As far as the necessity of an armed populace, there is only one sure historical truth: Sooner or later the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants and if tyrants are the only ones with firearms the tree may very well drown from an excess of the blood of patriots.
In a democracy you can vote people out of power. Historically there have not been many democracies so far.
I'll believe this type of argument if say the US citizens use guns to revolt instead of voting out the current party.
If you really believe this, wouldn't citizens owning nuclear weapons just accelerate the process, or do you think there should be limits on the destructive power a single person should have?
It has long been suspected that 'junk DNA' or 'non-coding' regions had some purpose, but is was not obvious what purposes or how. But some amount of gene regulation was definitely known, like promoter sequences.
Whenever I read something like this, I get a reminder how poor is biologists' comprehension of Computer Science, Information Theory, and languages. So, 90% of genes aren't "junk" after all. To anyone who does know something about the aforementioned topics, duh!
If they hadn't suspected it, multiple groups around the world wouldn't have worked on this thing for such a long time. It's one thing to have a theory, another to prove it, despite what creationists may say;)
First, evolution would weed that sort of thing out in a hurry. Two organisms with genes that achieve the exact same thing, but one has a more efficient encoding? No contest!
Actually, generally no and genome sizes can very a lot. There are a great many things that can complicate this. But you do see effects like this in cases like viruses that have limited space to pack DNA in the virus capsid. Not only do these viruses not have junk DNA, but even use some compression like techniques.
Second, ever tried compressing a DNA sequence? They don't compress very well! Meaning, they don't have much redundancy.
I think you are thinking of the coding regions. Redundancy is a notable feature of many non-coding regions.
Third, why this obsession with zeroing in on a magic gene that causes X? Do they think the language of DNA is context free? Defects could indeed be expected to have no context, but for the rest-- which genes determine a person's blood type? Eye color? Skin color? Going about that task by trying to find the magic gene for something like that is like a person who never learned to read trying to figure out the plot of a book by trying to recognize patterns of letters.
I think you've chosen very poor examples to illustrate you're point. Those are all features controlled by a very small number of genes or a single gene. In other context though, this could be an important way of thinking. For example, cell machinery matters too. Kinda like software vs hardware.
To match your analogy, if you can't read you have no hope of understanding the plot. First you have to figure out how to read. You might be able to figure out words from patterns of letters though. You have to start somewhere.
The magic gene thing is a matter of hoping for a solution that is actually simple and viable. If it's one gene, a single drug has a good chance of working. There are many diseases that actually work this way, so why wouldn't you look for a simple answer first. Things that involve lots of genes, like cancers, haven't had much success.
USA: Help us fight this tyrant in Iraq! Your with us or against us!
World: There are lots of tyrants, what about the ones killing lots of people RIGHT NOW?
USA: We're going after this one.
World: The RICH one, huh. Whatever, we won't stop you or put up trade sanctions or anything.
USA: That means you're fighting on his side! With us or against us!
World: My god your an asshole, but he's even worse. Kill your own soldiers in the oil grab and good luck trying to keep the middle east under control.
USA: Canada are you with us?
Canada:All our troops are fighting with you in Afghanistan. Does even the USA have enough troops to start a second war?
USA: Don't you want to stop terrorism! Otherwise you're a terrorist
Canada:I thought you were talking about Iraq? Finding Osama Bin...
USA: Mentioning failures is supporting terrorism!
A tyrant is sitting on enough oil to shake the world economy. US actions make complete sense when oil is factored in and take strange convoluted loops otherwise. Even if you personally don't believe this, many people in the US and worldwide do. Now consider people in Iraq might think while still occupied years after Saddam is gone and WMDs are found to be a joke? Poor ignorant Iraqies might confuse bombs dropped from planes for WMDs even.
No Bush could not have just bought the oil; US citizens would not support trillions of dollars in trade with a tyrant who would use the money to build WMDs. Other countries were well ahead in negotiating trade.
Most importantly, what justified a new war while you are still fighting a war in Afghanistan?
WMD and defense of the USA! Is that a joke? Okay, maybe you were surprised that Saddam had already used all the chemical weapons sold to him by the USA, but aren't places like say North Korea a bit more of a concern.
Iran glaces over:
"Shit we got oil and gas, too and the US will invade regardless of any evidence or weapon inspector claims just like Iraq. Unless we actually do have nukes (or they think we do), in which case the US backs down like for North Korea."
Then there is terrorism. After watching Fox News, for some reason you ended up thinking Al Qaida was linked to Iraq. Information sources outside the US (and those inside the US that focus more on facts) all seem in remarkable agreement that their was no link before the US invaded, because Saddam ruthlessly crushed anything that could potentially threaten his power.
Americans seem a bit confused about terrorism, especially for a country that insists its citizens should be allowed guns in case they need to overthrow their government in terrorist/revolutionary manner. Wars don't tend to make people like you better, especially when innocent people get killed.
Say Canada decides it's going to kill drug dealers and mafia in the US. Most US citizens don't like those people, so it's okay at first. Now imagine people are getting killed in the cross-fire, say 30 000 or so American civillians although not that many Canadian soldiers. Now how many Americans are rabidly anti-Canadian after their little sister and neighbour were accidently blown up?
The final possible justification is to help the people of Iraq. Instead of say the people of Sudan, or say roughly 50 billion dollars to bring AIDS under control in Africa or the people of Afghanistan, who really could have used the extra troops to finish the war there quickly. Actually there are too many ways to list that all that death and money could have aided humanity better.
Everyone knows its oil. That's why the US and all other countries act the way they do.
"Environmental factors" such as nutrition during developing years can have incredibly large impacts.
Aha, so I should be forced to feed someone else's child?.. How "liberal"... But what is the impact of nutrition, and what kind of nutrition exactly is it, that the rich can afford, but the poor can not — in this country? Countless millions of Chinese, for example, eat far worse than the American poor, yet they still manage to develop the industry to make modest money and the frugality to save it. Those few, who come to this country often manage to build enough wealth to buy a business and own a house — in the first generation. I walk through a "chinatown" often — I've never seen a single Asian beggar, have you?
