Well I'll be! (this is strictly *biological* not computer-related)
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Russia Today strikes again.
The Japanese researchers found virus fragments in pig faeces, and decided t hat they weren't what was left over when some anti-viral defense, or some h ungry but defective microbe had chewed up a virus, but rather something new , unique and publishable that might get replicated by hijacking some fragme nts of some other virus.
Only Cursitor Doom would take it seriously.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Are you saying, we can relax now?
--
Thanks,
- Win
Prions are alive and well. OK they are not alive, but they are well.
Mikek
Nature is infinitely evil. If any idea or phenomenon can be weaponized, it is.
Far too many times things went undiscovered because scientists assumed it was impossible.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Nature isn't evil - that implies intent.
Nature just doesn't care.
So people have to invent god(s) to care about the group that believes in that particular god.
As for science, Richard P. Feynman said that if you can't challenge the assumptions then it isn't a real science, it's a religion.
John :-#)#
Mr. Sloman has a bit of an issue with Russia. He hates the country for giving up on Communism back in the early 90s. He would have been happy if they'd pressed on regardless and entered into new pogroms and Stalinesque mass starvation like back in the 1930s to kill off all the dissenters. Throwing the towel in and admitting Communism is an unsustainable system was the ultimate sin by Russia as far as Bill is concerned.
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Communism was always an unfortunate perversion of socialism. The internatio nal socialist movement kicked out Karl Marx and the proto-communists in 187
1 precisely because their ideas were undemocratic and likely to lead to tyr anny - as indeed they did.I've pointed this out frequently here, but brain-dead idiots like Cursitor Doom and krw can't get the message.
I didn't think much of Communist Russia, and welcomed the downfall of the C ommunist Party. Sadly, the process of replacing it was severely mismanaged, and the country is now a failed state, run by a criminal conspiracy devote d to enriching itself at the expense of the rest of the population. Putin w ant to be able to rip off a larger population, so he's trying to take over nearby countries.
o new pogroms and Stalinesque mass starvation like back in the 1930s to ki ll off all the dissenters.
A bizarre misconception.
And another.
Cursitor Doom really does need to move to the nearest institution set up to look after demented idiots before his delusions start damaging his health.
If he said things like that in a face-to-face conversation, he'd get kicked out the door, and would run the risk of freezing to death before he'd find a place that would let him back in.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Was there ever anything to get excited about?
Perhaps if you were in the habit of bathing in pig faeces ...
John Larkin has talked about the enthusiasm of university publicity departments to make a splash about any new research result.
Somebody at Russia Today must have been bribed to put that lot on-line.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Russian Communism was sustained for a lifetime, and could go on far longer - but thankfully it has not. Every system is vulnerable to downfall as a result of poor decisions. The problem with communism.... well, which one should we pick.
NT
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Cursitor Doom is out of his mind. There are ridiculous accusations that can be close enough to the truth to have some credibility, but this isn't one of them.
r - but thankfully it has not. Every system is vulnerable to downfall as a result of poor decisions. The problem with communism.... well, which one sh ould we pick.
The problem with Communism was the leading role of the party. It was an oli garchy, which meant that it didn't serve the interests of the population as whole, though it liked to claim that it did.
Lot's of our rather more representative democracies have the same problem, but to a rather lesser extent. Boris Johnson isn't quite as silly as Putin or Trump, but he's clearly off on an ego trip.
The fact that a regime survives for quite a while doesn't demonstrate that it is all that good. If all it's energy is devoted to locking up supposed e nemies of the regime it will probably last longer than a regime that provid es equally defective government but puts it's energies elsewhere.
Russian Communism provided good enough government to allow Russia to defeat Nazi Germany (which wasn't all that well run either). There have been wors e regimes, but that didn't make it a good one.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
That's very true. The outlook for Capitalism much better as things stand, but at least it's built on sound principles that doesn't have wishful thinking and unrealistic expectations of altruism on the part of others as its foundation stone.
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Cursitor Doom seems to have descended into gibbering idiocy.
The free market can be relied on to degrade into cartels and monopolies if somebody doesn't regulate it to some extent, and the idea the the regulators won't be got at is clearly wishful thinking and an unrealistic expectation of altruism.
Adam Smith did mention that "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
He seems to have been willing to rely on social pressures and moral principles to stop this getting too bad.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Anything that tries to eat me is evil.
Nature is hungry. Most critters spend most of their time finding and eating food. Humans don't spend so much resources on food, which is why we have time to design electronics.
It would be fun if he were around today.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
As they say, it's not a real virus. It was almost certainly produced by the cells of the pig in response to some kind of cytoacivating enzyme floating around the blood stream. Probably the remnants of some ancient virus perma nently incorporated into the pig's genome. Like they say, if they're no pro teins, it's not infectious.
People need to worry about TTVs, transfusion transmitted viruses. Generally if the industry doesn't know what they do, they classify them as harmless. Sometimes this backfires. The virus associated with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, which is of epidemic proportions, originally started out as a TTV. Now it' s simian virus 40 or something, SV-40. There are hundreds if not thousands of others, with new ones discovered all the time.
And insufficiently picky about it;s food.
We don't now. It took the agricultural revolution to get us into that happy state, and anthropogenic global warming may take us out of it.
There are a lot of people who would get more of his jokes than John Larkin can manage, and quite a few who would also appreciate his serious contributions.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Cursitor Doom seems to think that "Capitalism" is some kind of system that designed around principles.
The first use of the term in it's modern sense goes back to Louis Blanc in 1850, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861.
It's actually the way world used to work, and was recognised as a system by the people who wanted society to be organised on socialist principles, who happened to see the necessity of curbing the power of people who had a lot of capital to run society in ways that suited them.
In so far as it has any underlying principles, it's all about prioritising immediate advantage over long term consequences. There's nothing sound abou t that.
It's proponents talk about trickle down economics
which is pure wishful thinking.
Where the unrealistic expectations of altruism on the part of others comes into socialist thinking escapes me.
Socialists want the economy run in a way that benefits everybody involved. That's entirely self-interested - it recognises the fact that if any sectio n of society feels hard done by they will be motivated to restructure that society in a way that will leave them better off. Any altruism involved is the self-interested desire to avoid having envious and discontented neighbo urs.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Mebe. But they also need to worry about artificially spliced together viruses put together in some kid's bedroom in about 10 years' time. Spliced to combine the virulence of ebola with the prevalence of the common cold. What a lovely future to look forward to for our children.
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Cursitor Doom think that the common cold is "prevalent". What he would mean - if he knew what he was talking about - is that it is easily transmitted.
Viruses have been working on being easily transmitted for at least a billio n years now. It's unlikely that a kid in a bedroom will be able match the p erformance of the best performing virus around at getting transmitted in so mething that also kills its hosts before they can get around to infecting o ther people.
It's much more likely that they will work up a virus that selectively kills off people with Cursitor Doom's obvious cognitive defects - not all that l ikely, but we can hope.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
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