Thanks for clarifying. I was misremembering the Quebec Route 366 / Banfield Expressway goof and confusing it with another goof (not Google) of a photo caption that had put an approach to the Fremont Bridge (in Portland) on Soldiers Field Road (in Boston). Silly me.

I never thought about how errors needed to be inserted into maps so they could be copyrighted. Wow.

I wonder if this is the reason why Google maps of Portland Oregon sometimes label the Banfield Expressway as "Soldiers Field Drive", which is in Boston Massachusetts. The errors seem to come and go, and seem to be limited to road names that are also identified by route numbers.

There would be no need to reverse engineer a pristine copy of the work. Simply proofreading a single copy and correcting some of the existing errors, while at the same time, introducing a few new errors of the same type would be enough to confound any attempt to make a positive identification of the source.

This approach has an incredibly high bogosity factor. I can't imagine anyone in the publishing industry with half a brain who would spend any money on its implementation... Oh wait. We are talking about the partially brain dead idjits who thought DRM was the best thing since sliced bread....

If I was going to do this, I would probably also play with the kerning to force some repagination, add some space characters before the newline at the end of some paragraphs, and so on. This approach to DRM is about as simple to get around as using a black magic marker on the edge of an "uncopyable" CD disk.

If this is medical school is in the USA, you and your fellow students are undergoing a very thorough indoctrination in the appropriate use of clinical detachment. Those who cannot handle that skill set rarely finish the course.

Actually I'm trolling. I'm trying to get some members of the biologic research community to do a little self-examination. I don't know much about the subject, but here is what I do know (now that I have been pushed into articulating it):

1. We are doing more biological research with what are basically 19th century approaches involving the death, pain, and mutilation of animals than we need to be doing. We do not know how much more (which is covered in greater detail in point 3)

2. To do this, we are training grad students, lab techs, and sometimes undergrads who need a biology credit in the intensive use of the ego defense mechanisms of "clinical objectivity" or "clinical detachment." Which is also the conscious suppression of normal human empathy. There is little to no screening done beforehand to determine if these persons have the emotional maturity and self-insight to limit the use of these mechanisms to the biology lab. There is no follow-up of these individuals; not even the ones who are given their walking papers because they are too unbalanced to do the work properly. Yet the clinical detachment that is needed to handle lab animals creates serious problems when it is used inappropriately in relationships, with children, in an office setting, among colleagues, etc.

3. No one in the biology research field is even seeing this as a problem. Despite the mass murders of the last few years, where the mechanisms of "clinical detachment" are taken to the pathological extreme. There is no discussion of whether it is time to start limiting training in these techniques, no discussion about how to reduce the number of individuals affected, there is not even an attempt to determine the scope of the problem. The closest is the USDA figures on the number of selected lab animals in active use in the USA: that is 1.3 million. But it excludes rats and mice and animals being bred for scientific use but not yet put to that use. The number of lab animals that lab techs and grad students are exposed to in this country has been estimated at between 10 and 50 million. But even with the 1.3 million figure, that is a large pool of persons being trained in the skills of clinical objectivity (with nothing being done to assure that they are capable of appropriately using those skills, or prevented from maybe obtaining a fully automatic rifle if they are not capable of policing their own psyches).

What seems to be necessary is to push the individuals in the biology research community into confronting the absurdity of their rationales and deliberate blindnesses, and get them looking for ways to move the research animal labs out of the 19th century and into the 21st century. Agitating for laws that would enforce limits upon the research communities seems to be necessary, just to get their attention.

Whether such laws are needed is a topic that is open for discussion. That the research community must be pushed into doing a scientific study on the effects of its practices on the psyches of its minions is definitely necessary.

Good for you!

Then these laws will not affect your research, or that of all the other biologists who have kept pace with technology, huh? They would probably only affect that small percentage of repetitious experimental work that is done by corporations seeking approval for new cosmetics, food additives, clothing treatments, and so on. What would that be? Only 90% of all the research that is being done today?

According to USDA, there were 1.1 million animals used in research in 2010 (the latest year of data). However although it breaks out dogs, cats, hamsters, and guinea pigs separately, it excludes the most common lab animals: rats and mice. It most certainly under reports in other areas, since the data are acquired only on the research that the USDA has responsibility for. Research on testing the efficacy of a possible drug that might eventually go on sale is definitely included, but screening studies to exclude candidate drugs that prove to be toxic probably is not. I have seen estimates that the actual number of animals used in all research is 10 to 50 times what the USDA reports, but these are from anti-vivesection groups, etc, so they have even less authority than the USDA numbers.

More significantly, the USDA numbers do not include animals that are involved in producing lab animals but are not directly used themselves. For instance when a strain of mice is developed for a specific trait, the young that do not exhibit that trait are destroyed, but that is not reflected in the USDA numbers. Cats, dogs, primates, and other subjects that are destroyed in developing techniques for implanting brain monitoring devices are not included.

The numbers of lab technicians and interns who are taught to disengage and suppress their normal emotional involvement with the animals they are handling significant. That "clinical detachment" is definitely an aberration from a healthy human psyche, and for that reason alone the use of animals in research needs to be as limited as possible. There are significant numbers of students who do not complete their training/education but who do learn how to turn off the normal human empathetic response when it gets in their way: that ability is part of the basis of terrorism and the kinds of mass shootings we have seen lately. We really don't need any more persons trained in that kind of "clinical detachment"; we need to curtail the number of persons we are exposing to this kind of training.

Are you and your colleagues actively involved in monitoring the use of laboratory animals? Can you provide more substantive data on how many are being used in the USA every year? If that is not the case, are you not a part of an ongoing problem?

