Yes, my point is just that these things don't just store energy, they have to be in circuit with something. Immagine wiring up a few square miles of the ocean and immagine how much environmental impact that could have. Also, these are not magical devices that get energy from nowhere. If they get energy from the waves then surely they take energy away from the waves. Do we really want to fuck around with changing global water patterns in any significant way? The tides actually play a huge role in regulating how fast the earth spins and how fast the seasons process. I'm not saying we shouldn't look into it, I'm just saying that if there's one thing fossile fules have taught us it is that actions have unintended consequences and that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Well...they're very expensive right now, and remember that "current" implies that they have to be hooked up to some sort of electric circuit that they're powering. There are some practical considerations with what you are suggesting. Also, if I recall my lessons in relativity correctly, the nanotubes have to be moving relative to their container in order to generate current. That means that if the device and it's nanotube contents are moving at a steady rate it won't work, it would have to be accelerating or changing directions in some fassion.
Nope, Galt's engine converted atpmospheric static electricity into current, this one converts kinetic energy into current. We have always been able to convert kenetic energy into current by using it to rotate a coil in a magnetic field, this just greatly enhances the range of kenetic motion now available for conversion.
Wait a minute, are you saying that people who speak out against free speech should be punished? Would you give such a person a trial and just compensation? And who the fuck gave you the country? There's about 300 million of us who might kindly object to your claim of sole ownership rights to our country. As a believer in the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it's nice to know that there's someone else out there who believes that the jails should be destroyed and who supports my inalienable right to fuck your sister.
Chinks are chinese, gooks are vietnamese. People need to learn to keep their racial slurs straight or soon we won't be able to tell who anybody hates, and that would be terrible!
With the exception of drugs, all of those things are against state law, not federal. Gay marriage is legal in Mass. Prostitution legal in Nevada, etc. Is anyone making the argument that states can't regulate carbon emmisions?
The difference is that when democrats are opposed to research, they just don't fund it. They don't say to scientists "we don't like nuclear weapons, so change epsilon in the equations so that they won't work any more". Whereas republicans seem to tell scientists to change their data to fit the facts that they want to be true, like telling scientists to change the nesting range so that california isn't included in the range of this bird. The former is a funding issue. That's political, it's ledgit. The later is data manipulation. In the world of science, that's sacriledge.
Lack of demand. Lets admit it, the vast majority of people who want to run linux build their own computers, no? Now that linux is becoming an office workstation option for at least a reasonable number of goverment and private sector workplaces, it becomes feasable for dell to keep a full time linux specialist on tech staff. They aren't really trying to sell this stuff to geeks, this is strictly aimed at the office.
The RIAA is as dead as disco, it's just thrashing alot on the way down and trying to take as many people out with it as possible. They no longer provide any essential service except promotion. What value do they add to any project? Anyone with an imac has a recording studio and digital content doesn't need to be manufactured. With sites like myspace and youtube becoming increasingly popular, promotion will increasingly be done online too. As the rest of the world catches up to the early adopters over the next ten years the influence of the RIAA will slowly wan until they are only one of many promotion and distrobution networks that new artists can use.
This gene would almost certainly have to be inserted before the eye develops, as it affects the type of "cone" cells that develop in the eye. Also, gene theropy into retinal is very difficult because (thank god) there are very few viruses that infect retinal cells.
IANAL, but my recollection is that it is illegal to even talk about the gag order. So you couldn't say, "I am forbidden by law to talk about that." You could say nothing, or "I don't want to talk about that." "I can't talk about that" is kind of fuzzy.
You obviously havn't read the PATRIOT act or the national security survailiance act. They explicitly give the FBI the ability to issue "National Security Letters" which have the force of warrents but don't need to be signed by a judge. You can be arrested for failing to comply, so they are somewhat more than a "request".
The statement was specified as acute, not chronic. My point was that this is nothing like an immediate problem, if it is a problem at all. Low level liver damage is one of those facts of life. Alcohol causes it. Red meats cause it. Sodium causes it. Lots of things cause it. Unless you're an organic vegan living on a mountain you're probably eating lots of things that cause low level liver damage. No need to get all in a panic about it.
Agreed, the p-value would be a wonderful number to have here and would be meaningful. However, without knowing the p-value, saying something is or is not statistically significant is meaningless. My understanding is that Monsanto says the results are not statistically significant while greenpeace says they are. My point is, what's the p-value? All else is wanking.
