In theory, you can always learn more by continuing to study something. In practice, though, modern medicine has a pretty complete knowledge of smallpox. Humans have been studying the disease since before anyone even knew what a virus was. There's evidence that the Chinese were inoculating people for smallpox over a thousand years ago. And the first practical, widespread form of that vaccine dates back to the late 1700s. This was literally the very first virus ever treated with a vaccine. It's well-trodden ground, research-wise.

The problem is, this virus is highly contagious and relatively dangerous compared with other viruses. For variola major, the case fatality rate is typically 30–60%, which puts it among the worst communicable diseases out there, approaching the fatality rate of ebola, and far more contagious. With nearly a two-week average incubation period (and up to 17 days in the worst case), one minor screw-up could easily cause a very serious pandemic before enough vaccines could be produced and distributed.

So basically, you have to weigh the odds of an accidental release (which, with recent revelations about this stuff getting lost for decades, then turning up by accident, seems not so improbable) against the relatively small chance of learning anything new from it that can't also be learned from cowpox or other similar viruses. On the risk-reward curve, this seems to be so far towards the "pure risk" end that any reward would border on undeniable proof of divine intervention, which means the speculated rewards would have to be pretty darn amazing for it to be worth the risk.

What could possibly be gained from further experimentation at this point? We already know how to isolate it and how to produce vaccines for it. And for gene therapy, there are lots of other, less dangerous viruses that can be used as vectors for delivering genetic material. It seems that keeping anything more than the bare minimum amount of material needed to produce vaccines would fall pretty far towards the risk end of the risk-reward curve.

The SyFy version involves a pro wrestler playing the technician. Oh, and the plucky daughter just found out she's pregnant.

I know one. Her manager got mad and grabbed her by the throat. He didn't even get back to his cubicle. He got walked out the door by HR, told to wait at home to find out if the woman would press charges. Real companies take these things seriously.

And some context for the link, if not clear:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/review-only-decent-people-the-netherlands-continued-dehumanization-of-black-people

To an extent, but only to an extent, you are correct.

The problem is that when someone who feels they should be entitled relative to someone else also feels that the somone else is favored over them, you get a lot more vitriol. And a lot of men and boys feel that they should be entitled relative to women. And yes, this also happens along racial lines. And anonymity makes them feel safe in targeting the "unfairly" favored.

Please note that I do not intend ANY actual implication as to whether or not the targeted individual actually is favored in any sane sense of the term. I'm talking purely about perceptions. And I intentionally spoke in generalities. It could as easily describe relationships between customers and clerks as anything else, but for most people that relationship does not impact the attention that they devote to the world significantly.

You realize that there's more difference between your average man and your average woman than between your average NFL linebacker and your average man, right? (seriously, compare the stats some time - height, average bench strength, etc). You do realize how commonly women are raped and abused by men, and how they might happen to be more sensitive to the implicit or explicit threats of violence from someone that they're highly unlikely to be able to fight off?

I'm tall, 182 centimeters, and I still once had a guy literally pick me up and carry me back to his apartment when I tried to walk away from him.

There's a bit of a difference in that one in every four women actually will be raped in their life, and a sizeable percent of those getting those threats already have been.

Yes, men are raped too. About 91% of rape cases are male->female, 8% male->male, 0.8% female->female, and 0.2% female->male. Men are virtually always the perpetrator, but even when the victim is male (not nearly as common, but still way more common than we as a society should accept), the perpetrator is still overwhelmingly likely to be male.

(and if the excuse for the stats is "men aren't as likely to report being raped by a woman because of shame"... so is there no shame for a guy to report being sodomized against his will by a man?)

The basic point is: when you're threatening a violent crime against a person who may well have been a victim of such, and even if they haven't, very likely has friends who have and is more than aware of their vulnerability in this regard, that's taking it to a whole different level.

Not directly. If you fed salt water into the system is would get blocked up with salt crystals. Indirectly, yes. The output is steam, and you could use that to heat the salt water to the point where it started rapidly evaporating. (You'd want to recycle the "working fluid" water, so you don't just bubble it through the salt water, but instead you use the salt water to cool the steam until it condenses and then feed it back into the heater.)

Oddly in reference:
http://videolinkz.us/mu.php?url=ox60w8tg5plk

Nice being a straight cis white male when a venue is dominated by other straight cis white males, isn't it?

And just to make clear, the problem of insulting people isn't along the lines of "ching chong chow chee" or whatnot. The problem case is along the lines of:

Scenario 1:

Man: "What does that do? Sorry, I don't know perl."
Crowd: "You don't know perl? Geez, you're stupid."

Scenario 2:

Woman: "What does that do? Sorry, I don't know perl."
Crowd: "Geez, women are stupid."