It's more about what was given up ... symbolized by the works of Shakespeare. It's something along the lines of giving up humanity for the sake of progress.

Handmaid's Tale ! Completely forgot about this one ... really good and extremely dark novel

I always thought A Brave New World was the much better dystopic novel, which is a pretty depressing genre as a whole. The world portrayed in BNW was more real to me, and the writing was a lot better, in my opinion, approaching literary science fiction. For example, I really liked the use of The Tempest throughout. You could definitely make the argument that 1984 was more depressing because the writing was worse and the book was less interesting though (i.e., it was depressing to read, not just the content).

I don't know if The Magus by Fowles would exactly qualify as science fiction, but that was another book that was a great read in the same way (depressing yet very well written so that it was still enjoyable).

Then there are the more common great scifi books that are depressing because they are so good that you dont want them to end. I remember feeling this way at the end of Snow Crash.

Atheists do not all believe the question is settled (and to lump atheists in one group would be as foolish as to lump theists in one group). As an atheist, I don't believe in a god simply because I see no evidence of a god. If I found this evidence, I would reconsider. I think being agnostic is really more like believing there is equal evidence on both sides, thus making leaning one way or the other on the question of religion difficult. In the end, this might come down to semantics, but the point that I'm trying to make is that not all atheists are are as you describe them to be. It's not about fervently believing there is no god, it's that I simply see no evidence. The two sides are by no means equivalent.

Dihydrogen monoxide may be troubling, yes, but HOH is 10 times more toxic.

In their experiment, selection is not hand choosing in the sense that you are selecting which apple to buy at the supermarket. The selections usually performed in these types of experiments are binding interactions or some form of catalysis. All of the XNAs (random pool) that bind to a target molecule or perform the desired reaction are taken to the next step of the process. This pool of "winners" is then amplified to create a new random pool for the next selection. Over many rounds of selection, you get the best binders back, and you can study their properties and so on. There is no guarantee that if you perform the selection all over again that you will end up with the same XNAs due to the randomness inherent in the pool and the selection process. "Intelligent design" (fictional characters in the sky aside) would be to start out designing the XNA to bind the target molecule from scratch. This is very difficult to do as is rational drug design in general because we don't know enough yet about molecular interactions.

My guess is Zimmerman's lawyer would argue that his client simply did not understand that statement or that it was unclear. The problem with this argument though is that Zimmerman seemed to be in control of his situation.

But the kinds of estimates he is making are what matters to game developers and the shareholders if the company is traded. They are going to lose money porting to linux if it takes a significant amount of time. You can't really blame Blizzard ...

Oh ok. I got the impression that would be passaging the human cells through mice at some point.

I think one worry from this type of technique would be the inclusion of murine virion DNA. For example, the likely source of XMRV was due to infection of human cells passaged through mice (that's my understanding of the cause). No one wants to accidentally create a new retrovirus ...

I corrected your error.

There are two types of people: those who fear command lines and those who do not.

So the goal of the adenovirus is to introduce the broadly neutralizing antibody into T cell lines. These are the immune cells that are going to be ultimately fighting HIV infection, but they lack the right antibodies. In the normal situation, your body raises antibodies, but they cannot bind to the right spot on the virus envelope. Instead, they bind to a spot that the virus naturally varies, and the virus escapes via mutation (i.e., mutated virus replicates, other virus doesn't). In the new situation, the adenovirus provides an antibody that is better, which binds a spot on Env that the virus needs (so virus with mutation at this spot replicate poorly).

So muscle and heart cells are likely not getting the vector, nor would they be expressing antibodies. Similarly, your body wont continue to raise the antibody if the infection is gone (it will not be ad infinitum).

This is my understanding ... perhaps others could add key points.

Sometimes, the trials are conducted with people who are currently on HAART (anti-HIV therapy). Their HAART regimens are ended, and the new regimen is given to them. My understanding is that the HIV-infected community is very very understanding--they know that the only chance for a real solution is to volunteer.

An alternative scenario is to conduct the trial in a high risk population, such as sex workers or people living in sub-Saharan Africa. If you treat enough people, there will be a portion who become HIV-positive during the trial, and you can compare the control/test groups. If the drug is really working well, the study will be halted prematurely because it's unethical not to give the control group the treatment (also an incentive for someone to volunteer themselves when they don't know what they are getting, placebo or test).

Well, NPR had the test on. But imagine that if you draw a Venn diagram of "fucking idiots" and "NPR listeners" ... well, you get my point.