What you're missing is that many of these superbugs live in hospitals and infect patients once they enter the hospital. Bacteria can transmit resistance from one to another in the form of small, circular DNA molecules called plasmids without even needing to reproduce, although this resistance is passed on to successive generations as well. This means that most bugs in the hospital that have been alive for a moderate amount of time have probably received many plasmids from the surrounding bacteria and have thus acquired most of the antibiotic resistance vectors that they didn't have from birth. Once these bacteria enter a human, they replicate and then are exposed to antibiotics. The ones that are resistant do not die. They reproduce further, and are probably expelled in mucus or sent airborne after a cough.
To sum it up: hospital patients are like a training ground that take in large amounts of bacteria and spit out only the best, most antibiotic-resistant ones back into the environment.
As you can imagine, the effects of a new antibiotic look great at first, as it acts like you say with a probability of survival of P(A). However, bacteria that survive then replicate, passing resistance both vertically through generations and laterally via plasmids. After a certain period of time, the antibiotic loses much of its efficacy against the hospital superbugs, even though it may be fairly effective against the everyday, non-hospital-related infection. Slowly, for the same reasons, however, the bacteria in the general population build up antibiotic resistance. It's an uphill battle for sure, just as it was before antibiotics were invented, and our best hope is to simply use antibiotics as rarely as possible so that they can maintain their efficacy.
To be honest, I saw it coming... the sleek designs, the cute sounds, that sly come-hither stare. So "worms" (ahem) turn on Macs... that's their decision and they should be proud of it:)
I remember working on a similarly themed project in my high school AP Lit class. We were reading Brave New World and discussing utopias, and our teacher asked us to conceive a plan for a utopian society. My group ran through the usual suggestions ("soma" - some opiate of the masses, class organizations, etc), but my addition to our plan was to tell the general public that we were soon to be at war with some unseen alien force, ala Ender's Game. It seems that we've been naturally selected to pursue objectives and defend our group, however we perceive it, against outside threats, and it takes a hell of a lot to contradict human instincts. For evidence, see one of the current/. stories about Yahoo banning the use of "allah". All you have to do is establish an enemy to form a strongly-bound group that exists solely to fight that perceived adversary.
What? I think maybe you're a little out-of-the-loop here. It's not that Google will go to jail. It's just that the Chinese routers will be programmed to filter out traffic to and from Google.cn if they do not cooperate. People are upset that Google is complying because their compliance implies that they approve of this censorship. The problem that Google faces is much the same as the problem that other industries who deal with China face: simple economics. We import billions of dollars of Chinese goods and labor, so while it would be nice to put them under economic siege to prove a political point, we simply can't afford to do such a thing, and neither can Google. Google has responsibilities to its shareholders, and while they intend no evil, they are still governed by the laws of our capitalistic society. China is a huge market, and if Google does not establish a presence there while other companies do, they'll surely succumb to the competition. If all the companies in the US that use Chinese goods or services could band together and unilaterally threaten to boycott the Chinese unless they changed their ways, perhaps we could get somewhere.
My hopes are that the Google.cn/Chinese information filters are not perfect. For instance, if publishers intentionally worded their articles so as to avoid the filter, perhaps Google's presence could make the open exchange of information easier. Also, Google could help to spread information about projects (like Tor) that seek to allow for anonymous proxies and communication. In a way, a censored but still-massive Google.cn could be a trojan horse into the Chinese people's minds.
If anything, it's GOOG's responsibility to their shareholders to work with China - it's a huge market, and while Google does their best not to be evil, they still are responsible for making money and expanding their company. Also, China's censorship policies have been very firm over the years; I highly doubt they'd make an exception for Google when there are other search engines available. The only results of Google's boycott of China would be a loss of profit for Google and a loss of a great resource to the Chinese people, incomplete or not.
I think for this we should take a look at the microprocessor. Nobody could look at a modern microprocessor's full CMOS layout and understand immediately exactly how everything works together. We can, however, look circuit by circuit, finding logic gates, adders, latches, etc and then slowly working from the bottom up until we have abstracted it.
