They fixed their RSS feed—for their blog—a few days ago, so I ended up on the site (having previously subscribed). It was interesting to see they're looking at using the therapy for other conditions.
Do you know if there's any scope for doing something to reduce cancer risk, with this tech? Such as enhancing P53, or something like that (if that doesn't damage the individual).
One of the GRG regulars raised the suggestion that perhaps we don't see increased cancer risk in mice following telomerase therapy - and that's after the research group in question dropped the addition of tinkering with P53, and moved to straight telomerase overexpression, interestingly - because the immune system improvement means that there is more and better cancer immunosurveillance going on. I'm not aware of any earnest data to support or contradict that hypothesis, however.
The Gerontology Research Group, originally organized by the late Stephen Coles. The mailing list is a watering hole of sorts for the gerontology community and some of the surrounding advocates and entrepreneurs, though much less so now than used to be the case.
It's an organization funded by tax payers. That doesn't automatically mean it is a state mouthpiece. Unfortunately, they have not been very bold in their reporting since the Hutton Inquiry:
The BBC is not funded by tax payers. It's funded by the TV License which is not compulsory. If you choose not to watch live broadcast television then you don't pay for a TV license.
Your definition would mean VAT isn't a tax. Just avoid the luxuries[1] and you avoid the VAT.
You have to pay the licence fee even if you never watch any BBC broadcast material. A person who only ever watches ITV would have to pay the licence fee.
And non-payment of the licence fee was a criminal offence with fines, and non-payment of the fine sent many people to prison.
It feels like a tax.
[1] also tampons and sanitary towels, which probably don't feel like a luxury purchase.
I was informed by a TV license "officer" that provided you detune BBC channels you can still watch commercial channels. In the same way that I am permitted to listen to BBC radio channels (for which no license is required) via a Sky box.
TV licensing have to prove that you're watching on-air BBC broadcasts.
In the UK even if you do not watch TV at all (live or recorded) you have to pay the BBC Tax / TV license fee under certain circumstances.
Best known one is having a car with a live video feed (e.g. a reverse camera to the dashboard) -first ones were Range Rovers and other luxury cars but these features are now arriving within more "bread and butter" cars as well.
Still better than in Germany where they recently turned it into a per-household tax to be paid even if you don't watch any TV / broadcast at all.
Incorrect, I pay no license fee as I only watch things through non-live streaming services such as Netflix, NowTV and iPlayer.
I used to have a TV license and cancelled it. When they asked why I was cancelling, I said that I consumed my entertainment through non-live streaming services and they were happy. That was at the end of last year and I haven't heard anything since.
just half true - you're right with regard to recorded broadcast, but...
Do you drive a modern car, do you have surveillance cameras at your property / your offices? - Bang you have to have a TV license in the UK even if you don't watch any TV.
Every year thousands of people in the UK are pulled to court / persuaded to pay thousands of £s to settle enforcement cases against them (or even go to prison) because they only look at half of the rules.
No, you don't. You're reading the legislation incorrectly which can happen if you just read it sequentially. Nobody goes to prison because their car has a reversing camera, that's absurd.
Whilst true that in Section 9 (Part 3) of 2004 No. 692
ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS BROADCASTING The Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004[0] a 'television receiver' is defined as:
any apparatus installed or used for the purpose of receiving (whether by means of wireless telegraphy or otherwise) any television programme service, whether or not it is installed or used for any other purpose.
...the key part is Section 363 of Part 4 of the Communications Act 2003[1] which states:
It an offence to
* install or use a television receiver or
* possess or have control of a television receiver with the intent to install or use it or
* possess or have control of a television receiver and know or have reasonable grounds for believing that another person intends to install or use it without a valid TV Licence issued under the Communications Act.
If you own or possess a television set without installing or using it as a TV receiver (e.g. you only use it to watch videos or DVDs, or as a monitor for a games console) then you don’t need a TV Licence. This is what the ''television programme service' refers to in Section 363 - the key part being that a TV receiver is concerned with the reception of live or 'virtually live' broadcasts.
This has been confirmed many times and directly by the BBC in this FOI request[2]
> In the UK even if you do not watch TV at all (live or recorded) you have to pay the BBC Tax / TV license fee under certain circumstances.
This isn't true.
You can quite happily watch iPlayer or 4OD or Netflix and not be liable to pay the license fee as long as what you're watching isn't live or being broadcast at that very moment.
You can avoid the TV License Fee if you only watch BBC iPlayer, or stick to things like Netflix.
It basically applies to any TV being watched as it is being broadcast at the time so you are liable to pay anything if you only watch shows after they have been aired.
Myself I tend to watch Netflix, some iPlayer and 4OD stuff and I do not have to pay anything.
That doesn't stop them sending letters once in a while to check though.
wrong - you need a TV license for "ANY" live broadcast in the UK - as mentioned in another comment here this includes any live camera feed (surveillance / in cars / etc) - so even if you never watch any TV (recorded or live) there a plenty of cases where by the law (under threat to go to prison) you have to sponsor the BBC.
The BBC is the only recipient of TV license fees in the UK - of course after plenty of cost created on the way between the consumer / license payer to the BBC / payee.
