Re: re-combinant DNA technology.
Most people have absolutely no idea where their drugs come from or how they are made. There is no doubt in my mind that there are diabetic people who are anti GM and yet who are completely oblivious to the fact that their insulin is made by splicing human genes into bacteria.
As for animal testing: people who are anti animal testing, yet use less humane methods to kill vermin in their own homes than the labs do to kill their mice.
Thinking about it further, I think I can add one from the programmers world:
Well yes I can move that button, but I reaaaaaaaally don’t recommend it.
My god but you can’t add enough disclaimers. And they will always end up coming back to say “move the button” even though you have distinctly come out and said, “do this and everything is going to break and the schedule for this project will get bumped another month.”
I mean sometimes a change is a two second, nothing will break type thing, but sometimes it might require you to have to rewrite half of everything.
If the programmer is really sweating and getting down on the ground begging you, it reaaaallly might be best to give it a good thunking before saying “change it.” But, they always do. One does his best to predict every single change that could ever be requested, but my god if they don’t always come up with that one thing.
Not my field, but most people have no idea how foreign aid works or how the budget in general works. If you ask an average person where tax money goes or how much we spend in foreign aid they’ll give you answers with nothing to do with reality. About 75% of tax dollars go to education, social security, medical care, interest on the national debt and the military. Many people i’ve noticed seem to think it goes to food stamps and highway projects.
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/BFW/finding1.html
PIPA asked respondents to estimate how much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid, and told them they could answer in terms of fractions of percentage points if they wished, to make them feel comfortable giving a low answer. Nonetheless, the median estimate was 20% of the budget-more than 20 times the actual amount (a bit less than 1%).
This has changed with the Iraq war and the war on terror, but its still nowhere near 20%.
Disclaimer: And I am a good programmer
Gah. Annoying that I have to disclaimer even this.
All food is genetically modified, with the possible exception of fish. You think apples the size of your fist were growing in the Garden of Eden?
I’m a professional programmer, using mainly C and C++ (with a little Java and VBA experience), and I always considered HTML as a form a programming, in the sense that it is giving instructions to a computer. It’s certainly at a different level than the stuff I do every day, but what does it lack that you feel is a necessary attribute to be under the “programming” label?
Flow control and variables are two major things it’s missing.
Writing HTML is like using a word processor or desktop publishing app: the file can have programs embedded in it (VBA or JavaScript), but the HTML itself just boils down to formatting and attribute codes, to be interpreted by a viewer. The only thing that can affect the “output” of an HTML file is the choice of browser, options, plugins, etc.; there is no input other than the file itself, and the only interaction the user has is to leave the page (by submitting a form or clicking a link).
Maybe this isn’t so “obvious within my field” after all. 
AI: the age of robotic overlords is not around the corner. It’s centuries away, if that.
I was similarly startled on the campaign trail, the first time the provincial section sent out a press release with a quotation attributed to me. Well, they did let me see it first, but it was slightly surreal. “Whoa, I said that? I must be pretty smart…”
True, and with the increasing prevalence of farm-raised fish, that’s on the brink of changing, too. In the fridge and pantry of any household in the U.S., I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any food substance that would have been pretty much the same 10,000 years ago, before humans started genetically modifying them - perhaps some types of nuts and berries (Yogi Bear would not be pleased).
Nothing good can come of going “Oh, let’s give it to Ghislaine; she’s bilingual. Ghislaine, type this up in French, would you?”
A translator needs more lexicographical resources than just a bilingual dictionary. Even one of the fat ones.
A translator cannot do simultaneous interpretation for you (unless, of course, s/he is also a simultaneous interpreter).
“Computer-assisted translation” does not mean Babelfish. It doesn’t even mean a really good version Babelfish. It means software to help human translators translate.
Data + Commands + Ability to Change Program Flow = Program
HTML is just data.
The only difference between HTML and a word or PDF document is that the markup is in ASCII instead of binary.
[apologies to non hackers for the hijack]
I actually kind of like it - the textbook I currently use for one of my introductory level geography courses has several. It does a very good job of depitcing the actual shape and size of the major landforms (3-d objects) on a two-dimensional surface.
However, this is done at the expense of “chopping” up the world, so one doesn’t get a sense of where these landoforms are in relation to one another in 3-d form (as one would via a globe or satellite images of the earth from space). So while shape and size are preserved, this is at the expense of distance (and to some extent direction). Of course, one could make the argument that the “chopping effect” done is relatively consistent and one could easily “fold” the world back into 3-d shape to reduce the distance/direction distortions.
