Young women are attracted to young men who take unnecessary risks in extreme displays of their adult skills. Today it's smoking the wheels of cars, not so long ago it was jumping out of trees onto wild buffalo. Every hero in every action movie does the same thing, no matter what is thrown at the hero he gets up and keeps going, no matter what the hero blows up or how many bullets he shoots no innocent bystander is ever hurt.

Young women are not attracted to 'idiots' that crash and burn, they are attracted to 'heros' who's skills and strength keep them alive and healthy despite the odds. It's not a conscious thing in either sex, "cheating death" is an integral part of the human ritual of finding a suitable mate, it's so deeply ingrained in humans that a males brain chemistry will reward "cheating death" with feelings of elation, pride, and self-satisfaction.

Looking back as an old man who had the luck to survive the motorbike ritual (among others), young men really do behave like peacocks, the things they unconsciously do to attract a mate are even more dangerous to the individual than that ridiculous tail is to the peacock. At the end of the day it does make our societies (if not our species) better suited to the civilizations we invented. We are continually evolving and are in a feedback loop with the environment we have created for ourselves, not unlike the termite and it's air-conditioned fungus farm.

We also need to limit the damage wealth can do, by keeping it as small as possible. Economic power is equivalent to political power, and wealth attracts more wealth. Without strong checks on the growth of wealth, we will find economic inequality just as oppressive as a corrupt government.

If the party in power screws up, vote for the other party. And do that until the other party cleans up its act. That's how our democracy works

That's how our democracy fails to work. Vote for one party, so they can fuck the country up until people can't stand them anymore. Then vote for the other party, so they can fuck the country up even more. By the time you tire of one party, you've forgotten how bad the other party is. To make matters worse, they deliberately distract us with bike-shed debates over trivial issues while making the important decisions behind closed doors.

It's just a good cop/bad cop routine. They're both on the same side in reality.

it actually has been doing fairly well keeping both parties in line with mainstream preferences.

No, they've been doing fairly well in keeping mainstream preferences in line with what the parties want. They frame the debates, they propagandize, they collude with the media to exclude alternative voices.

The West Fertilizer Company Explosion. They illegally held hundreds of tons of explosive fertilizer without reporting it in order to avoid safety regulations. As a result, 15 people died. That's murder just as surely as if they had thrown a bomb into a marathon.

Like or hate the Tea Party movement they showed a good example of 1/6th of the American people getting fed up and changing the structure of a political party on multiple issues.

No, they showed a good example of an astroturfed movement that tricked people into giving the ultra-rich even more wealth and power than they had before.

Ultra rich people get attacked by the United States all the time. Ask Bill Gates about his relationship with the Clinton administration

Before the trial, Microsoft gave no donations to politicians. Today they give millions of dollars. Despite being found guilty, Microsoft suffered no practical consequences. What happened to Microsoft was punishment for them not paying their dues for the service the US government provides to rich corporations.

And if you mean that no party that threatens the structure of wealth distribution could attain power, such a thing happened under FDR.

Most of what I'm talking about has been going on for 30-40 years. Starting with Nixon and really ramping up with Reagan. FDR was almost 70 years ago, a whole other world.

Oh, well if Hammurabi did it, it must be OK.

One only need to look at the City of Boston to see the full force of the Militarized Police State. One man, wounded and half dead, and the whole town goes Apeshit poo flinging crazy. Martial Law.

Indeed. And compare the situation in West, Texas the very same week, where corporate greed lead directly to the deaths of 15 people and no one responsible has been arrested. That's how you can tell that the law has nothing to do with keeping people safe, and everything to do with keeping the rich rich.

I do not live in fear of going to jail for off hand criticisms of our elected leaders

That's because authority in the US is so powerfully entrenched that no amount of satire can hope to damage it. If someone makes fun of the party in power, what are people going to do? Vote for the other party?

I do not fear that those currently in power will not leave office peacefully if they lose elections.

Those truly in power in the US are not elected. Whether a Democrat or a Republican is in office, the true power is held by the ultra rich. No party that threatens the rich can ever attain power in the US.

I do not fear for a military coup.

Of course not. Why would the military overthrow a government that is completely controlled by the military industrial complex?

I do not think our courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt

Then why does every amendment except the third have exemptions you can drive a dump truck through? If you don't think courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt, you're simply not paying attention.

I do not live in fear of going to jail for off hand criticisms of our elected leaders

That's because authority in the US is so powerfully entrenched that no amount of satire can hope to damage it. If someone makes fun of the party in power, what are people going to do? Vote for the other party?

I do not fear that those currently in power will not leave office peacefully if they lose elections.

Those truly in power in the US are not elected. Whether a Democrat or a Republican is in office, the true power is held by the ultra rich. No party that threatens the rich can ever attain power in the US.

I do not fear for a military coup.

Of course not. Why would the military overthrow a government that is completely controlled by the military industrial complex?

I do not think our courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt

Then why does every amendment except the third have exemptions you can drive a dump truck through? If you don't think courts as an institution are toothless or corrupt, you're simply not paying attention.

Sequencing involves in vitro DNA synthesis. It sounds to me like they are doing nothing more than solution hybridization. e.g. denature your sample, apply it to membrane with a probe on it, and let the strands anneal to the probe. Then they get a fluorescent signal if the strands anneal properly.

My question is how they get the hybridization so specific that a single base pair difference will cause a measurable difference in hybridization. If it's as easy as they make it sound, they do this without highly controlled temperatures and buffers.

most American's are decent folk and indoctrinated to submit to authority

Did you mean to say "most Americans are not decent folk, and indoctrinated to submit to authority"? Decent folk pay attention and resist when authority is unjust. Unthinking submission to authority is not just indecent, it's the cause of every atrocity in history.

Depends on what you're doing. I do some bioinformatics with Bioconductor. Even on Debian Sid, the r-bioc- packages get out of date fast. If I install Bioconductor manually, all I have to do is update from within R. If I install Bioconductor with apt, I have to wait until someone else packages it. This very frequently makes the difference between getting the work done and not.

Who pissed in your cornflakes? The underlying reason it speeds up both games and rendering is identical, ie: swap space.

Yep, an SSD on my i5 makes WoT play at "highest detail" just as good as it does on my i7 using a conventional HDD, they both have the same video card and ram but without the SSD the i5 is practically unplayable (especially if you want all the eye-candy). It also loads the O/S and game faster than the i7. However durability is a bit of a concern, my first SSD shit itself without warning after 3 months, it was replaced under warranty and has been running for about a year now without problems. "Windoze" gets a lot of bad press but I have to say the is a remarkably simple and useful tool for determining the best way to spend your hardware upgrade money.

Quick, someone hand Tom a shotgun and a sturdy walking frame.