Viruses don’t care whether you are poor, or wealthy. They could care less if you work hard or hardly work. They aren’t concerned if you are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim; morally righteous, or full of sin; gay or straight, pro-gun or no-gun. Viruses are only concerned with whether or not you are a fitting host for it to live and reproduce within. Here is what they do, according to HowStuffWorks.com:
A virus particle attaches to a host cell.
The particle releases its genetic instructions into the host cell.
The injected genetic material recruits the host cell’s enzymes.
The enzymes make parts for more new virus particles.
The new particles assemble the parts into new viruses.
The new particles break free from the host cell.
As you can see, humans, as possible hosts, have discovered through scientific method, how viruses work – as well as prudently prepare for them as a society.
Unfortunately for humans, some people subscribe to the Beavis and Butthead style of governance, better known as the 21st century incarnation of the GOP.
When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.
The first number (closest to the center) indicates in how many years the particular resource will last at current consumption and production rates. The second number is how many years the resource will last if humans cut their consumption in half. In the picture below, NewScientist.com is showing that gold will be completely exhausted in 36 years, 45 if we cut our consumption in half. It also shows the U.S. annual consumption per capita (per person).
This sums up what appears to be a heavy video day on DaddyHogwash.com…This is a good one. Nothing new for those who follow this closely, but it is a good video nonetheless…
I haven’t paid much attention to these Tea Parties; however, I was so embarrassed for these people, I had to post this. There once was a time when we actually wanted intelligent people running this country…I wonder what the Constitution Party guy has to say about African Americans being counted as 3/5’s of a person…
Philosopher Dan Dennett has some interesting thoughts on what makes things cute, sexy, sweet, and funny. The book on “What is Funny?” is something to look forward too. I have never really thought about it this way before, but it is quite simple, “Things are sweet because we like it, not, ‘We like it because it is sweet.’” Make sense? Just watch…
One thing happens to us all together, all at the same time. Every instant of every day we unfold in to the future. What never existed before becomes empirical, and where we came from no longer exists anywhere but in our minds. Existence and the state of being of every individual on Earth has this one property in common – Presence: We are all in it together – Not just here, but everywhere in the Universe.
1 “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so,” joked Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Scientists aren’t laughing, though. Some speculative new physics theories suggest that time emerges from a more fundamental—and timeless—reality.
4 Green days. The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand drops by 0.5 percent during Daylight Saving Time, saving the equivalent of nearly 3 million barrels of oil.
9 Weather also changes the day. During El Niño events, strong winds can slow Earth’s rotation by a fraction of a millisecond every 24 hours.
13 Until the 1800s, every village lived in its own little time zone, with clocks synchronized to the local solar noon.
17 Einstein showed that gravity makes time run more slowly. Thus airplane passengers, flying where Earth’s pull is weaker, age a few extra nanoseconds each flight.
19 Time has not been around forever. Most scientists believe it was created along with the rest of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.
20 There may be an end of time. Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their math, time may eventually stop, at which point everything will come to a standstill.
It’s been around for awhile, but I suppose the last of the dial up users finally got the message of the existence of a website known as “Twitter”. “Twitter”, in a nutshell, is a series of short updates, keeping followers informed of someone’s or something’s happenings.
If only Isaac Asimov warned us of the dangers of “Twitter” instead of robots. Back a decade or two ago, the modern world would be following Austrian cyborgs if they wished to live, or running for their lives on their 21st birthday. We’re not even logging on to our Internet to ride on a cyber motorcycle. How can their be social networking and no Robocops?
Instead we get to keep up with menial updates from everyone. In addition to all your cool friends but America’s beloved B-listers, such as Hulk Hogan and William Shatner (you fell a long way from the captain’s chair, Shat) have an account. Government officials of course also harnesses the awesome power of Skynet, I mean Twitter, from our current President to the Israeli Consulate.
Bottom line here folks, doesn’t someone usually have to ask before we answer the question, “What are you doing?” Twitter: taking the fun out of stalking.
As I continue to debate with my friends and family over the quality of Obama’s economic policies, I am always quick to let them know, that like this post from the Daily Galaxy, if Obama does nothing else during his President other than what he did this past week with stem cell research, I will still be ecstatic.
Obama has already lived up to his promise of change, signing stem-cell research funding into law and basically saying "Hey, how about we let the doctors and scientists run this medical research thing?" It’s terrifying that that’s actually a new sentiment on Capitol Hill, but at least it’s there now.
Previous Presidential proclamations have paralyzed this lifesaving science for almost two entire Olympics, seven-and-a-half years of being restricted to less than 5% of the available stem cell lines. Hundreds of ideal models for genetic diseases and organ replacement, ignored because people whose education in stem cells began with "no, they’re not part of a plant" said "Bad!"