Yes, I've seen multiple Asian beggars, but I live in a city with a high asian population (for North America). But immigrants as a group are much more ambitious and hard working than the general populations they are from.
Poor Americans are taller, stronger and smarter than the typical Chinese peasant (but China can pick from many more people) because of nutritional differences.
Americans are actually more productive than say Chinese or Mexican workers (stunning isn't it?). That's why the typical pay in the US is higher. As other countries become more productive in comparison, their wages rise/US dollar drops.
Investing money in your population is not wrong, just like investing money in your own employees is not wrong.
Well, excellent! Now that I knocked you from the moralistic high horse of the "we need to be compassionate to the less fortunate", you switch to the economics. If it is not the (forced) charity, but investment, then it should be discussed as such. Let's see the proposal and the expected ROI, shall we?
My post was entirely about economics, not morality; that's an added benefit. . The rates of return for something like early childhood (and pregnacy) nutrition are incredibly stunning. (In general the effect is about as large as the remaining environmental and genetic factors combined.) Social environment in early years (before 10 years old) had large influences too.
The study I saw was presented by a doctor about 10 years ago. The drops crime rate and teen-pregnancy were huge (less than half the levels of the controls.) This was being compared to aid given to troubled teens (where most of the money was being spent at the time) where the benefits were rather small.
Another place to look would be the effects of multi-vitamins on kids in Mexico (a while back, might have been the seventies). Drastic results - kids grew a foot taller than their siblings; many more grew bored with the small towns they grew up in and moved to get an education or more highly skilled jobs; there were obvious differences in the energy levels of the kids. The sad part was that these peasants grew plenty vegetables for sale that could have added the proper nutrition to their diet but just didn't traditionally eat them.
Social programs and environmental regulations don't always cost money, but they definitely can if implemented poorly so looking at return on investment is a good idea.
As for this forced charity bullshit, that's what governments do. Why should I support this 'police' charity that protects your stuff. Pay for your own protection. That way the government can save money right?
Governments collect taxes and spend it on things that help the country.
I'm willing to accept the impact of "environmental factors" as 10%. Ok, make it 20%... But the rest is squarely with the person —
"Environmental factors" such as nutrition during developing years can have incredibly large impacts.
and if we deny that, we should be prohibiting gambling.
Prohibit gambling by gambling addicts, I think is what you meant.
I'm just not so inexperienced with poverty to believe that this is a majority, nor so given to sweeping generalizations as to make moral pronouncements of, essentially, "they have it coming" about millions of other people.
But you are comfortable confiscating from "the rich" (at gun-point — via IRS) to help out these unfortunate ones — without even knowing, how many of them are in the dire straits due to their own faults?..
Let's see those who were born rich and became poor are likely in dire straits due to their own faults.
Investing money in your population is not wrong, just like investing money in your own employees is not wrong. Public spending can produce a more productive society, eg. scholarships can allow the most able, instead of only the most well funded, to become trained. These highly skilled people earn a much higher income than they would have otherwise (and working low paying jobs to save up for school still amounts to lowered income - those were years they could have been working high paying/high demand jobs.)
The government collects much more income tax on these people, getting its investment back. Industries benefit from a better pool of labour.
Some behaviors or actions aren't technically harmful in and of themselves, but they lead to harm with such a great degree of frequency that out of sheer pragmatism we ban them anyway. Like alcohol and tabacco?
Most people are not addicts and will not become one regardless of availablility or price of any drugs. Just like most people can drink without becoming alcoholics.
Alcohol is about as addictive and brain damaging as any drug known.
They can have the museum, but they can't call it science. That's the problem you are having. To be a science, it would have to stand up to the same standards as the rest of science. Processes like peer review, etc. that theories like evolution or quantum mechanics must continuously stand up to. (And creationists deliberately misinterpret 'scientific theory' to mean hypothesis.)
If they want to be a science, they must use scientific rigor, otherwise they just lies.
Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
All right, my BS detector just exploded after reading that, won't comment further it would damage my brain to do so.
Same here. I guess this is why big money movie companies make innovative, novel films as opposed to the sequels and stale recycled plots of low budget films;)
Remember kids piracy is dangerous. Just look at how unprofitable and rare porn became after the internet took off.;)
You do realize the political left is for more taxes and bigger government right? As though there aren't enough bureaucrats already. You're thinking of the old system, with GW Bush is proving bigger government is a right wing thing, now.
I'm not exactally sure what the efficency of photosynthesis is, but the eficency of aerobic respiration is about 40%. Thats pretty good Now just figure out how to use aerobic respiration to fuel our energy needs. I think that's more like a fuel cell than a solar cell though.
So wouldn't it make more sense to set efficiency standards rather than trying to cut overall emissions? That way you can develop rules that apply fairly to both industrialized and developing countries. You could set efficiency standards so that meeting them would cut overall emissions.
But whose efficiency standards? India and China would say something like 'Thank you, for acknowledging we are ten times as efficient because we use 1/10th the energy per person.' A old car in China might get half the milage of one in the US, but if that old car is hauling 4X as many people on average, isn't it twice as efficient?
These countries would probably be worried about enforcing health and safety standards first anyway.
I think a much better idea that I think is similar to what you are proposing is to use something like carbon trading and just regulate that CO2 polluters must buy a carbon credits in a certain percentage of what they pollute. This could be fairly applied to all countries and lets market forces promote the best practices of carbon dioxide sequestering and pollution reduction. This is shifting the cost of environmental cleanup to the polluters instead of the world at large. For example, biodiesel from an
algae tank might be more expensive than petroleum diesel, but biodiesel might be cheaper than the cost of petroleum diesel + sequestering carbon of the oil. This isn't even that strange of a concept. Right now you don't allow a chemical plant to dump toxins that kill off all the fish a fishery depends on. The chemical plant is forced to clean up (or contain) its toxins by law, so the chemical plant pays the price for its pollution as an expense. Otherwise the fishermen are subsidizing the chemical plant.
