On a whim, I pointed my BlackBerry with ScanLife (one of those square barcode reader apps) at the picture of the zebras in the article, and got redirected to a Groupon for discount rates on an African safari.
A recent xkcd had a cartoon about this: the variations in the gravity of the earth may be enough to affect some Olympic performances and records, particularly on high-jump style events.
The fraction is very small, but when you are jumping 10m, a difference of a cm can count.
I have a small cache of Logitech Trackballs (of a couple of different models) which I think are WAY better input devices. All the functions of a mouse, but the hand rests in a single location so I use less desk space and don't have to wobble all over the place to use it.
If you look carefully at ancient religions, you'll see that they are concerned with astromicical observations (the heavens control our lives so we'd better pay attention) social conduct (thou shalt not kill) sanitation (huge chunks of old testament law, the whole kosher/halal thing, disposal of the dead) and much besides.
Their first cause - that there exist omnipresent/omnipotent (mostly) invisible being(s) who cause all this stuff to happen - was COMPLETELY wrong, and that paradiegm has proven difficult to expunge, but a large amount of (especially early) religion has proven to be the right thing for the wrong reasons.
It is not all that different than a better scientific theory replacing an earlier, less accurate one.
You are quite correct in disparaging religion in a modern context; it is frankly amazing that something so archaic is still taken seriously by anybody. But in the ancient world, religion was a powerful civilizing influence and laid the groundwork for modern science.
Those people's accomplishments don't have anything to do with their genetics.
I would think that Steve Hawking would still be Steve Hawking if he didn't have ALS. I think he'd be far more happy and productive if he didn't have ALS. I wouldn't wish ALS on my worst enemy - why wish it on Steve?
It has been within our power to eliminate any number of dangerous genetic illnesses for about 75 years now. That we choose not to says a lot about human ignorance.
What if this microbe isn't "new" - what if it is old?
As in - what if life on Terra initially evolved based around an arsenic atom, and then later evolved to use the much better and more stable phosphorus?
DISCLAIMER - I am not an organic chemist. (although I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night)
Having watched the computer simulation, what I see is an organism that substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in all its internal chemistry.
Arsenic is similar enough to phosphorus, from a chemical standpoint, that the substitution works to form similar molecules - so DNA is still DNA, ATP is still ATP, etc.
In other words, this is still good old Terran life chemistry and life processes with a raw materiel switched out. It isn't an organism whose genetic material wasn't made from DNA, or whose energy source was something other than ATP.
This, to me, looks like evolution in action. An organism living in an environment short on phosphorus but long on arsenic evolved to successfully swap the one for the other - but it did it with the same building blocks.
To use a Slashdot car analogy, this is a car whose engine block and connecting rods are made of aluminum instead or iron; the parts are still the same, but the material is different. To be truly "alien" (in construction if not origin) the car would have to be powered by a turbine, or by electricity (no no engine block or connecting rods at all)
Except that Afghanistan and Iraq were the farthest thing possible from massive slaughter.
Those two wars have much more in common with the British actions in Northern Ireland than with any major conventional war. Yes, there were ground actions in both that were much farther along the warfighting spectrum than Ireland, but they were very quick and targeted against limited objectives.
And even then, the casualty sensitivity was still exceptionally high.
You can find on almost any given day in WW2 actions that generate more total casualties than in the total casualty figures for both Iraq and Afghanistan, combined, for their entire duration. In some actions, you can find casualty numbers in a single hour that dwarf what has come out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ground war in China would generate those kinds of WW2 numbers and I don't think a modern Western society has the stomach for that.
I don't rate China's nuclear strike capability very highly. The devices are (relatively) crude, old, and inaccurate. Plus I rate the American ability to interdict them very, very highly. US strike aircraft are very stealthy and highly precise, and their target location and identification capabilities are top notch. The days of "hide-a SCUD" from Gulf War 1 taught our American cousins a number of very valuable lessons.
I'd be willing to bet that in the case of open war between the US and China that China would lose all nuclear strike capability in minutes.
There are other factors though that I think act as serious disincentives to full-on warfare:
1. It would be a massive, one-sided slaughter, with Chinese casualties being simply horrible to contemplate - and we aren't in the days of rampant xenophobia where you could paint the enemy as some sort of sub-human "yellow peril" and justify that sort of death toll. I think that Western society simply won't stomach pictures and video of Chinese soldiers and civilians killed en masse;
2. The costs of fielding a modern army are astronomical. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan barely count as sub-theatres in a WW2 context, and yet the amount of money and resources required to sustain them is simply staggering. Committing the entire power of the modern US military to full scale warfare in China would probably be the single most expensive thing ever attempted in human history;
3. China is so inexorably linked to the US in an economic sense that open war with China would collapse the US civilian economy. So few consumer goods are actually manufactured in the US - and the common practice is just-in-time delivery, rather than massive warehousing - that stopping the flow of sea containers from China would see every Wal-Mart in the US empty within a month. This would touch the American voter far more seriously than WW2 rationing ever did - and I think modern generations are far less willing to accept that sort of hardship.
