These cells are grown in a soup with a high concentration of fetal bovine serum. ie, the fake meat is fed mostly from real meat. There's no reduction in harm to animals in this stuff. Probably a relative increase: it likely takes 2-5 liters of FBS to grow that much cell mass, and a 40 pound fetal calf only has so much serum.

All evidence to the contrary excepted.

Well, they might tell the FBI that you live near Memphis and like the phrase "I'm KC and I approve this message." Those seem like pretty innocuous bits of information: a non-specific geographical location, two initials, and a sense of humor that includes mocking political disclosure laws. This weekend, that convergence of information was enough to win a free vacation with dramatic Federal interrogation and evening news appearances. Probably not what anyone had in mind when sharing that information.

I think you're mistaken. 30,000 people each year die of GSW, and few of them are the victim of random gun violence. 75% of domestic violence homicides are GSW, and you'd be surprised how many of those perpetrators are genuinely remorseful and shocked by their own behavior after they've sobered up and calmed down. Restricting guns won't take away domestic violence, but it will reduce the lethality of the weapon at hand in a fit of rage. Now, it's true that "most people" won't be killed by domestic violence, but I don't think that's any reason to dismiss these people.

All schools, from kindergarten to grad school, have elaborate emergency response programs specifically to deal with the threat of gun violence. In the wake of Newtown, many of them are hiring or adding armed security. True, most students will never see an on-campus shooting, but they do see the metal detectors, the prison-like security does influence their attitudes, and the costs of maintaining this security does come out of the education budget.

Public policy is about weighing the immediate cost to the individual against the diffuse benefit to society. If it were just about weight the cost to the individual against the benefit to that same individual, we'd call it "economics," and it wouldn't be nearly as hard to figure out.

They do not necessarily use the internal framing that would have made the original Bounty worthy of Cape Horn. They do not necessarily use the same materials (esp, type of wood) that would have made the original Bounty worthy of Cape Horn. They do not necessarily do maintenance that would have kept the original Bounty seaworthy for 20 years. And they do not necessarily take the ship out of service when rot and decay of natural materials cause skyrocketing maintenance costs to make the vessel un-economical to operate.

This is a common tragedy among both replica and historical tallships: the costs of maintaining them in condition for rough weather are astronomical and the receipts from tourists, day sails, and historical programs are rarely close to those costs. You make compromises, like being sure to steer clear of rough weather because you know how much more water comes in when the seams work, but you try to get as much sea time as possible. Spend enough time at sea, and maybe you start discounting the fundamental structural weakness. Fundamental structural weakness means that one point of failure, which might otherwise be inconvenient, becomes catastrophic. I can see myself in the crew's position, and I know that I would have made the choice to stay aboard.

Just exactly how often to you think SWAT is called out to raid a house?

Are they like traffic stops? Cuz I gotta say that if there are a dozen people accidentally shot each year by a cop during a traffic stop, then that's too many and not "statistically zero." I'm willing to bet that the number of SWAT raids is substantially less than the number of traffic stops, and the rate of accidental/unnecessary killings orders of magnitude higher.

In fact, why don't you have a look at this blog and think about the "statistically zero" chance of unnecessary deaths. Think about whether terrorists or SWAT kill more US civilians in a year.

Try Somalia: you'll get all the government you're willing to pay for and a virtually unfettered free market.

If someone is actively firing rounds into a crowd, then violence may be the only answer and dispensing with a trial in the name of safety is probably justified. But how about if he's just got a gun in his hand? What if he's just pulling into the parking lot with a gun in the trunk? What if he's just passing tweets back and forth with some friends about going to buy a gun?

I don't think anyone's arguing against using drones in combat operations against military targets. I think the issue is that under the definition of "imminent threat," you could justify a drone strike on people talking about buying a gun and making a trip to the mall. Wouldn't you like to have that decision run by some third party who wasn't part of the decision to call those particular people "terrorists?" Just in case it's you or your angry brother? Or even just your weird neighbor, cuz if they drop a Hellfire next door, you better believe your property value is going to drop precipitously.