I think this could be applied reasonably fairly. If a country didn't want to play by these rules, that's okay, but when they want to trade with the rest of the world, a tariff could be applied at the equivalent to the cost of sequestering the pollutants. After all, you don't want companies going 'So if I stay in the US I have to pay this pollution tax, but if I build the plant in India I can sell the cheaper.' You want tell the manufacturer in China 'To sell your widgets in the US you must meet the standards US companies meet.'
I think Kyoto has some major problems. It appears that burning down a forest and replanting will give you carbon credits, but leaving the forest standing won't. So you promote the very behavior you wanted to stop. Very casual thinking on subject leads there, so I was surprised this wasn't addressed. You would need something like the ability to sell standing rainforest for a carbon credit, but then from this point on carbon credits must be bought to burn down the forest.
So what evolution predicted was not genetics specifically, but "an inheritance mechanism"? And that prediction makes evolution a falsifiable claim, because you could disprove evolution by showing that no such inheritance mechanism exists? Once again, you are using a strange sense of "predict", given that inheritance was already a well known fact. It doesn't take too much scientific sophistication to realise that offspring have a tendency to resemble their parents. Selective breeders have been using this trait since well before Darwin.
This is not a prediction, and it's not a possible point of falsification either. The known fact of inheritance was a consideration in the formulation of the theory: you have the cart before the horse.
This is scientific theory, not a hypothesis. A scientific theory is supposed to explain and not conflict with known facts. Of course Darwin knew of selective breeding, it is a major part of the theory of evolution. A simplified description of Darwin's observations were that especially in small, isolated islands nature acted like a selective breeder. Natural selection. Selective breeding of dogs made great danes and chauas whose size difference can make it physically impossible to interbreed. Similar things happen naturally.
When bugs don't eat a poison plant, they act like farmers breeding for poison. The core idea is that simple.
And it follows from the theory that an inheritance mechanism must exist for selective breeding to function and, therefore, natural selection. A god, on the other hand, could choose to have inheritance or could grant/alter abilities as required, so creationism gives no insights and makes no prediction.
There are millions of other things that must also be consistent for evolution. Millions of these are consistent. Others led insights into the mechanisms of evolution, such as aultruistic behavior having 'selfish' benefits, while some led to changes in the theory of evolution, like punctuated equilibrium as opposed to gradual change.
My one fear is the process that releases the hydrogen gas might not be as fast as we can demand it from a red light That's probably a real concern given they stated that reaction rate and prices.
and once the process is started can we shut off the car and not have it wasted. Given how enzymes work (they balance a reaction, so they would only produce hydrogen when hydrogen is low/being used), this is probably not a concern at all. In fact it could be a great advantage of this system, assuming the reaction is fast enough. The complexity that you are worrying about deals with the enzyme engineering and won't be contained in the car itself. Interestingly, in their actual paper they discuss the cost of producing and replacing the enzymes too. Enzymes are very efficient (so really quite light), but generally don't last very long (but this can be dealt with.)
What waste products to the chemical reactions give off and are they containable or toxic? What about the liquids that would be needed to move the starch and reactive agents around the system, or are we dealing with pellets of starch and have to have a hopper system like in pellet stoves? Waste would be water and carbon-dioxide, (and maybe some protein from degraded enzymes). The method is based on the enzymes used by living things to convert sugar to energy, carbon dioxide and water.
The liquid to move starch would probably be water. Enzymes in cells function in an aqueous environment.
You claimed that evolution predicted genetics. I'm calling you out on that claim, specifically: back it up with citations. Darwin's natural selection is not incompatible with Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characteristics, and Darwin did not rule it out. He arguably lessened its role, emphasising "natural selection" as the primary mechanism of evolution, but Lamarck's inheritance was still accepted. Since you cite the infamous Wiki, I will too. Here's what I'm talking about.
In subsequent years, Morgan and his colleagues developed the Mendelian-Chromosome theory of inheritance, publishing The Mechanism of Mendelian Inheritance in 1915. By that time, most biologists accepted that genes situated linearly on chromosomes were the primary mechanism of inheritance, although how this could be compatible with natural selection and gradual evolution remained unclear.... This issue was partially resolved by R. A. Fisher, who in 1918 produced a paper entitled The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance,[1] which used a model to show how continuous variation could be the result of the action of many discrete genetic loci.... Morgan's student Theodosius Dobzhansky was the first to apply Morgan's chromosome theory and the mathematics of population genetics to natural populations of organisms, in particular Drosophila melanogaster. His 1937 work Genetics and the Origin of Species is usually considered the first mature work of neo-Darwinism.
Darwinism did not predict genetics. On the contrary, the initial discoveries of genetics were distinctly problematic to it. These issues were resolved by making appropriate adjustments to Darwin's theory, then redesignated neo-Darwinism to underscore the differences between it and the theory put forth in "Origin of Species".
Where do you get the idea that the theory of evolution predicts genetics? It doesn't even require genetics in the Mendelian sense.
Lamarkism was accepted at the time because it was a reasonable explanation. Facts did not bear this out as a major force of evolution as more data was gathered (although features like culture are arguably Larmarkian evolution). Notice that this is consistent with the natural selection theory (and of course many others). Unlike creationism, natural selection requires A mechanism to transfer features from parent to child. This was the point I was trying to make. Without an inheritance mechanism, natural selection could not have caused evolution. This was a falsifiable claim. You are right that it does not require Mendelian genetics, but it requires something like genetics to exist. From what you quoted, the conflict with Mendelian views of genetics was resolved by changing the theory of how genetics functioned, not natural selection! You are right that Mendelian genetics is not required, after all prokaryotic bacteria and viruses don't have chromosomes but evolve too. They do have an inheritance mechanism, though.
This was really a very minor point, however. Creationists are very fond of using the old models and theories to make their points. Most of the best examples where they are actually pointing out flaws in evolution theory can be resolved by checking modern literature. Transition state fossils and problems of complex organs like the eye evolving are good examples of this. More transitions state fossils continue to be found. More related proteins are found that are related to vision, meaning the evolutionary jumps required are not as extreme and improbable as first imagined.
