protect themselves against disease, to protect themselves against unwanted financial obligations, and even out of consideration for their partner's well-being.
So any change that would shift that balance a bit to encourage correct usage of condoms, even by a small amount, could provide a huge public benefit.
But of course, there are always going to be some selfish people who don't care about protecting other people's health, or reducing the financial burden on the public from diseases and unwanted pregnancies. All they see is a chance to score a benefit for themselves or their own cause--and if it ultimately at the expense of the public, well, that's not their problem.
If there's a $99 iPhone, can a $79 iPod Touch be far behind?
Very, very far behind. It's not really $99--that's probably no more than a third the total price. You pay the rest off on time as part of your AT&T subscription.
I will not spend over $1,000 for an Air to just do email and surf the net. In fact I just bought a Dell Mini 12 with Ubuntu for that, and at $500 is much easier on the wallet. No entry here by Apple despite Apple having a Mobile ready OS, unlike bloated Windows (reason why netbooks run XP), which I just do not get. Just do not fully understand Apple's poo-pooing the netbook space.
You answered your own question. Apple does not compete in the bargain-basement market; its strategy has always been to add sufficient value so that consumers are willing to pay a high (margin) price. So the reason that Apple is pooh-poohing the netbook is quite simple: They haven't yet figured out how to make one that is so cool that you will pay $750 for an Apple netbook instead of that $500 Dell. So far, the only way that they've figured to make a high-margin netbook at a price consumers will pay is to keep the screen real small. They call it the iPod Touch.
Embryogenesis tends to be highly conserved. While protein sequences will continue to evolve even in an organism that is in evolutionary stasis, due to challenges from viruses and other pathogens, the only reason for embryogenesis to change is if the organism needs to evolve morphologically.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out pretty much any violence statistics. Here's a nice chart from Wired that also shows the release dates of some famous (or maybe notorious?) video games:
Except, of course that the Pre does not require iTunes to work. It's simply a convenience to the user to help the sync their different files. This is one of the strengths of the Pre--it has broad cross-platform compatibility, with Google, with Exchange, with Facebook, with iTunes, etc. etc.
It would be hard to promote the idea that Palm's difficulty in working with iTunes is due to poor quality on Palm's end. After all, the Pre worked just fine with iTunes until Apple changed iTunes to break it, and Palm restored compatibility in fairly short order. Legally, it is doubtful if Apple has any grounds to prevent them from doing so, since the Pre doesn't change the iTunes files to interfere with iTunes, and users are entitled to do what they want with their data. There is no user agreement that prohibits individual users from utilizing their data with other software or hardware. Short of taking away the current ability of Apple computer owners to use iTunes with data files in standard open formats such as mp3, it is hard to see how Apple could keep the Pre from syncing with iTunes one way or another. But as I noted, Apple's strategy has never been to try to create impregnable barriers, but rather to introduce inconveniences for users who aren't doing things the way that Apple wants. So it will probably go on like this: Apple will occasionally modify iTunes to reduce compatibility, and Pre owners will have the inconvenience of postponing updating iTunes until Palm updates the Pre's software.
I doubt if Apple expects to be able to keep Palm out on a long-term basis. Apple's strategy of protection seems to be not so much to try to create an impregnable barrier, but rather to introduce inconveniences for those who use their products in an "unapproved" way. So if you get a Palm Pre, you'll have to check the web before you update your iTunes to make sure that Apple hasn't disabled Pre sync, and then wait for Palm to get around to fixing it.
The reason they are talking about things like brain activity (and no neuroscientist can tell you what patterns of brain activity are good or bad) is they are trying to distract everybody from the fact that as videogames have gotten more realistically violent, real world violence and crime have dropped, and dropped most sharply in the very same demographic of young males that are the biggest consumers of videogames. Of course, that doesn't prove that videogames prevent violence, but it does prove that any hypothetical anti-social effect of videogames must be so small as to be absolutely swamped by other social and economic factors that influence violence and crime.
I have to wonder if it is even such bad law. Presumably, the law would have to be made more complicated to include exceptions for the case where the same corporate entity holds both a first and second mortgage, and complexity and exceptions can make loopholes and generate extra legal costs. For example, is it really a public benefit to make it cheaper for a company to hold both first and second mortgages on the same property? Is a bit of extra legal expense for Wells Fargo really a high price to pay for straightforward law? And since Wells Fargo is employing the lawyers on both sides, and is probably a valued client, they presumably have the clout to stop the lawyers from unnecessarily running up the billing hours beyond what is required to satisfy the formal legal requirements.
A long-standing puzzle is that SSRIs enhance serotonergic transmission pretty much immediately, yet it takes weeks for the effects on mood to emerge. Contrast that with stimulant drugs that enhance dopamine release or inhibit uptake, which enhance mood pretty much immediately (ask anybody who has tried cocaine). This has led to a widespread suspicion that it is not enhanced serotonin transmission per se that relieves depression, but rather some downstream regulatory change that occurs in response
No, they aren't looking at epigenetic markers like DNA methylation, but standard single nucleotide polymorphisms--variations in DNA sequence. That does not exclude epigenetic mechanisms from playing a role in the disease process, but at this point that is sheer speculation.
