I predict I won’t like the halftime show.

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

One would think all this extreme weather would lead to more rightwingers
changing their minds on climate-change — and maybe that will happen — but in West, by god Virginia, i see a lot of this kinda thinking from the evangelicals:

christian world view:https://theintellectualist.co/pro-trump-evangelical-blames-lgbt-community-for-hurricane-harvey/

w
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Yet, the hurricane didn’t just hit LGBT people and their allies…it hit the God-fearin’ Trump supporters that inhabit east Texas as well.

Of course, it doesn’t occur to the evangelicals that maybe God is punishing Texas for voting for Trump.

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Well i can see you know very little about God. I remember when God attacked Sodom and Gomorrah — there were some good Trump voters there too. But when God gets into a god-rage, it dont matter.

I also remember when Godzilla attacked Gomorrah. For no reason at all.
Pre-emptively. Gomorrah should have built a wall.

w
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Sodom and Gamera.

Clubber, what’s your prediction for the Colts when they face the Rams next week?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by nittany ram.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by nittany ram.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by nittany ram.

Goff was really green coming out of college and his development was hampered by Boras and Fisher. To me he’s still a rookie. He’s starting over fresh, but at least he’s now being mentored by someone who by all appearances knows what he’s doing. I think that is evident in the progress Goff made this preseason. But he’s still a little raw so patience is in order. Goff is on an upward trajectory but he’s going to have some dips and dives during his ascent.

There are a lot of QBs playing at a high level well into their late 30’s. Moreso now than ever. I wonder if this is an aberration or trend. My bet is it’s a trend. If Goff is legit, then the Rams could have their QB for the next 14 – 18 years.

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

I cant wait. In fact I think I’ll start my review a day ahead of time…..The producers screwed up by making fewer episodes; there wasnt enough character development in this last episode. It was all action. Though the final scene with the Pterodactyl and the time machine was interesting.

w
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Dragons are cool.

I have to say the GOT dragons are the best depictions of living dragons since St. George slew the last one towards the end of the Middle Ages. It was just a cub though.

Agamemnon wrote:

The sack is on Havenstein. But, still, Goff had right at 3 seconds to get rid of the ball or step up into a clean pocket and eliminate the sack altogether.

Yeah, Goff’s eyes were focused downfield as they should be but he needs to develop that timer in his head that tells him to get rid of the ball.

I think this Boston Dynamic robot tech is really cool. It’s amazing how it maintains its balance when kicked. It almost seems alive.

It’s very easy to forget that it’s a weapon.

Obviously there are all sorts of peaceful, scientific applications for this technology. But Boston Dynamics develops this stuff for DARPA, which invests in technology employed for national security. Boston Dynamics was purchased by Google, btw.

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

The problem with all this is that there are no genes that are population specific. The frequencies in which they appear can vary between populations, but none are exclusive to a certain population. Genetic variation is greater within a population than between them. So even if they developed a biological weapon targeted against a certain population, there would be potential for a lot of collateral damage among other groups that weren’t targeted. So to me, the risk of developing bio-weapons against genes in certain ethnic populations would be too risky, unless they weren’t worried about it moving through other populations with varying degrees of virulence.

================

And do you think ANY of that ‘collateral damage’ stuff would cause the CIA
to stop researching it, Nittany?

What do you think?

w
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Could they be researching it? Sure. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were researching it. The issue with such a weapon would be containment and isolation. The target population would have to be isolated through strict travel bans. Basically quarantene the region. But even then the risk of it spreading to other populations would be high. So there are galactically huge problems that would have to be overcome for such a weapon to be used in the intended manner, which I assume would not be creating a global pandemic.

Keep in mind the article provided no proof that this research was actually being done at any of these labs. It’s a pretty big leap from ‘Requesting sonovial fluid samples from Russians of European extraction’ to developing genetic bio-weapons.

And the article does read like a scare piece. It mentioned the GM H5N1 bird flu virus developed in the Netherlands that could potentially spread from person to person through the air. But the article didn’t mention that it was developed amid a lot of controversy. There was no cover up. Nothing was hidden. The researchers were aware of the risk, but did so because the only way to develop controls against an airborne bird flu would be to create one. And given the ease in which it was created, it lends credence to the researcher’s contention that the wild virus would eventually make that transition itself anyway. The potential danger of it escaping the lab or of terrorists using their published work to create a bio-weapon is real although the likelihood of it happening is debatable. But it wasn’t part of some covert research project consistent with the theme of the article. So in that regard, I think the article is alarmist. It doesn’t back up its contentions with hard evidence – just speculation, albeit reasonable in some ways.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by nittany ram.

wv wrote:

You know what the best part of the last episode was for me — It was the simple, matter of fact, sometimes humorous, Dialogues among the men who were on the quest beyond the wall. Before they met the Bear and things got all action-y.

The humor between the Hound and the Red-haired-guy, talking about Brienne of Tarth. Good dialogue.
The conversation between Jon and whatshisname about the sword — good dialogue.

Etc.

And i consider all that kind of thing ‘character development’. And thats what’s missing because of the decision to make fewer episodes. We miss out on THAT stuff, among other things.

I tried to google the question of just WHY the powers that be, decided to have fewer episodes, but i cant really fine anything that makes much sense. All i found was some paragraphs out there that say the writers basically just wanted to wrap things up. Ah well.

w
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I read somewhere that the actress who plays Daeneryis didn’t want her involvement with the show to extend beyond 8 seasons. Maybe some of the other actors are ready to move on as well. Not that that should have had an impact on the duration of the series. If there’s one show that isn’t afraid to kill off beloved characters, it’s this one.

wv wrote:

Zn trusts the ‘peer review’ system much more than i do. I cant tell how much of it has been tainted now by the Monsanto’s and mega-corpse.

Well, the problems facing science usually do not involve covering up or altering information. At least not until Trump got control of the EPA, that is. The reason is that other labs are going to verify the claims. Independent corroboration. Science only works if results are reproducible. Remember the cold fusion fiasco? Other labs could not reproduce the results as reported in the original paper using the same equipment, materials, procedures, etc…which meant the original lab most likely didn’t get those results either.

The issues facing science/peer review generally involve a lack of due diligence by the reviewers and journals that allow bad papers with dubious methods and results to get published. This is especially true in sociology and psychology. Part of this might involve “P hacking”, where the researcher consciously or unconsciously alters data to get the p value they want. Often, the p value researchers shoot for is 0.05, meaning if the study achieves a p value of 0.05 or less, then the results of the study are statistically significant. A common way to p-hack would be to collect data points until you get the p value of 0.05, then stop. But you can’t do this because what if the next data point had driven the p value above 0.05? It would be like playing a football game until the team you want to win is ahead and then stopping the game and declaring them the winner. Of course, the team that’s losing at the moment you stopped could have ultimately won the game had it been allowed to continue. That’s why you have to play the full 4 quarters. In science you have to use all the data you collect unless there is a valid reason not to, and you have to specify beforehand how many data points you will collect and what statistical measures you are going to use. You can’t change mid stream. To fix this, some have suggested that the accepted value of 0.05 should be lowered. Blinding the studies might help too.

But, again, this is different than trying to cover up information, which is what I assume you were alluding to with the Monsanto reference. I don’t doubt Monsanto would cover up data if it suited them. Fortunately there are many other independent labs all over the world replicating these studies, so even if they did, they wouldn’t get away with it for very long.