Comment Re:Celebrate Star Wars? (Score 3, Insightful) 64
Comment Re:I suspect... (Score 2) 148
Comment Re:Fear of the unknown (Score 1) 270
Comment Re: Nuclear *fission*, not fusion (Score 4, Funny) 111
Comment Re:I hear the deniers already shouting ... (Score 2) 331
Comment Re:Done before (Score 3, Funny) 382
Comment Re:Precursor (Score 1) 182
Comment Re:How about thermo-electric generation? (Score 0) 20
Comment Re:Fundamentally wrong (Score 1) 112
Comment Re:Math isn't always correct (Score 1) 112
Comment Something Big Just Slammed Into Jupiter (Score 0) 63
Comment Re: Consistent with Jerry Lettvin's work (Score 1) 135
Comment Re:When is a human not a human? (Score 2) 175
How much DNA do you need to change before a living thing is no longer classified as human and loses basic human rights?
Well if history has taught me anything, then the answer is none. You just need to change the classification to exclude whoever you intend to persecute.
These percentages aren't as straight forward as they first appear. In a chimera, different parts of the body have different DNA. You might even be one yourself without knowing it, taking DNA from four parent cells. What weight are we giving to DNA of the brain, and what to other parts of the body in our metric? Also how is this percentage derived? A downs baby has an extra chromosome but it's a copy of an existing one. So what percentage difference do you assign between downs and non-downs people? If you look at the difference between human and chimp, you see chunks of DNA being repeated more in one than another, sometimes a bit gets copied and turned upside down and shoved in somewhere else. Depending on the metric you choose to handle these situations, you can come out with different percentages and it's not obvious which is the fairest.
Comment Re:Ya know, finding asteroids is cool and all (Score 5, Insightful) 252
But why should people be worried? It's something that we can't stop, so why worry? Walking around scared of everything is good for getting clicks on a web page I guess, but not a great way to live life...
If it's a "city killer" and you're warned early enough can you not choose to be somewhere else when it lands?