Brains: No Indicator of Success

[elfs]

Most Likely To Succeed

In this fascinating essay, Gladwell reviews what makes a great NFL quarterback, a great teacher, and a great financial adviser, and discovers that the initial skillsets we've been measuring all along are no indicators of what it takes to be great in any of those fields.

The Vatican Bans Basically Everything Reproductive

The Vatican has banned:

• in vitro fertilization.
• research in and use of embryonic stem cells.
• post-fertilization birth control methods such as morning after pills, the so-called abortion pill RU-486 (mifepristone) and the inter-uterine device (IUD).
• surrogate motherhood.
• human cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic.
• hybrid cloning using animal oocytes (immature female germ cells) to reprogram the nuclei of human somatic cells.
• freezing embryos or oocytes for use in artificial fertilization.
• pre-implantation diagnosis of embryos to avoid genetic defects or select for gender or other qualities.
• reduction of implanted embryos to prevent multiple births.
• intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to overcome male fertility problems.
• germ line cell therapy to modify genes transmitted to offspring.
• genetic enhancement for purposes other than medical treatment.
• use of human biological material of illicit origin, such as experimentation on human embryos.

The Pope also announced that the Vatican reserves the right to "intervene" in any state that allows any of these technologies. At least the Vatican lacks an army.

CSS Sprites Advanced Techniques

Nifty stuff.

Not Tonight, Dear, I'd Rather Blog

According to a survey paid for by Intel, 46% of women would rather go without sex than without Internet access for two weeks, but only 30% of men. Intel wanted to emphasize how important its products are. Personally, I'd rather be out in the woods with a willing partner than a decent WiFi connection.

Although 46% of Americans voted for Bush, only 33% will admit to it now.

No surprises here.

Evangelicals really don't like gay people.

In an article that will surprise no one, the National Association of Evangelicals has booted the Rev. Richard Cizik, a spokesman and lobbyist, who has long irritated the group with the suggestion that the NAE "should take global warming seriously," has now lost position for stating that the "current state of heterosexual marriage ... is a greater threat to marriage than homosexual civil unions."

The Senate: George Bush & Donald Rumsfeld bear responsibility for toture

The Senate this week released a report showing that Bush and Rumsfeld were personally responsible for ordering torture at Guantanamo, and for authorizing techniques that led to Abu Ghraib. Juan Cole wants to know why this is coming out now, when most of the press is distracted with other things. Well, duh.

Video Game Design: 1990 through 2008

A fabulous trip through time. Dig those crazy interfaces.

Time Is Different from Space

A physics major explains closed time-like curve, the causal nature of reality and its malleability, the relationship between general relativity and the distinction between P vs NP problems, and finally the claim "CTCs make polynomial time equal to polynomial space as a computational resource."

Far out.

Comments

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Y'know, 2 weeks probably wasn't enough time really. I wonder how different the women's responses would have been if it had been 3 or 4 weeks. Or if it asked about when you'rre close to that time of the month and, well, in heat.

Not surprising that men would place a higher priority on sex than women though. ;p

The election's over. Slow down.

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

The Salon article does not say what you said it says, it says "in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 33 percent of respondents admit to having voted for the guy twice...".

It's quite possible that only 33% of the respondents DID vote for the guy twice.

I followed the link in the Salon piece to a page that represents itself as a summary of the survey, and it doesn't include any figures related to who the respondents voted for. I also Googled for more survey results and got nothing.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/081210_NBC-WSJ_ReleasedPoll.pdf

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[gromm.livejournal.com]

Re: Vatican

Some of that stuff makes sense...

* genetic enhancement for purposes other than medical treatment. - See also: Gattaca
* human cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic. - presumably, because you'd need to clone a whole human, then ah, harvest the organs you need.
* hybrid cloning using animal oocytes (immature female germ cells) to reprogram the nuclei of human somatic cells. - Who knows what side effects that may have...
* pre-implantation diagnosis of embryos to avoid genetic defects or select for gender or other qualities. -- See also: Gattaca
* germ line cell therapy to modify genes transmitted to offspring. -- See also: Gattaca


This one makes sense now:
* research in and use of embryonic stem cells.

It turns out that stem cells also exist in our bone marrow. This was the method used for the bronchial transplant in that woman in Spain - the first such transplant using the patient's own stem cells for creating a completely compatible organ for transplant. Which coincidentally, is one of the single most useful applications of stem cell research.

This one makes *no* sense:
* surrogate motherhood.

So they don't approve of adoption either?

Hmmmm.

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

So, the conclusion would be there were a lot of people who didn't support the first time, but after the demonstrations prior to the impending war, the war itself, the casualties, the debt, the terrorist events in other countries, the wounded, the administration's refusal to allow photographs of caskets of our soldier be photographed (unlike any other war), the secrecy, the WMD, the NO WMD, the shifting reasoning of why we went to Iraq in the first place .... after all that they decided to vote for Bush?

Occam's razor seems to have dulled quite a bit.

Re: Hmmmm.

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Well, let's see:

Popular vote for G.W. Bush in the 2000 election: 50,456,002
Popular vote for G.W. Bush in the 2004 election: 62,040,610

So, yeah. There were at least 11.6 million people who didn't vote for Bush the first time, but after all that stuff, decided to vote for him the second time.

And if it wasn't obvious the first time, not all the respondents would have voted at all, so even with everyone fessing up to their stupid votes for that mean old Dubya, you wouldn't expect to see a 50% result.

Durr.

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[mikstera.livejournal.com]

???

So the reason you agree with some of the Vatican's prohibitions on bioengineering research rest on your concern over unknown consequences and a fictional movie? That doesn't seem like a very solid foundation for forbidding entire areas of research.

There are certainly ethical concerns with some areas of research... but I don't think an effective way of addressing those concerns is to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and try to forbid inquiry into entire areas (which will only mean that the research gets done anyway, just not out in the open where oversight is possible.)

[gromm.livejournal.com]

See, the entire premise of the movie is that given less than half the chance, people will use money to further stratify society. That the rich would gladly pay (and pay any amount) to make their children superhuman through genetics is pretty much a given. And that they would use their power over people to ensure that only the superhuman would be able to achieve anything at all is also inevitable.

If you really think that you and I will be able to afford the kind of treatments necessary to keep our kids from having any number of congenital diseases and disorders that genetic research promises to eliminate, well, that's another bit of fiction. :)

[mikstera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I absolutely agree with you when it comes to the dangers of economic stratification leading to genetic stratification.

My point is that you don't address that problem by trying to prevent the research that could lead to it; force it underground by making it illegal, and you guarantee that it will be done in secret, and that only those with the money will get it.

Instead, let's keep it out in the open, and take steps to make it available to everyone, and not just the rich. If you don't think we can do that, then I don't see how you think we can make it illegal, and have that stick.