Pain is possibly the oldest, most effective stimulus to changing behavior in the history of, well, life.
To suggest that human behavior isn't modified by pain is to imply that humans are somehow intrinsically different than every other kind of life on this planet.

I doubt that is true.

Now we can talk all day about the long term effects of pain on spent beings, and the concomitant damage that can be done emotionally, socially, or in terms of relationships. But if I'm going to take you seriously as a real scientist (and not just a flake with an agenda) you need to concede that pain CAN change behavior, and that in some cases the behavior change may conceivably be worth the effects.

Because they're not "just feeding their family and keeping a roof over their heads"?

At least in the US, what we call "poor" are ridiculously well off by current world standards, and even very comfortable compared to relatively recent US norms. US "poor" typically have cell phones multiple tv's, computers, car(s) and a residence larger than middle class Europeans.
http://www.heritage.org/resear...

Living a life that would have comfortable in the 1970s - 1 cheap tv, no cable, no computer/internet, one cheapo car, no cell phone, smaller meal sizes, no convenience food - you could have a family of 4 right at the poverty line with out much trouble.

Not at all? Why would it?
I think it's great that we work to fix things that we understand and have clear, quantifiable paths forward.
My objection to "climate change" isn't what you seem to believe.
My objection is that it seems to have sucked all the air out of the room for the public to pursue real, tangible, projects that can materially improve life - mostly for the billions on this planet that live in squalor.

But hey, you keep paying indulgences for your sins, er, I mean 'carbon credits' (and that $ goes where, exactly, once it's done salving your conscience?) to make yourself feel like you're "doing something".

This is the stupidest conclusion I've seen in 2014 and I've had the US government and the WHOLE INTERNET aggressively providing strong candidates all year.

....aren't we skating a hairsbreadth from Lamarckism?
I recognize that the article doesn't imply that these genetic changes have any impact on the reproductive genes, but is it absolutely impossible that these methylation changes have some impact - if even only generally, for example on overall fitness of the offspring - that would almost be Lamarckian?

IANARG - I am not a reproductive geneticist - but as my amateur understanding is that a woman's ova are all in-place early in life, while a man's sperm are made anew regularly, I'd imagine this (hypothesized) impact could only apply to males' reproductive cells anyway?

Seriously, we do.

The fact that we're finding other PLANETS is now so humdrum that this gets 7 comments, this smells very much like the latter Apollo missions "Oh, we've got guys on the moon again? Zzzz."

If I simply posted something controversial*, like an entire article about how "global warming is bullshit", that would get 300 comments, easily.

*of course, I can't use /. as my personal blog. I'm not Bennett Haselton.

I'll trade the label of 'skeptic' for 'science denier' sure, but I'd ask that people stop using the blanket term 'climate change' when they really mean 'a host of sweeping economic, societal, and governmental changes that spend $billions and $trillions to effect what we optimistically expect to be trivial changes in a dynamic system that we mostly don't really understand and have been unable to reliably predict, and which only coincidentally SEEM to conform to a leftist agenda that otherwise nobody was listening to'.

That'd be great, thanks!

I see, so there's some controversy about the naming convention?
I propose "Namingconventiongate" or maybe "Slashdotpostgate".

First, let's remember that lawmaking politicians of influence of either party are typically what, 60+ years old? 70+? These guys still have their staff print their emails for them and are surprised when a someone says 'let's watch a movie' and it doesn't involve (at best) a VCR. Not super-quick at adapting to change.

Second, until pretty recently the "target demographic" of electric car buyers was some sprout-eating weirdo from the Bay Area, ie, someone who wouldn't piss on a Republican if they were on fire, ie not someone that ever, in a million years, would VOTE Republican. OTOH, Car Dealerships are relatively typical small businessmen, whose concerns about running a business tend to coincide with GOP viewpoints and platforms. Whether they vote Dem/Rep is irrelevant, it's that they [i]could[/i] vote Republican, so which group would a Republican politician reasonably spend their time serving?