I am a biogeneticist, and while I have not read the technical article (as it has not been published yet), I do have a few points. 1) According to TFA, this corn has been in use for a while. Remember the callifornia spinach ecoli thing? It took what, a couple dozen people getting sick for the authorities to track back to the source of the problem. Conspiricy theories aside, you will note that there have been no outbreaks of illness associated with this corn. On an acute level, it seems to be as safe as eating spinach (note that this is anecdotal rather than rigerous scientific work).
2) Most of the stuff that we eat can be shown to be toxic to the liver in rat studies under some conditions. I will be interested to see what their control groups are once the study is published.
3) Statistical significance is a useless word in these sort of situations. What we need to look at is the confidence interval, which is a hard number. Monsanto probably asserts that they aren't 95% certain that the effects were caused by corn toxicity, and Greenpeace probably asserts that they aren't 95% certain that the effects were not caused by corn toxicity. This dispute will eventually be resolved by the scientific community, which will promptly be ignored by the rest of the world at large.
4) "Natural" and "Nature" are nonsense words from a scientific perspective, used by people who would really like to use the word "God", but are too saphisticated or ashamed to actually use it. Nature is not an entity, does not intend, and encompasses humans and human creations as much as it encompasses beavers and beaver creations.
Um, IANAL but I thought that if you created a new strain of foodstuff the old fassion way (breeding) then you could patent it. Nothing new, nothing changed. You can patent it just like you always could.
Science is not infinately applicable. It applies only to those things that are falsafiable or subject to some sort of empirical test. To the extent that the scientific method can be applied to religion, scientists should and do apply it. It doesn't get a "by". But most of the really central parts of religion are simply not testable. An inability to test something doesn't justafy a conclusion that it is false. Now, you seem to be focusing on christianity rather than religion in general, so I'll adress it. The afterlife is not testable, not a realm of scientific inquiry, and therefor any opinions one holds on it are equally valid. Virgin birth is testable and, while biologicaly possible (barely), is unlikely to happen. Ceramonies are important, to us psychologically if nothing else. It's fairly easy to construct a version of christianity consistant with a scientific world view, the unitarians have done a pretty good job. So have the catholics at various times.
Of course you can be a "real" scientist and religious. Heck, belief in god isn't even a prerequisite for being "religious". However, being a "real" scientist is probably incompatable with most "fundamentalist" and "literalist" religions as well as many "personal god" religions. While many scientists are religious, most of those are so in a kind of vague "supreme archatect" way. Most of the religious scientists I know I would describe as Deist or Unitarian, or something like that. Oh, and Mormon. Lots of Mormon scientists out there. I suppose that if you plan on having your own planet some day you'd better learn how to make it right.
Hmmm...well, not to be pedantic, but doesn't athiest just mean "not a theist"? Conceded that one does not have to believe in a god to have a religion (though both buddhists and hindus believe in gods), it seems to me that there exist forms of thought that are both not theistic and not religious. Atheism certainly can be a religion (and religions can be atheistic), but they don't have to be.
Well, yes. That's true. But it's not like google is the one putting this stuff up there. Google is no more responsable for what other people do than the owner of a circle K is responsible for the gangs that deal drugs in his parking lot.
Well, I don't especially feel that we are opressing people in the rest of the world. That statement was specifically used as an example of anti-Americanism which is not anti-capitalism or anti-westernism. But I am honest enough with myself to realize that Opressors seldom feel like they're opressing anyone. Usually they feel like they're doing the other guy a favor. Things always look different from the other side of the fence and I am willing to admit that, though I don't really feel that the US opresses anyone, if I was an Afghan or an Iraqi I might feel differently about that. They certainly seem to.
Wait a minute here. You seem to be confusing anti-Americanism with anti-capitalism, anti-westernism, and pro-communism. Isn't it possible that some people are anti-American while loving capitalism, western culture, and democracy in general? Taking the devil's advocate here, but I can immagine someone saying, "Look, it's pretty bad in North Korea right now, but at least they havn't invaded anyone for the past 50 or so years. North Korea contents itself with opressing it's own people while the US goes out and opresses everyone else. On the sheer weight of the numbers, that puts the US in a worse position."