Laws that encourage rethinking the research process are a good thing right now, as it is definitely the case that a lot of unnecessary and costly research is being done on animals when it could be done better using advanced technology. A key part of the problem is that too many of today's researchers are only trained in the techniques that were made elegant 100 years ago and naturally see the increasing use of newer technology as a threat to their way of life. It is much more than a threat to their livelihood: being able to work with the same animals for weeks or months or years while maintaining the necessary emotional distance ("clinical attitude") is an abnormal trait for human beings which at the very least limits the researcher's ability to actualize all of his potential. At worst, it provides him access to a pathological defense mechanism where he becomes capable of screwing the people around by adopting a clinical attitude toward them. These persons are not the ones most capable of properly shaping the future of research departments. External direction is going to be needed for a while.

Perhaps just agitating for laws that guide research labs will be enough pressure to get things moving in an appropriate direction. But without some kind of external pressure, the necessary changes will not happen as fast as they could, and should. We would end up continuing to move into the 21st century while dragging along the baggage of 18th and 19th century research methods.

No matter how you look at that, ethically, morally, or pragmatically, that is not good.

These are definitely valid concerns. Have you talked to your political representative about having your government use its influence to assure China and Nicaragua are building effective preventitives into their plans?

Bullshit question. The real question these days is

How long will you put up with your neighbor committing atrocities in the name of Science when there are better (more ethical, less costly, and more accurate) ways of getting the answers?

We have a good and growing arsenal of non-invasive research tools that can be used directly on humans. They appear not to be used as often as they could be, and the most likely reason for that is that researchers who have devoted their careers to learning to use electric shock treatments and scalpels on lab animals have no skills in using MRI scanners or computer simulations. It is time to start limiting the influence the practitioners of these ancient ways have on the R & D industries. Using the law to guide these industries into the 21st century is fully appropriate.

Parent post argument is at least 25 years out of date.

A lot of the research that was only possible using animals then can now be done by non-invasive means and computer simulations. The day when almost all research can be done this way is not far off. This is not because the new ways are ethically better (even though they are). It is because the new ways allow faster and more comprehensive studies at much lower total costs. It is indeed time to consider using legal ways to force the biological R & D industry to upgrade its skills.

The problem is that a lot of today's researchers have skills in applying electric shocks and scalpels to research animals that do not transfer to reading MRI scans or improving computer simulations. As a group, these persons are going to be as opposed to the inevitable changes as the wagon drivers, farriers, and livery stable owners opposed the New York City laws that began favoring automobiles and trucks. Using legalities to prod the industries they influence to evolve is not a bad thing to do.

I'm having trouble following the mostly hidden logic behind parent post. It seems to address two distinctly different issues.

With regard to politicians, they are most definitely a self-selected group of persons who are willing, and successful, at advancing their personal agendas by portraying themselves as champions of this or that group. The average amount of lying, fraud, deceit, and associated crimes of politicians is naturally going to be much higher than the average for the general population. Culling politicians would therefore improve the species. It is not about how stupid they are; it is about how their moral compass is all twisted up. So, since effective ostracism (an acceptable form of culling introduced by the Greeks) will not be possible until we have established a lunar colony, using politicians as primates in various experiments should be on the table. (There might be better solutions, but this one is worthy of considering).

WRT using chimps in testing, that is now so bogus. The automobile has replaced the horse and buggy and freed horses for their rightful place as pampered pets (there are now more horses in the USA than there were in 1899-- hoowoodathunkit?) The MRI and computer simulations are now replacing the old fashioned use of chimps in the laboratory. There is no question that sooner or later the nasty old ways of doing biological research are going to become history, just like the horse and buggy, replaced by technology that can do the job faster, better, and without exploiting some other species. The only question is when do we pass the laws that will force today's buggy whip manufacturers to find some better source of employment?

This will cause a shake-up in the research and development industry, as the employment opportunities of persons who have spent their careers developing skills in carving up the brains of primates will be out of work and unemployable. Along with a host of other specialists in supporting roles. A lot of these people are quite likely incapable of finding other work. It requires a certain kind of blockage of normal human empathy to slice and dice a chimpanzee, and without that a lot of job opportunities will be closed to these individuals with their self-inflicted damage to their psyches.

The neolithic violins, oboes, xylophones, ocarinas and drum sets leave very little evidence in the archaeological record, and much of what little is left has been easy to dismiss as pieces of kid's toys, or ornaments: minor details that signify nothing. Choral groups and dance troupes and story tellers leave no evidence behind them, none at all. And yet, outside of those who have put on technology blinders, intricate forms of music and performing arts are considered to be advanced forms of culture.

Then there are practices like yoga, Zennist ways, and Taoism that are also advanced forms of culture, but also leave no trace that an archaeologist could discover.

Do you think that everyone who lived in a society that chose to stay in balance with its ecosystem was some kind of lesser human being than human than you are, and had no aspirations of advancing their culture? Do you really believe that in 10,000 years of First Nation's existence there was no advancement of any kind? Other than finding better ways to chip an arrow point? That the Aboriginals did nothing in the 60,000 years of Dream Time but pick at their toenails?

Measuring human history by the evidence of how this group or that went about destroying its ecosystem is looking at the world through a telescope with a very narrow field of view. And looking through the wrong end of that telescope at that.

But we seem to have wandered far from the original thread of this discourse.

You believe that the only possible form of advanced human culture involves technologies that destroy ecosystems and leave huge piles of trash behind?

That it is a pathetically limited view of human capabilities.

3 - 4 - 5 triangles. Which is really easy to do once you figure out the papyrus cord trick.

That's a plumb line, Bob.

But a plum pie is tastier than plumb pi. Which makes no sense at all.