Why? Why the hell can't a teacher be honest? If a kid is stupid / unwilling to learn, then why should the teacher kiss their ass and pretend like they're wonderful?
It's not always a simple matter of "the child is stupid" or "the child is unwilling to learn." Perhaps that subject is particularly difficult for that child, or perhaps there are problems occurring within the child's life that is preventing him/her from performing well. Depending on the community that we're talking about, it's not always a case of the kid being spoiled.
I agree with what someone mentioned above, that many people simply go through the system in an uninspired manner and then come out feeling entitled. Having tougher teachers might help with that. However, these children are also developing as people (not just as learners). Negative reinforcement has its place, but positive reinforcement is far better. Based on my experiences both in and out of the education system, people tend to over-use the negative (even inappropriately) and rarely utilize the positive. I would value a teacher's honest opinion, but I would not want a judgmental teacher taking their shit out on my child.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, but I don't think it's a matter of the company feeling that it's "beneath them." It likely has to do with marketing. They want you to associate the service with them, specifically, so that you'll stay with them and buy more things from them. Unlike electric and water companies, these companies do face competition (at least, in certain regions). Competing on price alone can not only be difficult, but it becomes fickle - if these companies are just dumb gateways to the internet, what's to prevent customers from switching over to another service that becomes cheaper? More importantly, the company that remains silent and stays out of their customer's way also stays out of their customer's mind. You and I may appreciate that (and wouldn't forget the company), but it seems like many people need something loud, flashy, obnoxious, and in-their-face to register it at all.
That's advice for the work force, as well...
I'd mod you up if I had points. You're absolutely correct. You may not be able to disprove that all ghosts exist, but you can examine claims. If people hear noises, record it to verify that they exist, and then look for possible causes. If people see eerie glows, record it (even if only by using a light meter - not even a camera). Temperature shifts - verify with a thermometer. And so on...
I see some parallels between this "ghost verification" and my biology research. We're working with things that we can't touch or see with the naked eye. You examine key, detectable parameters, and make your conclusions from that. We already have defined parameters for many cell types - the parameters for ghosts are those that cause people to believe that the ghost exists. Some people have written fears that this experiment would be used as proof that ghosts exist, no matter the outcome, and have recommended against even trying - the same thing happens in the field of science. I have yet to hear someone request that an experiment not be performed for that reason (although I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has encountered that).
I've read a number of your comments in this story, and I understand your thoughts and frustrations. I'm curious, though: why are you jumping to violence? Why not try to affect change through the system? I would preemptively guess your response to be something along the lines of, "the system is broken beyond repair," or "the system is rigged to prevent those who aren't part of the elite from getting in and making change." But is it true? I hear a lot of people complaining about politicians and corruption in the system, yet very few seem willing to challenge them by taking up the job themselves.
Yes, I'm very well aware that politics these days seems to favor the wealthy, or those with preexisting ties to the political world. It's probably why we have career politicians and political families. Despite that, nobody seems to even try.
Why not try it? Start a new political party, or even a loosely-organized politically-motivated organization. Start by taking on government at the local levels, and then move upward. Sure, it'll be difficult - difficult to outlast the established political organizations; difficult to keep your party united; difficult to bear the various expectations of the population you serve; and difficult to accomplish your goals with the limited power of what ever office you and your colleagues hold. Those are the limitations of the system.
However, you're saying that you would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, yet you would not be willing to try and work through the system? How can you and others like you declare the system to be broken, when you have not tried to work through it yourself?
The things in question aren't secret by any means. Anyone in the countries in question would know they're important infrastructure.
While that may be true, why did Wikileaks put them out there? I've always thought of Wikileaks as a way for internal sources to provide information that would reveal corruption or otherwise disturbing activities within organizations. Releasing this list just seems like pointless antagonism, or a sort of bragging to show what information they have.
