I don't think anyone wants to steal your tax money by offering ten free shrinks per kid... I think the question is, Is the cost of counselling younger kids made up for later on when they're more stable adults because potential bad things have been prevented?
We can't know for sure offhand, because it's difficult to measure. But imagine a whole city-full of maladjusted teenaged grumps who figure adults are there to do their jobs and not care about them... wouldn't they suck up more of our tax money than well adjusted youngsters with adult role models who actually give a shit? And do I want my kids going to school with the former type of peer or the latter...? So in elementary school, if there's judicious use of tax money to provide some measure of emotional support for those who need it (hardly an overwhelming number of kids), do I really need to move to Cuba? I don't want to pay higher taxes either, I just want my existing tax money put more to prevention (counselling, broad education without being forced to choose majors, mandatory gym etc) than cure (jails, court cases, etc).
I support the rights of the business to protect their films from being camcorded: they should be able to sieze the recording instrument and recordings and call the cops on anyone recording their films, by all means, within limits, not search your bag if you go into the theatre without committing a single 'crime.'
yabos is correct. Citizens of free countries don't need to put up with searches.
There are ways for people to nab me doing something illegal. For instance, if I'm caught red-handed recording a movie, then fine me (or arrest me or whatever). If it's such a serious crime, and cops have enough evidence that I've probably camcorded a movie to convince a judge to secure a warrant for my arrest, excellent. But random searches by authorities are not acceptable.
Though xero314 said, "I would also suggest that you do not attempt to board a plane, or view a concert or any other such event since these require purchasing of tickets that do not guarantee entry and were you are most likely subject to a search far more invasive than looking through your purse..." the analogy is not correct.
Since 9/11, airport authorities can at least use the pretext that you'd rather be searched than blown up by terrorists. Even sporting events with their emotional highs and lows, team rivalries, potential hooliganism, booze, and us-vs-them groupthink can allow for a certain amount of searching. None of this applies when you're out watching a movie. Why am I going to be searched next? Because I want to visit a corner store?
So I encourage those who want to enforce this law to do it the standard way: catch the bad guys in the act. If it's not worth enforcing, it's not worth passing into law in the first place.
Thanks. The deep and witty insights that normally follow slashdot articles fall to pieces whenever they post anything about evolution. But yours was a good reply.
As an additional point, the article seems to purposefully gloss over the distinction between "sudden shifts in natural selection" (presumably the environment -- natural selection just keeps on truckin') and "choices in behavior". It takes a bit of time for some lizards to figure out that climbing trees is good, after some of the short-legged ones have already kakked. That's hardly surprising in and of itself. And natural selection just keeps chugging along.
Sorry to have to start a new subject but I felt compelled only because the original article wasn't the usual quality stuff Slashdot links to. Luckily, many people responded with jokes.
It's possible that the original research is sound, but the BBC journalist screwed up in relaying the content. Let's assume that's not true, and see the article.
Tall & skinny vs. short & squat? In humans this has usually varied with climate, hotter vs. colder respectively, due to surface area -to- volume ratio. Not just 'cause, or because some people are smart or rich, ha ha.
Choosier about their sexual partners? Increased sexual selection (think peacock tailfeathers)... ? Why? No reason is given, but this would presumably lead to increased sexual dimorphism, i.e. differnces in appearance between males and females. Women would become more hairless and not men? Why? If it's natural selection at play, what's causing hairy women to have less offspring? If it's sexual selection, he could presumably point to studies of some sort of consisten mate choice among humans globally to that effect (forget local marketing fads).
This was hilarious: In 10000 years, people "...People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams." Ha, ha, he must be disagreeing with people who publish in academic journals that the ability to perform in teams won't vanish (due to genetics!) in 30000 years. What an academic debate that is!
And this: "Preventing deaths would also help to preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer." What percentage of cancer deaths occur in individuals before they reach reproductive age?
I ran out of time for this post. Other topics include disease-and-livestock vs. disease-and-technology, why his claim that being uniformly coffee-coloured means racial differences will have been ironed out if West Africans are still going to be more resistant to malaria than Southern Africans or Europeans, etc. etc. etc. Slashdot's topics are smart so often that the odd error like this one stands out.
