If the smart people let the stupid people out-breed them into extinction, are they actually the smart ones?

Driving half a soccer team to the soccer field because it's "your turn to drive the kids".

Wrong. They only tested 54 of the embryo's afterward. 28/54 is a 51.8% success rate.

The off-target mutations in the remaining 26 embryos was not only expected, it was predicted about 16 years ago, when we first started experimenting with retroviral splicing vectors.

I don't think most of us really care about people stupid enough to remove their progeny from the gene pool so that they don't pass on the "stupid gene" to future generations. Maybe you care about these people, but I pretty much think that the fact they have medical power of attorney for their children until the age of majority is a great negative feedback mechanism.

They were "horribly" able to cure B-thalassemia in 51.8% of the embryos.

We should "learn not to do this type of thing" from the post-testing not having a 100% success rate.

You know, instead of just not implanting the other 48.2% of embryos that were not successfully modified to not have the disease.

Not that they planned on implanting them anyway.

PS: I know in vitro clinic which would be screaming the "Happy, happy, Joy, joy!" song at the top of their lungs for a 51.8% pre-screening success rate on just not implanting embryos that carried the gene for Huntington's or Downs Syndrome, let alone *fixing* the damn thing.

It's hard to credit the behavioural science claim.

Since we already know how to social engineer our way into secure areas, secure building (including nuclear and military facilities), and to get people to give their passwords or reset someone else's password, and even get the police to respond with deadly force to a perceived threat by an otherwise innocent third party (e.g. SWATting), and get them to click on crap they shouldn't click on in emails, and get them to insteall "media player updates" that aren't, anti-mallware that's actually malware, and so on...

How is additional funding for behavioural science in this area going to make us any more secure by making us even more aware of the exploits we already know, such as those being used by Mitnick prior to 1995 to get into the phone company?

We already understand the human behaviour which allows these attacks to work -- and so does Microsoft, and they're not really spending any effort fixing their software over this knowledge.

So how *exactly* will additional spending in this area impact cybersecurity again? Will it make anyone less likely to believe someone pretending to be from the IT department? Will it make someone less likely to let you on the premises when you pretend you want to talk to the property manager "or someone else in charge" about purchasing land adjacent to an otherwise secure facility?

I kind of don't think so.

But... BOOGA! BOOGA! Cybersecurity! Cyberwarfare! Fund us, fund us!

This.

Also, I have yet to see an EV or Hybrid which is suitable for a soccer mom.

People should also realize that the yellow carpool stickers are no longer available for hybrids... to get the new white stickers, you have to be either a plug-in, hydrogen, or LNG fueled.

Looks like someone rediscovered Dan Hurley's book. I see they put nicotine on their wishlist, which is pretty stupid

Adderall is a phenethylamine class psychostimulant. It's 75% dextroamphetamine and 25% levoamphetamine.

Otherwise known as "speed". And yes, it's a short term cognitive enhancer, with some pretty negative long term effects. They used to give it to fighter pilots, and now the pilots tend to traffic in it themselves. They call them "go pills".

You are generally much better off taking things like caffeine, ocetam, piracetam, donepezil (aricept) or ergoloid (hydergine). if you absolutely feel the need to boost your IQ score for the duration of the drug, but they tend to have decreasing effects over time, and there's a ramp-down effect when you quit taking them, as your own neurotransmitters recover (if they do). Similar to long term pot use, they can reduce the overall available neurotransmitters naturally present, permanently altering your overall brain chemistry. Usually for the worse, if you aren't taking them as a means of treating an underlying condition.

Obviously, there no accounting for people who are going to try to tweak their brain chemistry anyway.

Yes. He's charged "with one count of wire fraud, 10 counts of commodities fraud, 10 counts of commodities manipulation, and one count of “spoofing,” a practice of bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution."

Quit exaggerating; it was only a 600 point slide. That's only $180,000,000,000, or 5.5% of the 30 most important companies in the U.S..

Actually, I'm surprised the guy is still alive; they must be hoping to recover some of the money before they off him.

Incorrect.

Military bases are not subject to normal law, they are operated under the UCMJ. The detention camp is a military prison located on the grounds of a U.S. Naval base, which was established as a coaling and naval station under the Cuban-American treaty of 1903. The U.S. leases it from Cuba for $4,085/year, and has since 1934 (prior to that, back to 1903, it was $2,000/year).

In this case, the Federal government derives its authority from treaty, not from the Constitution.

Which Obama then signed into law in order to obtain the powers granted the executive branch under Patriot II.

Just order everyone the hell out, and it won't matter what's in the appropriations bills, will it? As soon as the detainees hit U.S. soil, it's game over as far as denying them constitutional rights.

It'd look like the Works Progress Administration from the New Deal era following the great depression of course, but with minimum bidder, rather than an actual attempt to guarantee jobs for people who would otherwise starve to death, because a WPA infrastructure project can be restarted over and over again every 10-15 years and create more blue collar jobs than it would if the building, roads, and dams were built to last 75 years instead of just 15.

In other words, big government boondoggle to create ditch digging jobs for people not qualified for other jobs.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americ...

And for that, instead of a useless war on terror, we get a useless train which no one wants to ride because the security theater and speed make it more of a PITA than the airline. It might be a fun vacation trip exactly once, particularly if they are maintaining the "free train rides if you blog about how great it was, even if it wasn't". Maybe twice, if you take the ride back as well.

High sped trains in the U.S. usually aren't.

https://systemicfailure.wordpr...

http://chi.streetsblog.org/201...

The typical PETA reaction to "rescued animals" is that, having been domesticated, they should be euthanized. Not sure how the NhRP intends to handle emancipated chimps; one would expect that they have a larger plan that, them having legal rights, would not result in euthanizing the animals.

Gitmo is not *in this country*.

The entire *point* of Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay detention camp) is its extraterritoriality, and the fact that non-U.S. citizen detainees there are thus not afforded constitutional protections. That's *precisely* why Gitmo exists, and it's *precisely* why no president has, or will, honor their campaign promises to close the thing. It's too damn useful. Obama could close it tomorrow, if he wanted to, by fiat, by issuing an executive order. He is commander in chief of the armed forces, which is who runs the place. He won't: it's too damn useful.