Some ideas about evolution have definitely changed. It appears that punctuated equilibrium, rather than gradual change is the major mechanism. But I have to point out again that this is why evolution theory is taken seriously - Science theories must be changed or abandoned whe
in which traits were generated through mutation rather than acquired by effort (such as stretching the neck). You are thinking of Lamarkismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism, an alternate theory to natural selection that is inconsistent with Mendelian genetics. Natural selection is consistent with Mendelian genetics.
The explanatory power of evolution is one of its greatest strengths and often mentioned. However, I was pointing out that evolution theory makes important and accurate predictions also. That is a very important difference between evolution and creationism.
For example, evolution predicts the emergence of antibiotic resistance by selection processes when antibiotics are used and discontinued before the infection is cured. Evolution explains this process, but also predicts that the same behavior will emerge in other bacteria, using other drugs and even in similar processes like insects acquiring pesticide resistance. A creationist explanation might be that God punishes people for breaking their word to the pharmacist and predict that prayer will save them or any other number of theories depending on the designer?
Of course the theory of evolution has changed. Science is not a religion, it is supposed to change when better evidence of the truth emerges. But why the problem with evolution in the first place? Do you really believe that that the entire fields of geology, paleontology, genetics, zoology, anthropology and history are in some world wide, cross culture conspiracy to promote evolution? Why would all these people almost unanimously pervert their entire philosophy to pursue knowledge and truth? There are many religious members of the scientific community, why would they go along with this?
People with a startling similarity to creationists did think the bible proved the sun went around the earth and imprisoned Galileo for writing a book that suggested that facts indicated otherwise. They took this very seriously. Religion did not collapse. Science was not promoting the theory to disprove religion.
If creationism wants to be a philosophy, that is fine and may even be valuble. If creationism or intelligent design want to be a science, it must stand up to the same standards as evolution has. According to standards developed specifically to promote truth and understanding at the expense of established belief, evolution is a well established and very, very well supported theory, while the others are minor fringe theories. If the entire system and standards of science are false, you can develop another one but you must establish credibility on your own. You can't call it science.
China and India are in the G8? Besides, they probably view it more like 'per person we're doing fantastic compared to the US and Europe. You're just trying to use all the world's resources before we have a chance.'
Plenty of measures don't lower the standard of living. Using more energy efficient light bulbs, better insulation, etc. lower energy costs with savings for consumers and no loss in standards of living. SUV's are only raising your standard of living if you actually use features that are not available in more fuel efficient cars.
The environment provides a great deal of services that are incredibly expensive or impossible to replace or repair. Damages are felt world wide but benefit polluters who effectively have a free subsidy. So it is more realistic to say the wealthier countries are currently being given a free ride.
Whether Kyoto is actually a good idea or even effective in helping the environment is debatable. However, these important issues are not discussed because of the stupid diversionary debate on whether global warming is man-made. That had already been well established ten years ago and reasonable doubt has been shrinking rapidly since then.
Creationism is not science because it does not predict anything. Evolution theory has successfully predicted an incredible number of facts (and is falsifiable because incorrect predictions point to flaws in the theory). If you asked scientists whether evolution was THE most important and effective theory in science, many would agree that it is.
Evolution predicted the existence of genetics, emergence of antibiotic and pesticide resistance (and successful methods of preventing the resistance from emerging), the existence and locations of transition fossils, to name a few relevant ones.
The idea that peer review blocks outside ideas is false. If this were true, quantum mechanics would not exist as a scientific theory, it was hated and not believed but accepted after it repeated made correct predictions of experiment. Wave/particle duality was an absurd idea by a patent clerk (Einstein), but the arguments held. You do have to be more convincing in science when you are stating that everyone else is wrong, but it can be done. The main ideal of science is skepticism, not faith.
Supernatural theories are ignored generally because they predict nothing and, therefore, are scientifically useless. There is no way to make predictions without knowing the intent and abilities of the designers. You could simply say God makes objects fall down to explain gravity, but this doesn't advance knowledge in any useful way.
Most importantly, even if the world is only 6000 years old and creations are right about everything, evolution should still be taught as an important scientific theory. Even if its 'wrong' in a strict sense, the natural world exists in a state as if evolution occurred. The highly conserved amino acids in a protein sequence (ones unchanged from different species) are critical to function. If the male of a species has very large testicles, the species is promiscuous. Genetic algorithms have even found use in the distant field of computer science.
If creationists were actually raising valid points or providing insight, the scientific community would not be acting this way. Creationist arguments are very well refuted and completely unconvincing to the informed scientific community. Scientists are dismissive of the claims, but after someones cried 'wolf' a few hundred times, you tend to ignore them. The same as people claiming free energy inventions. Creationists have been effective in persuading the uniformed public, however.
It's not stealing based on one assumption, that every single person that downloaded would not have purchased at the rate set by the copyright holder.
But if even 1 person would have purchased except for the option of download for free, they have lost revenue and it could be construed as theft. Likewise, if one person bought an album they would not have otherwise known about, the labels have gained revenue by free advertising. I have never bought an album or attended a concert from a little known artist without extensively stealing mp3s or borrowing/copying a CD first.
These loss numbers are always bogus. When prices go down, sales go up.
When I was young video games and MS products were rampantly pirated, obviously those markets collapsed;)
Were those lost video game sales? No. Our allowances were limited and already spent on video games (or computer upgrades needed to run video games which was easier to justify to parents). More enforcement only meant we would spend more time out riding bikes, reading, etc. Lower prices, probably would have resulted in a greater diversity of games bought (at a high price you don't tend to risk buying things that might suck).
I have a hard time imagining that anything Amazon releases could beat the integration and ease of use of iTunes and iTunes Music Store... and from there, the iPod.
Exactly - And I don't want any of the three of those, much less all three.
Especially ease of use. I hate that.
-Ted Using mp3 is complicated? How much easier than double-click on virtually any computer and/or throw on virtually any device can you get?
IPCC was created largely by the Republicans under Regan specifically to create an organization that would not be biased by being made up of self-appointed experts. It was create specifically to prevent a bunch of environmental wackos from creating a distorted view of climate change. Unfortunately, this group also concluded that there were man made climate changes. This was already well established in 2001, now there is a great deal more evidence. I guess since they found the wrong answer, we'll need a new unbiased group.