The other alternative, one that I think will be the best way to explore the brain's function, will be computer-aided imaging and analysis. To complete the metaphor, analyzing the gate-level schematic for a microprocessor by hand would take forever, whereas analyzing it with an algorithmic computer program could produce the same results in seconds. The field of bioinformatics is steadily getting bigger and stronger, and I'm sure that with new, more precise functional imaging and better computing power, we will be able to create systems to analyze the electrochemical action in millions of cells simultaneously and from that find common patterns and interacting networks. From this bottom-up computer analysis, I think we can bypass our human limitations and let the computers do the crunching.
I liken evolution to pissing off the empire state building. As time goes by and the piss falls down, the single stream spreads and separates with some drops closer to each other than others. Some of the piss evaporates mid-air, and some of it lands on little ledges on the way down. Little by little, we keep finding those little fossilized drops of piss, and with enough time and memory, surely we'll be able to trace it all back to that first glorious stream.
The hard part comes here: imagine that that metaphorical piss takes 3.8 billion years to reach the ground. If we ran a video of piss falling through the air at even one thousandth of the real speed, it would be extremely difficult to see any significant change. Now imagine running that video at less than one billionth of the real speed. Asking for a reproducible experiment of macroevolution on the timescale of even ten scientists' lifetimes is obviously unreasonable... it just doesn't happen that fast.
To say that microevolution does not demonstrate a strong premise for macroevolution is like saying that the existence of a foot, as proven by a ruler, does not necessarily prove the existence of the mile. It's all a matter of observable scale.
That's not really the converse. That's an integral part of my idea. While I assume nature has no intent, I would agree that suicide (especially early in life) does lessen the frequency of the genes that predispose an individual to suicide. But consider that depression is a state that a large portion of the population will experience at some point in life. The evolution of a law to prevent that suicide can occur far quicker than the evolution of genes to prevent it, as even the legal system is straightforward in comparison to the human body. Therefore, the society that benefits from that law will have a much greater chance of survival than a similar society lacking that law.
Exactly. The human brain's "neural clusters" have evolved for group behavior. There is a very strong correlation between cortical size and social group size in primates. At least some of this increasing brain mass must be devoted to social behavior. So if the brain is simply functioning in the way that it has evolved to, why should we stop it?
The major purpose of law in society is to preserve the integrity of the society, meaning to protect its existence. A society of people who kill themselves cannot last long. Therefore, assuming that suicide is a natural tendency at times, the society that survives will be the society that can prevent suicide. In a way, a system to prevent suicide in the general population is an evolutionary advantage. Assuming that we want our society to survive, we cannot let suicide be an acceptable general practice.
To make this analogy appropriate, the person on the receiving end of the hypothetical bullet should be the President. The President might not wear a bullet-proof vest, but his team makes sure that he is isolated from possible threats. If something is mission-critical, you ensure it cannot be harmed. Surely an assasin would be at fault for killing the President, but I'd be pretty pissed if I found out that the Secret Service hadn't been guarding the doors.
Interesting, but I think the same economic rules will apply tomorrow that do today. I can look up the reaction mechanism for the oxidation of borneol to camphor and perform the conversion with a minumum of lab equipment, but it's still far easier and cheaper to just buy some Vick's Vapo-Rub at the store. What makes you think that desktop technology will outpace industrial experts (or that the commercial market will allow it to)?
Your DMCA and HP analogies are apt, however. I can certainly imagine companies selling a nano-easy-bake-oven of sorts that requires expensive chemical cartridges or stocks.
Agreed. I worked in a lab with a brilliant EE prof as my advisor/manager, and I had a great time there. Had I felt more talented than him, I would not have been nearly as motivated or as happy. I also probably would not have felt any compulsion to create good ideas, as I wouldn't trust my manager to accurately assess them.
Bush is an uneducated figurehead, but the machinery behind him is financed and directed by greedy corporations. Has Bush alotted significant funds to the research of alternative forms of energy? Has he set up large programs to reduce our oil dependence? If he has, I certainly haven't seen it.
