Yes, it's important to avoid thinking that this proves North Dakota is racist. That's an unfair assessment of the people of North Dakota.

The majority of people in North Dakota dislike black people. But they also dislike people from India, Pakistan, China, South America, Mexico, Japan, Morocco, Australia... pretty much anywhere that isn't North Dakota. Minnesotans have some degree of reciprocity. Heck, they don't even like people who grew up in North Dakota, lived in a city for a while and moved back.

Put more plainly: North Dakotans are xenophobic. Small town friendliness is only extended to people within the small town, and anyone who doesn't look like the majority of the rest of the people in the area isn't going to be all that accepted. The fact that the president has an appearance that immediately identifies him as "Not North Dakotan" (compounded by the amount of "book learnins" he's got) is enough that I was never under the impression that he'd ever be liked by the state (in general).

Now, there are plenty of counter-examples, of course, but after twenty-two years of experience, I can safely say that North Dakota is the least tolerant place I've lived. Does it equal the warmth, and openness with which everyone of all ethnicities is welcomed to rural Mississippi? Dunno. Never lived there. Now, does the data in TFA actually model that? Nope, it does not. Sadly. In my mind, North Dakota does deserve to be right up there with Mississippi for doesnt-look-like-us hatred.

Was that a joke?

I grew up in the Great Plains, a land that votes crushingly Republican on a bi-yearly basis. And yeah, the rich people there voted for Republicans. But the poor people voted for them, too. The major demographics that voted Democrat were the young (18-24... before they finished college and moved to other states) and those with Masters degrees.

Now, remember that pretty much all of those states exist due to constant government-based welfare in the form of subsidies and infrastructure funds that the states absolutely cannot cover by themselves. In Northern Virginia, when we need to improve a road, we pay higher taxes. When South Dakota needs to improve a road, they whine to the federal government, and everyone else pays for it. And while they do that, they lower their own taxes because... well... taxes suck and they all want to keep their money.

Thus the irony of the squishy middle of the US. They love to trumpet how important they are and how the rest of the country/world/universe would suffer if they weren't there, but forget that the rest of the country is paying them for everything they produce, and propping them up with federal tax dollars.

If Iowa ever decided to secede, the proper response would be to treat them like any other country we trade with. Put up tariffs and make them negotiate for trade. Six months later, its population would be wailing about immigrating back to the US to flee the starvation and poverty of an independent Iowa.

You'd be wrong.

And while I'm not an Influenza researcher now, I was one for five years, and there's a pretty good chance I helped supply a good deal of the data being used to work on this.

The human immune system doesn't do bitwise comparisons with the viral genome. It does more of a heuristic match against the functional shape of the created proteins. The problem is that very minor changes in the viral genome can produce functionally significant changes in the shape of the proteins. One of the easier-to-spot mutations was in the length of the Hemaglutinin "stalk". A simple change in the number of repeats in the genome (a simple and fairly stable mutation) will change this length and render antibodies against one version ineffective against another.

Remember, a vaccine is not some sort of program that tries to identify a virus. It is a primer that is designed to trigger the body's immune system to produce effective antibodies. You don't get to redesign how antibodies work. The idea behind vaccine design is to find the right protein fragments to present to the immune system such that it produces antibodies that are effective against the greatest variety of viruses. The part that you think is clever and revolutionary is already being done in your body right now. Everyone in immunology already knows this. Instead, imagine you had a computer that already had a self-learning, heuristic-based virus detection system. What code would you show it to teach it what is a (computer) virus and what isnt? Now, imagine that you didn't have the ability to see what the code actually did, but you could only work with how the code looked. The problem gets harder and your suggestion... doesn't really apply.

Not to sound like a dismissive jerk, but your idea is both old news and largely non-applicable to viral immuno-response.

Yeah... exercise is the best thing to do when you've got a 102F fever. That'll fix you right up.

Are from a different Slashdot than I am? I thought one of the core values of the Slashdot crowd was never reading (TFA).