Check out the "Skeptical Environmentalist" for another opinion. From someone who slammed the environmental movement on many fronts for creating a distorted views, using the 2001 data, concluded that man made global warming very obviously existed. There was already so much evidence back then that Lomborg thought the debate about man made global warming was very strange. Now as to the size of the effect, the costs of reversing it, etc. there is legitimate debate. Lomborg believed actions such as the Kyoto Protocol were a very bad idea, being very expensive and having little effect.
You can safely ignore global warming deniers, it requires ignorance or a disregard of balanced evidence and logic to hold this opinion. Debate as to the course of action or inaction to take may be very legitimate. For example, proper fishing controls that keep ocean ecosystems healthy would be far more beneficial to ocean life than stopping all CO2 emmitions completely.
Why would manufacturers/retailers/importers pass on the savings? They already sold at the level of profit they made everywhere else. This is profit they didn't ask for and can't count on. Even if they did pass on the savings, it would be likely be passed on to the entire world. Besides, wouldn't cheaper blank media costs exasperate the piracy problem and hurt artists more (assuming the logic used to collect the levee is valid). That's not a good deal for every Canadian buisiness that uses blank media to store data, every citizen that paid more for blank CDs to store digital images on, every small band that recorded a CD in someones basement,etc.
There are lots of subsidies of Canadian art. Why not use the money to increase this funding or reduce the taxpayer's portion of it. You know, spend the money to help artists like they claimed when they took the money.
You are forgetting pollution is an externalized cost (spread around the entire world) that the non-hybrid is getting subsidized by the population of the world. There are additional medical costs from smog, food costs (crop failures), losses due to extreme weather, reduced economies of fisheries, etc. Putting a real dollar value on these things is hard, but the effects are real. You will pay them in increased food prices, increased insurance rates, reduced quality of life, etc. instead of paying additional taxes.
To judge this properly would take a great deal of effort and is even more complicated because environmental costs might extend a long way into the future. I don't think your comparison is any more fair.
One measure might be to compare the cost of sequestering the additional pollutants emitted to the subsidy given to the hybrid. That would require the costs of pollution to be greater than the costs of sequestering the pollution, however. That may well not be the case.
Selectivity is most important. It's great that this gel can 'capture' virus proteins, but does it bind them more tightly than other proteins? This could be very problematic if it removes native proteins in the human serum. Many proteins look alike structurally at low resolution -- nm resolutions. If this system doesn't discriminate based on other factors like electrostatics, then this couldn't possibly be an effective filter.
There does appear to be electrostatic and shape interactions. Functional groups involved in binding do not get crosslinked, so there is both shape and some electrostatic specificity. The binding concept does seem similar to antibodies. Polymers are easy to create on the scale of pounds to tons very cheaply however. And polymers last a long time by not being biodegradable. The differences do seem to be in the level of price and practicality. They did acheive a significant level of specificity using the technique, which is why the results are important.
Besides, it's not like aptamers aren't useful even though they function similarily to antibodies.
Slashdot Mirror
Once bugs, bacteria and animals are included too, I believe this is called an ecosystem.
As far as the necessity of an armed populace, there is only one sure historical truth: Sooner or later the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants and if tyrants are the only ones with firearms the tree may very well drown from an excess of the blood of patriots.
In a democracy you can vote people out of power. Historically there have not been many democracies so far.I'll believe this type of argument if say the US citizens use guns to revolt instead of voting out the current party.
If you really believe this, wouldn't citizens owning nuclear weapons just accelerate the process, or do you think there should be limits on the destructive power a single person should have?
Whenever I read something like this, I get a reminder how poor is biologists' comprehension of Computer Science, Information Theory, and languages. So, 90% of genes aren't "junk" after all. To anyone who does know something about the aforementioned topics, duh!
If they hadn't suspected it, multiple groups around the world wouldn't have worked on this thing for such a long time. It's one thing to have a theory, another to prove it, despite what creationists may sayFirst, evolution would weed that sort of thing out in a hurry. Two organisms with genes that achieve the exact same thing, but one has a more efficient encoding? No contest!
Actually, generally no and genome sizes can very a lot. There are a great many things that can complicate this. But you do see effects like this in cases like viruses that have limited space to pack DNA in the virus capsid. Not only do these viruses not have junk DNA, but even use some compression like techniques.
Second, ever tried compressing a DNA sequence? They don't compress very well! Meaning, they don't have much redundancy.
I think you are thinking of the coding regions. Redundancy is a notable feature of many non-coding regions.Third, why this obsession with zeroing in on a magic gene that causes X? Do they think the language of DNA is context free? Defects could indeed be expected to have no context, but for the rest-- which genes determine a person's blood type? Eye color? Skin color? Going about that task by trying to find the magic gene for something like that is like a person who never learned to read trying to figure out the plot of a book by trying to recognize patterns of letters.
I think you've chosen very poor examples to illustrate you're point. Those are all features controlled by a very small number of genes or a single gene. In other context though, this could be an important way of thinking. For example, cell machinery matters too. Kinda like software vs hardware.To match your analogy, if you can't read you have no hope of understanding the plot. First you have to figure out how to read. You might be able to figure out words from patterns of letters though. You have to start somewhere.
The magic gene thing is a matter of hoping for a solution that is actually simple and viable. If it's one gene, a single drug has a good chance of working. There are many diseases that actually work this way, so why wouldn't you look for a simple answer first. Things that involve lots of genes, like cancers, haven't had much success.
World: There are lots of tyrants, what about the ones killing lots of people RIGHT NOW?
USA: We're going after this one.
World: The RICH one, huh. Whatever, we won't stop you or put up trade sanctions or anything.
USA: That means you're fighting on his side! With us or against us!
World: My god your an asshole, but he's even worse. Kill your own soldiers in the oil grab and good luck trying to keep the middle east under control.
USA: Canada are you with us?
Canada:All our troops are fighting with you in Afghanistan. Does even the USA have enough troops to start a second war?
USA: Don't you want to stop terrorism! Otherwise you're a terrorist
Canada:I thought you were talking about Iraq? Finding Osama Bin ...