Your comments about stereotypes were insightful, but to be fair, Bush is in fact a white, male, Christian, racist, pro-life-but-also-for-capital-punishment Republican. Stereotypes may be overgeneralized or may lead to prejudice in some cases, but in this case Bush fits the stereotype to a tee. It's also interesting that after criticizing stereotypes, you applied a set of them to the American people by assuming that voters think only along party lines and unequivocally hate opposition. In fact, I find wisdom in leaders of both parties, although I rarely agree wholeheartedly with everything that a certain person has to say.
Now, I know moderation exists only as a computer system on/., but maybe we could cognitively moderate ourselves a little as we post.
Good enzymes can catalyze reactions to millions of times their normal speed. With a complicated mixture of complementary enzymes, it could be possible to accelerate all of the necessary reactions to produce a fine wine. Flavor components could be synthesized to match those normally instilled from the wood casks or grapes. A fine wine could be synthesized through carefully controlled laboratory procedures - it would just take a hell of a lot of work.
Perhaps in the coming years of bioinformatics and computational chemistry, we will be able to characterize all the components of wines or other solutions and automatically synthesize them using a huge database of available reagents and starting materials, but such technology is a decade away at least. Until then, I think we'll have to enjoy our fine wines at customary price and pride levels.
Perhaps they finally realized their functional incongruity, but the mere knowledge of it did in fact make their heads explode before they could correct it. Or maybe they figured out that most users would rather have cute, customizable icons than extra functionality, and will come out with a badass super-user version later. Either way, it's tough luck for the IRCers out there.
Slashdot Mirror
dropload.com
What you're missing is that many of these superbugs live in hospitals and infect patients once they enter the hospital. Bacteria can transmit resistance from one to another in the form of small, circular DNA molecules called plasmids without even needing to reproduce, although this resistance is passed on to successive generations as well. This means that most bugs in the hospital that have been alive for a moderate amount of time have probably received many plasmids from the surrounding bacteria and have thus acquired most of the antibiotic resistance vectors that they didn't have from birth. Once these bacteria enter a human, they replicate and then are exposed to antibiotics. The ones that are resistant do not die. They reproduce further, and are probably expelled in mucus or sent airborne after a cough.
To sum it up: hospital patients are like a training ground that take in large amounts of bacteria and spit out only the best, most antibiotic-resistant ones back into the environment.
As you can imagine, the effects of a new antibiotic look great at first, as it acts like you say with a probability of survival of P(A). However, bacteria that survive then replicate, passing resistance both vertically through generations and laterally via plasmids. After a certain period of time, the antibiotic loses much of its efficacy against the hospital superbugs, even though it may be fairly effective against the everyday, non-hospital-related infection. Slowly, for the same reasons, however, the bacteria in the general population build up antibiotic resistance. It's an uphill battle for sure, just as it was before antibiotics were invented, and our best hope is to simply use antibiotics as rarely as possible so that they can maintain their efficacy.
That's why I love my iRiver. I can't imagine why anyone would want an audio player that couldn't mount as a hard drive.
Oh yeah. The whole DRM thing. Allofmp3, here I come.
To be honest, I saw it coming... the sleek designs, the cute sounds, that sly come-hither stare. So "worms" (ahem) turn on Macs... that's their decision and they should be proud of it :)
There should be a +1 Terrifying option.
Quite right.