You would think, though, that the academic societies, many of whom run the prestigious journals, would be willing to consider converting to an Open model. I mean, those societies are funded by membership fees, they mostly profess a goal of education and advocacy, and should be highly responsive to the will of their academic community. But it doesn't happen very often. Some, like the Physiological Society (London) have made the decision to make all of their archival content (for J Physiol, back to 1878) free online, but most (eg, the American Physiological Society) prefer to leave it all behind paywalls, fought against the NIH's public repository, and generally seem as closed as any for-profit journal.

If you're an academic, ask your favorite society why their journal has not moved to an Open Access model.

There have been betrayers and spies within every politically active group back to the Magna Carta. They're part of the reason MLK and John Lewis had to plan on going to jail (note: jail, not prison). It's shockingly difficult to stand up to the threats/pressure/mental anguish that Power is able to apply, and very few people are able to play Prisoner's Dilemma rationally when faced with actual, real-world penalties. Hate Sabu all you want, but don't pretend that you wouldn't sell out AnonFag342 in exchange for the chance to be present at your kid's graduation or wedding, unless you've had to make that choice.

The Librarian of Congress is part of the Executive Branch and a Presidential appointee. That office is empowered by Congress to identify exemptions from the DMCA, independently of further action by Congress. The White House is the approptiate body to lobby in this case, because the President can instruct the Librarian to reconsider/revise his policy and restore the DMCA exemption for unlocking a phone after any service contract expires.

It's unfortunate that we seem to have so much trouble distinguishing laws enacted by congress and policies implemented by various executive branch bodies.

All NIH funded research is freely accessible to the public no more than 12 months after private publication. NSF requires something similar-but-different: that the raw data be made available for no more than incremental cost. The same publishers who run the biological journals run the non-bio journals, so similar arrangements could be made, but NSF has not forced it. Of course, the NIH budget is something like 5x the NSF budget (which is, in turn, about 3x DARPA), so the NIH policy means that the great majority of government-funded research must be made available to the public, for free.

The buildings where faculty work are generally different from the buildings where students hang out. I can tell you that during my first 3 years, I took off 4 days for each Christmas, and was off campus 5 days each year for conferences. I got to campus around 6am, 7 days a week. On weekends, I did try to 'take it easy' a bit, and frequently left by 12 or 1pm, but weekdays it was just easier to work through until 6 or 7. Damn, there was a lot to do in those days, and no students or techs to do it for me, even if I'd have trusted them. I still look back on those as great times, because I was never more focused or more completely immersed in my work. The building was never empty of faculty.

It wasn't until a year or two after tenure that I made a conscious effort to take at least one day each week and not go on campus. My weeks average around 55 hours these days, but I have a team to do a lot of the physical work these days.

You don't have to work like that, and there are plenty of faculty whom I've never seen on a Sat/Sun. For the most part, though, what makes people successful in (research) academia is that they're obsessed with their work. Nobody tells them 'put in these hours or find another job,' they're putting in those hours because it's what they want to be doing.

The problem has two parts: mental illness and guns. In China, with no guns, a mentally ill guy assaults 20 people and none of them are dead. In the US, with prolific guns, a mentally ill guy assaults 28 people, and 26 are dead.

The knee-jerk suggestions for dealing with mental illness amount to preemptive jailing of a large number of people, the vast majority of whom will never assault anyone. The knee-jerk suggestions for dealing with guns amount to taking away tools, the vast majority of which will never be used in anger. Neither of those is right, but the best answer should include aspects of both. Hopefully, some reasonable people can work through the politics and come up with a reasonable solution that addresses not just extremely infrequent mass-violence, but individual shootings which have become so mundane we only hear about them when someone "interesting" is the victim.