Actually, I think antarctica is officially a protectorate of the united nations, so it counts as "claimed". But sea level is a farce anyway, it is the average sea level of all the worlds oceans, leaving large swaths of islands in the pacific (with its relatively low absolute water level) unaccounted for.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, my point is just that these things don't just store energy, they have to be in circuit with something. Immagine wiring up a few square miles of the ocean and immagine how much environmental impact that could have. Also, these are not magical devices that get energy from nowhere. If they get energy from the waves then surely they take energy away from the waves. Do we really want to fuck around with changing global water patterns in any significant way? The tides actually play a huge role in regulating how fast the earth spins and how fast the seasons process. I'm not saying we shouldn't look into it, I'm just saying that if there's one thing fossile fules have taught us it is that actions have unintended consequences and that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Well...they're very expensive right now, and remember that "current" implies that they have to be hooked up to some sort of electric circuit that they're powering. There are some practical considerations with what you are suggesting. Also, if I recall my lessons in relativity correctly, the nanotubes have to be moving relative to their container in order to generate current. That means that if the device and it's nanotube contents are moving at a steady rate it won't work, it would have to be accelerating or changing directions in some fassion.
Nope, Galt's engine converted atpmospheric static electricity into current, this one converts kinetic energy into current. We have always been able to convert kenetic energy into current by using it to rotate a coil in a magnetic field, this just greatly enhances the range of kenetic motion now available for conversion.
Wait a minute, are you saying that people who speak out against free speech should be punished? Would you give such a person a trial and just compensation? And who the fuck gave you the country? There's about 300 million of us who might kindly object to your claim of sole ownership rights to our country. As a believer in the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it's nice to know that there's someone else out there who believes that the jails should be destroyed and who supports my inalienable right to fuck your sister.
Chinks are chinese, gooks are vietnamese. People need to learn to keep their racial slurs straight or soon we won't be able to tell who anybody hates, and that would be terrible!
With the exception of drugs, all of those things are against state law, not federal. Gay marriage is legal in Mass. Prostitution legal in Nevada, etc. Is anyone making the argument that states can't regulate carbon emmisions?
The difference is that when democrats are opposed to research, they just don't fund it. They don't say to scientists "we don't like nuclear weapons, so change epsilon in the equations so that they won't work any more". Whereas republicans seem to tell scientists to change their data to fit the facts that they want to be true, like telling scientists to change the nesting range so that california isn't included in the range of this bird. The former is a funding issue. That's political, it's ledgit. The later is data manipulation. In the world of science, that's sacriledge.
Lack of demand. Lets admit it, the vast majority of people who want to run linux build their own computers, no? Now that linux is becoming an office workstation option for at least a reasonable number of goverment and private sector workplaces, it becomes feasable for dell to keep a full time linux specialist on tech staff. They aren't really trying to sell this stuff to geeks, this is strictly aimed at the office.
The RIAA is as dead as disco, it's just thrashing alot on the way down and trying to take as many people out with it as possible. They no longer provide any essential service except promotion. What value do they add to any project? Anyone with an imac has a recording studio and digital content doesn't need to be manufactured. With sites like myspace and youtube becoming increasingly popular, promotion will increasingly be done online too. As the rest of the world catches up to the early adopters over the next ten years the influence of the RIAA will slowly wan until they are only one of many promotion and distrobution networks that new artists can use.
This gene would almost certainly have to be inserted before the eye develops, as it affects the type of "cone" cells that develop in the eye. Also, gene theropy into retinal is very difficult because (thank god) there are very few viruses that infect retinal cells.
IANAL, but my recollection is that it is illegal to even talk about the gag order. So you couldn't say, "I am forbidden by law to talk about that." You could say nothing, or "I don't want to talk about that." "I can't talk about that" is kind of fuzzy.
You obviously havn't read the PATRIOT act or the national security survailiance act. They explicitly give the FBI the ability to issue "National Security Letters" which have the force of warrents but don't need to be signed by a judge. You can be arrested for failing to comply, so they are somewhat more than a "request".
The statement was specified as acute, not chronic. My point was that this is nothing like an immediate problem, if it is a problem at all. Low level liver damage is one of those facts of life. Alcohol causes it. Red meats cause it. Sodium causes it. Lots of things cause it. Unless you're an organic vegan living on a mountain you're probably eating lots of things that cause low level liver damage. No need to get all in a panic about it.
Agreed, the p-value would be a wonderful number to have here and would be meaningful. However, without knowing the p-value, saying something is or is not statistically significant is meaningless. My understanding is that Monsanto says the results are not statistically significant while greenpeace says they are. My point is, what's the p-value? All else is wanking.