I like Wikileaks, but this makes me question whether they've dropped their original ideal (or if it was never theirs, then the ideal that they could have been). Looking back, what purpose did leaking the diplomatic cables serve? We were given a glimpse into the inner thoughts of diplomats, but no hard evidence of corruption or misbehavior was revealed. Was the point really just embarrassment?
The reason why many cancers return after their initial removal has to do with cancer cell types. Previously it was believed that cancer was cancer and all cells were the same, but it is now believed that there are "cancer stem cells." These are cells that bud off into the fast-growing cells that make up tumors, but by comparison the stem cells are slow-dividing and may not fully resemble the tumor cells.
The reason why this is important is because many therapies are designed to target fast-dividing cells. Cells are most vulnerable to treatments (whether chemical or radiation) when they're actively replicating. Chemotherapy does a number on your entire body, but it hits the cancer cells a bit harder because they're dividing even faster. However, even if you clear out a tumor, remission may still occur if the cancer stem cells weren't taken out, as well. And due to their slow-dividing nature, many therapies that we're currently utilizing are likely missing them.
I've never heard of the theory that you mentioned. It seems very unlikely that cancers are intentionally brought about by the body, given that we have essentially no examples of cancers being beneficial, and from what we know of cellular biology there are many, many factors designed to guard against cells becoming cancerous.
I'm a graduate student in immunology research, so when I first read this over I immediately began to think about how I could use it in my own research. I can think of quite a few applications.
I won't go into the details of my project (that'd be a few paragraphs right there and I'd lose people's attention), but it's heavily based on cell signaling. In a molecular biology course you were probably exposed to the fact that cells have a whole lot going on inside of them - various receptors trigger various proteins; those proteins alter other proteins (either activating them or shutting them off); proteins can trigger transcription factors, which go to the DNA and influence the protein field... and so on. It can get pretty complicated, but it's like a big puzzle. Pretty fun, as long as your experiments are working properly and you're not in 100% uncharted territory!
The standard way that people map cell signaling pathways is by using inhibitors and stimulators. Generally this means that you want a drug that has a very high specificity, a known target, and a known function. By treating the cell with that drug, you affect one part of the pathway and try to determine what happens to other parts of the signaling pathway. You determine the relationships in that manner. (siRNA is increasingly becoming a standard for "knocking down" targets, as well.)
But how do you get a drug or siRNA plasmid into a cell? With drugs you generally have to culture the cells with them right up to the limit where it's toxic to the cells; with siRNA you need to package it into viruses and then infect your cells (infection rates generally aren't so hot - you could also do electroporesis, but that's a bit stress on the cells). Assuming I'm understanding the reality of the nanotubes correctly and am not totally off in a daydream, this would let you bypass a lot of those concerns and just get your products into the cells pretty easily. I'm not sure what the efficiency of this method would be, but it could be promising.
Just as a disclaimer to any other biologists reading this, I work with primary cells and our cells of interest occur in very low numbers (hence low infection rates and/or methods that stress and kill off large numbers of our cells are very undesirable). People who work with cell lines have it easy! =)
The prices are significantly reduced on "outdated" models, but the Apple store doesn't make them known (and they may not even sell them directly). For example, when my fiancee's HP laptop started to give her problems, we priced out Macbook replacements. A black Macbook - considered the "high end" Macbook back before they started making them in aluminum - would cost close to $1500 new (at least, that's how much the university was selling it at). However, my university bookstore made the prices of "old" units known. These were the units that were one or two "refreshes" old. We picked out a black Macbook for her for $850. It may not have been the absolute latest and greatest that Apple had to offer, but it was less than a year old and as such its specifications still blew away Apple's newly refreshed, lower-end Macbooks by quite a bit.
Apple's student discounts have to go through their website, or so the bookstore had told me, so the prices I'm giving you should not reflect prices after a student discount. It's possible that a university bookstore would discount "old stock" more steeply than other vendors would. It's still something to consider, and if you can find a store that sells Apple computers then you may want to ask if they carry discounted old stock.
Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"