In insects, it's fairly common to have genetic mutations in "master control genes" that can turn other sets of genes all on or off. So you could have a leg growing where an antenna should, for instance. In humans (and mammals in general) mutations don't occur at the master control gene level, so changes that large are rare. The few that occur are "minor" in the sense that they might code for a particular protein that does something-or-other on the surface of red blood cells.
Of course, such a mutation could still cause something serious to a human, but insects can, to put it in street language, "evolve faster" than humans. A couple moths with a mutation for a whole new wing colour could hit the reproductive jackpot if the environment was right.
Not to mention that five to ten human generations during some period of time corresponds to two hundred or so moth generations (if they live a year).
So, in the end, tall athletes = nutrition, practice, and often, drugs. Not evolution.
Yeah, my favourite part of the article is where it says they "gained ethical approval" to do this. So, first, they didnt' have it. Then they went to like, a panel, or God, or some such entity that grants ethical approval to people who don't have any. Next they must have filled in some formal application. "Will you harm the sharks?" No. "Would you try the same stuff on yourself?"... And finally approval is granted, and they can be confident that whatever it is they do, they're doing it ethically. Gee, I wish *I* could live my life like that too.
I suppose by "alpha" they're referring to TS2005-22!
I can imagine only a handful of things more moronic than naming storms. If you had a baby girl early this year and named her Katrina, which meteorological naming organization do you sue?
And can anyone remember the name of the third storm in 2003? I can, it was 2003-3. They should just number them. The Japanese number their typhoons, and everyone can refer to them once they've passed. I suppose you could give North American hurricanes letter codes: K instead of Katrina. But numbers are better than letters. The set of whole numbers contains significantly more than 26 members, certainly enough for any hurricane season before Armageddon.
And yes, there are definitions based on which hemisphere a storm originates in, where it's headed etc, but lettered prefixes can solve that.
"It doesn't matter if the IAU approves it or not. Unless there is an atomic war and the records are erased, when someone lands on Mars in 20 to 30 years and they go to Eagle Crater, they'll still call it Eagle Crater."
...Unless they're Chinese!
On a more serious note, maybe when those who care deeply about those names have a bit of downtime, they can prepare some lists in advance, and all you'd have to do is pick the next one from the list to name something if you were in a rush, or search the list by theme if you cared.
So, what have the traditional 9 planets got that make them a solar system?
a) They orbit a star (system).
b) Same inclination with respect to Sun, except Pluto.
c) Low orbit eccentricity, except Pluto
d) Members of a phase.
Off the top of my head, a "phase" is a series of orbiting bodies that share characteristics and whose members only exceptionally (less than half) cross over into other phases.
Hence, Phase I: rocky, iron core: Mercury - Mars.
Then comes an intervening asteroid belt, call it its own phase if you want to.
Phase II: gas giants with significant numbers of sattelites: Jupiter - Neptune.
Phase III: Kuiper-belt objects of irregular size, orbital eccentricity & inclination: Pluto, Sedna & the gang.
Hence, we live in a solar system with 4 Phase I planets, 4 Phase II planets, and a flagship member of the Kuiper belt, Pluto, which we may call a "cultural" planet, and count as a planet if we like to, not getting too emotional about it.
The advantage of this system is it's testable: when our technology matures and we can begin to observe systems around single sun-type stars without a huge failed-binary sister, then we can determine whether the phases outlined above apply to these new systems. It also predicts that a in a single-star system with orbiting rocky bodies that don't share the same plane of inclination at all, those orbiting rocky bodies aren't planets, but need a new word.
Thought experiment: an alien drops by, asking how many planets there are in my solar system, and I don't want to embarass myself. I say, "eight main phase planets."
Apple already controls the music market, has excellent MIDI stuff, and seems to have the sound side covered. Intel's website points to significant research in the text-to-speech/voice recognition/continuous voice processing areas. As a result, if I were to speculate 5 years ahead (a long time) then I'd offer speech/language processing to be a likely avenue of exploration for the new Apple/Intel matchup.
Good question. One thing I like about my books is that they still work after my having dropped them a bunch of times. The data is still intact, and there's no 'blue page of death'.