This does not really make sense. There is no prohibition of self-modifying code when it comes to molecular genetics. There is nothing at all to prevent genes from altering other genes. An example of DNA-modifying genes that has been widely used to create inducible and/or targeted genetic knockouts is Cre-lox recombination
The fact that a drug may be over-prescribed does not mean that it is without efficacy in appropriate conditions. The effectiveness of antidepressants in obsessive-compulsive disorder is clear and often dramatic. Similarly, there is strong evidence for efficacy of a variety of medications in some cases of bipolar disorder. While antidepressants may not be more effective than nonpharmacological therapy for depression on the average, that does not mean that everybody who responds to one will respond equally well to the other. Fears that people treated with stimulants for ADD will find themselves "hopelessly addicted to drugs" have failed to materialize (unless you consider continued treatment with ADD drugs to constitute being hopelessly addicted, in which case diabetics are hopelessly addicted to insulin). Moreover, untreated ADD is by itself a risk factor for drug abuse. I do think that there are valid concerns about the long-term safety and efficacy of stimulants for ADD, as the use of these drugs is based upon relatively brief clinical trials.
I am too. This has proved to be a very powerful technique in animal models. But establishing safety in the human could be a long process. And in many of these illnesses, it is still unclear what kind of genetic modification would be therapeutic. This will be a hard thing to determine, because the available animal models are of questionable relevance to human psychiatric illness.
Nevertheless, pharmacology has been remarkably effective, even if not curative, in treating psychiatric diseases. Despite their side-effects and their limited efficacy against "negative" symptoms, the neuroleptics are miracle drugs with respect to schizophrenia. And the antidepressents are also remarkably effective for some psychiatric conditions. Similarly, benzodiazepines are remarkably effective for anxiety.
I think that knockouts are a bit misleading here, in that they are so drastic, and also (at least for the older non-inducible knockout technology) are present at a time when the brain is relatively plastic and able to more able to compensate. I agree that behaviors are ultimately dictated by network properties, but such properties can be very sensitive to the behavior of receptors.
Short answer: NO
We have two alternatives: (1) Educate people to understand that a little bit of acetaminophen can enhance the pain relief from opiates, give then an opiate prescription and advise them to take a few Tylenol (with a clear warning that they can up the opiate dose, but not the Tylenol dose, if they aren't getting enough pain relief). The Failure Mode is that a few people who might benefit won't understand to do this, and will get slightly less effective pain relief, and perhaps take a bit higher dose of opiate than they would otherwise. But the hazards of opiates are generally less than the hazard of acetaminophen (2) Sell the drugs as a combo, and try to educate people to understand that they shouldn't take extra pills, no matter how much pain they are in. The Failure Mode is that people who take extra pills because they don't understand, or because the pain is so overwhelming that they can't think straight, destroy their livers.
And of course, there is also the abuse problem. Pain relievers are often abused, particularly by teenagers who are unlikely to understand and appreciate the risks of acetaminophen (it's just Tylenol, right? They wouldn't sell it over-the-counter if it wasn't safe!). It is unlikely that the acetaminophen ever dissuaded anybody from getting high on Vicodin. And while a pain pill habit is a bad thing, it is not nearly as bad as liver failure.
These combinations were always a stupid idea. The give only modest improvement in pain relief, they don't really prevent abuse (ask any teenager if the kids in his school are passing around "pain pills" to get high), and they result in a large number of cases of liver failure.
There is still a huge amount of diversity in neurotransmitter receptors due to subunit heterogeneity and splice variants, much of it still untapped in terms of highly selective small-molecule agonists and antagonists. In many cases, specific variants are confined to very small subregions of the brain or specific cell types, and there are also newer strategies such as targeting individual subunits with inhibitory RNAs, so I'm not as pessimistic as you. Nevertheless, there is no reason to imagine that every condition will be treatable by increasing or decreasing the activity of a specific neurotransmitter receptor population.
Targeting regulatory proteins with small molecule therapeutics is pretty much in its infancy, so it is hard to know how well that will work. Of course, there is also the gene therapeutic approach, which might work well against a regulatory flaw, but delivery and targeting remains a thorny problem.
We are at a frustrating stage of understanding, in which we are beginning to get an idea of what is going wrong, but our ability to actually fix things is still very limited.
Just to put this in perspective, this is not a gene, but just a region of a chromosome. And the association with any particular locus is weak, so it doesn't look like it is strong enough for diagnosis or prenatal testing. Even when the gene is identified, going from a gene to a treatment tends to be very difficult. We've know of genes for Huntington's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease for years, and while this has inspired a lot of promising research, so far this knowledge has not yet resulting any major improvements with respect to treatment or prevention.
Moreover, finding that the same genes are involved does not necessarily mean that the diseases are the same, because genes can be "broken" in multiple ways.
The idea that there is a relationship between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is not actually new, as there are some people who exhibit characteristics of both disorders, and some people diagnosed with one respond to drugs that are commonly used to treat the other. So this basically adds a bit more evidence to a long-standing suspicion.
