Actually, I think there are some good, sound, scientific reasons that intelligence differences along racial lines are not genetic (at least in major part). Simplest among these is that there is as much evolutionary pressure from problems such as tropical diseases as there is from survival during an ice age, or similar factors that are invoked to "scientifially "explain these differences.
          In general, Science frequently uses Occam's Razor in one of its classic forms "It is vain to explain with more what can be explained with fewer". Explanations that somehow give special weight to the selection pressures that supposedly improved European or Asian migrants and treat the human evolutionary period like Africa was some sort of peaceful paradise where people had no reason not to stay jolly, dumb and lazy, are perfect examples of needless and counter-scientific complexity.
        These are usually offered with pseudo-scientific claims that somehow attacks by diseases or parasites or large predators on the African proto-human population, are not sustained at the right frequency, or in some exact way that was needed, and only survival against one particular stressor caused evolutionary pressure. Sometimes these get very elaborate, with claims that only one thing, such as glaciers, produced the precise combination of stressors needed to trigger evolution - wars, for example, didn't count as an evolutionary driver, unless they were wars against a distinct species offshoot such as the Neandertals, or diseases didn't count because they didn't happen on a yearly cycle like glacial advances, etc. That's special pleading, not science.

With that said Watson did something very good for many people. I'll respect that even where I think he's wrong about something, and even where I might dismiss all somebody's other opinions otherwise.

That's one of Iain M. Banks' "The Culture" novels. Understandable though, it's very easy to get Iain M. Banks and Iain Banks confused, since they even lived in the same city at the time of their unfortunate deaths from similar diseases.

Still, how can The Player of Games be the greatest when one of its sequels is The Hydrogen Sonata?

People are probably going to claim that the AI can be programmed to avoid jeopardizing the economic interests of its owner to take care of such things. The problem with that is, such AI puts humans at risk, not because the AI itself will act against them, but the persons owning the AI will become more inclined to harm their fellow humans if those humans don't come with the useful feature of putting their owner's interests above self preservation. Having smart slaves with no sense of self may be possible some day, and even desirable for some applications, but what will it enable sociopaths to do?
          In some ways, AI without self identity is like a gun that automatically sends out press releases saying the target had a history of thuggish behavior and was charging at the gun owner. The things that could replace self identity are often things society has other problems with, such as fanatical devotion to a cause.

Maybe, but there are reasons not to just go by the first thing you find on Wikipedia, and you've found a great example.

First, what's pretty definite about the Permian Extinction is that a really big meteor hit near Chicxulub, in the gullf of Mexico, at the right time to contribute to it. What's called the K-Pg boundry Iridium layer supports this.
Second, there's real doubt the big rock from space was enough to cause the known extinctions all by itself, so something else, such as Methane Clathrate release happening about the same time might be needed to explain some of it. That's two mights - we might need to consider more factors, and methane might be one. You're adding a third might, that the Methane might be a key factor, which I take to mean you think it's bigger than most, but not necessarily all of the suggested other factors.. There's lots of other possible factors, such as which continents were recently reconnected by land bridges after aeons of isolation at the time, or what did the evolution of flowering plants contribute, if anything. If you're right, Methane release is more significant than most such possibilities, but that's a long chain of mights, only as strong as its weakest might. .

I'll give you a countervailing wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The part about the Deccan Traps gives an alternative source for tremendous amounts of Carbon with a source which could change isotope ratios. Also, while I don't think the meteor itself could have had enough Carbon in its composition to make much difference, it is a known fact that stuff from elsewhere in the solar system can have different isotopic ratios. In fact that's one of the things the recent cometary probe lander was supposed to measure, so I supposes somebody ought to do a few back of the envelope calculations to really rule that possibility out.
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I'm incredibly lousy at making unsubstantiated assertions! Never made one, never will! There, have I defended my comments enough?

It's nice, but the compound in question only seems to display superconductivity for a while immediately after annealing, and has to be kept away from water or this quickly stops. This still may lead to a sizeable commercial application someday, but that's not by any means likely.

Your example would be better proof of your point if there had been similar switching to Kubuntu or any of the other 'buntus that don't use Unity. Especially since there were already people advising switching to Kubuntu over the Gnome 3 issues. Distrowatch only indirectly shows where there may be an actual use trend, and there's several possible reasons more people became/are interested in Mint (the Cinnamon desktop for one).

99.9% may be overstating it a little. I just updated a Mint install, and the way I chose was to manually edit the PPAs by replacing all the references to Ubuntu Quantal with Ubuntu Trusty, running a 3 hour update in the graphics mode, then looking at what was now the new download sources list and editing it again for the sources that had changed naming conventions and weren't being found, looking up source PPAs online for them, etc and running a second update which also added another two hours. This is not the recommended way - Mint thinks people should preferrably back up all their files to some other physical storage device and reinstall from scratch using a newly burned disc, but I didn't really have 3.4 terabytes of physically discrete storage handy. Mint's standard references for updating give a 4 year old link to another, 3rd party page that (sort of) explains how to do it the way I did, while warning it's not for basic users and will probably hose your machine, etc.

