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Comment Re:Gut flora (Score 1) 152

Some 10 years ago, in response to rising blood sugar levels, I lost almost 60 pounds. Although I have an annual 10 pound cycle, (gain in the winter, lose in the summer)

In all that time, there has not been a single day that wasn't filled with angst about eating too much. Satiety is rare, and must be paid for with future deprivation. Most of my family has no idea, only my wife is really aware of the constant struggle I fight.

I would happily transplant fecal material if it would help with this.

Comment Re:The benefit of Science (Score 1) 398

It never is, and never will be if all goes well. Wouldn't you rather be honest about what you (don't) know than work on stupid old data, like "cloved hooves are bad to eat"??

We continuously learn more, and the "flip flops" are the result of continuously better understandings. Your life expectancy has increased as a result, and this continues to improve each and every year.

Comment The benefit of Science (Score 2) 398

There is a tremendous amount of ignorance and stupidity the world over. People get ideas from random sources, make their choices, and are very prone to making the mistake of believing everything they think. So we have people who *still* swear by Laetrile as a cure for cancer, or Scientology as a cure for arthritis caused by grumpy souls stuck in their elbows.

However, science offers a way out of the maze: the idea that ideas are only as valuable as they can be *validated* by peer review and experimentation. Validating ideas is painful, costly, and time consuming, so it takes *time* to find all the stupids and work them out, one by one. Combine that with the often significant economic interests in the ideas being cross-checked, and you can see it often takes even more time and expense to get the word out.

The change of tune that you point out is perhaps the single biggest strength of science, not some evidence of *ahem* irrational design.

Comment Re:Bogus patent... (Score 1) 128

Simply put, VR headsets (displays mounted in such a way as to be placed in front of a person's eyes) have been visualized and built for decades.

Sure, but that's not what's being patented here. What's being patented here is a frame that you can slot an existing mobile device into to be used as a headset, where the headset detects the insertion and notifies the phone to switch to VR mode. That's not something that has been built for decades.

Lawnmower Man anyone?

Lawnmower Man didn't include a device like this. This is not a patent on any and all VR displays, it's a patent on a specific type of frame for mobile devices.

Comment Re:Upside Down? (Score 2) 142

There's lots that you are missing.

The issue isn't the input data, it's the processing method. The processing method mentioned here as "revolutionary" is just about exactly the method that Raymond Kurzweil posited: a hierarchy of "nodules" that pattern match on a cascading network of pattern matches....

We're living with a modern-day Turing. Do we give him ample credit?

Comment Re:And so it begins ... (Score 1) 158

If anything, the digital revolution obviates the need for tedious, drudgerous work. In the 1960s that was George Jetson speak! Poor George had to work an entire hour per day! But now that we've adopted far-right, archaic ideology and let the super-wealthy get all the spoils of the digital revolution, suddenly "eliminating drudgery" means "eliminating jobs".

The digital revoluion is set to disemploy up to 50% of Americans over the next 2 decades. It's going to get lots worse before it gets better. That is, unless you are a software engineer.

Comment Re:Big Data (Score 4, Insightful) 439

Everyone knows that the military airplane became obsolete once radar was invented. (Sarcasm?)

The SR-71 was shot at too many times to count. Never once shot out of the sky. RADAR? Sure, they may have known she was there, and wasn't nothing to be done about it, as nothing could catch it.

The only reason why we parked the SR-71 is that satellites could do the same thing, cheaper, 24x7.

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