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Comment Re:Annoying at night... (Score 1) 107

Mmmmmno, they don't. The fish are FLUORescent, not PHOSPHORescent. They're transfected with GFP like these cats. Hence the name GFP: green fluorescent protein.

FLUORESCENCE PHOSPHORescence ELECTROluminescence GALVANOluminescence BIOLUMinescence

All these phenomena are distinct. I'm wondering if anyone has ever heard of any naturally occurring PHOSphorescent molecules.

Comment Re:Sending astronauts? (Score 1) 132

Nope, not saying any of that hilariously absurd, contrived, strawman bullshit at all. But I genuinely appreciate that you saw my totally unrelated point sufficient reason to fire up your obviously well oiled Chomskybot, such that you could spout your long, soporific list of dimestore, cryptofascist mewlings. Better luck next time in arguing against a transparently ridiculous point opposite to the one I was obviously making, though. Have a nice day :)

Comment Re:Sending astronauts? (Score 3, Interesting) 132

"....Patriotism has no place in science."

Patriotism may have no place in science, but science unquestionably has a place in patriotism.
I'm proud that my country built and operates the Tevatron which discovered the top quark, I'm proud we built the world's most powerful laser, the National Ignition Facility which is on the verge of demonstrating controlled thermonuclear fusion in a laboratory, I'm proud we were the first to decipher the 3 billion letter sequence of the human genome, I'm proud we invented the transistor, the laser, the nuclear reactor and the Polio vaccine that is on the verge of wiping that disease from the face of the Earth forever, I'm proud we engineered the microcomputer revolution and invented the internet those machines operate on, I'm proud we were the first to robotically explore every planet in the solar system with the exception of Venus and sent probes into interstellar space, and I'm proud of a thousand other things my country did to push back the darkness of ignorance about the physical world, thereby elevating the human condition to previously unimagined heights. And I hope that someday, instead of being proud of something as stupid as military might, or the number of gold medals we win in the Olympics, that my countrymen can join me in the more nuanced and altruistic flavor of patriotism that I am proudly guilty of indulging in. My style of patriotism is anything but the last refuge of scoundrels, and scientific achievement plays a central role in its maintenance.

Comment Re:Arrogance rarely wins... (Score 2) 267

If you look at how Pixar fit into Disney creatively and politically, it was a takeover in everything but name. Pixar execs were immediately moved into high-ranking Disney positions- John Lasseter is now in charge of the entire animation studio. Tons of soulless projects were axed and the overall creative direction of the company shifted significantly.

Comment Re:Who let the cat out of the bag? (Score 1) 219

Well, I'm from liberal about-to-legalize-gay-marriage (wo0t!) New York and I think it's a ridiculous waste of money too. 2 Billion dollars for a 500 megawatt generating plant? Please. This is some kind of sick joke.

The 500 MW is obviously peak power output, meaning that average power is going to be 200 MW, TOPS. 2 BILLION dollars for a 150 MW generating station. That's beyond pathetic. A natural gas fired station that provided that kind of power output could be built for 5% of that kind of money. The argument for this being a good investment into the technology is even more absurd. It's just a solar thermal plant using hot oil /molten salt. We've been doing this stone-age level crap since the early 70's.

Do I really need to explain what kind of advancements the nuclear fusion community could do with 2 billion dollars? We're right on the edge (like, this year) of demonstrating fusion ignition in the laboratory at the National Ignition Facility, a lab that houses the most powerful laser in the world and the largest, most complicated optical system ever constructed, at a cost barely more than 50% of this useless, make-work, feelgood project. $2 billion could go a long way toward building a gigawatt level power plant demonstration reactor after NIF achieves ignition, instead of wasting it on this nonsense that produces laughably insignificant amounts of energy.

Comment Re:Riding coattails! (Score 1) 333

Then the guy on the ground says "You must be a manager!" The guy in the balloon asks how he knows this. He says "You ask dumb questions while having no idea where you are, where you're going, or how you got there, but now somehow it is my fault."

Comment Re:Total breakdown of their vetting process. (Score 2, Insightful) 163

From the description in the article, especially the phrase "sneak in", it sounds like he deliberately obfuscated the functionality of the app. It's happened a few times before- an app is submitted with a questionable feature disabled, then once it's in the wild a switch is thrown on a server and suddenly it's capable of more than was ever shown to Apple. The vetting process being susceptible to targeted attempts to circumvent it does not mean that a "total breakdown" occurred.

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