Ahhhh!!! Stupid me. You meant "Kelvin", didn't you? But for some darn reason my mind saw "thousand" there (which didn't make sense given that moon is so far out there), and before I'd even finished making another response for dreamchaser, "what a dummy I am".
Don't forget that cell phone locations are not only already tracked, but the cell phone companies are constantly working to make it ever more accurate: there is good reason for this, that is, if they know the location of a device, and the device can report the signal strength back to them, as well as be noted when it disappears in a general area, they can improve their services: it's cell phone inc. 101, and if you don't like it, don't use one. They do this because coverage is terribly difficult to provide and maintain, and expensive (and the towers), such that the more data they have, the more intelligently they can proceed. Most people just don't even have a clue to how marvelous that little device that surpasses even the wildest dreams for handhelds in the early Star Trek series actually is, or even more interesting, the infrastructure and technologies it takes to make it more than a just a connectionless disabled mobile computing device.
Just want to point-out, however, about the "corporate personhood is a bullshit concept" sentiment, that oftentimes what people mean is that "corporations shouldn't be protected in advocating positions as are individuals", but what that would effectively means is that people would not have right of association to advance positions, ideas, causes, critciisms, etc.: a lobby is a corporation, a union is a corporation, a religious organization is a corporation, a movement of cause-based voters who convince a bunch of people to vote the same (for some piece of legislation that they've either proposed and gotten into congress, or advocated)...is a corporation. What people tend to miss is that just because a corporation brings-in money that are labeled "profits" rathe rather than "charitable contributions", that doesn't then mean they shouldn't be allowed to be represented as associated by some spokesmen of that corporation.
I don't think you understood his rhetoric: by the words he employed he appears to be saying what those who say "we should interpret the constitution with the times to mean what is convenient or preferable to us" and simultaneously implying that those who say "no, law is not law unless interpreted accurately to ascertain to and apply what it means when and as written" are saying that "the law should be stone and otherwise you're all Nazis and anti-black racists and chauvinistic woman-hating knuckle-dragging bigots": that is, at least, what many have tried to say, imply, and paint others as, in their rhetoric in this country. Personally I'm all for defining those who try to twist law (and which can be confirmed to reasonably be doing so because they're violating the tenets of genuine reading) as subversive and treasonous, but then again, with as many times in history that parties twist history and even force some re-interpretation down the throats of the elite, and then those of the populace in the forms of historical myths which become as faithfully held as true in their hearts as anything they could possibly value, that their minds are dominated (and you know, the elites aren't exception to this), that could be too dangerous a thing to do.
You live in a day where the politicians and their stooges want it outlawed for you to collect evidence (record) their treatment and handling of you, and many other devious things, which sort of thing that Constitution (if actually followed, applied, enforced) would disallow, and you think it's a "tad too high"? The dang thing is meant to be a limitation on government TO PROTECT YOU, but too many idealists want their way NOW and so will go to any lenghts to ignore, "reinterpret", and subvert it. That it is set high is a good thing.
Good example, many of the cases that had bearing upon slavery...turned out the way they did because the Constitution was ignored. Various amendments were totally unnecessary if the darn thing had been hermeneutically interpreted (i.e. read for what it means, not interpreted as the reader wants it to mean in their own head), but because of that refusal to let law reign explicit amendments were made: but note they are worthless in a climate where the thing can be made to mean whatever anyone wants so long as they are in a position that others let them have authority to declare it.
Great comment, but please put your screen name (or if really daring, real one) next time. I wanted to add that the extremes aren't always opposite: an honest look at the current parties shows that in large part, ideologically speaking, they're two sides of the same coin: the "opposites" and "extremes" are their approaches to trying to obtain the same things. Unfortunately we have, pretty much, one (not two) terrible extreme in power (if we're to look from a historical perspective) to which I think we'll get many varied and diverse strong reactions (i.e. more extremes). Being "extreme" isn't always so bad, rather "excessive zealotry that blocks critical thinking, evaluation, and fair mindedness" is the sense that "extreme" is used in these days, which is unfortunate, because it muddles thinking when I think we should all be for "extremely upright/principled/just" people/living/honestly/thinking, etc. etc.. Actually passionate people who have such characteristics? Easily painted as "extreme" (by which really is meant "zealots", but the lowest common denomination won't discern the difference and it'll be influence one way or another, usually easily).
We're already there: corporations, whether officially designated by existence on a piece of paper in a laywer's desk, or just ideological or cause-based movements tryign to use the government to bring about their vision of society by force (rather than building communities: no, that would be difficult and require personal investment and sacrifice). You guys think the unions aren't corporations? The mass of voters that are so easiily swayed? There is either rule of law...imposed by an elite few who are idealistic enough to care (and whether that law is good or noble or fair or just or virtuous etc. etc. isn't something I said, human law isn't instrinsically just, I'm just pointing this out), or there is rule (warring) of corporations: there is also warring of corporations by mandate of law, or when law rules the corporations can still war against it, but when the rhetoric of "rule fo law" is repetitiously spewed by a president who flaunts it at every opportunity in his own interests, those shared with his "corporate" constituencies, what do you think you have? "Corporate anarchy."
Actually the Fed mandated loans to people in income and credit brackets that happen to be beneficial to their voter shares, but which the banks knew could be suicide; the set-up Federal, quasi-private organizations to control and direct this effort, and passed legislation which could make criminal those who "discriminated" by not following their guidelines--which wasn't too hard to legitimize because currently it is minorities generally whose finanical conditions are bad, thus meaning that any smart, intelligent, reasonable, business-oriented, careful, responsible bank could have its workers charged and imprisoned, forever demonized as "discriminating", and even have the institution sold-off to financial institutions "compliant" with the political mobsters. On top of this, the profligate spending of the Fed and terrible non-economics they played (economics means "economy with ___", anything, and in the areas of money, "not spending more than you have", not much more) put the dollar into jeopardy, for which the Fed R. held interest rates low in order to prevent a total collapse of that currency (then you would see WWIII, as the entire world is tied into our system, and heavily: Texas could get the Fed to bow on many issues with threats of secession alone given they have most of the financial mega-cities, though I could be wrong since the Fed Gov. isn't know for being rational, nor its bureaucracies); coupled with the mandated lending which was supposed to make the politico-sold "American dream is to own your own house, even if you can't friggin' afford it, which will guarantee national financial utopia, and which we had to engineer as such a dream because it's convenient for us to mirage that the CALIFORNIAN housing crisis is really a national one" marketing/vision possible, meant there was a perfect storm for never-ending and rampant, greedy borrowing: guaranteed by the Fed and unavoidable by banks. The smart ones lent, and then sold-off EVERYTHING that had anything to do with real estate of this sub-prime.