As a technosceptic (and how many technosceptics read Slashdot I wonder?) the "How tough is it?" question is one of the main reasons why I don't have more gadgets. Obviously Philips won't start selling whatever this turns into until it's somehwat sturdy. And by the time the purchased product breaks/becomes virtually unreadable, the technophile consumer usually lusts after the newer, better replacement.
That being said, I must say something like this would have a number of good uses, eg. meeting agendas & notes during teleconferences etc etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think anyone wants to steal your tax money by offering ten free shrinks per kid... I think the question is, Is the cost of counselling younger kids made up for later on when they're more stable adults because potential bad things have been prevented?
We can't know for sure offhand, because it's difficult to measure. But imagine a whole city-full of maladjusted teenaged grumps who figure adults are there to do their jobs and not care about them... wouldn't they suck up more of our tax money than well adjusted youngsters with adult role models who actually give a shit? And do I want my kids going to school with the former type of peer or the latter...? So in elementary school, if there's judicious use of tax money to provide some measure of emotional support for those who need it (hardly an overwhelming number of kids), do I really need to move to Cuba? I don't want to pay higher taxes either, I just want my existing tax money put more to prevention (counselling, broad education without being forced to choose majors, mandatory gym etc) than cure (jails, court cases, etc).
I support the rights of the business to protect their films from being camcorded: they should be able to sieze the recording instrument and recordings and call the cops on anyone recording their films, by all means, within limits, not search your bag if you go into the theatre without committing a single 'crime.'
yabos is correct. Citizens of free countries don't need to put up with searches.
There are ways for people to nab me doing something illegal. For instance, if I'm caught red-handed recording a movie, then fine me (or arrest me or whatever). If it's such a serious crime, and cops have enough evidence that I've probably camcorded a movie to convince a judge to secure a warrant for my arrest, excellent. But random searches by authorities are not acceptable.
Though xero314 said, "I would also suggest that you do not attempt to board a plane, or view a concert or any other such event since these require purchasing of tickets that do not guarantee entry and were you are most likely subject to a search far more invasive than looking through your purse..." the analogy is not correct.
Since 9/11, airport authorities can at least use the pretext that you'd rather be searched than blown up by terrorists. Even sporting events with their emotional highs and lows, team rivalries, potential hooliganism, booze, and us-vs-them groupthink can allow for a certain amount of searching. None of this applies when you're out watching a movie. Why am I going to be searched next? Because I want to visit a corner store?
So I encourage those who want to enforce this law to do it the standard way: catch the bad guys in the act. If it's not worth enforcing, it's not worth passing into law in the first place.
As an additional point, the article seems to purposefully gloss over the distinction between "sudden shifts in natural selection" (presumably the environment -- natural selection just keeps on truckin') and "choices in behavior". It takes a bit of time for some lizards to figure out that climbing trees is good, after some of the short-legged ones have already kakked. That's hardly surprising in and of itself. And natural selection just keeps chugging along.
Sorry to have to start a new subject but I felt compelled only because the original article wasn't the usual quality stuff Slashdot links to. Luckily, many people responded with jokes.
It's possible that the original research is sound, but the BBC journalist screwed up in relaying the content. Let's assume that's not true, and see the article.
Tall & skinny vs. short & squat? In humans this has usually varied with climate, hotter vs. colder respectively, due to surface area -to- volume ratio. Not just 'cause, or because some people are smart or rich, ha ha.
Choosier about their sexual partners? Increased sexual selection (think peacock tailfeathers)... ? Why? No reason is given, but this would presumably lead to increased sexual dimorphism, i.e. differnces in appearance between males and females. Women would become more hairless and not men? Why? If it's natural selection at play, what's causing hairy women to have less offspring? If it's sexual selection, he could presumably point to studies of some sort of consisten mate choice among humans globally to that effect (forget local marketing fads).
This was hilarious: In 10000 years, people "...People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams." Ha, ha, he must be disagreeing with people who publish in academic journals that the ability to perform in teams won't vanish (due to genetics!) in 30000 years. What an academic debate that is!
And this: "Preventing deaths would also help to preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer." What percentage of cancer deaths occur in individuals before they reach reproductive age?