There are hopes that this isn’t just throwing the shackles off stateside science, but could lead to a worldwide renaissance in regenerative medicine. The idea is that other repressive countries might ask themselves "Wait, we’re writing rules AGAINST curing disease? And do those people screaming against stem cells even know what they’re talking about?"
War is a broad term. World War. Cold War. War on Drugs. Turf War. Of all of the different type of wars, this has to be my favorite. The War on “Brain Drain”…
This is why I was so heartened recently when I met my friend Bob Jaffe, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He told me about a remarkable experiment in Pakistan that he is a part of, in which a unique combination of private money, government support and intellectual leadership is helping to build the first private research school for science and engineering in that country, the School of Science and Engineering (SSE), part of the Lahore University of Management Sciences.Developments so far have been encouraging. More than $53 million in support has come in from individuals, government and industry - and world-class faculty are returning to Pakistan to participate in the new institution. Admission is merit-based and open to all, independent of gender and social or religious background, providing opportunities to outstanding students who need financial aid to make a new life.As Jaffe says in a brochure about the new institution: "Access to world-class education opens the door to economic prosperity and personal creativity. Our vision is to bring transformational science and engineering education to Pakistan. Our goal is to ignite development at a fundamental level by educating the most promising young people of all backgrounds. We hope to end Pakistan’s disastrous "brain drain" by expanding the national market for superbly trained scientists and engineers. SSE will seek out the best-prepared, most motivated students from all social and economic backgrounds. We will educate them and provide them the skills and experience to succeed in the world… We believe that this is the most effective and positive way we can impact Pakistan’s economic future."
President Eisenhower (The Republican Party of my grandpa’s era) warned us of 21st Century Republican Party on his way out of office, with his exit speech. He obviously felt this was going to be the ominous challenge facing America following his Presidency. He just didn’t know the extent of it then. It didn’t just affect America, the M.I.C. spread across the world, arming everyone…thriving off of war. ….if I was just a bit more superstitious, I would almost call him a prophet…
After the results of the latest American Religious Identification Survey, Christian Science Monitor appears to blame evangelical Christianity on the reduction of believers nation-wide.
One interesting tidbit here is that strong proponents of the Separation of Church and State are strong proponents for two reasons. 1. They want the church to stay out of the government business, and 2. They want the government to stay out of church business.
1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.
The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap ofbelieving in a cause more than a faith.
Currently, this device reminds me of the accountant carrying the suitcase size portable computer with them from home to office back in the 80’s, but this is really cool. They didn’t show it, but I am almost positive that this device will be able to look at people when they are talking to you and through facial “tells” based on the FACS system, you will be returned with a certain percentage of certainty the likelihood that they are telling the truth or not. This sounds scary, but imagine the possible benefits for someone with certain forms of autism.
Even without that, this product is amazing. It has a long way to go in relation to aesthetics, but as Pattie Maes says, “Who knows, in 10 years we may be here displaying the brain implant version.”
This is interesting information, especially the data about Vermont being the largest non-believer state with 34% “nones,” or no religion. I would be willing to bet that the numbers of non-believers is much higher that this survey shows. I only say that because when I talk to people who doubt their faith, or otherwise claim to be agnostic or atheist, they only do so after they feel comfortable talking about it for awhile. Therefore, I bet that many more people are agnostic than they would ever admit to on a survey, or at the very least, function as deist. The only reason why the number jumped from 8.2 to 14.2 like it did in 2001 is probably just an indication of an increasing population feeling more and more comfortable admitting their agnosticism. However, I don’t have any hard data to prove that, so that is nothing more than a hypothesis waiting to be tested. It seems that most people just don’t know how to categorize their doubts.
In broad terms, ARIS 2008 found a consolidation and strengthening of shifts signaled in the 2001 survey. The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million “Nones.” Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent “Nones,” leading all other states by a full 9 points.
“Many people thought our 2001 finding was an anomaly,” Keysar said. We now know it wasn’t. The ‘Nones’ are the only group to have grown in every state of the Union.”
The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.
Roughly 1 million Earths fit in to the sun. So, multiply 50 billion, by 1 million (50,000.000.000 x 1,000,000 = 50,000,000,000,000,000 Earths [That's 50 Quadrillion]) I suddenly don’t feel so fat.
Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that’s 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as “ridiculously stupidly big” and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.
It’s a certain tragedy when conservationist have to apply economic style formulas to determine which species they are going to save and which they are going to let fall in to extinction. It’s even worse when you consider what economic formulas are doing for our economy.
WOULD the animal have made it into the ark? That’s the kind of question conservationists have been asking when it comes to the thorny issue of picking which threatened species to save.
Kerstin Zander of the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, and her colleagues looked at conserving cattle - the species with the most number of breeds to have gone extinct. They turned to an approach first outlined by economist Martin Weitzman at Harvard University.
In the 1990s, Weitzman devised a formula for prioritising species for conservation. This considers the cost of saving a species, how useful or genetically diverse it is, and the increase in its chance of survival if chosen.
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