BTW the BBC is also the TV licensing authority in the UK and is authorised by the government via the Communications Act 2003 to collect and enforce the TV license fee. One of the companies in the Capita conglomerate has been "entrusted" by the BBC / the government to collect the TV licensing fees.
Well, representatives and the documentation from the TV Licensing authority themselves that they provided me with would seem to disagree with you.
A lengthy correspondence with them led them to conclude that because my TV was not connected to a TV aerial or cable, and I only used it to watch Netflix and iPlayer from my computer, I did not in fact need a TV license.
I've been through this dance with them three or four times.
Previously, when I looked, the BBC stated that they received a substantial sum from direct taxation in addition to the license fee. On that basis you pay in part and the BBC is funded [partially] by tax payers. IIRC it amounted to about 5% of the take from license fee payers.
"Grants from Government departments
For the year ended 31 March 2014, the BBC World Service
received Grant-in-Aid from the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office. Previously, BBC Monitoring also received a grant from
the Cabinet Office. These grants have been drawn down to
meet estimated expenditure in the year but unspent amounts
do not have to be repaid, as long as they fall within
predetermined limits. The grants are recognised as income in
the financial year that they relate to."
Very minor nitpick: you should say "consume live broadcast TV" as blind people don't watch but still have to pay.
Not so. Politicians lie far more often than the average person. It is easy to see why: a politician's job is to get re-elected, and the best way to do that is to please their campaign donors while simultaneously lying through their teeth to tell the voters what they want to hear.
Politicians rarely lie outright; it's too easy to catch. They usually use equivocating language, or phrase statements that make you believe that they're committing to one thing when in reality they are committing to a much narrower band of truth.
Now, if you want to talk about what NSA and CIA chiefs say to the U.S. Congress under oath, there are tons of lies there.
Once again, s/politician/human/ and your statement is more honest. So, why do you phrase statements to make people believe that politicians are some special class of humans that think differently or are somehow immune from other standards of human behavior? By committing to a much narrower band of truth regarding the human propensity to spin arguments in our favor, act in our own interests, and deceive ourselves and others you seem to suggest that you are, by your own standard, deceiving us.
Have you run for political office before? Perhaps that is your source of authority for your claims.
If by "special class" you mean "because it is part of being successful at their career", I don't see much wrong with the statement.
Consider a career ("special class") that we (hopefully) agree on where being dishonest is required to succeed. An illusionist, or a spy / secret agent.
Do they think differently about truth than most people?
Well yes, of course they do. I can think of at least two reasons: self-selection and habit+experience.
All three examples do so for different specific reasons, and in different ways.
For the illusionist and the spy, I guess that's what we expect of people doing those jobs. For politicians, not so much.
> Politicians rarely lie outright; it's too easy to catch. They usually use equivocating language, or phrase statements that make you believe that they're committing to one thing when in reality they are committing to a much narrower band of truth.
Even then, if you look closely, there's still quite often a clear and outright lie, just cushioned in "equivocating language" (nice term, btw). It's just that all the cushioning tends to make pointing out the lie within seem like a petty thing to do. And in the case of politician-to-politicians they tend not to do that to each other because they recognize the game being played and rather not risk getting theirs in turn. If it does happen, it gets ugly fast, and both parties are worse off.
BTW I don't disagree that there's also a large amount of "equivocating language" going on, without any outright lies in the middle of it. Maybe that's even more common. Doesn't mean they don't lie, quite a lot more than people whose career doesn't depend on it.
Also (but this is just opinion) if "equivocating language" is used to deliberately give people / the public a wrong idea, that's not far from lying either. Even if it's "technically" true.
And then there's still quite a large number of politicians, on all sides of the spectrum, left/right, popular or not, powerful or not, that I have seen knowingly speaking some pretty damn big lies, and not seeing any consequences for it.
No data on this matter, but when a politician can say obvious lies in front of, sometimes literary, millions of people and look comfortable about that, it says something about him as a human being. I for one, couldn't do that.
I don't have evidence either way, that why there's a "maybe" there.
Politicians lie, humans lie, and politicians are humans. Unless there's some strong evidence, claiming that politicians lie more than the average human makes no sense.
My generalization is as convincing as "all politicians are liars". All humans lie relentlessly, but I never said they only lie. A physicist might not lie when talking about physics, but might tell a white lie to make her husband or a friend happy.
We all lie, and all the time. We notice politicians' lies more simply because they're public.
> We notice politicians' lies more simply because they're public.
I disagree. Politicians do in fact, generally, lie more than most people.
In particular many of the successful ones. It's often a large part of how they got successful. You could almost say it's part of their job (fortunately, there are some politicians that do not believe this).
Sometimes it's for a (relatively) benign reason, a "political white lie" if you like. But just as often (if not more often) it's to protect their own interests, or the interests of certain parties (corporations, usually) that are not quite aligned with the people they are supposed to be representing.
The fact that some of their statements are public just matches the fact that many people in the public may have an idea or opinion about that statement and can judge it. Say your neighbour lies about having borrowed your hedge-trimmer. If that statement were to become public, I still wouldn't be able to judge its truthfulness.