Ask 10 economists a question and you'll get 11 answers.

"...But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out...."
That sounds suspiciously like someone wants to run something.
I'd ask - sincerely - if there's a way to tell if world economics has run better since politicians started actually listening to economists? The moment economists moved from descriptive to prescriptive was arguably not a step upward.

The world of geopolitics are much more Hobbesian "red in tooth and claw" - certainly there are international "laws" but considering that a) being subject to them is entirely voluntary and b) there are no punishments for law-breakers beyond what other states are willing to exert, "international law" is more like a voluntary coordination of diplomatic efforts than an actual binding structure of laws. I know it didn't help Ukraine for shit (bye Crimea!), and is unlikely to do much for the Philippines or Vietnam in terms of a logical (ie not China-uber-alles) resolution of the various sea-disputes they're in.

If there are truly vast swathes of resources beneath the polar cap, ultimately, it's going to go to whomever can protect it (or who has big enough friends ok with them having it - in particular them having it instead of someone they like less...).

In short, Good Luck Denmark! My suspicion is that legal victory here, if they win, will be short-lived: Denmark *may* have a legitimate claim in the World Court, but this case would be followed almost immediately by a just-as-legitimate claim by Greenlanders for independence from a pre-modern colonial tie.

Now he's writing policy for the White House, sadly.

First, the flippant comment:
I find it astonishing that in this day and age when apparently they can track everything I do, want, and own online without my permission, my ATM still asks me WHAT LANGUAGE I want to use? Seriously? After I've answered that once, it's done. I'm not changing my native language guys. Offering it subsequently is doing a favor only for the foreign-language dude that steals my card.

Second, the serious one:
a) the site itself is fairly vague and misleading:
"Yes! (You can be tracked!)
36.34 % of observed browsers are Chrome, as yours.
27.11 % of observed browsers are Chrome 39.0, as yours.
55.61 % of observed browsers run Windows, as yours.
39.77 % of observed browsers run Windows 7, as yours.
59.03 % of observed browsers have set "en"as their primary language, as yours.
5.51 % of observed browsers have UTC-6 as their timezone, as yours.
You have the only browser out of 24041 with this fingerprint."
I call bullshit on that. You're telling me I'm the only english-language individual running chrome on windows 7 in the UTC-6 timezone? Absolute nonsense.

b) when you pull the 'more details" then it starts to get more plausible, where the specific list of addons I use is rather unique, but they go down to asserting that my browser is 'identifiable' due to WebGL output - really, are vendors doing this to fingerprint my browser (as is implied) or is this more of a forensic "if I was stupid enough to send a ransom note from my browser, the FBI could eventually confirm that it came from my machine if they had physical possession of it and some weeks"?
That's two different contexts of "unique", surely?

As PT Barnum is reputed to have said (OK I know he didn't say it but roll with the anecdote): "There is no bad publicity."

I've thought for years that the news coverage ITSELF is the problem.

If these individuals didn't know that they'd suddenly gain the attention of millions this would be a far less appealing strategy for them.

Now, imagine for a moment that news services voluntarily refused to share (during OR AFTER the incident):
- the names/identities of the perpetrators
- their "cause"
- their demands
- any details extrinsic to the safety of the public.

This story would hit the news as: "A hostage-event is taking place at a location in Sydney's CBD; several people are believed to be held by an individual, and police are evacuating the CBD as a standard precaution."

I know, it's a utopian idea that news stations actually stop reveling in the carnage they get to cover, and there's no question that crazy-bad people would still do bad things, but it would certainly discourage attention-seekers.

"BR2: Blade Roller"

A geriatric and now wheelchair-bound Rick Deckard is called back to "retire" a collection of aging replicants whose superhuman abilities are wreaking havoc on cruise ships, nursing homes, and bingo parlors everywhere.