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Comment Re:it's means it is (Score 2) 132

by mjwx (#47905057) Attached to: 3D-Printed Car Takes Its First Test Drive

I figured as much; but don't knock that. Talk to anybody who has wrecked the plastic on their sport motorcycle. If you could print that stuff at a reasonable price, that wold be HUGE.

Not just motorbikes. Today I noticed another scratch on my quarter panel (Perth, this is why we cant have nice things). If I knew I could replace the thing for less than $100 I wouldn't care so much (then again, the people who think it's OK to bang their door carelessly against my car might become even more reckless).

Comment Re:Great idea! Let's alienate Science even more! (Score 1) 937

by mjwx (#47904983) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

If bigot Yankees wouldn't have started to teach Creationism at school, or open the Creation Museum, or all the bizarre stuff I periodically read about religion in the US, maybe atheists would not have felt the need to "fight back" in that way...

The Creation Museum was founded by an Australian.

Not any more... he had to give up his Australian citizenship to get US citizenship.

He's your nutbar now.

Comment Re:Fallacy (Score 1) 937

by mjwx (#47904933) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

Sorry this whole story is some attempt to fill a boring summer void.

The pedant in me desperately wants to point out that Spock is half human and feels emotions too.

The pendant in me desperately wants to point out that the Vulcans have emotions, they just control (suppress) them and because of his Vulcan upbringing, Spock learned to do the same.

Comment Re:No, no. Let's not go there. Please. (Score 1) 937

by mjwx (#47904903) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

I think part of what you're pointing out is that atheism is not a belief system, and so people shouldn't expect atheists to all think the same way or believe the same things.

This,

People who dont understand what the word "atheism" means dont know that atheism describes everyone from the non-religious to LeVayan Satanists to Buddhists (yep, Buddhism is an atheist religion, they dont believe in a god or gods).

Comment Re:No, no. Let's not go there. Please. (Score 1) 937

by mjwx (#47904881) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

Exactly. I get so tired of being asked "Then what *do* you believe?" with the emphasis on the do. My usual response is "Concerning what?" And there the questioner typically falters because they simply cannot wrap their minds around divorcing that question from some supernatural belief.

By all means, not all religious people are like that. My ex's father was a prof emeritus with five friggin' degrees in theological studies and we got along and understood each other just fine. He was, however, exceptional.

People who spend a lot of time studying beliefs are the ones that are typically most accepting of others who dont share their beliefs. Its the lay preachers and blind believers that are intolerant of any viewpoint except their own. I think this is because they haven't thought about why they believe what they believe and find any idea that challenges their blind adherence to be uncomfortable and must be silenced.

A theist who commits themselves to study their own faith will find the flaws of it pretty quick. This does not mean they'll stop believing, but it makes them more rational when dealing with people who dont share their faith.

Submission + - School to fingerprint students to 'monitor their diets' (eagnews.org) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: STOURBRIDGE, England – A school is implementing a biometric system to better track what students are eating each day.

The Express & Star reports students at Redhill School in Stourbridge, England will be fingerprinted in an attempt to reduce lunch lines and “monitor pupils’ diets.” The system requires pupils to press a finger against a machine which converts the print into biometric data. This can then be used to identify individual pupils accounts.

Headteacher Stephen Dunster wrote to parents, “We are aiming to have a cashless system throughout the school. The catering system is better for parents because they don’t have to provide children with lunch money every morning. From our perspective it is far more efficient as it reduces waiting times. We will also be able to monitor what children are buying to make sure they are eating a healthy diet.”

Comment Re: +-2000 deaths? (Score 3, Interesting) 119

by dgatwood (#47899259) Attached to: US Scientists Predict Long Battle Against Ebola

Ebola may not be easy to transmit, but it sure as heck isn't hard to transmit. It's not pedantically known to be airborne, but it is believed to be spread by droplets (e.g. sneezes). There's a very, very, very fine line between the two.

And yes, I can provide citations if you'd like, but it's not like they're very hard to find with a Google search.

Submission + - U.S. Scientists See Long Fight Against Ebola (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Despite recent advances in medicine to treat Ebola, epidemiologists are not hopeful that the outbreak in west Africa will be contained any time soon. Revised models for the disease's spread expect the outbreak to last 12 to 18 months longer, likely infecting hundreds of thousands of people. "While previous outbreaks have been largely confined to rural areas, the current epidemic, the largest ever, has reached densely populated, impoverished cities — including Monrovia, the capital of Liberia — gravely complicating efforts to control the spread of the disease. ... What worries public health officials most is that the epidemic has begun to grow exponentially in Liberia. In the most recent week reported, Liberia had nearly 400 new cases, almost double the number reported the week before. Another grave concern, the W.H.O. said, is 'evidence of substantial underreporting of cases and deaths.' The organization reported on Friday that the number of Ebola cases as of Sept. 7 was 4,366, including 2,218 deaths." Scientists are urging greater public health efforts to slow the exponential trajectory of the disease and bring it back under control.

Submission + - Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke on Thursday to faculty and students at the University of Oklahoma City about the privacy perils brought on by modern technology. She warned that the march of technological progress comes with a need to enact privacy protections if we want to avoid living in an "Orwellian world" of constant surveillance. She siad, "There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that’s happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy and how far we want to protect it and from whom. Because people think that it should be protected just against government intrusion, but I don’t like the fact that someone I don’t knowcan pick up, if they’re a private citizen, one of these drones and fly it over my property."

Submission + - Apple disappoints fans in China: No iPhone 6 for awhile (latimes.com)

Submitted by SpzToid
SpzToid writes: Apple disappointed millions of Chinese fans this week when it said that its latest iPhone would not go on sale in mainland China on Sept. 19, the date it is to hit stores in the U.S. and nine other territories.

Some observers say Chinese authorities want to make sure the homegrown TD LTE standard can dominate the country’s 4G networks before allowing a foreign-developed 4G standard in.

Last week, a document that purported to be a leaked internal directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which oversees the country’s telecommunication industry, surfaced on Chinese social media websites. It said that all smartphones sold in China would be required to lock out the FDD LTE functionality.

That seems to raise the question of whether Apple would be willing to comply with such restrictions on its crown jewel. Chief Executive Tim Cook said during Tuesday’s keynote that the device would support more than 200 carriers globally, including China Mobile.

“It’s possible that Apple is willing to wait until the iPhone can be released in China without any restrictions on its FDD LTE network support,” said Xu Hao, who monitors China’s smartphone market for Beijing based consulting firm Analysys International.

Cook has called China “one of the most important markets” and when Apple announced its latest quarterly earnings in July, revenues from greater China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, were up by 28% from a year earlier, largely outperforming the company’s overall year-over-year growth rate of 6%.

Comment Re:CDC guilty of correlation == causation (Score 1) 291

by dgatwood (#47893635) Attached to: Link Between Salt and High Blood Pressure 'Overstated'

The leg pains have nothing to do with exercise or DVTs. Statins are known to cause severe muscle damage (rhabdomyolysis) if too much of it stays in your system for too long a period of time. The pharmaceutical companies say that this side effect is relatively rare, but even if the claimed half a percent is correct, that still adds up to a lot of people when you're talking about a medicine that's as overprescribed as statins are.

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