First off... anyone making $19k a year isn't paying income taxes. I think the standard deduction/independant income line is somewhere around $24k. So anyone who thinks that 19k is an upgrade, is already paying $0 in federal income tax. The people who are expressing envy over the lack of income taxes, are the people who are making $30k. I don't know many people who would drop their $30k/year job to for a $19k/year job just to avoid income tax. If they exist, then... I guess they're free to make that jump and reap the loss of what... $7k a year in spendable income?

My mom would have gladly paid a couple thousand in income tax if it would mean that her salary would jump to $30k. And, yeah, she could have paid $1 in income taxes. But what is the point? Let's say that the 40% of the country that pays no income tax were forced to pay $1... no, wait, let's make it $500 dollars. Now, for many of them, that would be a significant, painful increase in taxes that would hurt their standard of living. That would generate... $75B in taxes. That's significant... except when you realize that the Bush tax-cuts-for-the-rich dropped tax revenues by $1T. So, if given the choice, should we impose a painful tax on the poor and generate a small amount of money, or a barely-noticeable tax on the wealthy and generate 13 times more money? If you still want to talk about income tax levels of $1 or $10, then the amount of revenue generated is so small that it's only there to poke the poor and make them feel bad. No, it doesn't hurt them, but it doesn't help the country either.

And finally, I love people who complain that these "parasite" poor people aren't paying for the use of common services. Understand that without that 40% of people, many of those common services wouldn't exist, largely because they wouldn't have workers or the infrastructure they need to function.

And in case you think that I'm just biased... I make way, way more than my mom. I pay taxes. Quite a bit, actually. And unlike most people who complain about income tax rates, I've seen both sides. I gladly pay my taxes because I realize that if I pay even an extra $1000 in taxes, it won't really affect me, and that would mean that there are ten families out there that won't lose $100 in food or clothes.

And that is totally independent of the discussion of how to spend revenues. The whole point that a large portion of the country doesn't pay income tax, because the income disparity is so wide. And that income disparity is wide and growing because far too many of the wealthy (or nearly wealthy like me) are driven by selfishness and greed and would rather buy a new car for themselves than help other families feed their children, and they make themselves feel better by telling themselves that there are loads of people who are trying to keep their income low so they can live off the handouts of the wealthy. The reality is... different. But it's sickeningly common for the wealthy to be completely unaware of how the majority of the country actually lives.

I've never seen anyone who refers to Obama as BHO who wasn't a racist/bigot/whackjob-extremist.

Using it immediately labels you as someone who is dissociated from logic.

Everyone who works pays Federal taxes on their wages.

Not everyone pays Federal Income taxes, because Income taxes are only supposed to be paid on wages earned over a certain level required for some standard of living.

Example: When I was in college (which I paid for, unlike so many of the welfare-children who drank away mommy & daddy's hard work), I worked part time and made about $12k/year. Between standard deductions, student tuition deductions, and student loan interest deductions, I paid $0 in federal income taxes. However, I still paid FICA (and a couple other small taxes, I think), and that wasn't an insignificant amount, considering that I was paying my own way through college.

Another example: My mother (one of those greedy, money-grubbing teachers) raised three children on $19k/year. She also paid no income taxes, but still paid a decent chunk in FICA, property, and state taxes. I've heard people complain about how pissed they are that some people don't pay Federal [Income] Taxes. My response has always been: My mom would have gladly traded spots with you. She'll pay income tax, and you can sleep in a cold house because there isn't enough money to keep the house any warmer.

Forget future historians, in 600 years, when Hobbitism rises as the worlds newest major religion, the coins will be used by fundamentalists as proof that Hobbitism is the One Truth, and encouragement for the furthering of their grim beliefs.

A large sect of Hobbitics in Western Europe will base their entire world view on the belief that there was no allegory or symbolism in the Lord of the Rings, and thus Balrogs do have wings, foxes are sentient, and that if you become suitably evil, you'll turn into a floating eyeball. They'll lobby the Grande Bankocracy of America to force the teaching of Ainuism as an alternative to Evolution. In late November, they will gather together in a large field with a bucket of these coins, separate into five groups, and then murder each other until someone spots an eagle. Then, the group with the shortest individual gets all the gold.

