$100,000 instruments, the $50,000/year grad students and post-docs, and the tens of thousands in lab maintanence fees that are necessary in order to get the work done.
These activists are hopelessly native about the scientific process. In the medical field, R&D is roughly evenly split between public and private, and completely intertwined. EVERY drug or technique developed has at least some public and private money behind it. Saying that drugs "developed by a university" should be given away for free strikes a false dichotomy. No drug is developed by universities alone, and no drug is developed privately without at least some public research supporting it.
Activists such as these (and everyone else who complains about drug prices) just needs to get over the fact that SCIENCE IS EXPENSIVE, and that someone has to pay for it.
donors are labor unions, and unlike corporations, donate in an almost purely partisan manner (greater than 90% to Democrats)?
www.opensecrets.org
Fortunately, money has much less of an effect on politics than most people think. First, studies have shown that spending has little impact on who wins (double your spending, capture about one more percent of the vote). Second, it is human nature to over-estimate everyone else's bias, usually by a wide margin, while underestimating one's own. This has been confirmed by numerous psychological tests. Please take heart in the fact that your political opponent's are a lot less biased than you think they are.
For most of my adult life (I am 31) we have actually been paying our bills. The problem is that the debts run up by previous generations continue to roll with interest. You are one of the few people I have seen notice this besides myself.
I read it. It was a news article summarizing a peer-reviewed study. To be more specific in what the researchers found, it was noted that those who claimed to be independant but "lean Republican" were actually MORE reliable Republican voters than those who claimed to be Republican. Likewise with Democrats. The researchers noted that self-proclaimed indepedants were more educated than the average, and perhaps didn't like pigeonholing themselves with party labels.
The most important thing one can learn from knowing these numbers is that when any politician yaps about "cutting the deficit" or "cutting spending", they are talking about trivial chump-change unless they are willing to cut one of these five items (actually four, as debt interest is pretty much a given).
A recent study found that most of them are MORE partisan than people who claim to be Republicans or Democrats. About two-thirds of self-proclaimed "independants" are self-delusional.
we are nowhere near putting the money into fighting AIDS or malaria (or basic sanitation, water and food problems for the world's poor, which also offer returns of 30x plus) as we could.
I am a bit suspicous that the news article claims "could be 5-20%". This makes me think that this is the cost under the worst-case GW, which is highly improbable. Also, other cost-benefit analyses of this issue that I have seen have had much lower returns - something like break-even to 200%, not the 500-2000% implied by the news article. Something seems a bit fishy.
Also, just for reference, fighting AIDS and malaria have 50-fold returns, blowing even this GW analysis away in terms of benefits per dollar spent.
actual Japanese skip their particles all the time. Either way, translation would be somewhat slow, as you would have to wait for a Japanese to finish a sentence before you could start to translate it. In English, you need the verb right away, but in Japanese you are usually given it last.
Many short Japanese sentences consist ONLY of a verb, where as the English equivalent would consist of a verb plus pronouns. To translate from Japanese to English, the computer would need to know the subject and/or object being referred to, without it being spoken. In other words, it would need to be able to understand context. This is incredibly challenging.
but we learned how to fix nitrogen over a century ago. Nitrogen is the limiting reagent, except in cases of drought. We can make as much as we want, by a very efficient process. Barring nuclear war or some similar apocalypse, there will be plenty of food for the nine billion or so we will top out at.
It won't be long before under-population concerns start to take hold here in the US, too. It is already a huge issue in Europe, Japan, Korea, etc, where birth-rates are far below replacement levels. You can't count on immigration to bail us forever because birthrates are plummetting everywhere else, as well.
Earth is basically a closed loop in terms of atoms. They are all "recyclable" in that sense. We use about 1/10,000 of the energy the sun provides us, and the sun is not the only source of energy we could tap. There is no chance we will run out of either atoms or energy anytime in the foreseeable future.
AREN'T purchasing hundreds anymore. They aren't purchasing any. Five steps forward, three hundred back does not move you forward.
How many CDs have you NOT purchased because you heard the mp3 and decided it wasn't as good as you thought it was, or that a few listens was enough? Probably more than five. For many people, it is nearly 100% of their music. Most importantly, it is precisely those who WOULD buy hundreds that most likely to become pirates. Instead of buying many, they buy a few (but probably still more than a non-music fan).
Back in the 90s, when CDs existed but mp3s on the internet did not, plenty of young people that I knew had HUNDREDS of CDs. I do not know anyone doing this anymore.
When I lived in Japan, it was the opposite. The Americans I knew spoke better Japanese than the Brits or Aussies, even though we had been there less time.