And no, it wasn't Bush's fault. It WAS, however, a joint effort by both parties, in various points here and there: it was the Dems, however, that decided to make it impossible for banks to avoid the financially dangerous, I mean "minoirties, the greedy white bastards are all racist pigs who won't lend to the MINORITIES, IF WE KEEP SAYING IT LOUD ENOUGH, LONG ENOUGH, REPETITIOUSLY ENOUGH, EVEN WE'LL BELIEVE ALL THIS". What really happened, however, and continues, is the idiots in Washington believe they can themselves direct an entire nation to their own delusions of grandeur, and sustain it all by cooking the books more systematically and questionably than any Enron could ever imagine, all funded and supported by the mobs that have been sold the idea that we can all be white-collar, high-class, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and "creative class" producers: no production of real goods necessary, no need of the farm land and product (that we'll seize by eminent domain and turn into taxable commercial and residental property, which in turn, by virtue of the inevitable, dogmatically unquestionable, truism that all real estate will always rise in value, especially if we as politicians and bureaucrats simply declare higher values in our assessments for taxes, we'll always be prosperous and fat, and therefore we've succeeded to become your saviors, keep giving us power!).
You idiots, stop making diversion with finger-pointing at the politcial label, instead of considering the real implications of the schemes the unscrupulous cons are concocting (along with their constituents). This guy thinks things will be better with numerous segregated, decentralized mafias voting their schemes? Well actually, probably...to a great extent it will be for this or that luckier jurisdiction which isn't such a scheming cess-pool of human avarice vs. the others: but the others, I'm sure, will likely not tolerate the "inequality" (by which, they mean, "non egalitarianism", "they're not like us, they must be taking advantage of u
I need to mention that the microbes known no earth, with all their various metabolisms, sometimes seem as though they really are from separate planets. That said, enver underestimate their abilities to swap genetic material and re-synthesize their machineries for different environments. Knowing this, "there should be little chance of confusion" isn't so reassuring: it already is just with the "earth" based life, even trying to figure out whether this or that is related to that or the other, where such and such came from, etc. (the so-called maps of microbial relationships are extremely pick-and-choosy, subjectively prioritizing one or another criterium over others depending on the values of the researchers, and often more in favor of various formulations of theories instead of the barest and hardest facts or most critical considerations: honestly it's practically impossible to get past the sheer amount of information, that's ever-increasing by magnitudes, in order to do better, but much better can be done, it's just that complicated and as I said, confusing). Oh, and this, http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1675560&cid=32465806http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1675560&cid=32465806
Actually I don't think his is a bad point. First off, we DON'T understand the metabolisms of most microbes on earth: most CAN'T be cultured in a lab because of this, experimented with, etc. etc.: only a little subset of the entire known microbial biota are even available for us to research. Beyond this, however, the known range of things that microbes can eat is expanding beyond our wildest imaginings: and not just on the bottom of oceans. That's why we now have microbes to use to eat oil spills, nuclear waste, and even metals (ummm....iron and steal, yum!). Not kidding about the bacteria that eat metals, by the way, which incidentally...DO IT BY HYDROGEN AND ELECTRON EXCHANGES. There's all sorts of stuff that one can tell you haven't even considered from the comment you just made: you need to do more dreaming "dream[er]...".
P.S. bacteria have survived in the vaccum of space on the moon, so "[they] would most likely die" is also not a very informed statement. I don't mean to be too insulting here, just very frank about the state of knowledge on these things vs. what you wrote: that is rose to "5, Insightful" just demanded the bio nerd in me to respond.
Food isn't taxed in the U.S., by the way: Federal law exempts it. States can re-define what constitutes "food", to some extent, e.g. in Colorado they've defined candy as a non-food item, and also given a definition for candy, and are now taxing it, but for many items they could very likely be beat-up by the Fed for attempting to somehow un-define food as food when it's fairly obvious that it is. [Please note, none of my reply should be taken as tax advice, and in any event you have questions about tax issues or want to act on some information, you should consult with a real, certified, licensed, (or whatever legal designation exists in you jurisdiction for recognition of someone as a valid practitioner of law) legal practitioner of law.
Flash IS a documented standard, but developing an alternative and functional player is hard: plus, it requires having $$$ to pay for the licenses on patented technology within it. Heck, developing PDF parsers is difficult, but there's been plenty of time for alternatives to mature and become viable competitors, (and I think it's not quite as difficult as creating a functional, dependable alternative to the dominant flash player).
If the BSDs have a linux-compatibility layer, why aren't they utilizing it? If it doesn't quite work with Flash, why aren't they improving it? And what do you mean "Spirit of Linux"? Linux is the bane of the spirit of the FSF, Linus being pragmatic, after all, the head of the Linux KERNEL project, turning-down Stallman's bid to have him assign the FSF his linux-kernel copyrights, and being one of the many to point-out that AS WRITTEN, the GPL (v. 2) doesn't disallow dynamic linking (it's one of those things which lawyers joke "definitely wasn't written by a lawyer"), such that he even has a modifying header-license text for certain parts of said kernel. The FSF is the puritanical group (and you know, I just want to point-out that despite the bad associations, being "puritanical" isn't always bad, which is just another way of saying "purist"), whereas Linus is not interested in that sort of thing: he's perfectly fine with letting propriety run, or if a company doesn't want to do that work, not run, atop the kernel. If you want the "spirit of the [FSF]", use GNUHerd...oh wait.
Taking cues from his pragmatic orientation or many comments to that effect, I bet Linus is quite happy that Adobe ported at all, which might be taken as a testament to having obtained some measure of success (or that the Linux using community is just so annoyingly whiny that Adobe finally got tired of the spam). Like it or not, many standards are closed, most effective and functional and widely-implemented standards are closed; most highly successful standards are closed; and this is likely to continue into the future in many arenas, if not (let's hope) online, where the virtual "reality" of things makes contrary circumstances potentially feasible. Just because something is closed, doesn't mean its crappy: and just because many users have done crappy implementations, doesn't make the tool crappy: it has its uses. GTK/+, of itself, compared to alternative sets of tools, really is crap: yet it's currently used very effectively for functional and worthwhile programming and programs. Flash of itself, has quite a lot of merit, and when used intelligently those things are leveraged, but no matter what you do, the majority out there isn't always going to be that considerate or intelligent, if at all, and usually the only solution to this is to make the tools almost impossible to use effectively if they aren't mastered (and then even the masters of a discipline just simply refuse to use them: look at the programming environments for Sony's PS3 for a good case study on this: you have to be expert and deft to program well for that thing, but "it's too hard" say so many, even great gaming companies, and so not many games were readily available for it, and studios in general just weren't that interested; Sony actually made statements to the effect that they wanted it to be a hard set of tools in order that quality would be better, which I admire, but instead people just avoided the platform).
p.s., before I get flamed by the zealots, I'm typing this from within Firefox on XFCE atop of Ubuntu, am considering Debian, but am intrigued by the speed and rolling-updates of Arch, and like Linux and things OSS and FOSS very much. I'm just being realistic about things here.