I am a biogeneticist, and while I have not read the technical article (as it has not been published yet), I do have a few points. 1) According to TFA, this corn has been in use for a while. Remember the callifornia spinach ecoli thing? It took what, a couple dozen people getting sick for the authorities to track back to the source of the problem. Conspiricy theories aside, you will note that there have been no outbreaks of illness associated with this corn. On an acute level, it seems to be as safe as eating spinach (note that this is anecdotal rather than rigerous scientific work). 2) Most of the stuff that we eat can be shown to be toxic to the liver in rat studies under some conditions. I will be interested to see what their control groups are once the study is published. 3) Statistical significance is a useless word in these sort of situations. What we need to look at is the confidence interval, which is a hard number. Monsanto probably asserts that they aren't 95% certain that the effects were caused by corn toxicity, and Greenpeace probably asserts that they aren't 95% certain that the effects were not caused by corn toxicity. This dispute will eventually be resolved by the scientific community, which will promptly be ignored by the rest of the world at large. 4) "Natural" and "Nature" are nonsense words from a scientific perspective, used by people who would really like to use the word "God", but are too saphisticated or ashamed to actually use it. Nature is not an entity, does not intend, and encompasses humans and human creations as much as it encompasses beavers and beaver creations.
Um, IANAL but I thought that if you created a new strain of foodstuff the old fassion way (breeding) then you could patent it. Nothing new, nothing changed. You can patent it just like you always could.
Science is not infinately applicable. It applies only to those things that are falsafiable or subject to some sort of empirical test. To the extent that the scientific method can be applied to religion, scientists should and do apply it. It doesn't get a "by". But most of the really central parts of religion are simply not testable. An inability to test something doesn't justafy a conclusion that it is false. Now, you seem to be focusing on christianity rather than religion in general, so I'll adress it. The afterlife is not testable, not a realm of scientific inquiry, and therefor any opinions one holds on it are equally valid. Virgin birth is testable and, while biologicaly possible (barely), is unlikely to happen. Ceramonies are important, to us psychologically if nothing else. It's fairly easy to construct a version of christianity consistant with a scientific world view, the unitarians have done a pretty good job. So have the catholics at various times.
Of course you can be a "real" scientist and religious. Heck, belief in god isn't even a prerequisite for being "religious". However, being a "real" scientist is probably incompatable with most "fundamentalist" and "literalist" religions as well as many "personal god" religions. While many scientists are religious, most of those are so in a kind of vague "supreme archatect" way. Most of the religious scientists I know I would describe as Deist or Unitarian, or something like that. Oh, and Mormon. Lots of Mormon scientists out there. I suppose that if you plan on having your own planet some day you'd better learn how to make it right.
Hmmm...well, not to be pedantic, but doesn't athiest just mean "not a theist"? Conceded that one does not have to believe in a god to have a religion (though both buddhists and hindus believe in gods), it seems to me that there exist forms of thought that are both not theistic and not religious. Atheism certainly can be a religion (and religions can be atheistic), but they don't have to be.
Well, yes. That's true. But it's not like google is the one putting this stuff up there. Google is no more responsable for what other people do than the owner of a circle K is responsible for the gangs that deal drugs in his parking lot.
Well, I don't especially feel that we are opressing people in the rest of the world. That statement was specifically used as an example of anti-Americanism which is not anti-capitalism or anti-westernism. But I am honest enough with myself to realize that Opressors seldom feel like they're opressing anyone. Usually they feel like they're doing the other guy a favor. Things always look different from the other side of the fence and I am willing to admit that, though I don't really feel that the US opresses anyone, if I was an Afghan or an Iraqi I might feel differently about that. They certainly seem to.
I think you can say bad things about President Bush in most countries. In fact in some it's required.
Wait a minute here. You seem to be confusing anti-Americanism with anti-capitalism, anti-westernism, and pro-communism. Isn't it possible that some people are anti-American while loving capitalism, western culture, and democracy in general? Taking the devil's advocate here, but I can immagine someone saying, "Look, it's pretty bad in North Korea right now, but at least they havn't invaded anyone for the past 50 or so years. North Korea contents itself with opressing it's own people while the US goes out and opresses everyone else. On the sheer weight of the numbers, that puts the US in a worse position."
I would call them "Apple"
Actually, I think antarctica is officially a protectorate of the united nations, so it counts as "claimed". But sea level is a farce anyway, it is the average sea level of all the worlds oceans, leaving large swaths of islands in the pacific (with its relatively low absolute water level) unaccounted for.