That's not to say that these forces that tend to reduce the probability of war could not be overcome. China has a HUGE economic lever to use on the US. If they use it hard enough, they can create the kind of conditions that would allow the US population to start thinking in xenophobic terms which would then open the doors to full-scale military retribution. It is entirely possible to go down this road should both parties prove sufficiently intransigent. But my assessment that the probability that this would ever happen is very low.
Bicycle frames (with a few exceptions) and not counting the department store crap, are pretty much all the same throughout the model range once you hit the $800 price point. What changes is the level of the groupset. Sora->Ultegra->Dura Ace for Shimano road, Alivio->Deore->XT->XTR for Shimano mountain bike.
The advantage of the higher groupset is primarily weight, not quality. A Deore or Sora based bike will perform just as well for just as long as a Dura Ace or XTR bike, but it will weigh more.
The addition of suspension to mountain bikes skews the price somewhat, as there are ranges in the forks/shocks as well. An $800 mountain bike will be a hardtail with a springer (probably undamped) fork; you need to get into the $1500 range or so to start getting decent forks, and a proper full squish will be around $2000.
Carbon frames also push prices upwards, but carbon is nowhere near as pricey as it used to be.
My Cervelo - a top-line road bike - equipped with Ultegra/FSA, was a tick under $3000, and it is top-notch in terms of quality. And it is 16 lbs.
For road bikes, $800 gets you a decent bike. Over $2000, nothing is crap or really compromised any more. All the extra money gets you is lighter weight.
One does not expect Lance Armstrong to die in a bicycle crash.
Actually, given the number of annual km Lance rides on the road, and given the number of inattentive or otherwise poor drivers of heavy vehicles out there "sharing" the road with him, it is entirely likely that Lance could die in a car-bicycle collision.
The 5-time winner of the Race Across America ( a bike race that is exactly what it sounds like) was killed this past week - in a bicycle/car collision.
To generate irony, Lance would have to be killed in a crash with a vehicle driven by Sheryl Crow.
As someone who has written his fair share of military orders over the years, and then subsequently transmitted them over a radio, this is highly unlikely to be a military orders station - and for one basic reason:
An order broadcast into the aether is useless. An order must be confirmed as having been received and understood.
Hey, I'm a 40-year-old dude who is developing into a fairly serious cyclist.
And let me tell you, a proper set of cycling bib shorts (they have built in suspenders to keep them in place) are AMAZINGLY comfortable.
My daily ride runs between 30-75 km in length, and those shorts are a huge part of how I can stand to do it.
Yes, there is a visual issue... it is getting better as the weight falls off, but yeah, 30lbs ago there was very much a sausage-skin effect going on. That too was motivation to drop more weight.
As soon as you really start to get into this sport, you wind up going full Lycra. And eventually, you start shaving your legs too.
I actually think that perl is the best programming language every designed.
(Waits for storms of laughter to subside)
No, really, I'm completely serious. perl is the English of programming languages. It takes the most useful parts of everything and mixes them all together into a useful conglomerate.
Much the same way you can use English to write a scientific dissertation, a sonnet (in full Billy S mode), or O RLY? perl can be as descriptive and formal or as loose and unbounded as the programmer chooses and it all JUST WORKS!
I **lothe** "bondage and discipline" languages that force me to think and write a certain way just because some would-be language guru thinks HIS way is the One True Path to enlightenment. perl gives me an expressive, more-than-one-way-to-do-it language that lets me think and work the way that best fits the problem at hand.
I have written enterprise-level perl code optimised for long-term maintainability and reliability (an LDAP server replication program that did schema translation). And I have written 5-second hacks that solved an immediate problem quickly and efficiently. perl lets me do this. No other language I've used matches perl's sheer versitility.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife bought me a PSP Go for Xmas when they first came out.
I like it - nice and compact, doesn't need a stack of discs to work, nifty form factor, great screen, and a whole bunch of cool games.
I never understood the virulent hate for this system - I enjoy mine.
DG
On a whim, I pointed my BlackBerry with ScanLife (one of those square barcode reader apps) at the picture of the zebras in the article, and got redirected to a Groupon for discount rates on an African safari.
Man, *everybody* has sold out.
DG
The headline I saw in a local paper about this story was - and I'm not making this up - "Virgin Penetrates Deep".
That, right there, makes this story full of win.
DG
Yet my wife thought it was amazing and one of the best films she'd ever seen.
Perhaps you have poor choice in girlfriends.
DG
A recent xkcd had a cartoon about this: the variations in the gravity of the earth may be enough to affect some Olympic performances and records, particularly on high-jump style events.
