Ok, now that I've read the link, I can definitely say this isn't a scientific study. The sample size of 29 people, 7 of which had the gene that supposedly causes bad driving is not nearly enough to draw a positive causal conclusion. And most importantly, he cannot possibly demonstrate that the gene *causes* bad driving. If he cannot demonstrate it, it's simply his belief based on... whatever else he may have studied. Or random, but it's of equal value to science - a belief is not science. It's small wonder this tidbit is just on UC Irvine's webpage.... it'll never make scientific publication.

A relation does not a correlation make. And less so does a correlation make a causation. They are drawing the conclusion that the gene is associated with bad driving for... I don't know why, or what logic. Probably little to none. I couldn't tell without looking at the study, but their sample size probably is too small to even be statistically significant. And even if it was, they can't provide an explanation as to *why* this gene could have the effect of making you a bad driver, and *what causes it*. And there are *so* many factors that can affect the test scores than just the gene. The researchers cannot possibly have justification for drawing a causal relationship between said gene and bad driving. This isn't any more scientific than eugenics.

Yes, and it's relative to government investment in projects. Businesses and banks engaged in speculation only run the world when governments don't. Our greatest advancement in science and technology, in social welfare and public education, in manufacturing, have always been when the Federal government invests in it. You have a huge surge in industry and scientific and humanist advancement when a nation invests in infrastructure projects and regulation of charter banks and Wall Street, as in FDR's New Deal and decay when there is little to no invest and/or deregulation of speculative activity... which is mostly everything in the past 40ish years since the Nixon administration and the dissolution of the Bretton-Woods treaty. By allocating large grants to public works projects (roads, public transit, utilities, etc.) and technological developement (like the space program) in the form of credit/grants is the best way to nurture science and technology development, which are needed in various forms for those projects. This fosters advancements in the machine-tool industry, or the technology and techniques to manufacture things, and helps support the current population and provide the means for the population to expand. When this isn't done... industry wanes away or is even eaten alive from the inside out by globalization, companies unwilling to pay high wages for skilled work, limited funds to new projects, etc. And contributes to the mess the US in presently in.

I have yet to read the actual article, what I am replying to is the slashdot clipping. I'll read the article later just for arguing points and completion.

This is moronic. I don't know *how* they are calculating that 'the supply has actually remained steady over the past 30 years,' but if that is true, that demonstrates
a growing need for science and technology students, not that it's fine. The US was the world leader in science, technology and manufacturing coming out of WW II, and our
society has revolved around progressive upgrading and retooling of our industrial output.

The total population growth of the US from 1979 to 2008 according to the US Census Bureau was approximately 80 million people. You have to consider retiring, and emigrating persons in your picture when you are trying to estimate how many science sector persons we have produced, and kept in the last whole generation. So, if our number of graduating science, engineering and manufacturing sector students has remained the *same* for the *past 30 years*, we are ALL in a LOT of trouble.

I'd say that their conclusions, contrary to what they speculate as 'needing fewer Science students' shows data explaining how the scientific, industrial and manufacturing sectors of our country have been decaying for the past 30 years.

Well, that would be one of the baseline first steps.

From an electronics perspective, we'd have to have a *greatly* expanded understanding of both electronics as well as cellular biology and biochemistry,
with a major emphasis on cellular signaling... not an area we know a whole hell of a lot about right now.

But bigger than that, would be a widespread understanding of the human MIND, as the non-physical component that is the larger force at work beyond the
physical structure. We'd have to take up where Socrates, Plato, and a few of the greatest Greek philosophers and tragedians, as well as some of our
greatest scientists as Kepler, Leibniz, Vernadsky, Gauss, and Riemann left off - how the human mind works, and how it relates, responds to, and how it
affects the rest of the universe.

We'd have to have that before we could even attempt making a human mind, or imprinting one into a material medium no matter what it may be.

Otherwise, we're looking at cheap imitations, though extremely sophisticated at that. We'd never get beyond modeling similar to an extremely complex,
interconnected set of specialized help systems.