I ran out of time for this post. Other topics include disease-and-livestock vs. disease-and-technology, why his claim that being uniformly coffee-coloured means racial differences will have been ironed out if West Africans are still going to be more resistant to malaria than Southern Africans or Europeans, etc. etc. etc. Slashdot's topics are smart so often that the odd error like this one stands out.
Of course, such a mutation could still cause something serious to a human, but insects can, to put it in street language, "evolve faster" than humans. A couple moths with a mutation for a whole new wing colour could hit the reproductive jackpot if the environment was right.
Not to mention that five to ten human generations during some period of time corresponds to two hundred or so moth generations (if they live a year).
So, in the end, tall athletes = nutrition, practice, and often, drugs. Not evolution.
Yeah, my favourite part of the article is where it says they "gained ethical approval" to do this. So, first, they didnt' have it. Then they went to like, a panel, or God, or some such entity that grants ethical approval to people who don't have any. Next they must have filled in some formal application. "Will you harm the sharks?" No. "Would you try the same stuff on yourself?" ... And finally approval is granted, and they can be confident that whatever it is they do, they're doing it ethically. Gee, I wish *I* could live my life like that too.
I can imagine only a handful of things more moronic than naming storms. If you had a baby girl early this year and named her Katrina, which meteorological naming organization do you sue?
And can anyone remember the name of the third storm in 2003? I can, it was 2003-3. They should just number them. The Japanese number their typhoons, and everyone can refer to them once they've passed. I suppose you could give North American hurricanes letter codes: K instead of Katrina. But numbers are better than letters. The set of whole numbers contains significantly more than 26 members, certainly enough for any hurricane season before Armageddon.
And yes, there are definitions based on which hemisphere a storm originates in, where it's headed etc, but lettered prefixes can solve that.
On a more serious note, maybe when those who care deeply about those names have a bit of downtime, they can prepare some lists in advance, and all you'd have to do is pick the next one from the list to name something if you were in a rush, or search the list by theme if you cared.
a) They orbit a star (system).
b) Same inclination with respect to Sun, except Pluto.
c) Low orbit eccentricity, except Pluto
d) Members of a phase.
Off the top of my head, a "phase" is a series of orbiting bodies that share characteristics and whose members only exceptionally (less than half) cross over into other phases.
Hence, Phase I: rocky, iron core: Mercury - Mars.
Then comes an intervening asteroid belt, call it its own phase if you want to.
Phase II: gas giants with significant numbers of sattelites: Jupiter - Neptune.
Phase III: Kuiper-belt objects of irregular size, orbital eccentricity & inclination: Pluto, Sedna & the gang.
Hence, we live in a solar system with 4 Phase I planets, 4 Phase II planets, and a flagship member of the Kuiper belt, Pluto, which we may call a "cultural" planet, and count as a planet if we like to, not getting too emotional about it.
The advantage of this system is it's testable: when our technology matures and we can begin to observe systems around single sun-type stars without a huge failed-binary sister, then we can determine whether the phases outlined above apply to these new systems. It also predicts that a in a single-star system with orbiting rocky bodies that don't share the same plane of inclination at all, those orbiting rocky bodies aren't planets, but need a new word.
Thought experiment: an alien drops by, asking how many planets there are in my solar system, and I don't want to embarass myself. I say, "eight main phase planets."
Apple already controls the music market, has excellent MIDI stuff, and seems to have the sound side covered. Intel's website points to significant research in the text-to-speech/voice recognition/continuous voice processing areas. As a result, if I were to speculate 5 years ahead (a long time) then I'd offer speech/language processing to be a likely avenue of exploration for the new Apple/Intel matchup.
Good question. One thing I like about my books is that they still work after my having dropped them a bunch of times. The data is still intact, and there's no 'blue page of death'.
As a technosceptic (and how many technosceptics read Slashdot I wonder?) the "How tough is it?" question is one of the main reasons why I don't have more gadgets. Obviously Philips won't start selling whatever this turns into until it's somehwat sturdy. And by the time the purchased product breaks/becomes virtually unreadable, the technophile consumer usually lusts after the newer, better replacement.
That being said, I must say something like this would have a number of good uses, eg. meeting agendas & notes during teleconferences etc etc.