          I was updating a Kubuntu box (that was also back on Quantal) at the same time, and it was a matter of command line "sudo apt-get update", "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade", etc., but I could have done it using the graphic updater interface (Muon or whatever it is now). That update took about 1 1/2 hrs total for about the same number of files, but of course, the additional software, machine configuration and such varied.

          Mint appears really comitted to an update model that avoids what they see as safety issues with Ubuntu/Kubuntu updating. I can respect this but it means they aren't the best at supporting more advanced users who can still use the command line when needed or trust some of the graphic updaters out there. The Mint site says there is really no need to upgrade unless the user just wants to be on the cutting edge, but right now, for just one counter-example, running a distro based on Quantal will leave you with a version of Firefox old enough that G-Mail will automatically post a warning saying it's insecure and no longer supported. That combination is bound to be one of the most common for Mint users, and I susspect there are a lot of them wondering how to manually update Firefox from a Tar/gz, or the whole distro the proper Mint way or whatever.

It all worked fine until a group of simulated Kangaroo's were spooked by explosions and whipped out weapons and started fighting back.

That was rather silly, only Dropbears do that.

But that 76 trillion doesn't create inflation, just like bailing out the 'creators' when those OTC derivatives fail doesn't. Only demand side fiat money creation causes inflation, not supply side fiat money creation. Deficits to expand the military don't cause inflation, just deficits to fund health care. /endsnark

Anyone who uses the phrase "Tragedy of the Commons" should have to first pass a test showing they know the history of the enclosure acts before they throw that phrase around.

There weren't seven billion of them. The real challenge isn't working hard enough to survive as one of 200,000 hunter/gatherers in a stable population, it's in making it through the stabilizing process.

A nation literally cannot attack a multi-national company in the way these attacks have happened. That's because these attacks now include physical threats against the citizens of other nation states. Those threats make no sense coming from a nation state, and just about have to be from some third party if North Korea is involved in even the 'cyber' part of the attacks. That's because the nation doesn't want to find itself in a war with other nation states and not just the corporation, or to get boxed in by making a threat they don't intend to follow through on and lose face. Bluffs are for when you are already desperately losing, not beginning.
          Do you really think North Korea could follow up on those death threats by actually attacking those people, perhaps claiming they were legitimate targets as Sony employees and not being killed as citizens of the US, Japan, or other states, and that those states should also ignore any other deaths that resulted as merely collateral damage? Assasinate a few thousand citizens and any witnesses, family members, and first responders and such that get involved, and act like their citizenship doesn't matter? The bodies that deal with such things are not elected, they are called by such names as carrier strike forces and joint combat arms taskforces.
      If the Korean government did pay for hacking teams, and sticks to just cyber-attacks, there's still some risk if they hit promiscuous targets or affect the various stock markets enough, but any involvement by governments would depend on whether Sony or Wall Street or whatever even asks them to become involved. For such non-lethal attacks, sanctions would probably begin with a UN resolution and individual states agreeing to participate in further economic restraints as they saw fit once that resolution passes. Sony would have to lobby various governments to support the UN sanctions if they can get more declared, and this gets to such things as taking out ads in many of those countries reminding their citzens that Sony is not just a Japanese company, and such preliminaries, before anything much else is done.
          If UN lobbying efforts fail (unlikely if there's any real evidence NK is involved), Sony would probably still lobby individual nations to act, but Sony can also go ahead with asking some individual governments to help with proving for certain just where the attacks are coming from, and not have to rally the UN there, so that's the one step they are doubtless already taking.
        Sony is actually allowed less independence in even trying to gather evidence that it was really North Korea than North Korea is in initiating such non-physical attacks, and in theory, Sony is the side that would have to be very careful not to have any malicious code spread to other parties and such, while a nation has more rights. In practice, theory goes out the window if the right US senators are taking a hit because of the Sony stock in their retirement portfolios.

Add to that, companies that assume they will be able to get 60 hours a week in the future are assuming that the economy will still have all the problems it has right now, or more, in that future. That assumpion hardly sounds like a good business plan - "Our employment model is to assume the recession will never end.".

If all your itches can be satisfied at work, then you are asexual, since satisfying that one at work will get you fired. By identifying as a person who would gladly spend all their time at work, but not mentioning how statistically unusual you are, you're thus posing a Kantian Universal - That is, you're claiming that what is good for you should be good for everyone. If everyone stops having sex, the human race dies out in a generation. Why do you hate the whole human race?