Of course a public statement raises the bar because it has more eyes on it, but even non-public lies involving just a few people generally have the tendency to come out eventually, if it matters and they pay some attention. I believe their statements being public only explains a small part of why politicians are so often caught lying.
Another way to look at it is to consider other public figures that are not politicians. They don't lie nearly as often. In particular, public figures like those "tonight" talkshow hosts, such as Stewart or Oliver. And you know why they often don't "need" to lie, because they can afford to. And when they do lie (because occasionally they do), and I caught them at it, it wasn't too hard to figure out why, and it always involved some other entity such that they couldn't afford not lying[0]. So when they are affected by the same reason why politicians tend to lie more often.
Of course, none of us never lies. I don't think it would be entirely impossible, but it would probably be very very hard. However I do believe that there's a quite wide spectrum from people that lie very little, to people that really lie very often (and therefore don't think much of doing it). And politicians most definitely tend to be found at the far end of that spectrum.
[0] ignoring obvious lies for comedic value. Let's call that "fiction" or something, conflating it with the other types of lies we are discussing here will just confuse matters.
> If an organization wishes to have an equal gender representation in its faculty, wouldn't a short term hiring preference be a reasonable thing to do?
No. That's discrimination against males.
> Sexism (in this conversation meaning male preferential treatment) is still quite an issue in academia.
It might also make sense for a university's administration to prefer women -- for the same position, women currently make, on average, 10-20% less than their male counterparts. That adds up. Surely, you'd consider the wage differential as part of your hiring decision?
That's an entirely different argument. On the whole, the wage gap is a myth[0]. If there's a particular situation where someone is willing to do the same work for less pay, then the university should absolutely hire them.
They should hire all women, and become the most cost-effective university. The same goes for businesses. Imagine an increase in profits of around 10-20%. An all-women company would be staggeringly profitable.
That doesn't happen. Because? The wage gap is a myth.
HN is more liberal and progressive in the true meaning of the word rather than the SJW interpretation of it these days.
While plenty of people still use the downvote button as a censorship tool (and in HN it's actual censorship due to 10 votes kill) many have stopped and you see much more non-politically correct arguments being accepted and debated on HN these days.
Downvoting is also an often herd like mentality once you go grey you are most likely to be vote killed or close to it within minutes. But on the other hand there are much more -1 <-> +1 fights these days, pretty much the only thing that will get you vote killed these days is talking about "privacy" related things and even that is more open to a debate than it was even 6 months ago.
>I think it's fair to characterise democracy as two foxes and a hen voting on what's for dinner!
Given the nature of the original quote ("Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin), does that imply that the poor need more guns?
The armed insurrection in Northern Ireland did eventually, after 30 years of human rights violations, 3500 dead and 47000 injured, mortar attacks on Downing Street, the near-annihilation of the government in a Brighton hotel, and the assasination of the Queen's cousin, result in improved treatment of and economic opportunities for the Catholic population. This really isn't the best way to handle budgets.
Democracy is about achieving better results without having to kill people.
For what it's worth, Franklin probably never said that. The use of "have for lunch", marks it as too modern, and I can't find any attestation at all prior to a minor variation of the first sentence showing up on Usenet in 1990 (the author didn't present it as a quotation).
He felt isolated in Ibiza. And once he felt dissatisfaction, has the option of going anywhere and be with nearly anyone!
If something is that easy to solve, it's not a problem.
In this instance, his problem was something like the inability to predict Ibiza's utility. He probably doesn't know himself well enough.
Some people have the isolation, and then have no choice but to endure it constantly, unable to change their circumstances. Suffering in quite desperation.
Notch wasn't isolated. He just picked the wrong destination in a large array of destinations.
Saying, "Help the monied interests who control governments." doesn't sound as convincing.
Serving your country/honour/helping the group are rhetorical tools used convince people to sacrifice themselves (their human capital, and sometimes their bodies) for this group.
Governments are extremely powerful (obviously), and part of that power comes from co-opting people. A metaphor can be seen in the Matrix. To quote Morpheus:
> The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
The hacker culture is being co-opted wholesale. Technology is powerful—both as an economic driver and a competitive advantage against other groups—, so it's not unexpected that the human capital which are tech savvy are targeted.
People can't be forced to do anything—unless they break the law at which point they will have the full force of law brought down upon them, with no mercy applied (if members of the gov choose!). As such, people with skills need to be convinced to work with government, and that's where the rhetorical tools are implemented.
When you read comments about how governments help the people they preside over, you're reading the grass-roots propaganda from those which Morpheus talks of. The businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, coders!
Do as you like, but it's important to know the message conveyed in the blog post is from a member of the business-class who has been fully co-opted, and doesn't follow the very advice he gives! And why would he? It's much more profitable (in the board sense of the word) to use his platform as a tool of marketing and persuasion for said establishment—I.e. getting others to make sacrifices, so those with control can live with impunity and in-group-largess (with the cost borne by society).
Do you know if there's any scope for doing something to reduce cancer risk, with this tech? Such as enhancing P53, or something like that (if that doesn't damage the individual).