=S That isn't science either, and global warming isn't happening. The studies presented to the people attending the Kyoto Protocol conference were from a group of two scientists, only. The data and conclusions presented by said scientists were soon after examined by other scientists and shown to use inaccurate, outdated data and selectively omit much other data. The mathematical means for calculating their "L shaped graph" demonstrating a massive upsurge in global temperature was also shown to be fraudulent, and has been contradicted by almost every other study done on the subject... more recent among them coming out of Cal Tech, UC system schools, and MIT demonstrating that warming and cooling cycles fluctuate based on solar cycles/based on our star system's position in the milky way galaxy over time, and that the overall trend is toward another ice age/cooling period, not the opposite. Not all things purported as science, or commonly called science, are honest or "good science". Unfortunately, there seems to be a scarcity of good science while misleading, business driven, controversy driven and fraudulent "science" seem to be running amok. =(

Yeah... "studies" such as this are why Psychology is NOT a science, and not quickly advancing to become one.

Psychology isn't a science, it isn't debatable. It doesn't meet the formal definition of a science on several grounds,
falsifiability, honoring of the null hypothesis, and lack of rigor in experiments all being among them.

Yeah, have to agree with this. There *are* some independent semi-social networking mods that are used(usually by the 18ish+ crowd that don't normally fall into the drooling psychopathic troll category), but those are primarily to maintain a floating ban list for the community to identify leavers, hackers, and the like rather than people that are simply unpleasant. And with DoTA, what active user base there is, *does* tend to be caustic... to greatly understate it... much, much, much more so than other games on battle.net let alone anywhere else. Though it does seem to be a pox infesting battle.net more than anywhere else I've seen. I also see a *lot* of junior high and high school aged kids in cyber cafes (I live just south of Los Angeles) playing DoTA... I thought stories of drooling kids trolling from cyber cafes playing DoTA and Starcraft were just exaggerations, but alas...

We really need to look at modern nuclear power, period. Glad to see you made the distinction between *modern* and the average anti-nuclear advocate's idea of nuclear, technology that was out of date for its time 50 years ago. A few things about so called wind power - first, is that the material resources needed to construct wind farms are very large - why use that much metal and/or plastic? Second, being that the power generation rating for each wind turbine isn't quite half of what you will get at times of maximum power generation... you hover around 50% or less of what the actual rating is at *peak*, and generate far, far less all other times... which is most of the day, every day. Third, is that to generate a significant amount of power for industrial and domestic uses both, you need to use an *immense* amount of land to ensure the fans are at the optimum distance from each other. Doesn't really matter whether you put the fans in the middle of your neighborhood, a desert, or the ocean, they're *all* bad ideas. The energy, labor, and material resources put into them far exceed what you will ever get in returns. And on top of that, new jobs are not being created in the construction of wind (or solar) farms long term - politicians and major proponents of wind and solar technology have admitted that new jobs will not be created, beyond the very short term of building the farms themselves. Why waste all of that effort, when you could just build a modern nuclear power plant - it almost doesn't matter where you put them, as long as humans can acess them, they generate tons of energy for a very small investment of resources, the waste they create can be recycled and produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived wastes (using thorium), using thorium-based fission completely obviates concerns about meltdown/chain reaction, is *much* harder to get weapons grade fission material from the thorium reactor than plutonium from the uranium reactor... and the plant will take up all of a football field. There are other means of power generation, but as of yet, none are mature and/or inexpensive enough to manufacture to be used as primary energy sources to sustain current and future human population - excepting hydroelectric, where it applies.

Might as well just tax the parents for bad parenting. And as far as money grabbing, far be it from us to cut back expenses, or spending, or bailouts that endlessly generate more debt and drive hyperinflation...

I'd venture to say all this is a cultural trend of the people in the baby boomer generation, the age group most loudly supporting this garbage. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

Of course! I'm always provoked to domestic violence every time I hear a girl babbling about some completely irrelevant garbage she saw on the Road Rules/Real World challenge. =P

Well, that's part of the consequences of both a culture and a legal/judicial system that doesn't reward personal responsibility.

Yes, but to say that the punishment being draconically out of proportion with the crime would be an understatement. Seriously? Kicked out of the dorms immediately? For being caught illegally downloading copyrighted material on what I assume is a first offense? Not being warned? Not simply having dorm internet services revoked? Wow, I'm speechless.