USA: Mentioning failures is supporting terrorism!
A tyrant is sitting on enough oil to shake the world economy. US actions make complete sense when oil is factored in and take strange convoluted loops otherwise. Even if you personally don't believe this, many people in the US and worldwide do. Now consider people in Iraq might think while still occupied years after Saddam is gone and WMDs are found to be a joke? Poor ignorant Iraqies might confuse bombs dropped from planes for WMDs even.
No Bush could not have just bought the oil; US citizens would not support trillions of dollars in trade with a tyrant who would use the money to build WMDs. Other countries were well ahead in negotiating trade.
Most importantly, what justified a new war while you are still fighting a war in Afghanistan?
WMD and defense of the USA! Is that a joke? Okay, maybe you were surprised that Saddam had already used all the chemical weapons sold to him by the USA, but aren't places like say North Korea a bit more of a concern.
Iran glaces over: "Shit we got oil and gas, too and the US will invade regardless of any evidence or weapon inspector claims just like Iraq. Unless we actually do have nukes (or they think we do), in which case the US backs down like for North Korea."
Then there is terrorism. After watching Fox News, for some reason you ended up thinking Al Qaida was linked to Iraq. Information sources outside the US (and those inside the US that focus more on facts) all seem in remarkable agreement that their was no link before the US invaded, because Saddam ruthlessly crushed anything that could potentially threaten his power.
Americans seem a bit confused about terrorism, especially for a country that insists its citizens should be allowed guns in case they need to overthrow their government in terrorist/revolutionary manner. Wars don't tend to make people like you better, especially when innocent people get killed.
Say Canada decides it's going to kill drug dealers and mafia in the US. Most US citizens don't like those people, so it's okay at first. Now imagine people are getting killed in the cross-fire, say 30 000 or so American civillians although not that many Canadian soldiers. Now how many Americans are rabidly anti-Canadian after their little sister and neighbour were accidently blown up?
The final possible justification is to help the people of Iraq. Instead of say the people of Sudan, or say roughly 50 billion dollars to bring AIDS under control in Africa or the people of Afghanistan, who really could have used the extra troops to finish the war there quickly. Actually there are too many ways to list that all that death and money could have aided humanity better.
Everyone knows its oil. That's why the US and all other countries act the way they do.
Aha, so I should be forced to feed someone else's child?.. How "liberal"... But what is the impact of nutrition, and what kind of nutrition exactly is it, that the rich can afford, but the poor can not — in this country? Countless millions of Chinese, for example, eat far worse than the American poor, yet they still manage to develop the industry to make modest money and the frugality to save it. Those few, who come to this country often manage to build enough wealth to buy a business and own a house — in the first generation. I walk through a "chinatown" often — I've never seen a single Asian beggar, have you?
Yes, I've seen multiple Asian beggars, but I live in a city with a high asian population (for North America). But immigrants as a group are much more ambitious and hard working than the general populations they are from.Poor Americans are taller, stronger and smarter than the typical Chinese peasant (but China can pick from many more people) because of nutritional differences.
Americans are actually more productive than say Chinese or Mexican workers (stunning isn't it?). That's why the typical pay in the US is higher. As other countries become more productive in comparison, their wages rise/US dollar drops.
Well, excellent! Now that I knocked you from the moralistic high horse of the "we need to be compassionate to the less fortunate", you switch to the economics. If it is not the (forced) charity, but investment, then it should be discussed as such. Let's see the proposal and the expected ROI, shall we?
My post was entirely about economics, not morality; that's an added benefit. . The rates of return for something like early childhood (and pregnacy) nutrition are incredibly stunning. (In general the effect is about as large as the remaining environmental and genetic factors combined.) Social environment in early years (before 10 years old) had large influences too.The study I saw was presented by a doctor about 10 years ago. The drops crime rate and teen-pregnancy were huge (less than half the levels of the controls.) This was being compared to aid given to troubled teens (where most of the money was being spent at the time) where the benefits were rather small.
Another place to look would be the effects of multi-vitamins on kids in Mexico (a while back, might have been the seventies). Drastic results - kids grew a foot taller than their siblings; many more grew bored with the small towns they grew up in and moved to get an education or more highly skilled jobs; there were obvious differences in the energy levels of the kids. The sad part was that these peasants grew plenty vegetables for sale that could have added the proper nutrition to their diet but just didn't traditionally eat them.
Social programs and environmental regulations don't always cost money, but they definitely can if implemented poorly so looking at return on investment is a good idea.
As for this forced charity bullshit, that's what governments do. Why should I support this 'police' charity that protects your stuff. Pay for your own protection. That way the government can save money right?
Governments collect taxes and spend it on things that help the country.
"Environmental factors" such as nutrition during developing years can have incredibly large impacts.
and if we deny that, we should be prohibiting gambling.Prohibit gambling by gambling addicts, I think is what you meant.
But you are comfortable confiscating from "the rich" (at gun-point — via IRS) to help out these unfortunate ones — without even knowing, how many of them are in the dire straits due to their own faults?..
Let's see those who were born rich and became poor are likely in dire straits due to their own faults.
Investing money in your population is not wrong, just like investing money in your own employees is not wrong. Public spending can produce a more productive society, eg. scholarships can allow the most able, instead of only the most well funded, to become trained. These highly skilled people earn a much higher income than they would have otherwise (and working low paying jobs to save up for school still amounts to lowered income - those were years they could have been working high paying/high demand jobs.) The government collects much more income tax on these people, getting its investment back. Industries benefit from a better pool of labour.
Most people are not addicts and will not become one regardless of availablility or price of any drugs. Just like most people can drink without becoming alcoholics.
Alcohol is about as addictive and brain damaging as any drug known.
If they want to be a science, they must use scientific rigor, otherwise they just lies.
Same here. I guess this is why big money movie companies make innovative, novel films as opposed to the sequels and stale recycled plots of low budget films ;)
Remember kids piracy is dangerous. Just look at how unprofitable and rare porn became after the internet took off. ;)
But whose efficiency standards? India and China would say something like 'Thank you, for acknowledging we are ten times as efficient because we use 1/10th the energy per person.' A old car in China might get half the milage of one in the US, but if that old car is hauling 4X as many people on average, isn't it twice as efficient?