Hoping that the U.S. will not bomb North Korea doesn't mean I do not care. You know, there are better means to end this conflict than military ones
Which are? Fifty years of yapping have only brought the deaths of many millions of Koreans - probably more than sucking it up and taking a North Korean nuke or three.
The emails were sent to a former page, who must be at least 16 (the minimum age for a page). He may have been 17 by the time.
Being a "minor" is irrelevant. Age of consent is not. And these young men were above the age of consent, and therefore it is legal to proposition them, or even have sex with them. That being said, the emails known about two years ago were not even propositions - they were pretexts to propositions.
So Hastert was supposed to flip a lid when he learned that Congressman was doing something legal, simply because it was tacky or creepy?
There is not evidence Foley EVER abused a minor, unless you consider e-flirting with people above the age of the consent "abuse". There is no evidence AT ALL that he actually had sexual contact with anyone underage, or indeed, even propositioned anyone under the age of consent. The fact that he was asking ages clearly indicated that he was attempting to stay within the bounds of the law.
The emails that were known two years ago were not illegal in any way. What was the Republican leadership supposed to do? Out one of their own because he was a creep who had a fetish for deviant-but-legal sexual behavior?
Clinton's policy was a failure, and it was running on autopilot when Bush entered. Bush failed to address this failure in time, therefore failing himself. There were no "policy changes", just a few bureaucrats doing the position shuffle as the new administration took over. I do not blame either president, however, because we the people did not press them to do something. Terrorism simply was not a matter of significant discussion pre 9-11. Many people seem to forget this because it is dominant in the political debate now. I just searched through the first debate between Bush and Gore. There were ZERO mentions of terrorism, Islam, etc. Neither man mentioned it during their security blurbs.
That is simply the way it was. No one was paying much attention, neither liberal or conservative.
Something like a full Kaplan course will get you an exta 30-40 points on an SAT. Beyond that, the returns rapidly diminish. All the studying in the world won't net you 100.
The primary alternative to test scores are grades, which are even worse. They are extremely coachable, greatly influenced by third parties (parents, tutors, smart friends), subject to teacher ass-kissing, and are often a measure of attention to detail and willingness to do the grind rather than mastery of the material.
Can you tell me what you are talking about and how it could have prevented 9-11? Even dropping a bomb on Osama's head would have stopped it.
The only realistic policies that could have prevented 9-11 are variations of the following:
1: A major separation of the barriers between foreign and domestic intelligence (FBI, CIA, etc). This was politically impossible pre 9-11 and not on the political radar at all.
2: A massive upgrade in airline security. This was probably possible, but was again not on anyone's agenda. Nor could it have been debated, legislated, passed and implemented in eight months. Even if Bush had considered it his mission from God himself, it could not have been done in time to prevent 9-11.
A vague terrorism "policy" would not have prevented 9-11. Only REAL changes to our intelligence gathering and security systems would have. These types of changes were simply not under significant debate as of 9-10.
Pop quiz: Without peaking, can you recall the biggest foriegn-policy incident in Bush's term before 9-11?
Hint: It had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or Islam, and it was the major news story for a few weeks.
Here is your analogy, redone:
Foreman: Listen, Mr. Stevens. I'm concerned about some things...
Mr. Stevens: Oh. What?
Foreman: Well, as you know, lately, we've had a few problems around here. The boiler pipes is making that funny noise I noted in that report I sent you, the roof is leaking, and there is a smell near one of the gas heaters. I need more money to buy supplies, and I want a raise:
Secrectary (interupting): Excuse me, Mr. Stevens. You have four calls on hold. And here are the reports for the last four months, like you requested. Oh, and your meeting was rescheduled to 2-4. And don't forget to get the budget done by six.
Steven's cell starts ringing...
And so forth....
The fact that you only put ONE thing on the list means you are implicitly picking the needle out in advance, which is exactly what I was warning against. The president receives a security report EVERY DAY. One guessed right. What about the other couple hundred that didn't?
Odd that you dropped half the title - the one that is far more limiting. This article general politics, not nerd-related politics. There are plenty of sites for general politics. Slashdot should stick to its specialty.
Slashdot Mirror
$100,000 instruments, the $50,000/year grad students and post-docs, and the tens of thousands in lab maintanence fees that are necessary in order to get the work done.
These activists are hopelessly native about the scientific process. In the medical field, R&D is roughly evenly split between public and private, and completely intertwined. EVERY drug or technique developed has at least some public and private money behind it. Saying that drugs "developed by a university" should be given away for free strikes a false dichotomy. No drug is developed by universities alone, and no drug is developed privately without at least some public research supporting it.
