The measurements are valid, but IIUC, the dating typically uses the assumption that ther is/was not significant radioactivity in the region.

Yet for dating of rocks, that would require that magma and lava not be radioactive. Tests on Mt. st. Helens lava, though, showed that it is.

Moreover, the oldest areas on earth are where evidence indicates at least the possibility of their having been deMeijer/Van Westrenen style georeactor explosions: the craton around the Hudson, and South Africa (specifically the African Karoo).

That being the case, I find this data interesting, but the conclusions questionable.

Most of your intracellular bacteria -- and that includes toxiplasmosis, which can trigger schizophrenia -- can pass the blood-brain barrier. Intracellular bacteria also include a number of your organelles, which definitely not only have an effect, but are vital to cellular operation.

The organelles we are aware of, of course, do not survive outside the cell, nor do they move from one to another. But that doesn't mean that there can't be others (like toxiplasmosis) that do.

I really consider that the amount we don't know far exceeds the amount we do know. Or, to put it another way, if we really understood the brain enough to make a digital version of it, then why can't we make a digital brain *without* a model? Thus, I think there is so vastly more to the brain than we understand, that what he is doing will end up being a useless failure.

Don't forget that historically, when the top of technology was muscles and levers, the brain was a kind of muscle. When the top tech was hydraulics, the brain was a type of hydraulic motor. When the top tech was telegraphs, the brain was a telegraph network. When the top tech was computers, the brain was a kind of computer. When the top tech was neural networks, the brain was a kind of neural network. At every stage, there were those who were sure that this time was different, who were sure that they could build a working model of a brain, and they failed miserably. I see no evidence that this time, which admittedly is different, is any different from the other times, which were also different.

I don't mind him trying to model other creatures' brains, though. But I don't find it to be currently worthwhile -- thus, I shouldn't work on such a project.

Do you really think that we'll model -- for example -- all the different blood cells and lymph cells that might possibly interact with the brain? The blood pressure? The various bacteria? There are perhaps 700 billion cells that we would have to model, and most we don't even know what they are, much less how they would work.

I don't think it's currently possible. Maybe he intends to deconstruct a person to get the data. I hope not.

Also not to mention that we have no clear understanding of what cells do what. We now know that the human glia cells -- well, some of them, anyhow -- when injected into mouse brains, make them human-smart mice.

So obviously those glia cells do something. What?

Now, glia cells weren't mentioned in the simulation. But lets be generous, and say that when this guy discovers that something is amiss, and researches more, and decides to put in glia cells, he'll be sure to make them do ... .... something.

Yes. I want to build a robot to make my bed in the morning. It'll save me from having to do all that work. It'll just take tinker toys, and a cardboard box, and a grant. Oh, and it has to have flashlight eyes, I almost forgot. It won't work without flashlight eyes. But first that grant. Dad, could I have $50?

Mostly, I lived in Virginia, though we spent 3 years in Lithuania. Also, 1985 was still a good year, economically speaking. By 1992, when I graduated from college, NASA was involved in a huge layoff, there were few jobs for new graduates who were not in a preferred minority, the Alumni association made the specific (and publicised) decision not to help new graduates who had not yet held a job, and that year was t_e year Generation X got its definition in a novel.

Clinton, whowas running for his first term, declared, in response, that if Generation X had been x'd out of everything by the greedy and spendthrift Baby boomers, they would fix everything by volunteering their time to Baby boomers for free.

It was not the best of years to graduate.

I don't intend for my kids to work for others. I hope to buy a eight acre plot of property, and they get started in biointensive organic gardening, specifically in the form of a community christian garden. First hour, reading Bible and praying. Subsequent hours, limited talk as needed for work and training, but working the garden in a planned manner. Those who work use their working hours to bid on the produce it yields.

Doesn't sound profitable, maybe, but I could see it being a very valid way to live in this coming era. Plus,I suspect they'll have far more free time for learning and engineering, than I ever had.

The budgeting I do as well as I can, but there are certain costs that are not in my control, and that does hamper me a little. One of the other posters very nearly hit my current family income on the head --sixty, which is just barely poverty level in our area--but before that, counting backwards year by year, it was probably pretty close to 60,60, 53,47, 43, 37, 35, 33, 30, 30, 12, 45, 30,25,22, and thn splitting my work and my wife's work, (17/43, 11/41, 8/40). Before that we weren't married. I made 4,12, 10. All numbers in thousands. We had all our children late (heavily related to the poverty.)

The dollar does not have innate value. Fair dealing, honesty, people working together for good, charity, hope, investment, diligence: these things have innate value.

Once upon a time, the dollar was a mathematical variablerepresentation of these things. At that time, it appeared to have innate value. However, as people started to value it as having its own innate value, they separated the dollar from its represented values, and its actual innate value has started to become apparent.

It is entirely possible that the day could come when people will offer vast estates, for any who is willing to separate them from their dollars.

