I scored a hundred percent on this quiz. But remember, it’s a test of deductive, not inductive logic (e.g., ignore whether or not the premises are valid — focus on the validity of the syllogism itself).
[Via Paul Hsieh, who got the same score as I did. Or so he says…]
Jon Goff and Ferris Valyn describe its attributes, and benefits, for the Obama administration. Hope they’re listening.
…and scientific paradigm shifts, from A Jacksonian.
[Via Joe Katzman]
Today is the fifth anniversary since President Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration (has it really been that long?).
I have some thoughts on how it’s been going over at PJM. Bottom line: not so well.
Here’s a handy new aggregator for those interested in keeping on top of space news.
Some thoughts on a lapdog press corps.
It’s not like we haven’t seen this before. Like the last time a Democrat was in the White House.
An interesting new theory, for those well versed in organic chemistry.
[Update in the afternoon]
This seems related:
Not content with achieving one hallmark of life in the lab, Joyce and Lincoln sought to evolve their molecule by natural selection. They did this by mutating sequences of the RNA building blocks, so that 288 possible ribozymes could be built by mixing and matching different pairs of shorter RNAs.
What came out bore an eerie resemblance to Darwin’s theory of natural selection: a few sequences proved winners, most losers. The victors emerged because they could replicate fastest while surrounded by competition, Joyce says.
“I wouldn’t call these molecules alive,” he cautions. For one, the molecules can evolve only to replicate better. Reproduction may be the strongest – perhaps only – biological urge, yet even simple organisms go about this by more complex means than breakneck division. Bacteria and humans have both evolved the ability to digest lactose, or milk sugar, to ensure their survival, for instance.
Joyce says his team has endowed its molecule with another function, although he will not say what that might be before his findings are published.
More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule. “It doesn’t have open-ended capacity for Darwinian evolution.”
Not yet.
The voting for best Middle-East/Africa blog is pretty much down to Juan Cole and Michael Totten. Please don’t sully the award by allowing Cole to win.
Something I just noticed, which is typical of leftists — false advertising. From the Bolsheviks (no, they weren’t really the majority), to “progressives” and “liberals” and support of “appropriate technology,” they have to steal a base with their misleading (to be polite) names. Not to mention, of course, Democratic. “Informed Comment” is just the latest (and even more presumptuous than usual) in the sham names.
Exhibit…well, not A, but it’s up there:
The CRS report describes the dilemma for members of the majority who face such motions, by stating that they “have the effect of creating a diffcult political choice for Members who support both the underlying measure and the amendment contained in the motion to recommit.” It goes on:
If such proponents of the measure vote for the motion to recommit with “non-forthwith” instructions, they are voting to send the measure back to committee, delaying or potentially killing the bill and perhaps breaking with their own party. However, if such Members vote against the motion to recommitthey may be on public record as having voted against a policy that they (and perhaps their constituents) strongly support.
The report then notes that such a vote could later become the subject of a political ad. With the new rules change, Democrats are protecting themselves from the kind of accountability that Republicans faced when they were in the majority, and which majority Democrats also faced prior to their loss of Congressional control in 1994.
“The new rules basically shield them from taking embarrassing votes,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee. “It denies us the ability to have clean votes based on our policy alternatives.” Note how Ryan’s language echoes that used by Fitzgerald 100 years ago.
The hypocrisy astounds, though it shouldn’t. And as noted, they will regret this rule change when (not if) they lose power.
…meet rainmaking bacteria:
Barbara Nozière of Stockholm University, Sweden, and colleagues suggest that surfactants secreted by many species of bacteria could also influence the weather. While these are normally used to transport nutrients through membranes, the team have shown that they also break down the surface tension of water better than any other substance in nature. This led them to suspect that if the detergent was found in clouds it would stimulate the formation of water droplets.
This is the kind of thing that makes me skeptical about bureaucratic solutions to planetary engineering, natural or otherwise.