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Comment Re:Nuclear is a dead and dangerous technology (Score 1) 200

(Note: I'm against the profligate financial support the US is providing Israel, for a variety of reason)

The problem with the idea of "stop sending billions to Israel" is that it's not actually that we send, you know, truckloads of cash to Israel for it to spend wherever it wants. Most of our aid to Israel is in the form of arms and equipment that is specifically to be purchased from US companies -- so most of that money actually ends up staying in the US, and if you were to take that money off the table, then several large US contractors -- and thousands of employees -- would then feel that pinch.

(Not that that makes it a bad idea, mind you)

Comment Re:Decreased obesity (Score 1) 132

Y'know, it feels intuitive to assume that going through some sort of Massively Traumatic Event (e.g. WW2 or Great Depression) would have depressed survivability, but apparently that's -- again, totally counter-intuitively -- not necessarily supported by studies.

For example, this study comparing Holocaust Survivors lifespans to control group in Israel demonstrated that while Holocaust survivors had more chronic health conditions, "mean age at death was significantly higher in the survivor group compared with the control group."

I've seen some hypothesis that these sorts of massive events sadly cull the population, on average leaving a population that will actually be hardier than otherwise, which ... both makes sense and is a bummer.

Comment Foccused ultrasound but yes. (Score 1) 37

microwave labotomy ... We just put the machine against your head here for a bit and those bad urges go away, all better.

Another poster mentioned that it's actually focussed ultrasound.

Still sounds like breaking a piece of a system by stirring the brain with a knife (lobotomy) or burning it out with heat (cauterization), electricity (electroshock) or mechanical shock (blow to the head) - just carefully focused without (substantial) damage to other parts of the brain or its casing.

Ultrasonic destruction of a piece of the brain's reward/punishment/desire/avoidance mechanism rather than persistent unwanted fat.

Comment Re:Won't matter to me (Score 1) 29

Wow, someone from the future. What is 2917 like?

I'm not from the future. It's just that time is cyclical.

There are various hypotheses to explain it, such that the universe is cyclical or that we're stuck in a time loop. But the most broadly accepted hypothesis is that a prior civilization collapsed at the end of year 32,767, and it has taken us almost 35,000 years to get back to where we are now.

Of course, our calendar doesn't allow for a year 0, so we may have an off-by-one error. But then again people celebrated the millennium at the end of 1999, so maybe there's a tacit assumption that there was in fact a year 0.
 

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