Why don't people think about consequences when they make commemorative coins like this?

[/far-too-much-tolkien-knowledge]

Difference of opinion, I guess.

Anti-Science Movement? Intelligent design in schools. Portraying scientists as "academic elitists" who shouldn't be listened to.

Backwards Rights for Women: Cutting availability of contraception and childcare at the same time. Insisting on extremely invasive procedures before legal medical procedures as a method of discouragement/punishment/humiliation. Removal of regulations for equal pay for women. Allowing employers to cut medical care for women based on religious beliefs (which subjugate women).

Marriage is a contract. The ability of all people to enter into a contract is a Civil Right. The guarantee of Civil Rights is a federal issue.

I agree that funding for Medicare et al is an issue, I just don't think its a more important issue than ensuring equal civil rights for homosexuals, preventing a serious backwards slide in rights for women, and the growing anti-science movement. I'd actually be fine with having the argument over whether its ethical to support medical care for children in poverty by preventing some finance banker from buying a second Lexus this year. But I'd rather have that argument after we've shored up things like basic civil rights and international diplomacy.

I'm not convinced.

I'd almost say that playing WoW would decrease the chances of being computer savvy, once you exclude people without computers. Maybe if one of the Eastern European hacking groups released a "Attack the US" bot (with instructions), I would be afraid of Iranian WoW players, but until then... nope.

Wow. Were you looking for quantified numbers that held even less meaning than standardized test numbers. The problem with standardized tests is that they don't measure what we want them to measure, and they're applied in ways that aren't supported by statistical analysis. GPA's are poisoned by all sorts of bias and manipulation techniques and school rankings are highly biased and not at all based on long term graduate performance. It really just reinforces the point of how useless

Example: We have a few of the highest ranked schools in the country near me. You know what sets them apart from the other schools? The average percentage of rich white parents. Sad, but there you are. Politics and socioeconomics ensure that not only are the schools supported by a bunch of rich parents who continually lobby for their school to be higher on the list, but they never have to deal with students who are actually challenging. Here's the great part, though: When you isolate the statistics based on socioeconomic group, the kids in those schools aren't any better off than any of the other schools. In some cases, they're worse (college dropout rates). But they get into Harvard and Yale, so they must be brilliant, yeah?

I think the vaccine-variation idea was considered, but last I heard, it had troubles with ethics boards. Basically, short of getting explicit agreement from people getting the shots, there are medical ethics issues with giving someone a vaccine when you have evidence in hand that says the vaccine you are giving to another person is more likely to protect them both.

It might be better for everyone on the whole, but it also starts sounding a lot like Socialism, and in the US, we tend to try and kill it with fire (or nuke it from orbit) whenever we see that. Sure, we're all a little worse off because of it, but if one person benefits, then it's all worth it.

Yes and no.

The changes seen with influenza are more than just natural selection. It's aggressive mutation, with specific adaptations to encourage mutation and direct it toward areas that are beneficial for the future replication chances of the virus.

In short: It's evolution.

Over the past few decades, the virus has gained a whole new gene. It's adapted to anti-influenza drugs. It's adapted its polymerase to be be stable at higher temperatures (thus allowing for better transmission outside the normal winter months). Ah, but that's just microevolution... you say. Yes, the same way that we don't know how the Grand Canyon formed because we have only ever observed micro-erosion. And continental drift doesn't occur because we have only seen micro-tectonics.

If you don't believe in evolution, then you've got nothing to fear from Influenza, because none of those things will happen. Instead, you have to fear God, because he's the one changing things around, presumably because he likes infecting people... or because he hates scientists.

Note: I'm using the generic "you" here, and not specifically aiming my comments at the previous poster. However, if you refuse to acknowledge the Theory of Evolution, then my comments are pointed at you.