Linux is so marginal that it almost doesn't count, like it or not. I rather don't blame them for saying they are cross-platform, etc., especially given that most that would hear that sort of thing will think "Windows and Mac", not "Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, Minix, . .."; Linux has been worth supporting only when some other MAJOR player begins to leverage it: Google, for instance (whicrh didn't exactly beg Adobe for anything, but said "we'll pay for you to play: we want to build it into our Chrome browser".
Besides that, you can't qualify "HTML5" with "real standard" yet: it's not yet, if it ever will be: those codifying it (you know, the companies, rather than the standards body) are going about talking about how it probably won't be ready for "ten or fifteen years": what a friggin' joke.
It's already done all the time with non-directed mutation-induction that's done because the government doesn't have two bits of a clue about what genetic manipulation is: if you purposefully and carefully, intelligently insert a gene into some sequence of DNA, for instance, it's "genetically modified", but if you mutate the hell out of something with high-intensity U.V.s until you have some apparently desirable phenotypes (without knowing what's actually gone-on underneath the surface, and no idea of other potential side-effects), it isn't (legally speaking) considered such, nor do you have to notify anybody of what you've done, whether it's a plant or a microbe. There are also already plenty of biohackers out there, but the difference between those who hack on biology and those who hack, say, on electronics, is that in the former you really do have to know what you're doing, not because of consequences but because if you don't it just doesn't work: unless, of course, nature decides to do things itself: actually keeping specific, desired, bacteria alive and getting certain outcomes in a lab isn't actually that easy, though it may seem to be to those outside of the field.
"Plasmid" != "beneficial gene". Plasmids are one method, used in nature and in labs alike, to transfer genes between bacteriums (-- I know that "bacteria" is proper and scientific, but I'm using "-ums" to emphasize "several individuals"). There are also other methods and devices, besides transfer of the devices called "plasmids", to accomplish gene transfer, by the way: I say that for general interest, and hope it intrigues someone out there. : )
Actually it ("nature") can dude: it's called "horizontal gene transfer", and it's genetics 101: living, functioning bacteria microbes can swap material and recombinate themselves in sito, while carrying out all the processes of their life cycles. This is why bacteria microbes are essentially taxonomically unclassifiable (at least without having severe doubts of ALL systems of classification, however their organization is conceived, whether based upon various phenotypic phenomena, or even upon genetic comparisons). In fact, it's not limited to microbes, just to the cellular level: retro-viruses can also infect organisms with foreign, functioning, genes when they use reverse transcriptase to integrate their own RNA-derived genomes into their host, that is, whenever a viron or some viruses have themselves become infected with genetic matter from a previous host: sometimes this is very very bad (in any "higher", multicellular organism it's deadly), while in other cases (plants are often able to cope quite well, being much simpler in life, though not processes, or "emergent properties necessary to keep living", terms). Let me repeat this, explicitly, this can take place within current organisms, not just in gametes before fusion, and not just because of mutation. Your own post is a bit mixed-up from a biological perspective: most microbes don't reproduce sexually as it is, and as far as "could not occur naturally", as far as we can tell there is nothing known yet that microbes can't metabolically come to deal with or use, or chemical they can't produce, etc. etc., and when they don't have the genetic complement to handle it, swapping begins (not just "swapping may accidentally occur in the vicinity luckily enough that they might come across some combination that's useful", but really "purposeful swapping which comes to produce a necessary genetic repertoire to deal with or live happily within a given situation"); even more interesting with regards this "mutation" thing: it doesn't happen just accidentally, as there are actually mutation-directing factors/mechanisms/structures within cellular organisms to happenstance-search for new genetic combinations to cope with situations, though emergency ONLY (seriously ONLY in this department, as it will almost always prove fatal to an organism).
And to get even "worse", "complex", whatever, if there's some function that an individual microbe just can't find itself able to do, and it hasn't happened upon the right genomic sequence yet, it can begin chemically communicating with the microbes in its environment to form a highly organized, complex organization or cooperating ecosystem of microbes to accomplish its ends (i.e. living in an environment, exploiting an environment to live). What is always comes down to with these things is that they have to function towards continued living: even if you designed them not to, you'd soon find yourself with colonies and derivatives that decided to trade for genes or repair the ones you've damaged in order to keep living in spite of your intents. That's what they do in a lab: even, in fact, if it means that the very characteristic/s for which they're designated in some way have to be completely reversed (such as E. Coli developing the ability to metabolize citrate).
In fact, because of these sorts of characteristics with microbes, plants, etc., I have something of a philosophical problem with actually calling them "species" or even "life" in the same sense as higher-order animals. These things might better be designated as environmentally observed super-modular/interchangeable/adaptable "machines"/"mechanistic devices"; it's for this sort of thing that earth is homeostatic too, a phenomenon which is still baffling, whether considered by the religious or the scientific community.
When they apply for patents like this, legitimately considered applications might be things like "making organisms to eat non-bio-degradable materials", but guess what? Microbes naturally develop abilities like that without our help: any sort of
Interest, maybe? Mathematical researchers can derive NO patent-protected benefit from their work at all, because fundamentally the concepts they produce are too abstract and, as ideas go, important to be permitted to receive patent protections. I don't, however, see a lack of funding to such theoretical departments, which are more than well compensated in prestige and grants to make those fields attractive to those with a penchant for it. But you see, this is a non-issue as it is: this sort of thing isn't legally eligible for legitimate patent protection in the first place.
Over and over and over biological patents are having to be struck-down because the processes involved with manipulating biological matter are too fundamental to life and often only-course methods to do it; legally speaking NO patents are supposed to be granted (as per the law itself) on any biological fact AT ALL, yet the USPTO has kept on granting them, only leading to one costly legal battle after another, which inevitably ends-up invalidating the patent in the end, costing us all time, money, etc. etc. in the first place.