I remember working on a similarly themed project in my high school AP Lit class. We were reading Brave New World and discussing utopias, and our teacher asked us to conceive a plan for a utopian society. My group ran through the usual suggestions ("soma" - some opiate of the masses, class organizations, etc), but my addition to our plan was to tell the general public that we were soon to be at war with some unseen alien force, ala Ender's Game. It seems that we've been naturally selected to pursue objectives and defend our group, however we perceive it, against outside threats, and it takes a hell of a lot to contradict human instincts. For evidence, see one of the current /. stories about Yahoo banning the use of "allah". All you have to do is establish an enemy to form a strongly-bound group that exists solely to fight that perceived adversary.
also viewable here
What? I think maybe you're a little out-of-the-loop here. It's not that Google will go to jail. It's just that the Chinese routers will be programmed to filter out traffic to and from Google.cn if they do not cooperate. People are upset that Google is complying because their compliance implies that they approve of this censorship. The problem that Google faces is much the same as the problem that other industries who deal with China face: simple economics. We import billions of dollars of Chinese goods and labor, so while it would be nice to put them under economic siege to prove a political point, we simply can't afford to do such a thing, and neither can Google. Google has responsibilities to its shareholders, and while they intend no evil, they are still governed by the laws of our capitalistic society. China is a huge market, and if Google does not establish a presence there while other companies do, they'll surely succumb to the competition. If all the companies in the US that use Chinese goods or services could band together and unilaterally threaten to boycott the Chinese unless they changed their ways, perhaps we could get somewhere.
My hopes are that the Google.cn/Chinese information filters are not perfect. For instance, if publishers intentionally worded their articles so as to avoid the filter, perhaps Google's presence could make the open exchange of information easier. Also, Google could help to spread information about projects (like Tor) that seek to allow for anonymous proxies and communication. In a way, a censored but still-massive Google.cn could be a trojan horse into the Chinese people's minds.
If anything, it's GOOG's responsibility to their shareholders to work with China - it's a huge market, and while Google does their best not to be evil, they still are responsible for making money and expanding their company. Also, China's censorship policies have been very firm over the years; I highly doubt they'd make an exception for Google when there are other search engines available. The only results of Google's boycott of China would be a loss of profit for Google and a loss of a great resource to the Chinese people, incomplete or not.
Just like that damned VCR.
I think for this we should take a look at the microprocessor. Nobody could look at a modern microprocessor's full CMOS layout and understand immediately exactly how everything works together. We can, however, look circuit by circuit, finding logic gates, adders, latches, etc and then slowly working from the bottom up until we have abstracted it.
The other alternative, one that I think will be the best way to explore the brain's function, will be computer-aided imaging and analysis. To complete the metaphor, analyzing the gate-level schematic for a microprocessor by hand would take forever, whereas analyzing it with an algorithmic computer program could produce the same results in seconds. The field of bioinformatics is steadily getting bigger and stronger, and I'm sure that with new, more precise functional imaging and better computing power, we will be able to create systems to analyze the electrochemical action in millions of cells simultaneously and from that find common patterns and interacting networks. From this bottom-up computer analysis, I think we can bypass our human limitations and let the computers do the crunching.
I liken evolution to pissing off the empire state building. As time goes by and the piss falls down, the single stream spreads and separates with some drops closer to each other than others. Some of the piss evaporates mid-air, and some of it lands on little ledges on the way down. Little by little, we keep finding those little fossilized drops of piss, and with enough time and memory, surely we'll be able to trace it all back to that first glorious stream.
The hard part comes here: imagine that that metaphorical piss takes 3.8 billion years to reach the ground. If we ran a video of piss falling through the air at even one thousandth of the real speed, it would be extremely difficult to see any significant change. Now imagine running that video at less than one billionth of the real speed. Asking for a reproducible experiment of macroevolution on the timescale of even ten scientists' lifetimes is obviously unreasonable... it just doesn't happen that fast.
To say that microevolution does not demonstrate a strong premise for macroevolution is like saying that the existence of a foot, as proven by a ruler, does not necessarily prove the existence of the mile. It's all a matter of observable scale.
That's not really the converse. That's an integral part of my idea. While I assume nature has no intent, I would agree that suicide (especially early in life) does lessen the frequency of the genes that predispose an individual to suicide. But consider that depression is a state that a large portion of the population will experience at some point in life. The evolution of a law to prevent that suicide can occur far quicker than the evolution of genes to prevent it, as even the legal system is straightforward in comparison to the human body. Therefore, the society that benefits from that law will have a much greater chance of survival than a similar society lacking that law.