These countries would probably be worried about enforcing health and safety standards first anyway.
I think a much better idea that I think is similar to what you are proposing is to use something like carbon trading and just regulate that CO2 polluters must buy a carbon credits in a certain percentage of what they pollute. This could be fairly applied to all countries and lets market forces promote the best practices of carbon dioxide sequestering and pollution reduction. This is shifting the cost of environmental cleanup to the polluters instead of the world at large. For example, biodiesel from an algae tank might be more expensive than petroleum diesel, but biodiesel might be cheaper than the cost of petroleum diesel + sequestering carbon of the oil. This isn't even that strange of a concept. Right now you don't allow a chemical plant to dump toxins that kill off all the fish a fishery depends on. The chemical plant is forced to clean up (or contain) its toxins by law, so the chemical plant pays the price for its pollution as an expense. Otherwise the fishermen are subsidizing the chemical plant.
I think this could be applied reasonably fairly. If a country didn't want to play by these rules, that's okay, but when they want to trade with the rest of the world, a tariff could be applied at the equivalent to the cost of sequestering the pollutants. After all, you don't want companies going 'So if I stay in the US I have to pay this pollution tax, but if I build the plant in India I can sell the cheaper.' You want tell the manufacturer in China 'To sell your widgets in the US you must meet the standards US companies meet.'
I think Kyoto has some major problems. It appears that burning down a forest and replanting will give you carbon credits, but leaving the forest standing won't. So you promote the very behavior you wanted to stop. Very casual thinking on subject leads there, so I was surprised this wasn't addressed. You would need something like the ability to sell standing rainforest for a carbon credit, but then from this point on carbon credits must be bought to burn down the forest.
So what evolution predicted was not genetics specifically, but "an inheritance mechanism"? And that prediction makes evolution a falsifiable claim, because you could disprove evolution by showing that no such inheritance mechanism exists? Once again, you are using a strange sense of "predict", given that inheritance was already a well known fact. It doesn't take too much scientific sophistication to realise that offspring have a tendency to resemble their parents. Selective breeders have been using this trait since well before Darwin.
This is not a prediction, and it's not a possible point of falsification either. The known fact of inheritance was a consideration in the formulation of the theory: you have the cart before the horse.
This is scientific theory, not a hypothesis. A scientific theory is supposed to explain and not conflict with known facts. Of course Darwin knew of selective breeding, it is a major part of the theory of evolution. A simplified description of Darwin's observations were that especially in small, isolated islands nature acted like a selective breeder. Natural selection. Selective breeding of dogs made great danes and chauas whose size difference can make it physically impossible to interbreed. Similar things happen naturally.When bugs don't eat a poison plant, they act like farmers breeding for poison. The core idea is that simple.
And it follows from the theory that an inheritance mechanism must exist for selective breeding to function and, therefore, natural selection. A god, on the other hand, could choose to have inheritance or could grant/alter abilities as required, so creationism gives no insights and makes no prediction.
There are millions of other things that must also be consistent for evolution. Millions of these are consistent. Others led insights into the mechanisms of evolution, such as aultruistic behavior having 'selfish' benefits, while some led to changes in the theory of evolution, like punctuated equilibrium as opposed to gradual change.
You claimed that evolution predicted genetics. I'm calling you out on that claim, specifically: back it up with citations. Darwin's natural selection is not incompatible with Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characteristics, and Darwin did not rule it out. He arguably lessened its role, emphasising "natural selection" as the primary mechanism of evolution, but Lamarck's inheritance was still accepted. Since you cite the infamous Wiki, I will too. Here's what I'm talking about.
Darwinism did not predict genetics. On the contrary, the initial discoveries of genetics were distinctly problematic to it. These issues were resolved by making appropriate adjustments to Darwin's theory, then redesignated neo-Darwinism to underscore the differences between it and the theory put forth in "Origin of Species".
Where do you get the idea that the theory of evolution predicts genetics? It doesn't even require genetics in the Mendelian sense.
Lamarkism was accepted at the time because it was a reasonable explanation. Facts did not bear this out as a major force of evolution as more data was gathered (although features like culture are arguably Larmarkian evolution). Notice that this is consistent with the natural selection theory (and of course many others). Unlike creationism, natural selection requires A mechanism to transfer features from parent to child. This was the point I was trying to make. Without an inheritance mechanism, natural selection could not have caused evolution. This was a falsifiable claim. You are right that it does not require Mendelian genetics, but it requires something like genetics to exist. From what you quoted, the conflict with Mendelian views of genetics was resolved by changing the theory of how genetics functioned, not natural selection! You are right that Mendelian genetics is not required, after all prokaryotic bacteria and viruses don't have chromosomes but evolve too. They do have an inheritance mechanism, though.
This was really a very minor point, however. Creationists are very fond of using the old models and theories to make their points. Most of the best examples where they are actually pointing out flaws in evolution theory can be resolved by checking modern literature. Transition state fossils and problems of complex organs like the eye evolving are good examples of this. More transitions state fossils continue to be found. More related proteins are found that are related to vision, meaning the evolutionary jumps required are not as extreme and improbable as first imagined.
Some ideas about evolution have definitely changed. It appears that punctuated equilibrium, rather than gradual change is the major mechanism. But I have to point out again that this is why evolution theory is taken seriously - Science theories must be changed or abandoned whe
The explanatory power of evolution is one of its greatest strengths and often mentioned. However, I was pointing out that evolution theory makes important and accurate predictions also. That is a very important difference between evolution and creationism.
For example, evolution predicts the emergence of antibiotic resistance by selection processes when antibiotics are used and discontinued before the infection is cured. Evolution explains this process, but also predicts that the same behavior will emerge in other bacteria, using other drugs and even in similar processes like insects acquiring pesticide resistance. A creationist explanation might be that God punishes people for breaking their word to the pharmacist and predict that prayer will save them or any other number of theories depending on the designer?