And am I going to be the only guy on here (though I haven't read every comment yet, so forgive me if I've overlooked something) that is going to point-out that this isn't "artificial life" at all, in the sense that the "synthetic life" combination of terms is being thrown-around to signify? It's not even the first example of "synthetic life", as those terms mean in every proper and derivative sense, which applies to everything from all the clones we make, to every example of recombinant or genetically-engineered lifeform that we use daily in biological research; it's not even the first time a genome from one organism has been inserted into another, as the reports have been proclaiming: such stupidity, ignorance, and sensationalism, ugghh.
All this is, is recombinating of existing matter into an existing cell, in something of a slightly more complex fashion (if that) than some earlier examples. I wouldn't say this is something that should come near to qualifying as unique or meritorious of patent protection, and if it was granted it would shut-down a lot of previous and continuing biological research. The libertarian (center-left, not rightist) "but OMG, if we don't let them patent it, who's gonna research!!! OMG, the end of the frikkin' world will be upon us" is the same sort of diversion and fearmongering that we're usually able to spot (around here) quickly, but this is a electric-technology oriented site and community more than a biologically oriented one, so I guess I can understand why it's not as easily being seen through. Anyway, I tried to be a little more expansive in my comment because of that difference of orientation, a much more succinct way of saying some of what I did (speaking of reading more of the comments) here, http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1663502&cid=32334514
It's both concepts. Also, however, much of the actual knowledge that's really needed is still kept as trade secrets: concepts, for instance, may become public knowledge when patented, but the actual processes to produce the real material product, necessary for any utilization of that knowledge for most high-technology inventions, is often kept under wraps, whether in the private sector, or the government, or collaborations between the two: the explosive "glue" that holds nuclear warheads to U.S. rockets, for instance, was so secret (not to mention dangerous to make) that the knowledge of how to produce it was segmented between many individuals and classified, and now that they've decided to overhaul the nuclear arsenal (or rather, do maintenance upon it) they've realized that not only are some of those individuals dead, but others can't be found, and meanwhile both the composition of the stuff (which can be determined through chemical testing, but is highly dangerous because of its volatility) and the method of its production (which cannot be) is currently lost: likely we'll have to concoct a substitute or invent a replacement. : ( Heck, the jet that the Nazis were producing had a carbon-based substance as a coating which actually absorbed radar: to this day we can chemically analyze the substance, but don't know how to produce it. (Thankfully it's not crucial to know or do, as we have much better substances for such purposes than that earlier technology.)
This is/. man, you don't blame the tool here, you blame the users who misuse it: programming/design/use-your-brain 101, am I right people? Look at the data on crime in places where the likelihood is that many of the people around you are carrying guns, vs. those where that is not so likely, by the way: just do that some time. That sort of thing tends to be a good motivator not to, even where there are a lot of uncultured idiots who might be tempted to "break the system" (how, by the way, is people using guns "breaking the system" when the system allows for use of guns? It is not, it's the misuse that is breaking the law, but the system isn't broken because of this, as "If a system exists where people are going to break it, and requires that people will play nice to each other, then I think the system truly IS broken" in the context of trying to use the "guns don't..." saying in analogy with the patent system; for my purposes I'm going with it to make my own point, however).
Anyway, besides a rather foolish "nuclear option" to a misused system, a better response is accountability for the stewards of it, and the users of it: penalties for what can be reasonably deemed as obvious (to specialists in the field involved) attempts to gain overbroad monopolies through patents, i.e. not complying with the rules and intents of that system, in the name of abusing the government for your own purposes (there's already precedent for this: lawyers can be punished for bringing frivolous lawsuits into the courts by losing their licensing to practice law, which is EXTREMELY serious; also, Sandra Day O'Connor, sitting-in on a Federal Circuit panel, just recently told some hispanic organizations "GFY", in legal terms, "you don't get to use the government to get your way and censure speech you don't like", so the arguments for this sort of thing are still quite prevalent); then you can add accountability to those who are supposed to expertly review these things, and since it's their butts on the line, I'll bet they'll call for accountability for those who give them horrendous conditions to review, and so on (use the mass idiocy inherent in democracy against the highly intelligent, calculating abusers, who abuse others with it): courts have essentially ruled that the government can't normally be held liable for mishandling of their duties, even when mass deaths result from it, with some exceptions where legislation allows for it, so if you want to stop this sort of thing you need to get the right, narrow, carefully crafted, and carefully-enforced, legislation and officials passed and appointed/elected. You don't trash a system just because it's misused: doing that is like trashing a large, functioning, tested, battle-worn, base of code just because it's easier on YOU (i.e. you can be a lazy idiot) to deal with, rather than having to grapple with it, find its values, strengths, weaknesses, application, non-applications, etc. etc., and intelligently, deftly, precisely responding.
I'm appalled at the stupidity and daft ignorance or blindness to consequences to political and legal courses of action that people often take or advocate in their rage and disaffection, when it would affect them so terribly. The world is HORRENDOUSLY complex, and the forces at play tend to counteract and mitigate even terrible systems: ours is in theory actually not too shabby, it's just getting principled and dutiful, intelligent men into position to practice the dang thing that's the key. If you want to do that, however, you need to work towards undermining the overreaching and expanding principles of democracy that our system was originally designed to greatly hinder and prohibit in the first place (1), and make calculating, intelligent, and considerate/moral application/administration necessary for the well-being of the officials such that any actions that are taken in their own or their constituents' short-term interests are instead largely damaging or even perilous to them instead (2): without these
I understand hat "fair and balanced" does not mean "opposing extremes", but I was pointing-out that if you have one extreme, it's better to have another to call its bluff, and vice versa. This is the history of the world man: there's almost never such a thing as "neutral" journalism, even rarer to have anything but extremes, sensationalism, etc..: people have correctly discerned and exposed that for centuries, the media is anything but investigative. And with regards the language of "extremes", well, define it: in our day such terms are used of anything by anyone of something they don't like, just as "moderate" is used not only to mean either nothing or just pretended neutrality, but many times is applied to views and positions that are, historically, nothing less than excessive extremes.
The media in general is in that business, the up-side to having Fox around is that it's one side of the nonsense that gets to criticize the other, and vice versa. If you think there are many out there publishing anything but nonsense, then I would have you carefully examine your discernment, if you can.
"...the internal problems [rotted] the USSR to the point where the system as it [was] could no longer support it[self]...". Sorry to be a pedant, but it drove me nuts!