And real-world violence overall has decreased as video games have become more popular and more realistically violent, and decreased most sharply in the very demographic (young males) that are the heaviest consumers of videogames.
Does this conclusively prove that violent videogames are the root cause of our society becoming safer? No.
But what it does prove is that the pro-violence effect of videogames (if, indeed, there is any such effect at all) must be so small that it is utterly swamped by other social, economic, and demographic factors that impact rates of violent behavior.
But what else could be responsible for this spike in "spree-killings?" The only other thing that I could think of that would likely inspire such a cluster, would be if such events were widely reported and obsessed over in the media, with numerous fawning reports inquiring into the "motivations" of the killers.
Oh wait, that happened, didn't it?
No, I am suggesting that STDs and unwanted pregnancies, are problems everywhere. Given variations in diagnosis and reporting, accurately determining exact incidence on a state-by-level would be time-consuming and probably expensive. I suppose that you could propose a federally-funded study study to do this, but you would have to convince a NIH study section that such a study has a realistic chance of yielding significant benefits for public health. That would be particularly difficult these days. The NIH budget has been tight for several years, and NIH study sections are highly critical--only the top few percent of grant proposals, judged by panels of expert scientists as having the best chance of yielding information that will benefit public heath, are receiving funding.
I suppose that one could argue that if the benefits of a project accrue almost entirely to residents of a particular region, that it should be primarily funded by residents of that region. There are counter-arguments as well, but this seems quite irrelevant to the issue at hand. It is not as people only get pregnant in Alaska, or catch HIV in Milwaukee. And the knowledge attained from basic research is not a highway, it crosses state boarders, and is shared by all.
Correct. You have made an argument that if a great cost-benefit justification can be made for a service, then it should be supported by voluntary donations rather than compulsory tax revenues.
If this argument has any validity at all, then it must apply to all services for which there is a great cost-benefit justification. So I am asking whether you really accept this argument, or whether you are merely using it as a club to beat on public projects that are not to your personal taste.
The example I raised was for national defense. To keep it simple, lets restrict it to those aspects of national defense for which you agree that there is a great cost-benefit analysis. Do you or do you not feel that those aspects of National Defense should be supported by private donation (presumably leaving the federal government to support those aspects of National Defense for which there is not a good cost-benefit justification)?
So I take it that you are in favor of ending public funding for the military, and running it on voluntary donations? After all, you can make a great cost-benefit analysis for national defense, so it shouldn't be necessary to force people to pay for it. We can fund national defense from voluntary donations.
Or is that only a good argument when applied to something that you don't agree with?
I pay taxes too. So if it makes you happier, feel free to imagine that it is my tax dollars and those of other "like-minded" individuals that are paying for this project, while your tax dollars pay for the activities (of which I suspect there are quite a few) that you favor and I do not.
You mean, aside from the fact that enhancing condom use will save you me, and everybody money by reducing costs associated with unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases such as Hep B and HIV? And aside from the fact that the research was approved by an expert peer review panel of scientists with the actual knowledge and experience to judge the scientific merit of the project and the benefits for public health?
I knew when I saw this news item that it would turn out to be dishonest. There is one very obvious reason why men don't like to wear condoms ("it doesn't feel as good...duh"). So I suspected immediately that this isn't actually what the study is about, and it's just a matter of a politician or lobbyist phrasing it this way to try to score a cheap shot at the expense of the public welfare. Because, of course, there is a huge public benefit to condoms: The reduce unwanted pregnancies, which often end up imposing a substantial financial and social burden on the public. And they reduce the spread of diseases that also end up costing the public money, not to mention placing those dear to us in peril--sometimes mortal peril.
And while men don't much like condoms, there are many reasons for them to want to use them--to protect themselves against disease, to protect themselves against unwanted financial obligations, and even out of consideration for their partner's well-being.
So any change that would shift that balance a bit to encourage correct usage of condoms, even by a small amount, could provide a huge public benefit.
But of course, there are always going to be some selfish people who don't care about protecting other people's health, or reducing the financial burden on the public from diseases and unwanted pregnancies. All they see is a chance to score a benefit for themselves or their own cause--and if it ultimately at the expense of the public, well, that's not their problem.
The real question is whether they will be able to match the Wii's casual gaming price.
Very, very far behind. It's not really $99--that's probably no more than a third the total price. You pay the rest off on time as part of your AT&T subscription.
You answered your own question. Apple does not compete in the bargain-basement market; its strategy has always been to add sufficient value so that consumers are willing to pay a high (margin) price. So the reason that Apple is pooh-poohing the netbook is quite simple: They haven't yet figured out how to make one that is so cool that you will pay $750 for an Apple netbook instead of that $500 Dell. So far, the only way that they've figured to make a high-margin netbook at a price consumers will pay is to keep the screen real small. They call it the iPod Touch.
Embryogenesis tends to be highly conserved. While protein sequences will continue to evolve even in an organism that is in evolutionary stasis, due to challenges from viruses and other pathogens, the only reason for embryogenesis to change is if the organism needs to evolve morphologically.