Activists such as these (and everyone else who complains about drug prices) just needs to get over the fact that SCIENCE IS EXPENSIVE, and that someone has to pay for it.
donors are labor unions, and unlike corporations, donate in an almost purely partisan manner (greater than 90% to Democrats)?
www.opensecrets.org
Fortunately, money has much less of an effect on politics than most people think. First, studies have shown that spending has little impact on who wins (double your spending, capture about one more percent of the vote). Second, it is human nature to over-estimate everyone else's bias, usually by a wide margin, while underestimating one's own. This has been confirmed by numerous psychological tests. Please take heart in the fact that your political opponent's are a lot less biased than you think they are.
For most of my adult life (I am 31) we have actually been paying our bills. The problem is that the debts run up by previous generations continue to roll with interest. You are one of the few people I have seen notice this besides myself.
I read it. It was a news article summarizing a peer-reviewed study. To be more specific in what the researchers found, it was noted that those who claimed to be independant but "lean Republican" were actually MORE reliable Republican voters than those who claimed to be Republican. Likewise with Democrats. The researchers noted that self-proclaimed indepedants were more educated than the average, and perhaps didn't like pigeonholing themselves with party labels.
Thank you for being informed.
The most important thing one can learn from knowing these numbers is that when any politician yaps about "cutting the deficit" or "cutting spending", they are talking about trivial chump-change unless they are willing to cut one of these five items (actually four, as debt interest is pretty much a given).
1: Social Security - 21%
2: Defense - 19%
3: Medicare - 14%
4: Interest on the debt - 9%
5: Medicaid - 7%
I think these numbers are from 2005. Defense is obviously a bit higher than "usual" due to the Iraq war.
If you can't answer the following question (without searching Google or the like), please stay home.
What are the five largest items in the federal budget?
Four out of five is a pass, and you can vote. Anything less, and your vote is so mis-informed to as to be dangerous.
Answers appear in my reply
A recent study found that most of them are MORE partisan than people who claim to be Republicans or Democrats. About two-thirds of self-proclaimed "independants" are self-delusional.
we are nowhere near putting the money into fighting AIDS or malaria (or basic sanitation, water and food problems for the world's poor, which also offer returns of 30x plus) as we could.
hasn't been published yet, now isn't it?
I am a bit suspicous that the news article claims "could be 5-20%". This makes me think that this is the cost under the worst-case GW, which is highly improbable. Also, other cost-benefit analyses of this issue that I have seen have had much lower returns - something like break-even to 200%, not the 500-2000% implied by the news article. Something seems a bit fishy.
Also, just for reference, fighting AIDS and malaria have 50-fold returns, blowing even this GW analysis away in terms of benefits per dollar spent.
actual Japanese skip their particles all the time. Either way, translation would be somewhat slow, as you would have to wait for a Japanese to finish a sentence before you could start to translate it. In English, you need the verb right away, but in Japanese you are usually given it last. Many short Japanese sentences consist ONLY of a verb, where as the English equivalent would consist of a verb plus pronouns. To translate from Japanese to English, the computer would need to know the subject and/or object being referred to, without it being spoken. In other words, it would need to be able to understand context. This is incredibly challenging.
The government should set a price on the pollution, and use the tax dollars to benefit everyone.
This accomplishes the same effect without a million expensive lawsuits.
but we learned how to fix nitrogen over a century ago. Nitrogen is the limiting reagent, except in cases of drought. We can make as much as we want, by a very efficient process. Barring nuclear war or some similar apocalypse, there will be plenty of food for the nine billion or so we will top out at.
It won't be long before under-population concerns start to take hold here in the US, too. It is already a huge issue in Europe, Japan, Korea, etc, where birth-rates are far below replacement levels. You can't count on immigration to bail us forever because birthrates are plummetting everywhere else, as well.
Earth is basically a closed loop in terms of atoms. They are all "recyclable" in that sense. We use about 1/10,000 of the energy the sun provides us, and the sun is not the only source of energy we could tap. There is no chance we will run out of either atoms or energy anytime in the foreseeable future.
Just have a "cut me off after $5/month" plan. Few use 500 emails per month. For those that do, there could be 10/15/20/etc plans.
AREN'T purchasing hundreds anymore. They aren't purchasing any. Five steps forward, three hundred back does not move you forward.
How many CDs have you NOT purchased because you heard the mp3 and decided it wasn't as good as you thought it was, or that a few listens was enough? Probably more than five. For many people, it is nearly 100% of their music. Most importantly, it is precisely those who WOULD buy hundreds that most likely to become pirates. Instead of buying many, they buy a few (but probably still more than a non-music fan).
