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[TheBiggerFish]

What, does the average American think that state-funded research will make everyone communist or something?

It has more to do with the fact that they're using fetuses for the research, rather than it being state-funded.

It's this particular subject, not research in general (*looks at NSF, DARPA, Internet*) that's a no-sell. 

I don't understand this at all.

There's a prohibition against spending government funds on embryonic stem cell research the same way there might be a prohibition on building new nuclear weapons, and etc.

[Aklyon]

I don't understand this at all.

Politics.

[wierd]

It's a moronic holdover from the Bush Jr administration.

Basically, Bush Jr decided (incorrectly) that the only way to collect embryonic stem cells was through blastocyst destruction based collection methods. (never mind that techniques to harvest inner cell mass cells for diagnostic purposes in IVF had been around for a good decade or more, and destruction of the blastocyst would be contra-indicated in the purpose of performing IVF.) He, and the Republican idiots in congress, drummed up a big moral panic in the religious conservative demographic of the US, and the result was a complete prohibition on all public funds being used on such research, regardless of how the tissue was sourced.

Stupidity. But then again, my country is not particularly well known for its sensible and rational politics.

[TheBiggerFish]

Thank you.

[BlackHeartKabal]

Religious conservatives are idiots and the only reason I'm sharing a state with them is because my part of the family took the idiot ball when they moved here. Why do people listen to them? They probably just cherry-pick The Bible anyway to legitimize whatever crap comes out of their mouths.

[TheBiggerFish]

Amazingly enough, that is a common tactic.

[Furtuka]

I'm reading Hesiod's Theogeny for my mythology class right now. and it's hilarious because in the middle of listing the grand family tree of the gods and titans and paraphrasing their stories when he gets to the story of pandora he spends an entire page worth of epic poetry on ranting about how much he hates women and marriage.

To paraphrase, he's suddenly like "and that's why Zeus curse us with women who'll seduce you and then take all your hard earned work with their cursed prettyness WREEEEEEEE! And you know what's the worst part kids? If you don't get married you can't have proper sons, and if you want proper sons you have to get married! And if you don't get a really good wife life will suck forever and ever for you. SO DON'T EVER PISS OFF ZEUS OR HE'LL JUST MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR THE REST OF US YOU GOT THAT KIDS?! Now back to the story of the grand rebellion against the titans..."

Also I like how there's a footnote that basically says: "Now that Zeus is king of the gods, as you can see here the very first thing he does with his authority is to go have sex with Metis. This is going to be a common theme from now on."

[Putnam]

Amazingly enough, that is a common tactic.

Yeah, it's hilarious. They say it's "good morals" or whatever and completely ignore the consistent message of "kill those who do not believe", "women are for babies not actually doing anything" etc.

[Arx]

Man, it's almost like a lot of liberals and atheists do the exact same thing in a different way. If you want to bash Christianity, take it to the religion thread.

[i2amroy]

Computer Science TA introduces this cool system where you can grade their lecture and post questions up onto the screen in real time, which is definitely cool. After a few questions show up just like normal suddenly that whole particular window pauses and a popup shows up in the middle of the screen that says "does this sanitize inputs?" (For the non-computer people sanitizing inputs means stopping input data from pretending to be code and hacking in. For example anything I type into this post box is sanitized to stop me from stealing all of your emails). TA takes one look at it, looks at the class, and then says "I guess not". Queue the whole class bursting out laughing.

[TheBiggerFish]

Heh.

[i2amroy]

Computer Science TA introduces this cool system where you can grade their lecture and post questions up onto the screen in real time, which is definitely cool. After a few questions show up just like normal suddenly that whole particular window pauses and a popup shows up in the middle of the screen that says "does this sanitize inputs?" (For the non-computer people sanitizing inputs means stopping input data from pretending to be code and hacking in. For example anything I type into this post box is sanitized to stop me from stealing all of your emails). TA takes one look at it, looks at the class, and then says "I guess not". Queue the whole class bursting out laughing.

Further update. The whole background of the page just suddenly became red from people messing with it. XD This is hilarious.

[wierd]

You need to snap some video with your phone or something. This sounds beautiful, and I love the way the TA approaches this issue.

Too often, teaching staff gets all bent out of shape when students expose flaws in "the system".

Since it doesn't sanitize inputs, are there any further exploits to escalate privs? This could very well become a useful lesson in creating good bug reports to send to development teams.

[TheBiggerFish]

*insert relevant xkcd here*
Praise Lenhart.

[Avis-Mergulus]

*insert relevant xkcd here*
Praise Lenhart.

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