The fraction is very small, but when you are jumping 10m, a difference of a cm can count.
DG
Now now, how about you settle down and contribute yourself - or perhaps go edit your MySpace page?
Kids today.
DG
Because it ain't perfect.
I have a small cache of Logitech Trackballs (of a couple of different models) which I think are WAY better input devices. All the functions of a mouse, but the hand rests in a single location so I use less desk space and don't have to wobble all over the place to use it.
Once you go track(ball) you'll never go back.
I don't userstand why they aren't more popular.
DG
If you look carefully at ancient religions, you'll see that they are concerned with astromicical observations (the heavens control our lives so we'd better pay attention) social conduct (thou shalt not kill) sanitation (huge chunks of old testament law, the whole kosher/halal thing, disposal of the dead) and much besides.
Their first cause - that there exist omnipresent/omnipotent (mostly) invisible being(s) who cause all this stuff to happen - was COMPLETELY wrong, and that paradiegm has proven difficult to expunge, but a large amount of (especially early) religion has proven to be the right thing for the wrong reasons.
It is not all that different than a better scientific theory replacing an earlier, less accurate one.
You are quite correct in disparaging religion in a modern context; it is frankly amazing that something so archaic is still taken seriously by anybody. But in the ancient world, religion was a powerful civilizing influence and laid the groundwork for modern science.
DG
Your argument doesn't make sense.
Those people's accomplishments don't have anything to do with their genetics.
I would think that Steve Hawking would still be Steve Hawking if he didn't have ALS. I think he'd be far more happy and productive if he didn't have ALS. I wouldn't wish ALS on my worst enemy - why wish it on Steve?
It has been within our power to eliminate any number of dangerous genetic illnesses for about 75 years now. That we choose not to says a lot about human ignorance.
DG
What if this microbe isn't "new" - what if it is old?
As in - what if life on Terra initially evolved based around an arsenic atom, and then later evolved to use the much better and more stable phosphorus?
DG
DISCLAIMER - I am not an organic chemist. (although I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night)
Having watched the computer simulation, what I see is an organism that substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in all its internal chemistry.
Arsenic is similar enough to phosphorus, from a chemical standpoint, that the substitution works to form similar molecules - so DNA is still DNA, ATP is still ATP, etc.
In other words, this is still good old Terran life chemistry and life processes with a raw materiel switched out. It isn't an organism whose genetic material wasn't made from DNA, or whose energy source was something other than ATP.
This, to me, looks like evolution in action. An organism living in an environment short on phosphorus but long on arsenic evolved to successfully swap the one for the other - but it did it with the same building blocks.
To use a Slashdot car analogy, this is a car whose engine block and connecting rods are made of aluminum instead or iron; the parts are still the same, but the material is different. To be truly "alien" (in construction if not origin) the car would have to be powered by a turbine, or by electricity (no no engine block or connecting rods at all)
DG
That would take an enormous effort - one well beyond the capabilities of any single human.
You'd need a giant robot - a Transformer.
Perhaps Shockwave?
DG
If that's supposed to be small talk, you're doing it wrong.
DG
Except that Afghanistan and Iraq were the farthest thing possible from massive slaughter.
Those two wars have much more in common with the British actions in Northern Ireland than with any major conventional war. Yes, there were ground actions in both that were much farther along the warfighting spectrum than Ireland, but they were very quick and targeted against limited objectives.
And even then, the casualty sensitivity was still exceptionally high.
You can find on almost any given day in WW2 actions that generate more total casualties than in the total casualty figures for both Iraq and Afghanistan, combined, for their entire duration. In some actions, you can find casualty numbers in a single hour that dwarf what has come out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ground war in China would generate those kinds of WW2 numbers and I don't think a modern Western society has the stomach for that.
DG
I don't rate China's nuclear strike capability very highly. The devices are (relatively) crude, old, and inaccurate. Plus I rate the American ability to interdict them very, very highly. US strike aircraft are very stealthy and highly precise, and their target location and identification capabilities are top notch. The days of "hide-a SCUD" from Gulf War 1 taught our American cousins a number of very valuable lessons.
I'd be willing to bet that in the case of open war between the US and China that China would lose all nuclear strike capability in minutes.
There are other factors though that I think act as serious disincentives to full-on warfare:
1. It would be a massive, one-sided slaughter, with Chinese casualties being simply horrible to contemplate - and we aren't in the days of rampant xenophobia where you could paint the enemy as some sort of sub-human "yellow peril" and justify that sort of death toll. I think that Western society simply won't stomach pictures and video of Chinese soldiers and civilians killed en masse;
2. The costs of fielding a modern army are astronomical. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan barely count as sub-theatres in a WW2 context, and yet the amount of money and resources required to sustain them is simply staggering. Committing the entire power of the modern US military to full scale warfare in China would probably be the single most expensive thing ever attempted in human history;
3. China is so inexorably linked to the US in an economic sense that open war with China would collapse the US civilian economy. So few consumer goods are actually manufactured in the US - and the common practice is just-in-time delivery, rather than massive warehousing - that stopping the flow of sea containers from China would see every Wal-Mart in the US empty within a month. This would touch the American voter far more seriously than WW2 rationing ever did - and I think modern generations are far less willing to accept that sort of hardship.
