Comment Re:armchair evolutionary biologist (Score 1) 532
people listening to Hawking on this is the only threat
Glad you're keeping things in perspective!
people listening to Hawking on this is the only threat
Glad you're keeping things in perspective!
Actually, we'll just outlaw hobby drones. We can add that to outlawed real chemistry kits and outlawed lasers.
Remind me again, why doing this crazy rocket landing is better than using a parachute recovery like the shuttle boosters did?
Is ist just me or is anyone else actually concerned that a have-a-go engineer can apparently quite easily achieve significantly bettr results than a team of so-called expert doctors in their own field?
RTFA please.
The description does indeed try to imply that the above is the case. But it's far from the truth, as much as internet armchair experts would like to believe.
The article itself appears to state that the problem was that 1) the initial advice was to wait, which after (appropriately) consulting with a number of experts they had done, and a followup showed progression. Even the first advice was not totally misplaced. Then what happened was that he suggested that the neurosurgeons basically invent a procedure specifically for him, and used 3D printing to create a model for them. The result was he did find someone willing to try (my guess is they refused the conventional approach) a less invasive procedure that removed 95% of the tumor. Now that may sound revolutionary, but neurosurgery is a tricky business, and depending on the tumor 95% may be equivalent to buying a little time while doing nothing at all, especially since they already knew that the tumor was growing aggressively. If the conventional approach would have had more of a chance of removing more of the tumor, possibly all of it with negative margins, that would be a far more definitive approach. Doctors aren't always right, but if you get a sufficiently experienced expert opinion, it'll usually reflect what is possible to do currently, with a reasonable margin of both safety and success.
This is what chicken hitting an engine looks like. The engine effectively explodes. The engine gets a "passing" grade in such a test as long as the blades flying out of the explosion are contained by the enclosure and don't immediately destroy the rest of the plane. If you think this is a minor event, you're deluding yourself.
147 characters comes to
the problem is that the world is awash in surplus capacity at every turn
If you'd tried hailing a cab on a street in Boston, I bet you'd be singing a different tune.
When? Way before they figured out if they scare everyone with ISIS, they'll get even more resources.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
So, yeah, as soon as people figure out what it is that is being measured, expect them to alter their behavior to make that measure useless.
Tell that to Obamacare.
MDs and institutions now get less money when they take care of sicker patients whose socioeconomic status causes them to be less compliant and have more adverse outcomes. Congratulations, now no one wants those patients doubly. Oh, and they still can't pay for health insurance.
They never made it to orbit. The projects were canceled
Which was my exact point!
btw., layering all your answers with personal insults really makes you sound like an expert!
You'd say that if you knew nothing of the early American space program. Of course, having demonstrated no knowledge of that history your opinion on the matter is pretty much worthless.
Perhaps you know of some secret space plane that went into orbit before Apollo, but this would be news for the rest of the world. So cite or STFU.
Space planes were actually the preferred method of getting to space before the Apollo program.
Considering that no space plane actually went into orbit until the Space Shuttle, the space plane must have been the preferred method for getting into space in the same way that teleportation is preferred now.
It is a FACT that ebola is ONLY CONTAGIOUS when symptoms are present.
Only if you ignore the last fifteen years of established science. Many people get Ebola and never show symptoms at all. We know this because they test positive for the antibodies to Ebola. Those people are believed to have had the virus in their blood at some point during the course of the disease. Therefore, under the right circumstances, it is possible for someone not showing symptoms of Ebola to spread the disease. It is highly unlikely, and has not been documented to occur in the wild so far (that we know of), but claiming that it is impossible based solely on limited anecdotal evidence is downright terrifyingly bad science.
I'd be happy to dig up the citations again if you really want me to, or you can just Google it yourself.
That's just patently wrong. Having antibodies to Ebola doesn't mean you had the disease, it means you were exposed to the virus. There was a study in 2000 Lancet which looked at seroconversion in close contacts of individuals ill with ebola, which showed that 11/24 people seroconverted in the absence of symptoms. However, the scientists were unable to isolate virus from these patients. This suggests that there are people who have either a defect in the ability of Ebola to infect them, or their innate immune response is able to deal with Ebola. There is no evidence from the last 30 years that there any asymptomatic individual acts as a carrier.
That's not insightful.
If you cannot isolate infectious virus or amplify its genetic material from someone's bodily fluids, they are not infectious.
Making assertions based on panic is not reasonable. Maybe if the nurse wasn't treated like a criminal leper on coming home, she wouldn't be lashing out and would stay home.
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh
