Comment Re:IN B4... (Score 1) 410
IN B4 "Android Fragmentation"
Wasn't that part of the plot to one of the Star Trek movies?
Comment Re:Told but didn't understand..... (Score 2, Interesting) 332
So, were they mislead, or is this more of a type of "buyers remorse"? There are plenty of places where the local population is uneducated and unlikely to fully understand genetic testing, should we stop studying them, and in the process deny them the good (potential treatments for disease that they suffer from) to protect them from "the bad" (the possibility that their world-view will be challenged, or that the data will be applied to larger studies)?
Also, one of the big issues here seems to be that the findings contradict their folklore: Another article, suggesting that the tribe’s ancestors had crossed the frozen Bering Sea to arrive in North America, flew in the face of the tribe’s traditional stories that it had originated in the canyon and was assigned to be its guardian. Listening to the investigators, Ms. Tilousi felt a surge of anger, she recalled. But in Supai, the initial reaction was more of hurt. Though some Havasupai knew already that their ancestors most likely came from Asia, “when people tell us, ‘No, this is not where you are from,’ and your own blood says so — it is confusing to us,” Rex Tilousi said. “It hurts the elders who have been telling these stories to our grandchildren.” So science showed that their fable about springing from the ground in this canyon was, at best, unlikely. So what. We don't accept that the Earth is the center of the universe, that sex with virgins cures disease, that human sacrifice improves crop yield, or that it's turtles all the way down, why should we care about this story either. I'm not inclined to "turn off" science just because results show that a stone-age story is just a story.
I agree with your second part. Challenging anyone's worldview is always a good thing. Whether they are Christians, Havasupai, or even athiests, challenging people with evidence contradicting their ignorance is a good thing! It keeps society from stagnating by encouraging free thinking!
Comment Re:I assume you mean MD-diagnosed (Score 1) 423
Yes, it was a nasal mucous swab. It tickled... haha.
I was diagnosed after I was on the way to recovery. The meds they gave me helped a ton. I think it took only a few days (it was over a weekend iirc). I seriously thought I had a concussion earlier that week because of the headache.
I live in Pittsburgh, and we have a CDC location here IIRC. Maybe that sped up the process.
Comment Re:I assume you mean MD-diagnosed (Score 1) 423
I'm a little confused. I am pretty sure I had H1N1 flu in late October for about a week. I had a 102 degree F temperature, clogged sinuses, really bad headache, fatigue, and lost about 5 pounds of weight. The doctor prescribed Tamiflu and Mucinex, and he told me to take 48 hrs off after my fever broke to reduce the risk of contamination. I tested positive for H1N1. It didn't take weeks to be notified. Actually it took 4 days (and a few were over a weekend). Are things worse now?
Comment Re:Linearization (Score 1) 553
Here's the part that I find interesting. The whole gravity/space-time curvature is merely an abstraction of gravity into a new dimension.
Ancient people's idea of gravity was simple. Stuff goes down.
Then people figured out that the earth's surface is curved, and "down" didn't work anymore. The new theory of gravity said that stuff moves toward other stuff, and the earth is a big blob of stuff that all our little stuff moves toward. Kinda simple, but you don't have the nice, straight, linear sort of system. You've got a radial one, and other planets and stars have their own gravity fields that pull stuff toward them, and it's a bit more complex.
So, with this notion of mass curving the surface of space/time in some higher dimension, we envision space/time as a sort of elastic surface. Mass sinks into the surface, and smaller mass will "roll" into the depression caused by the larger mass. Why does the "mass" roll downhill? Well, there's the kicker: this higher dimension apparently has its own sort of gravity, and, like the ancients' theory, it's nice and straight: it always goes down!
That's not actually true. Take a square apiece of paper. Draw a straight line parallel with one side in the middle. Then tear the paper perpendicular to the line from one side to the line. Now pull one side of the tear over the other. See how the paper bends into a cone? That's what gravity does. It causes "space" to not be flat just like that. However, look what happened to your line. Now it curves around toward the direction of your tear. So it is the geometry of the paper that causes the gravity. It isn't about anything rolling downhill, or about there being another type of gravity pulling everything down a rubber sheet. Instead, the shape of surface causes anything going in a straight line to be deflected towards that tear. And why does your object tend to go in a straight line? Because of Newton's first law, of course!