That's not to say that these forces that tend to reduce the probability of war could not be overcome. China has a HUGE economic lever to use on the US. If they use it hard enough, they can create the kind of conditions that would allow the US population to start thinking in xenophobic terms which would then open the doors to full-scale military retribution. It is entirely possible to go down this road should both parties prove sufficiently intransigent. But my assessment that the probability that this would ever happen is very low.
DG
None of which means squat if confronted by a texting soccer mom in an SUV.
DG
Try $800.
Bicycle frames (with a few exceptions) and not counting the department store crap, are pretty much all the same throughout the model range once you hit the $800 price point. What changes is the level of the groupset. Sora->Ultegra->Dura Ace for Shimano road, Alivio->Deore->XT->XTR for Shimano mountain bike.
The advantage of the higher groupset is primarily weight, not quality. A Deore or Sora based bike will perform just as well for just as long as a Dura Ace or XTR bike, but it will weigh more.
The addition of suspension to mountain bikes skews the price somewhat, as there are ranges in the forks/shocks as well. An $800 mountain bike will be a hardtail with a springer (probably undamped) fork; you need to get into the $1500 range or so to start getting decent forks, and a proper full squish will be around $2000.
Carbon frames also push prices upwards, but carbon is nowhere near as pricey as it used to be.
My Cervelo - a top-line road bike - equipped with Ultegra/FSA, was a tick under $3000, and it is top-notch in terms of quality. And it is 16 lbs.
For road bikes, $800 gets you a decent bike. Over $2000, nothing is crap or really compromised any more. All the extra money gets you is lighter weight.
DG
One does not expect Lance Armstrong to die in a bicycle crash.
Actually, given the number of annual km Lance rides on the road, and given the number of inattentive or otherwise poor drivers of heavy vehicles out there "sharing" the road with him, it is entirely likely that Lance could die in a car-bicycle collision.
The 5-time winner of the Race Across America ( a bike race that is exactly what it sounds like) was killed this past week - in a bicycle/car collision.
To generate irony, Lance would have to be killed in a crash with a vehicle driven by Sheryl Crow.
DG
You do know that Stewart and Colbert work together, right?
DG
As someone who has written his fair share of military orders over the years, and then subsequently transmitted them over a radio, this is highly unlikely to be a military orders station - and for one basic reason:
An order broadcast into the aether is useless. An order must be confirmed as having been received and understood.
Where's the "Ack"?
DG
Farscape,
Primer,
What others?
DG
Thanks.
And it is nowhere near finished.... so much to write about.
And it makes NO money. *sigh*
DG
Hitler's ghost *can't* run for Prime Minister of Israel.
You have to be ***dead*** to have a ghost.
DG
Hey, I'm a 40-year-old dude who is developing into a fairly serious cyclist.
And let me tell you, a proper set of cycling bib shorts (they have built in suspenders to keep them in place) are AMAZINGLY comfortable.
My daily ride runs between 30-75 km in length, and those shorts are a huge part of how I can stand to do it.
Yes, there is a visual issue... it is getting better as the weight falls off, but yeah, 30lbs ago there was very much a sausage-skin effect going on. That too was motivation to drop more weight.
As soon as you really start to get into this sport, you wind up going full Lycra. And eventually, you start shaving your legs too.
But the wife likes it, and she can't be wrong.
DG
I actually think that perl is the best programming language every designed.
(Waits for storms of laughter to subside)
No, really, I'm completely serious. perl is the English of programming languages. It takes the most useful parts of everything and mixes them all together into a useful conglomerate.
Much the same way you can use English to write a scientific dissertation, a sonnet (in full Billy S mode), or O RLY? perl can be as descriptive and formal or as loose and unbounded as the programmer chooses and it all JUST WORKS!
I **lothe** "bondage and discipline" languages that force me to think and write a certain way just because some would-be language guru thinks HIS way is the One True Path to enlightenment. perl gives me an expressive, more-than-one-way-to-do-it language that lets me think and work the way that best fits the problem at hand.
I have written enterprise-level perl code optimised for long-term maintainability and reliability (an LDAP server replication program that did schema translation). And I have written 5-second hacks that solved an immediate problem quickly and efficiently. perl lets me do this. No other language I've used matches perl's sheer versitility.
I love perl!
And I'm not at all ashamed to admit it.
DG