Slashdot Mirror
Ahhhh!!! Stupid me. You meant "Kelvin", didn't you? But for some darn reason my mind saw "thousand" there (which didn't make sense given that moon is so far out there), and before I'd even finished making another response for dreamchaser, "what a dummy I am".
That hot, hugh? Me too if so.
Don't forget that cell phone locations are not only already tracked, but the cell phone companies are constantly working to make it ever more accurate: there is good reason for this, that is, if they know the location of a device, and the device can report the signal strength back to them, as well as be noted when it disappears in a general area, they can improve their services: it's cell phone inc. 101, and if you don't like it, don't use one. They do this because coverage is terribly difficult to provide and maintain, and expensive (and the towers), such that the more data they have, the more intelligently they can proceed. Most people just don't even have a clue to how marvelous that little device that surpasses even the wildest dreams for handhelds in the early Star Trek series actually is, or even more interesting, the infrastructure and technologies it takes to make it more than a just a connectionless disabled mobile computing device.
Just want to point-out, however, about the "corporate personhood is a bullshit concept" sentiment, that oftentimes what people mean is that "corporations shouldn't be protected in advocating positions as are individuals", but what that would effectively means is that people would not have right of association to advance positions, ideas, causes, critciisms, etc.: a lobby is a corporation, a union is a corporation, a religious organization is a corporation, a movement of cause-based voters who convince a bunch of people to vote the same (for some piece of legislation that they've either proposed and gotten into congress, or advocated)...is a corporation. What people tend to miss is that just because a corporation brings-in money that are labeled "profits" rathe rather than "charitable contributions", that doesn't then mean they shouldn't be allowed to be represented as associated by some spokesmen of that corporation.
I don't think you understood his rhetoric: by the words he employed he appears to be saying what those who say "we should interpret the constitution with the times to mean what is convenient or preferable to us" and simultaneously implying that those who say "no, law is not law unless interpreted accurately to ascertain to and apply what it means when and as written" are saying that "the law should be stone and otherwise you're all Nazis and anti-black racists and chauvinistic woman-hating knuckle-dragging bigots": that is, at least, what many have tried to say, imply, and paint others as, in their rhetoric in this country. Personally I'm all for defining those who try to twist law (and which can be confirmed to reasonably be doing so because they're violating the tenets of genuine reading) as subversive and treasonous, but then again, with as many times in history that parties twist history and even force some re-interpretation down the throats of the elite, and then those of the populace in the forms of historical myths which become as faithfully held as true in their hearts as anything they could possibly value, that their minds are dominated (and you know, the elites aren't exception to this), that could be too dangerous a thing to do.
...a bar set a tad too high
You live in a day where the politicians and their stooges want it outlawed for you to collect evidence (record) their treatment and handling of you, and many other devious things, which sort of thing that Constitution (if actually followed, applied, enforced) would disallow, and you think it's a "tad too high"? The dang thing is meant to be a limitation on government TO PROTECT YOU, but too many idealists want their way NOW and so will go to any lenghts to ignore, "reinterpret", and subvert it. That it is set high is a good thing.
Good example, many of the cases that had bearing upon slavery...turned out the way they did because the Constitution was ignored. Various amendments were totally unnecessary if the darn thing had been hermeneutically interpreted (i.e. read for what it means, not interpreted as the reader wants it to mean in their own head), but because of that refusal to let law reign explicit amendments were made: but note they are worthless in a climate where the thing can be made to mean whatever anyone wants so long as they are in a position that others let them have authority to declare it.
Great comment, but please put your screen name (or if really daring, real one) next time. I wanted to add that the extremes aren't always opposite: an honest look at the current parties shows that in large part, ideologically speaking, they're two sides of the same coin: the "opposites" and "extremes" are their approaches to trying to obtain the same things. Unfortunately we have, pretty much, one (not two) terrible extreme in power (if we're to look from a historical perspective) to which I think we'll get many varied and diverse strong reactions (i.e. more extremes). Being "extreme" isn't always so bad, rather "excessive zealotry that blocks critical thinking, evaluation, and fair mindedness" is the sense that "extreme" is used in these days, which is unfortunate, because it muddles thinking when I think we should all be for "extremely upright/principled/just" people/living/honestly/thinking, etc. etc.. Actually passionate people who have such characteristics? Easily painted as "extreme" (by which really is meant "zealots", but the lowest common denomination won't discern the difference and it'll be influence one way or another, usually easily).
We're already there: corporations, whether officially designated by existence on a piece of paper in a laywer's desk, or just ideological or cause-based movements tryign to use the government to bring about their vision of society by force (rather than building communities: no, that would be difficult and require personal investment and sacrifice). You guys think the unions aren't corporations? The mass of voters that are so easiily swayed? There is either rule of law...imposed by an elite few who are idealistic enough to care (and whether that law is good or noble or fair or just or virtuous etc. etc. isn't something I said, human law isn't instrinsically just, I'm just pointing this out), or there is rule (warring) of corporations: there is also warring of corporations by mandate of law, or when law rules the corporations can still war against it, but when the rhetoric of "rule fo law" is repetitiously spewed by a president who flaunts it at every opportunity in his own interests, those shared with his "corporate" constituencies, what do you think you have? "Corporate anarchy."
Actually the Fed mandated loans to people in income and credit brackets that happen to be beneficial to their voter shares, but which the banks knew could be suicide; the set-up Federal, quasi-private organizations to control and direct this effort, and passed legislation which could make criminal those who "discriminated" by not following their guidelines--which wasn't too hard to legitimize because currently it is minorities generally whose finanical conditions are bad, thus meaning that any smart, intelligent, reasonable, business-oriented, careful, responsible bank could have its workers charged and imprisoned, forever demonized as "discriminating", and even have the institution sold-off to financial institutions "compliant" with the political mobsters. On top of this, the profligate spending of the Fed and terrible non-economics they played (economics means "economy with ___", anything, and in the areas of money, "not spending more than you have", not much more) put the dollar into jeopardy, for which the Fed R. held interest rates low in order to prevent a total collapse of that currency (then you would see WWIII, as the entire world is tied into our system, and heavily: Texas could get the Fed to bow on many issues with threats of secession alone given they have most of the financial mega-cities, though I could be wrong since the Fed Gov. isn't know for being rational, nor its bureaucracies); coupled with the mandated lending which was supposed to make the politico-sold "American dream is to own your own house, even if you can't friggin' afford it, which will guarantee national financial utopia, and which we had to engineer as such a dream because it's convenient for us to mirage that the CALIFORNIAN housing crisis is really a national one" marketing/vision possible, meant there was a perfect storm for never-ending and rampant, greedy borrowing: guaranteed by the Fed and unavoidable by banks. The smart ones lent, and then sold-off EVERYTHING that had anything to do with real estate of this sub-prime.
