Mokele

There is actual evidence that differences are socially imposed. Minority students actually do measurably worse on identical tests if asked about their race beforehand (thereby purportedly 'priming' them with racial sterotypes). Even more interesting, Korean-American students typically outstrip white students in the US (and test at the same level as Japanese-american students), but in Japan, where individuals of Korean descent are sterotyped as dumb and regularly discriminated against, Korean students do far worse than native Japanese students.

Why is this even an issue? The New Scientist is a news magazine, not a reliable source. The best it can do is point to interesting recent research.

Seriously, you wander in here spouting nonsense about conspiracies and secret societies, and expect us to believe you? What sort of secret society sends out advertisements in the mail, and posts openly on the internet? Yes, please rush me my super-secret Illuminati membership for $19.95 plus shipping and handling!

Did you forget to take your Haloperidol again?

Doesn't it leave the capsid inside the cell? Are these RNAses intracellular or extracellular?

Slime molds have way more than 3 (507, to be precise). Or one, depending on your POV. They have 3 genes that determine sexual compatability: two have 13 alleles, one has 3. In order to be compatible, two gametes must differ at each locus, so any given slime mold is compatible with 288 out of 507 of its kin. However, it's *still* only the union of two gametes, not 3. Three is problematic, because the organism would have 3 sets of chromosomes, making cell division difficult (though some organisms have coped). Four may be more likely - there are plenty of tetraploid animals.

Another point, one which I'm surprised hasn't come up, is the other reason to do this: with credit freezing up and loans getting progressively harder to come by, there's a real danger that lots of people won't be able to afford college (putting them at a competitive disadvantage during a time when job-seekers need every edge they can get). An educated populace is a huge asset, not just philosophically but economically, and to allow that to suffer would only make things worse.

But wouldn't an RNAase be useless against a virus that's sealed safely inside it's capsid?

It could bind to the site the virus uses to gain entry into the cell. More directly, a digestive enzyme could attack the protein coat of the virus, breaking it down and destroying it, but it would also wind up attacking anything else it bumped into.

It's bullshit. It's also the sort of thing that's why those of us in the *real* sciences don't respect sociology.

Isn't the point that this bill would take *all* the loans, not just those who can't get them elsewhere? And what defines loan eligibility for a private sector only student loan? Income, or projected income? Would the private sector even bother anymore, with such a plan in place?

Sure. Go read a textbook on cellular metabolism. Hell, read a textbook on organic chemistry. This is sophomore-level stuff. All reactions produce damaging waste. That's why we pee. Slowing, not stopping. Wrong. Some damage is easy to repair, such as when it results in mis-aligned base pairs. But what if it's a bigger mutation, such as a deletion of several base pairs? You cannot detect such a mutation without knowing the original code. That's far too much data for any nanobot to contain, and to fix it by gene therapy would require constant gene therapy for every single bit of DNA in our body. Oh, and let's not forget that there are non-genetic damages too, such as to methylation patterns, nucleosome placement, and associated proteins. It would be like keeping your computer functional by formatting the drive and re-installing everything every 5 minutes. Mokele

For a)

Sisyphus is right, which brings up the issue of numbers: what percentage of students default on their loans? How much interest is made on those that don't? Does the latter exceed the former?

a) Those aren't the genotypes of the parents, if both are palominos b) good c) Simple ratios, shouldn't be a surprise. d) True, but this would mean she'd have to have a large population of adult off-whites and chestnuts. What other crosses would produce palominos? d - bonus) Consider sex ratio, and what sex the off-white horse is. Would she be able to get away with having less white horses if it was any particular sex?

The number times their height

No, it can't. The only way to stop the production of damaging metabolic by-products is death. We can reduce it, but can't stop it, and some damage simply cannot be undone.

Fantastic, but without any sort of external criteria, there's going to be no consistency and nothing informative. Why even bother keeping track of people's answers, if the answers can't be meaningfully compared?

I'm with Sisyphus - it's too vague and poorly defined for any sort of meaningful conclusion. What freedoms are essential and what aren't? What matters most? Least? What even counts as a freedom? Are we using laws to measure, or the resulting scope of behavior (since not all laws are enforced)? It's like asking "What's the best animal?" without defining anything else - the results will be meaningless gibberish.

Um, what?

Well, what does evolution require in order to work? Which of those assumptions may be violated by this example? Hint: think about athletes who train at high altitude and why they do so.

That too - he's like the Garfield of political cartoons. Oh, look, he was mean to the dog and then slept! Hilarious!

So disparaging people for their sexuality is OK, just not their race? Double-standard much? Hatred is hatred, bigotry is bigotry, and this cartoonist is clearly bigoted against absolutely everyone who isn't a white, christian, straight, able-bodied male. Do we *really* want to voluntarily give him a platform from which to spew his vitriol? Mokele

Not all diseases are caused by cell damage - most are pathogens like viri and bacteria. Natural cell damage typically leads to one type of disease: cancer. More importantly, the metabolic processes that generate the most intracellular damage are those involved in oxidizing food (carbs, fats, proteins). It *is* possible to scale this back 10-fold, with one small disadvantage - we'd become ectotherms, or 'cold-blooded'. We'd have to completely abandon all latitudes outside of the tropics, and would need to spend a substantially amount of time and effort regulating our body temperature via external means such as basking. Mokle

What about the question, specifically, don't you understand?