The Twitter Book
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stoolpigeon writes "Microblogging service Twitter has undeniably been a hit, with growth rates that were at times in excess of 1400%. The growth was rapid enough that the site became well known for its periodic, and, at times, extensive downtime. Even with these issues, the service continued to grow rapidly, and with celebrities getting into the mix Twitter was quickly on the radar of mainstream media. The ubiquity of Twitter and ever-increasing coverage of 'tweets' has also brought the inevitable backlash. As with anything that gains high-profile popularity, there are plenty of Twitter haters out there, though the role Twitter has played in the recent Iranian elections seems to have brought more legitimacy to Twitter in the eyes of many. With popularity come books, and quite a few are already out there about and for Twitter, but my favorite so far is The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein." Read below for the rest of JR's review.
Churches Use Twitter To Reach a Wider Audience
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In an attempt to reverse declining attendance figures, many American churches are starting to ask WWJD in 140 or fewer characters. Pastors at Westwinds Community Church in Michigan spent two weeks teaching their 900-member congregation how to use Twitter. 150 of them are now tweeting. Seattle's Mars Hill Church encourages its members to Twitter messages during services. The tweets appear on the church's official Twitter page. Kyle Firstenberg, the church's administrator, said,"It's a good way for them to tell their friends what church is about without their friends even coming in the building."
Internet Archive Seeks Same Online Book Rights As Google 67
Miracle Jones writes "Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has jumped on Google's 'Authors Guild' settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive's letter to Judge Denny Chin: 'The Archive's text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.'"
Comment Re:Not as barbaric as a country that kills kids? (Score 1) 329
Read my post in context with the parent to which I was responding. Original poster used the term "fucking barbaric" to describe a country that executed drug users and I was suggesting they thought a little more about their posting.
Agreed my language should have been more carefully chosen. I completely agree the issue is more nuanced than a short response can provide however felt it would be mostly lost on the original poster, hence decided to give them a blunt response to get them thinking about what they'd written. Perhaps I shouldn't have jumped back at a troll...
Clearly you are more capable of a more rational debate and it would be more pleasant to have a decent conversation and discuss the issues with you rather than User Jaysyn.The issues are indeed complex.
I'd note though that the State of Texas- a part of the USA - apparently still reserves the right to execute under 18 year olds and President Obama has promised to review the failure to ratify the Convention (Ref.)
regards.
I think that it is very strange to defend a blunt response if it can easily be shown to be incorrect. For example, I could call you "fucking barbaric" for murdering children too, but that would be incorrect and certainly unjustified. At very least, your outburst makes you look very silly to me. The context doesn't compare the US to anyone, and the post doesn't imply the author is from the US at all. So your remark about the US is certainly off-topic and not supported by the context.
Your reference from wikipedia is probably incorrect. The citation in wikipedia for the remark, that Texas reserves the right to execute 17 year olds (Texas's previous limit), does not mention Texas at all! I did a search for texas in that article and got nothing, so (unless my browser is malfunctioning) that wikipedia statement seems baseless to me. So I will edit out that reference from the article.
Furthermore, Texas cannot overrule the US constitution, and the supreme court has already ruled on the matter. There was a case mentioned in the wikipedia article where they tried to overturn the ruling in Alabama, but that went nowhere (and rightfully so). So that reference that you cited can not support your argument in any case whether true or not.
Finally, Obama is a politician. He cares a lot about symbols, as shown by his public reasons for "firing" a CEO. I repeat that: he forced a person to retire from his job because Obama wanted to emphasize a point. Doesn't matter if it was justified for other reasons or not - that was the reason suggested by the man himself. Obama also recently suggested a world without nuclear weapons, though there are many reasons that is currently unrealistic. Obama declared it probably won't happen in his lifetime, in fact! So the point of mentioning that goal was also symbolic. The UN Convention is also a symbol. So Obama's support of ratifying the convention is not surprising, but also not a sign that he thinks it is realistic or even possible in the near future. Of course I could be wrong, but I think this is the likely conclusion.