And no, it wasn't Bush's fault. It WAS, however, a joint effort by both parties, in various points here and there: it was the Dems, however, that decided to make it impossible for banks to avoid the financially dangerous, I mean "minoirties, the greedy white bastards are all racist pigs who won't lend to the MINORITIES, IF WE KEEP SAYING IT LOUD ENOUGH, LONG ENOUGH, REPETITIOUSLY ENOUGH, EVEN WE'LL BELIEVE ALL THIS". What really happened, however, and continues, is the idiots in Washington believe they can themselves direct an entire nation to their own delusions of grandeur, and sustain it all by cooking the books more systematically and questionably than any Enron could ever imagine, all funded and supported by the mobs that have been sold the idea that we can all be white-collar, high-class, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and "creative class" producers: no production of real goods necessary, no need of the farm land and product (that we'll seize by eminent domain and turn into taxable commercial and residental property, which in turn, by virtue of the inevitable, dogmatically unquestionable, truism that all real estate will always rise in value, especially if we as politicians and bureaucrats simply declare higher values in our assessments for taxes, we'll always be prosperous and fat, and therefore we've succeeded to become your saviors, keep giving us power!).
You idiots, stop making diversion with finger-pointing at the politcial label, instead of considering the real implications of the schemes the unscrupulous cons are concocting (along with their constituents). This guy thinks things will be better with numerous segregated, decentralized mafias voting their schemes? Well actually, probably...to a great extent it will be for this or that luckier jurisdiction which isn't such a scheming cess-pool of human avarice vs. the others: but the others, I'm sure, will likely not tolerate the "inequality" (by which, they mean, "non egalitarianism", "they're not like us, they must be taking advantage of u
I need to mention that the microbes known no earth, with all their various metabolisms, sometimes seem as though they really are from separate planets. That said, enver underestimate their abilities to swap genetic material and re-synthesize their machineries for different environments. Knowing this, "there should be little chance of confusion" isn't so reassuring: it already is just with the "earth" based life, even trying to figure out whether this or that is related to that or the other, where such and such came from, etc. (the so-called maps of microbial relationships are extremely pick-and-choosy, subjectively prioritizing one or another criterium over others depending on the values of the researchers, and often more in favor of various formulations of theories instead of the barest and hardest facts or most critical considerations: honestly it's practically impossible to get past the sheer amount of information, that's ever-increasing by magnitudes, in order to do better, but much better can be done, it's just that complicated and as I said, confusing). Oh, and this, http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1675560&cid=32465806http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1675560&cid=32465806
Actually I don't think his is a bad point. First off, we DON'T understand the metabolisms of most microbes on earth: most CAN'T be cultured in a lab because of this, experimented with, etc. etc.: only a little subset of the entire known microbial biota are even available for us to research. Beyond this, however, the known range of things that microbes can eat is expanding beyond our wildest imaginings: and not just on the bottom of oceans. That's why we now have microbes to use to eat oil spills, nuclear waste, and even metals (ummm....iron and steal, yum!). Not kidding about the bacteria that eat metals, by the way, which incidentally...DO IT BY HYDROGEN AND ELECTRON EXCHANGES. There's all sorts of stuff that one can tell you haven't even considered from the comment you just made: you need to do more dreaming "dream[er]...".
P.S. bacteria have survived in the vaccum of space on the moon, so "[they] would most likely die" is also not a very informed statement. I don't mean to be too insulting here, just very frank about the state of knowledge on these things vs. what you wrote: that is rose to "5, Insightful" just demanded the bio nerd in me to respond.
Food isn't taxed in the U.S., by the way: Federal law exempts it. States can re-define what constitutes "food", to some extent, e.g. in Colorado they've defined candy as a non-food item, and also given a definition for candy, and are now taxing it, but for many items they could very likely be beat-up by the Fed for attempting to somehow un-define food as food when it's fairly obvious that it is. [Please note, none of my reply should be taken as tax advice, and in any event you have questions about tax issues or want to act on some information, you should consult with a real, certified, licensed, (or whatever legal designation exists in you jurisdiction for recognition of someone as a valid practitioner of law) legal practitioner of law.
Flash IS a documented standard, but developing an alternative and functional player is hard: plus, it requires having $$$ to pay for the licenses on patented technology within it. Heck, developing PDF parsers is difficult, but there's been plenty of time for alternatives to mature and become viable competitors, (and I think it's not quite as difficult as creating a functional, dependable alternative to the dominant flash player).
If the BSDs have a linux-compatibility layer, why aren't they utilizing it? If it doesn't quite work with Flash, why aren't they improving it? And what do you mean "Spirit of Linux"? Linux is the bane of the spirit of the FSF, Linus being pragmatic, after all, the head of the Linux KERNEL project, turning-down Stallman's bid to have him assign the FSF his linux-kernel copyrights, and being one of the many to point-out that AS WRITTEN, the GPL (v. 2) doesn't disallow dynamic linking (it's one of those things which lawyers joke "definitely wasn't written by a lawyer"), such that he even has a modifying header-license text for certain parts of said kernel. The FSF is the puritanical group (and you know, I just want to point-out that despite the bad associations, being "puritanical" isn't always bad, which is just another way of saying "purist"), whereas Linus is not interested in that sort of thing: he's perfectly fine with letting propriety run, or if a company doesn't want to do that work, not run, atop the kernel. If you want the "spirit of the [FSF]", use GNUHerd...oh wait.
Taking cues from his pragmatic orientation or many comments to that effect, I bet Linus is quite happy that Adobe ported at all, which might be taken as a testament to having obtained some measure of success (or that the Linux using community is just so annoyingly whiny that Adobe finally got tired of the spam). Like it or not, many standards are closed, most effective and functional and widely-implemented standards are closed; most highly successful standards are closed; and this is likely to continue into the future in many arenas, if not (let's hope) online, where the virtual "reality" of things makes contrary circumstances potentially feasible. Just because something is closed, doesn't mean its crappy: and just because many users have done crappy implementations, doesn't make the tool crappy: it has its uses. GTK/+, of itself, compared to alternative sets of tools, really is crap: yet it's currently used very effectively for functional and worthwhile programming and programs. Flash of itself, has quite a lot of merit, and when used intelligently those things are leveraged, but no matter what you do, the majority out there isn't always going to be that considerate or intelligent, if at all, and usually the only solution to this is to make the tools almost impossible to use effectively if they aren't mastered (and then even the masters of a discipline just simply refuse to use them: look at the programming environments for Sony's PS3 for a good case study on this: you have to be expert and deft to program well for that thing, but "it's too hard" say so many, even great gaming companies, and so not many games were readily available for it, and studios in general just weren't that interested; Sony actually made statements to the effect that they wanted it to be a hard set of tools in order that quality would be better, which I admire, but instead people just avoided the platform).
p.s., before I get flamed by the zealots, I'm typing this from within Firefox on XFCE atop of Ubuntu, am considering Debian, but am intrigued by the speed and rolling-updates of Arch, and like Linux and things OSS and FOSS very much. I'm just being realistic about things here.