Of course the theory of evolution has changed. Science is not a religion, it is supposed to change when better evidence of the truth emerges. But why the problem with evolution in the first place? Do you really believe that that the entire fields of geology, paleontology, genetics, zoology, anthropology and history are in some world wide, cross culture conspiracy to promote evolution? Why would all these people almost unanimously pervert their entire philosophy to pursue knowledge and truth? There are many religious members of the scientific community, why would they go along with this?
People with a startling similarity to creationists did think the bible proved the sun went around the earth and imprisoned Galileo for writing a book that suggested that facts indicated otherwise. They took this very seriously. Religion did not collapse. Science was not promoting the theory to disprove religion.
If creationism wants to be a philosophy, that is fine and may even be valuble. If creationism or intelligent design want to be a science, it must stand up to the same standards as evolution has. According to standards developed specifically to promote truth and understanding at the expense of established belief, evolution is a well established and very, very well supported theory, while the others are minor fringe theories. If the entire system and standards of science are false, you can develop another one but you must establish credibility on your own. You can't call it science.
China and India are in the G8? Besides, they probably view it more like 'per person we're doing fantastic compared to the US and Europe. You're just trying to use all the world's resources before we have a chance.'
The environment provides a great deal of services that are incredibly expensive or impossible to replace or repair. Damages are felt world wide but benefit polluters who effectively have a free subsidy. So it is more realistic to say the wealthier countries are currently being given a free ride.
Whether Kyoto is actually a good idea or even effective in helping the environment is debatable. However, these important issues are not discussed because of the stupid diversionary debate on whether global warming is man-made. That had already been well established ten years ago and reasonable doubt has been shrinking rapidly since then.
Creationism is not science because it does not predict anything. Evolution theory has successfully predicted an incredible number of facts (and is falsifiable because incorrect predictions point to flaws in the theory). If you asked scientists whether evolution was THE most important and effective theory in science, many would agree that it is. Evolution predicted the existence of genetics, emergence of antibiotic and pesticide resistance (and successful methods of preventing the resistance from emerging), the existence and locations of transition fossils, to name a few relevant ones. The idea that peer review blocks outside ideas is false. If this were true, quantum mechanics would not exist as a scientific theory, it was hated and not believed but accepted after it repeated made correct predictions of experiment. Wave/particle duality was an absurd idea by a patent clerk (Einstein), but the arguments held. You do have to be more convincing in science when you are stating that everyone else is wrong, but it can be done. The main ideal of science is skepticism, not faith. Supernatural theories are ignored generally because they predict nothing and, therefore, are scientifically useless. There is no way to make predictions without knowing the intent and abilities of the designers. You could simply say God makes objects fall down to explain gravity, but this doesn't advance knowledge in any useful way. Most importantly, even if the world is only 6000 years old and creations are right about everything, evolution should still be taught as an important scientific theory. Even if its 'wrong' in a strict sense, the natural world exists in a state as if evolution occurred. The highly conserved amino acids in a protein sequence (ones unchanged from different species) are critical to function. If the male of a species has very large testicles, the species is promiscuous. Genetic algorithms have even found use in the distant field of computer science. If creationists were actually raising valid points or providing insight, the scientific community would not be acting this way. Creationist arguments are very well refuted and completely unconvincing to the informed scientific community. Scientists are dismissive of the claims, but after someones cried 'wolf' a few hundred times, you tend to ignore them. The same as people claiming free energy inventions. Creationists have been effective in persuading the uniformed public, however.
But if even 1 person would have purchased except for the option of download for free, they have lost revenue and it could be construed as theft. Likewise, if one person bought an album they would not have otherwise known about, the labels have gained revenue by free advertising. I have never bought an album or attended a concert from a little known artist without extensively stealing mp3s or borrowing/copying a CD first.
These loss numbers are always bogus. When prices go down, sales go up. When I was young video games and MS products were rampantly pirated, obviously those markets collapsed ;)
Were those lost video game sales? No. Our allowances were limited and already spent on video games (or computer upgrades needed to run video games which was easier to justify to parents). More enforcement only meant we would spend more time out riding bikes, reading, etc. Lower prices, probably would have resulted in a greater diversity of games bought (at a high price you don't tend to risk buying things that might suck).
Exactly - And I don't want any of the three of those, much less all three.
Especially ease of use. I hate that.
-Ted Using mp3 is complicated? How much easier than double-click on virtually any computer and/or throw on virtually any device can you get?
Check out the "Skeptical Environmentalist" for another opinion. From someone who slammed the environmental movement on many fronts for creating a distorted views, using the 2001 data, concluded that man made global warming very obviously existed. There was already so much evidence back then that Lomborg thought the debate about man made global warming was very strange. Now as to the size of the effect, the costs of reversing it, etc. there is legitimate debate. Lomborg believed actions such as the Kyoto Protocol were a very bad idea, being very expensive and having little effect.
You can safely ignore global warming deniers, it requires ignorance or a disregard of balanced evidence and logic to hold this opinion. Debate as to the course of action or inaction to take may be very legitimate. For example, proper fishing controls that keep ocean ecosystems healthy would be far more beneficial to ocean life than stopping all CO2 emmitions completely.
There are lots of subsidies of Canadian art. Why not use the money to increase this funding or reduce the taxpayer's portion of it. You know, spend the money to help artists like they claimed when they took the money.
To judge this properly would take a great deal of effort and is even more complicated because environmental costs might extend a long way into the future. I don't think your comparison is any more fair.
One measure might be to compare the cost of sequestering the additional pollutants emitted to the subsidy given to the hybrid. That would require the costs of pollution to be greater than the costs of sequestering the pollution, however. That may well not be the case.
There does appear to be electrostatic and shape interactions. Functional groups involved in binding do not get crosslinked, so there is both shape and some electrostatic specificity. The binding concept does seem similar to antibodies. Polymers are easy to create on the scale of pounds to tons very cheaply however. And polymers last a long time by not being biodegradable. The differences do seem to be in the level of price and practicality. They did acheive a significant level of specificity using the technique, which is why the results are important.
Besides, it's not like aptamers aren't useful even though they function similarily to antibodies.