Because the last time, when the Republic Revolution frehmen impeached a guilty Clinton, they were removed from office by the Management.

See my reply to another nearby thread; it applies to your post, too.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3742531&cid=43709853

More to the point of your post, I think my horizons are pretty broad. My career has bounced through programming, ancillary textbook creation, education, and prestressed concrete/surveying through project management.

It's not just a cynical view of life. Record numbers of people are buying into the "retraining" hype... doctors retraining as plumbers, plumbers going to med school to be doctors, and they're just getting school debt without ever getting a job.

That isn't cynicism, that's pragmantism you're seeing in me.

My other post, that I referenced, tells what I think a better path is, that I am going to be suggesting for my kids.

Let me remind you of a standard career guidance. Ask yourself, "what kind of a standard of living do I want? What will it cost?" Then ask yourself, "What jobs does society find valuable enough, to pay for that standard of living?". That kind of thing, in the past, has led actors to abandon acting for insurance sales. It's really good advice. Acting is a great career move for maybe, what, twenty people a year. It's okay for another thousand. It's lousy for everyone else: our society really does not value acting.

But let me point out that recently, our society also does not value... computer coding, and grocery store clerks, and drafting, and drawing, and manufacturing automobile rivets, and ... the list goes on. Our society does not value the laborer. Unlike "the laborer is worth his wage", our society says "the manager is worth the laborer's wage", even when the manager couldn't do the laborer's job to save his life. But our society then took it a step farther: the owner is worth...

Yes, I have a job. That's a great positive. But the rate of actual unemployment/underemployment/no longer considered unemployed due to overly long unemployment is so great, I can validly say that there is almost no job that our society places a living ... much less family ... wage on.

In light of that, going to college doesn't make sense. I rather say, prepare yourself as if you *would* go to college, and then wait on that.

One of the most successful people at our high school reunion was a girl who got married in her senior year of high school to another of my classmates.

When she got divorced from him, she went into business with her father, as executive janitorial services [janitors for rental business locations].

She's a millionaire.

Waited till the trolls left. Specifically, (1) Negotiating pay, and (2) budgeting. I contend that those I worked for profited heavily from my work, therefore I'm good at my job.

Ever take Serway's College Physics (CP) /PSE/POP? Did you end up buying the study guide? If so, why did you pick that study guide to buy? I did the page layout, the formatting, all the artwork, some rewriting, etc. A lot of what went into that was what I put into it. My customer's contact (Saunders/Harcourt) mentioned that I was the best at this, that she was aware of.

For a long time, that particular text was the top seller in the world -- no credit to me, all credit to others on that one. However, the study guide is typically a major money-maker.

Jump ahead to a career change, into prestressed concrete. The last place I worked -- where I was told to put a subordinate in a brakeless water truck, and asked "are the brakes fixed?", and was told that I had no right to ask that question... and subsequently fired in great betrayal, I was still later told that I was the best field engineer he ever knew, by the guy who betrayed me.

Now, I did get another job, nearby, at the same wage, doing the same thing, and was subsequently promoted to project manager. But I can say that it isn't that I suck at my job.

But I am not free to move. And I do suck at negotiating pay. But that is not just cause for a top performer to receive bottom pay; and I have seen enough other evidence that college degrees no longer pay off, that I do not intend to send my kid to college. Moreover, I have seen the colleges fail miserably at their primary mandate, and I don't intend to support that either.

I have told my kids, that they need to work at school such that they *could* go to college if they want to. But if they want a further education they should forget the degree, and just find out what the courses are, get the books, work through every single problem, try the stuff out themselves. If they still want a college degree, they should do 2 years of tech school, 2 years of work, 2 years of community college, 2 years of work, 2 years of university, and then they *might* have a chance of getting a job. But I'm not going to send them to that, because I don't consider it to be an idea that is likely to pay off.

At this point, my advice is more along the lines of agricultural and Christianity. Forget business and tech -- in our society's glorification of "greed is good/more for me, none for you", it made too much use of an empty promises.

When I moved from theUS to Lithuania, ten years after they were released by the USSR, I learned a valuable lesson. In places where there is plenty of freh, clean air, people don't talk about the air. In places where there is freedom, people don't talk about freedom. They live it.

Keep talkin, you're comin' thru.

I have an engineering degree (BS, AOE) from an in-state university. At this point, 20 years down the road, having lived frugally the whole time, I own a mobile home that is older than I am, on a rented lot, no retirement 401k, medical care plan is over 1/3 of my income, and no significant savings or money to send my 14 year old to college in 4 years. No land, either.

The companies that have used my skills have all profited heavily from them, but I have not. Nor is my anecdotal evidence far from the truth for most other college educated americans, recently.

Since the sole beneficiary of a college degree is the employers, I categorically refuse to send my kid to college, and have advised him not to waste his time on it, either.

Nor have colleges satisfied their charters, that I should support them.

So you don't thi!k an optic lens or an inner ear wave guide would focus and concentrate the microwaves?