Comment Re:Not as barbaric as a country that kills kids? (Score 1) 329
Only two countries in the World refuse to sign up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and declare their right to execute children as part of their legal processes:
1. Somalia
2. United States of AmericaCareful who you are calling barbaric, some people might also call executing kids a pretty primitive practice.
If you are going to call the US barbaric, please use a correct reason. Just because we did not "sign up" (we did sign it in fact, just not ratify it) doesn't mean we don't support most of its ideals. The US Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute children as part of our legal processes. So the US is not executing kids, unlike what you are claiming.
Now there are many reasons why we should ratify it. There are also reasons why we might not be able to ratify it. For example, it could be unconstitutional. So it is not a clear issue and should be debated and considered with much thought. However, using loaded words like "barbaric" and "refuse" is unfair when the issue needs more discussion. So you please refrain from such derogatory and untrue characterizations.
Internet Killed the Satellite Radio Star 368
theodp writes "As Sirius XM faces bankruptcy, Slate's Farhad Manjoo reports that the company has bigger problems than just the end of cheap credit. While it has what seems like a pretty great service — the world's best radio programming for just a small monthly fee — Sirius XM has been eclipsed by something far cheaper and more convenient: the Internet. Load up Pandora or the Public Radio Tuner on your iPhone, and you've got access to a wider stream of music than you'll ever get through satellite. So forget the satellites, the special radios, and the huge customer acquisition costs, advises Manjoo, and instead focus on getting Howard Stern, Oprah, the NFL, and MLB on every Internet-connected device on the market at very low prices."
Comment Re:However, the only emotions are hate and anger (Score 1) 124
It has other emotions, but those are the only ones that Lore allows him to feel. :-p
Comment Re:Holy Mackerel! (Score 3, Interesting) 465
I don't think this compares with Fermilab. The fine article is talking about creating positrons, not anti-protons. This isn't the first time I've heard about creating positrons from a laser shown upon a gold foil target. Here are two (from 2004 and 2001 respectively) that I just found on Google Scholar describing a result and a theory behind the positron production:
http://llacolen.ciencias.uchile.cl/~vmunoz/download/papers/wclpp05.pdf
http://www-project.slac.stanford.edu/lc/local/PolarizedPositrons/doc/ClassicalPapers/B_Shen-J_Meyer-ter-Vehn-PRE65_16405.pdf
It also isn't very efficient. They make 10^11 positrons per 400 J of energy input. If those positrons react with 10^11 electrons, they produce gamma rays with the energy 2 * (electron mass * (10^11)) * (c^2) = 0.0163742083 joules. Maybe it is more efficient than Fermilab, but that's still not very much. Since these are light positrons - not heavy anti-protons - I don't think these results would be very useful for fusion. Maybe as a source of gamma rays or as a research tool.
Identifying People By Odor As Effective As Fingerprinting
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A study has found that everybody has a unique body odor, like their fingerprints, that could be used as an unique identifier. The study showed that a persons unique odor stayed the same even if they varied their diet with strong smelling foods such as garlic and spices. "These findings indicate that biologically-based odorprints, like fingerprints, could be a reliable way to identify individuals," said Monell chemist Jae Kwak. I would have thought that hundreds of years of dogs tracking people would have proved this, but it's nice to know that science has figured it out officially now.
Comment Re:Importance of warm-up (Score 2, Interesting) 339
I agree with Eskimo. I'm also a martial artist (BJJ instructor), and we only do dynamic stretches before practice or sparring as well. Instead we begin with a light warm-up to (duh!) warm up the muscles. Then we train sport-specific movements as well as dynamic stretches to build muscle memory and increase flexibility. After practice we might finish with some yoga, but we got rid of the generic static stretches with no problems. Our Muay Thai instructors do the same thing at their practices. As far as I knew, the thesis of this article was common knowledge in the sports world for a while now. It has made us more flexible and faster with less occurring of injuries than when I was doing static stretches. We have some really good fighters and competitors, so I don't doubt our training methods. They seem to be working for us.