Linux is so marginal that it almost doesn't count, like it or not. I rather don't blame them for saying they are cross-platform, etc., especially given that most that would hear that sort of thing will think "Windows and Mac", not "Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, Minix, . . ."; Linux has been worth supporting only when some other MAJOR player begins to leverage it: Google, for instance (whicrh didn't exactly beg Adobe for anything, but said "we'll pay for you to play: we want to build it into our Chrome browser".
Besides that, you can't qualify "HTML5" with "real standard" yet: it's not yet, if it ever will be: those codifying it (you know, the companies, rather than the standards body) are going about talking about how it probably won't be ready for "ten or fifteen years": what a friggin' joke.
It's already done all the time with non-directed mutation-induction that's done because the government doesn't have two bits of a clue about what genetic manipulation is: if you purposefully and carefully, intelligently insert a gene into some sequence of DNA, for instance, it's "genetically modified", but if you mutate the hell out of something with high-intensity U.V.s until you have some apparently desirable phenotypes (without knowing what's actually gone-on underneath the surface, and no idea of other potential side-effects), it isn't (legally speaking) considered such, nor do you have to notify anybody of what you've done, whether it's a plant or a microbe. There are also already plenty of biohackers out there, but the difference between those who hack on biology and those who hack, say, on electronics, is that in the former you really do have to know what you're doing, not because of consequences but because if you don't it just doesn't work: unless, of course, nature decides to do things itself: actually keeping specific, desired, bacteria alive and getting certain outcomes in a lab isn't actually that easy, though it may seem to be to those outside of the field.
"Plasmid" != "beneficial gene". Plasmids are one method, used in nature and in labs alike, to transfer genes between bacteriums (-- I know that "bacteria" is proper and scientific, but I'm using "-ums" to emphasize "several individuals"). There are also other methods and devices, besides transfer of the devices called "plasmids", to accomplish gene transfer, by the way: I say that for general interest, and hope it intrigues someone out there. : )
Actually it ("nature") can dude: it's called "horizontal gene transfer", and it's genetics 101: living, functioning bacteria microbes can swap material and recombinate themselves in sito, while carrying out all the processes of their life cycles. This is why bacteria microbes are essentially taxonomically unclassifiable (at least without having severe doubts of ALL systems of classification, however their organization is conceived, whether based upon various phenotypic phenomena, or even upon genetic comparisons). In fact, it's not limited to microbes, just to the cellular level: retro-viruses can also infect organisms with foreign, functioning, genes when they use reverse transcriptase to integrate their own RNA-derived genomes into their host, that is, whenever a viron or some viruses have themselves become infected with genetic matter from a previous host: sometimes this is very very bad (in any "higher", multicellular organism it's deadly), while in other cases (plants are often able to cope quite well, being much simpler in life, though not processes, or "emergent properties necessary to keep living", terms). Let me repeat this, explicitly, this can take place within current organisms, not just in gametes before fusion, and not just because of mutation. Your own post is a bit mixed-up from a biological perspective: most microbes don't reproduce sexually as it is, and as far as "could not occur naturally", as far as we can tell there is nothing known yet that microbes can't metabolically come to deal with or use, or chemical they can't produce, etc. etc., and when they don't have the genetic complement to handle it, swapping begins (not just "swapping may accidentally occur in the vicinity luckily enough that they might come across some combination that's useful", but really "purposeful swapping which comes to produce a necessary genetic repertoire to deal with or live happily within a given situation"); even more interesting with regards this "mutation" thing: it doesn't happen just accidentally, as there are actually mutation-directing factors/mechanisms/structures within cellular organisms to happenstance-search for new genetic combinations to cope with situations, though emergency ONLY (seriously ONLY in this department, as it will almost always prove fatal to an organism).
And to get even "worse", "complex", whatever, if there's some function that an individual microbe just can't find itself able to do, and it hasn't happened upon the right genomic sequence yet, it can begin chemically communicating with the microbes in its environment to form a highly organized, complex organization or cooperating ecosystem of microbes to accomplish its ends (i.e. living in an environment, exploiting an environment to live). What is always comes down to with these things is that they have to function towards continued living: even if you designed them not to, you'd soon find yourself with colonies and derivatives that decided to trade for genes or repair the ones you've damaged in order to keep living in spite of your intents. That's what they do in a lab: even, in fact, if it means that the very characteristic/s for which they're designated in some way have to be completely reversed (such as E. Coli developing the ability to metabolize citrate).
In fact, because of these sorts of characteristics with microbes, plants, etc., I have something of a philosophical problem with actually calling them "species" or even "life" in the same sense as higher-order animals. These things might better be designated as environmentally observed super-modular/interchangeable/adaptable "machines"/"mechanistic devices"; it's for this sort of thing that earth is homeostatic too, a phenomenon which is still baffling, whether considered by the religious or the scientific community.
When they apply for patents like this, legitimately considered applications might be things like "making organisms to eat non-bio-degradable materials", but guess what? Microbes naturally develop abilities like that without our help: any sort of
Interest, maybe? Mathematical researchers can derive NO patent-protected benefit from their work at all, because fundamentally the concepts they produce are too abstract and, as ideas go, important to be permitted to receive patent protections. I don't, however, see a lack of funding to such theoretical departments, which are more than well compensated in prestige and grants to make those fields attractive to those with a penchant for it. But you see, this is a non-issue as it is: this sort of thing isn't legally eligible for legitimate patent protection in the first place.
Over and over and over biological patents are having to be struck-down because the processes involved with manipulating biological matter are too fundamental to life and often only-course methods to do it; legally speaking NO patents are supposed to be granted (as per the law itself) on any biological fact AT ALL, yet the USPTO has kept on granting them, only leading to one costly legal battle after another, which inevitably ends-up invalidating the patent in the end, costing us all time, money, etc. etc. in the first place.