Back in the 90s, when CDs existed but mp3s on the internet did not, plenty of young people that I knew had HUNDREDS of CDs. I do not know anyone doing this anymore.
stereotypes.
When I lived in Japan, it was the opposite. The Americans I knew spoke better Japanese than the Brits or Aussies, even though we had been there less time.
Consider your anecdote refuted...
Hoping that the U.S. will not bomb North Korea doesn't mean I do not care. You know, there are better means to end this conflict than military ones
Which are? Fifty years of yapping have only brought the deaths of many millions of Koreans - probably more than sucking it up and taking a North Korean nuke or three.
The emails were sent to a former page, who must be at least 16 (the minimum age for a page). He may have been 17 by the time.
Being a "minor" is irrelevant. Age of consent is not. And these young men were above the age of consent, and therefore it is legal to proposition them, or even have sex with them. That being said, the emails known about two years ago were not even propositions - they were pretexts to propositions.
So Hastert was supposed to flip a lid when he learned that Congressman was doing something legal, simply because it was tacky or creepy?
There is not evidence Foley EVER abused a minor, unless you consider e-flirting with people above the age of the consent "abuse". There is no evidence AT ALL that he actually had sexual contact with anyone underage, or indeed, even propositioned anyone under the age of consent. The fact that he was asking ages clearly indicated that he was attempting to stay within the bounds of the law.
The emails that were known two years ago were not illegal in any way. What was the Republican leadership supposed to do? Out one of their own because he was a creep who had a fetish for deviant-but-legal sexual behavior?
Clinton's policy was a failure, and it was running on autopilot when Bush entered. Bush failed to address this failure in time, therefore failing himself. There were no "policy changes", just a few bureaucrats doing the position shuffle as the new administration took over. I do not blame either president, however, because we the people did not press them to do something. Terrorism simply was not a matter of significant discussion pre 9-11. Many people seem to forget this because it is dominant in the political debate now. I just searched through the first debate between Bush and Gore. There were ZERO mentions of terrorism, Islam, etc. Neither man mentioned it during their security blurbs.
That is simply the way it was. No one was paying much attention, neither liberal or conservative.
Something like a full Kaplan course will get you an exta 30-40 points on an SAT. Beyond that, the returns rapidly diminish. All the studying in the world won't net you 100.
The primary alternative to test scores are grades, which are even worse. They are extremely coachable, greatly influenced by third parties (parents, tutors, smart friends), subject to teacher ass-kissing, and are often a measure of attention to detail and willingness to do the grind rather than mastery of the material.
Can you tell me what you are talking about and how it could have prevented 9-11? Even dropping a bomb on Osama's head would have stopped it.
The only realistic policies that could have prevented 9-11 are variations of the following:
1: A major separation of the barriers between foreign and domestic intelligence (FBI, CIA, etc). This was politically impossible pre 9-11 and not on the political radar at all.
2: A massive upgrade in airline security. This was probably possible, but was again not on anyone's agenda. Nor could it have been debated, legislated, passed and implemented in eight months. Even if Bush had considered it his mission from God himself, it could not have been done in time to prevent 9-11.
A vague terrorism "policy" would not have prevented 9-11. Only REAL changes to our intelligence gathering and security systems would have. These types of changes were simply not under significant debate as of 9-10.
Pop quiz: Without peaking, can you recall the biggest foriegn-policy incident in Bush's term before 9-11?
Hint: It had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or Islam, and it was the major news story for a few weeks.
Here is your analogy, redone:
Foreman: Listen, Mr. Stevens. I'm concerned about some things... Mr. Stevens: Oh. What? Foreman: Well, as you know, lately, we've had a few problems around here. The boiler pipes is making that funny noise I noted in that report I sent you, the roof is leaking, and there is a smell near one of the gas heaters. I need more money to buy supplies, and I want a raise:
Secrectary (interupting): Excuse me, Mr. Stevens. You have four calls on hold. And here are the reports for the last four months, like you requested. Oh, and your meeting was rescheduled to 2-4. And don't forget to get the budget done by six.
Steven's cell starts ringing...
And so forth....
The fact that you only put ONE thing on the list means you are implicitly picking the needle out in advance, which is exactly what I was warning against. The president receives a security report EVERY DAY. One guessed right. What about the other couple hundred that didn't?
Odd that you dropped half the title - the one that is far more limiting. This article general politics, not nerd-related politics. There are plenty of sites for general politics. Slashdot should stick to its specialty.