But that’s the nature of mapping - there will ALWAYS be some distortions in trying to represent a 3-D object on a 2-D surface. Depending on the concern (what best to preserve - distance, direction, shape, and size), the others will be distorted in some fashion. Again, think Mercator projection - good for navigation (preserves direction - easy to plot courses from A to B), but bad for accurately conveying shape and size of landforms (Greenland and Antarctica monsterously disorted).
It is really really freaking expensive to develop drugs. No, really. Really expensive. Especially when you factor in every drug that gets to a certain point in development but never gets to market.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t problems with pharmaceutical pricing, regulatory oversight, unethical sales practices to doctors, and so on and so forth. But the general public seems to have a hard time grasping that we don’t just wave a magic wand and find cures.
Furthermore, cancer isn’t one disease that we can take out in one fell swoop. So when the General Public finds it amusing to ask me how come “we” can develop Viagra (yes, the entire pharmaceutical industry is interested in your erection!) but we can’t cure cancer, the answer is that lots of people are spending lots and lots of R&D money on trying to find cures for many different types of cancer that behave in different ways.
I’m by no means a cheerleader for big pharma, but I do wish the public could grasp that it’s just not a Hollywood lab scene where the cute girl in the white coat and glasses goes “Eureka! I found the cure for everything! We can all go home!”
Yep, what Sample_the_Dog said. Also:
It is possible to have an extensive vocabulary and an impeccably correct grasp of English grammar and still not be able to write your way out of a paper bag.
Formal writing is not inherently better than less-formal writing.
Yes, people really do write big books that consist entirely of interpretation of other books. No, the goal of this exercise is not to come up with the “definitive” or “correct” interpretation. There isn’t any such beast. However, the goal is also not to come up with the most outlandish interpretation possible, and no, you cannot twist a text into meaning anything you want it to mean.
The word “symbolism” is grossly overused by freshman English students. Most of the things you think are symbols probably aren’t.
Shakespeare was Shakespeare, but he collaborated.
I am an Ecologist (in the technical sense of someone who studies the ecology of organisms, not the popular sense that equates “ecologist” with “environmentalist.” Most ecologists are not professional environmentalists - although they may sympathize with their goals - and most environmentalists are not professional ecologists.)
Among my professional colleagues, there is very little controversy regarding:
Global climate change is presently occurring, and the effects will very likely accelerate in the near future, and be quite severe;
A massive extinction event is currently under way, with the loss of a large number of species of plants and animals;
These events are not a part of any normal cycle, but are almost entirely due to the direct and indirect impacts of human activity.
There may be controversy about the details of exactly what the effects may be, how severe they will get, and how rapidly they will happen, but there is a strong consensus on the basic trends.
If anything, ecologists (as opposed to environmentalists per se), being scientists, tend to couch their views relatively conservatively, and in professional presentations and articles often understate the case. But privately, many feel strongly that an environmental Apocalypse is at hand.
In most cases, yes. Antibiotic products are marketed as antibacterial and are widely available in any supermarket. As for antibiotic medication, people can buy it over the counter in many cases. But some prescription antibiotics are also overused. People often insist on having an antibiotic, even if they’re suffering from a viral problem which would be unaffected by an antibiotic (I assume most people are aware that antibiotics work against bacteria). If the first doctor won’t prescribe an antibiotic, many patients will shop around until they find one who will.
I assume that most people know that bacteria evolve and develop resistance to antibiotics. So everytime antibiotics are used, the bacteria become more resistant to the antibiotic. Eventually that particular antibiotic is useless. As I said before, I’m not a doctor, but my understanding is that there is no guaranteed antibiotics anymore. Every known antibiotic now has at least one form of bacteria that is resistant to it. Fortunately, for the moment at least, there is no single bacteria that is resistant to all antibiotics. But any credible biologist will tell you it’s just a matter of time before one evolves - if nothing else, bacteria are capable of stealing resistant genes from other bacteria. In a few decades, humanity will probably be back to the situation it was in a century ago - millions of people will die every year from simple infections that are incurable. We’re living in the latter part of a brief golden age when we’ve held superiority over germs.
Several people have made mention of Lawrence Summers remarks about gender differences and mathematical aptitude. I don’t think any knowledgable person disputes the idea that there are real genetic differences between men and women. But to put Summers’ remarks in context, in the same speech, he compared the lack of women in mathematics to the lack of Catholics in banking or Jews in farming. Once you realize he was theorizing that Catholics and Protestants have different genes or that there are farming and anti-farming genes, you might consider he was talking out his ass.
The camera lies.
I recently heard a story on NPR news that claimed it’s common practice for NFL teams to issue antibiotics pre-emptively to the players, on the grounds that an infection could easily spread and sideline the whole team.
Seemed monumentally stupid to me, if true.