And am I going to be the only guy on here (though I haven't read every comment yet, so forgive me if I've overlooked something) that is going to point-out that this isn't "artificial life" at all, in the sense that the "synthetic life" combination of terms is being thrown-around to signify? It's not even the first example of "synthetic life", as those terms mean in every proper and derivative sense, which applies to everything from all the clones we make, to every example of recombinant or genetically-engineered lifeform that we use daily in biological research; it's not even the first time a genome from one organism has been inserted into another, as the reports have been proclaiming: such stupidity, ignorance, and sensationalism, ugghh.
All this is, is recombinating of existing matter into an existing cell, in something of a slightly more complex fashion (if that) than some earlier examples. I wouldn't say this is something that should come near to qualifying as unique or meritorious of patent protection, and if it was granted it would shut-down a lot of previous and continuing biological research. The libertarian (center-left, not rightist) "but OMG, if we don't let them patent it, who's gonna research!!! OMG, the end of the frikkin' world will be upon us" is the same sort of diversion and fearmongering that we're usually able to spot (around here) quickly, but this is a electric-technology oriented site and community more than a biologically oriented one, so I guess I can understand why it's not as easily being seen through. Anyway, I tried to be a little more expansive in my comment because of that difference of orientation, a much more succinct way of saying some of what I did (speaking of reading more of the comments) here, http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1663502&cid=32334514
It's both concepts. Also, however, much of the actual knowledge that's really needed is still kept as trade secrets: concepts, for instance, may become public knowledge when patented, but the actual processes to produce the real material product, necessary for any utilization of that knowledge for most high-technology inventions, is often kept under wraps, whether in the private sector, or the government, or collaborations between the two: the explosive "glue" that holds nuclear warheads to U.S. rockets, for instance, was so secret (not to mention dangerous to make) that the knowledge of how to produce it was segmented between many individuals and classified, and now that they've decided to overhaul the nuclear arsenal (or rather, do maintenance upon it) they've realized that not only are some of those individuals dead, but others can't be found, and meanwhile both the composition of the stuff (which can be determined through chemical testing, but is highly dangerous because of its volatility) and the method of its production (which cannot be) is currently lost: likely we'll have to concoct a substitute or invent a replacement. : ( Heck, the jet that the Nazis were producing had a carbon-based substance as a coating which actually absorbed radar: to this day we can chemically analyze the substance, but don't know how to produce it. (Thankfully it's not crucial to know or do, as we have much better substances for such purposes than that earlier technology.)
This is /. man, you don't blame the tool here, you blame the users who misuse it: programming/design/use-your-brain 101, am I right people? Look at the data on crime in places where the likelihood is that many of the people around you are carrying guns, vs. those where that is not so likely, by the way: just do that some time. That sort of thing tends to be a good motivator not to, even where there are a lot of uncultured idiots who might be tempted to "break the system" (how, by the way, is people using guns "breaking the system" when the system allows for use of guns? It is not, it's the misuse that is breaking the law, but the system isn't broken because of this, as "If a system exists where people are going to break it, and requires that people will play nice to each other, then I think the system truly IS broken" in the context of trying to use the "guns don't..." saying in analogy with the patent system; for my purposes I'm going with it to make my own point, however).
Anyway, besides a rather foolish "nuclear option" to a misused system, a better response is accountability for the stewards of it, and the users of it: penalties for what can be reasonably deemed as obvious (to specialists in the field involved) attempts to gain overbroad monopolies through patents, i.e. not complying with the rules and intents of that system, in the name of abusing the government for your own purposes (there's already precedent for this: lawyers can be punished for bringing frivolous lawsuits into the courts by losing their licensing to practice law, which is EXTREMELY serious; also, Sandra Day O'Connor, sitting-in on a Federal Circuit panel, just recently told some hispanic organizations "GFY", in legal terms, "you don't get to use the government to get your way and censure speech you don't like", so the arguments for this sort of thing are still quite prevalent); then you can add accountability to those who are supposed to expertly review these things, and since it's their butts on the line, I'll bet they'll call for accountability for those who give them horrendous conditions to review, and so on (use the mass idiocy inherent in democracy against the highly intelligent, calculating abusers, who abuse others with it): courts have essentially ruled that the government can't normally be held liable for mishandling of their duties, even when mass deaths result from it, with some exceptions where legislation allows for it, so if you want to stop this sort of thing you need to get the right, narrow, carefully crafted, and carefully-enforced, legislation and officials passed and appointed/elected. You don't trash a system just because it's misused: doing that is like trashing a large, functioning, tested, battle-worn, base of code just because it's easier on YOU (i.e. you can be a lazy idiot) to deal with, rather than having to grapple with it, find its values, strengths, weaknesses, application, non-applications, etc. etc., and intelligently, deftly, precisely responding.
I'm appalled at the stupidity and daft ignorance or blindness to consequences to political and legal courses of action that people often take or advocate in their rage and disaffection, when it would affect them so terribly. The world is HORRENDOUSLY complex, and the forces at play tend to counteract and mitigate even terrible systems: ours is in theory actually not too shabby, it's just getting principled and dutiful, intelligent men into position to practice the dang thing that's the key. If you want to do that, however, you need to work towards undermining the overreaching and expanding principles of democracy that our system was originally designed to greatly hinder and prohibit in the first place (1), and make calculating, intelligent, and considerate/moral application/administration necessary for the well-being of the officials such that any actions that are taken in their own or their constituents' short-term interests are instead largely damaging or even perilous to them instead (2): without these
I understand hat "fair and balanced" does not mean "opposing extremes", but I was pointing-out that if you have one extreme, it's better to have another to call its bluff, and vice versa. This is the history of the world man: there's almost never such a thing as "neutral" journalism, even rarer to have anything but extremes, sensationalism, etc..: people have correctly discerned and exposed that for centuries, the media is anything but investigative. And with regards the language of "extremes", well, define it: in our day such terms are used of anything by anyone of something they don't like, just as "moderate" is used not only to mean either nothing or just pretended neutrality, but many times is applied to views and positions that are, historically, nothing less than excessive extremes.
The media in general is in that business, the up-side to having Fox around is that it's one side of the nonsense that gets to criticize the other, and vice versa. If you think there are many out there publishing anything but nonsense, then I would have you carefully examine your discernment, if you can.
"...the internal problems [rotted] the USSR to the point where the system as it [was] could no longer support it[self]...". Sorry to be a pedant, but it drove me nuts!