Or just insert your own imperceptible variations. Put enough sub-human-threshold noise in and you're bound to interfere with the watermark.
Exactly. The human brain's "neural clusters" have evolved for group behavior. There is a very strong correlation between cortical size and social group size in primates. At least some of this increasing brain mass must be devoted to social behavior. So if the brain is simply functioning in the way that it has evolved to, why should we stop it?
The major purpose of law in society is to preserve the integrity of the society, meaning to protect its existence. A society of people who kill themselves cannot last long. Therefore, assuming that suicide is a natural tendency at times, the society that survives will be the society that can prevent suicide. In a way, a system to prevent suicide in the general population is an evolutionary advantage. Assuming that we want our society to survive, we cannot let suicide be an acceptable general practice.
To make this analogy appropriate, the person on the receiving end of the hypothetical bullet should be the President. The President might not wear a bullet-proof vest, but his team makes sure that he is isolated from possible threats. If something is mission-critical, you ensure it cannot be harmed. Surely an assasin would be at fault for killing the President, but I'd be pretty pissed if I found out that the Secret Service hadn't been guarding the doors.
Interesting, but I think the same economic rules will apply tomorrow that do today. I can look up the reaction mechanism for the oxidation of borneol to camphor and perform the conversion with a minumum of lab equipment, but it's still far easier and cheaper to just buy some Vick's Vapo-Rub at the store. What makes you think that desktop technology will outpace industrial experts (or that the commercial market will allow it to)?
Your DMCA and HP analogies are apt, however. I can certainly imagine companies selling a nano-easy-bake-oven of sorts that requires expensive chemical cartridges or stocks.
Agreed. I worked in a lab with a brilliant EE prof as my advisor/manager, and I had a great time there. Had I felt more talented than him, I would not have been nearly as motivated or as happy. I also probably would not have felt any compulsion to create good ideas, as I wouldn't trust my manager to accurately assess them.
+1 Sickening
Bush is an uneducated figurehead, but the machinery behind him is financed and directed by greedy corporations. Has Bush alotted significant funds to the research of alternative forms of energy? Has he set up large programs to reduce our oil dependence? If he has, I certainly haven't seen it.
/., but maybe we could cognitively moderate ourselves a little as we post.
Your comments about stereotypes were insightful, but to be fair, Bush is in fact a white, male, Christian, racist, pro-life-but-also-for-capital-punishment Republican. Stereotypes may be overgeneralized or may lead to prejudice in some cases, but in this case Bush fits the stereotype to a tee. It's also interesting that after criticizing stereotypes, you applied a set of them to the American people by assuming that voters think only along party lines and unequivocally hate opposition. In fact, I find wisdom in leaders of both parties, although I rarely agree wholeheartedly with everything that a certain person has to say.
Now, I know moderation exists only as a computer system on
Also, there's this cute little project called WINE that emulates most business-oriented programs well enough to work on most flavors of *nix.
Yeah, this all sounds suspiciously (or at least auspiciously) similar to EEye's Retina scanner, etc. It's all been done before.
Good enzymes can catalyze reactions to millions of times their normal speed. With a complicated mixture of complementary enzymes, it could be possible to accelerate all of the necessary reactions to produce a fine wine. Flavor components could be synthesized to match those normally instilled from the wood casks or grapes. A fine wine could be synthesized through carefully controlled laboratory procedures - it would just take a hell of a lot of work.
Perhaps in the coming years of bioinformatics and computational chemistry, we will be able to characterize all the components of wines or other solutions and automatically synthesize them using a huge database of available reagents and starting materials, but such technology is a decade away at least. Until then, I think we'll have to enjoy our fine wines at customary price and pride levels.
Perhaps they finally realized their functional incongruity, but the mere knowledge of it did in fact make their heads explode before they could correct it. Or maybe they figured out that most users would rather have cute, customizable icons than extra functionality, and will come out with a badass super-user version later. Either way, it's tough luck for the IRCers out there.