Jordan Peele does a fantastic impersonation of Ray Parker Jr. (“the Ghostbusters guy”) promoting his lesser known movie theme songs he’s submitted through the years. Talk about bad songs! Jumanji, Passion of the Christ, Apt Pupil. lol. https://youtu.be/GxjNOv5QPzM?si=zSduoOlbIULoKOMC
If I turn the volume down to the point that I only hear the cadence/rhythm of the voices, but can no longer make out the words, it sounds like any, “This Week in…” podcast.
In this case, the User deliberately changed the text of a fairly well-known riddle in order to “fool” the LLM. What you really are looking for is the right question: “A man and a son get into a car accident. They are rushed to the hospital and the boy requires surgery. The surgeon looks at the boy and says "I cannot perform surgery on him, he’s my son!". Why is this the case?”. In this corrected version, there is no statement that the man is a surgeon. If you read this correct version of the riddle, ChatGPT’s answer makes sense. The LLM was tricked because the majority of the text for the User prompt (modified riddle) is very close to the correct version which is prevalent across the internet (search the web for, “I can’t operate on him, he’s my son” and you’ll receive many hits with the full text of the correct riddle). I admit that when I first read the modified version of the riddle, I assumed it was the original after having seen it so many times before.
As an aside, this riddle is commonly used to demonstrate that people assume all doctors are male based on a stereotype. However, I think the reason many people stumble on the answer is related to the exceedingly low probability that a boy in a car accident would be rushed to a hospital where his own mother (or father) is the ER surgeon. The riddle also adds in the seemingly unnecessary statement by the doctor that she can’t operate on the boy because he is her son. Why not? Possibly she would not be in the right frame of mind due to the emotional attachment, but my expectation is that her fight-or-flight would kick in and she would perform the surgery to save her son’s life. It’s a red-herring in my opinion.
It's important to distinguish between the types of stem cells when referring to pluripotency (i.e., the ability for a cell to differentiate into almost any cell type in the body). Embryonic stem cells are considered pluripotent. Adult stem cells are more correctly referred to as "multipotent" in that they can be coaxed into differentiating into other cell types, but typically into cell types close to their own lineage.
I completely agree that neglect, indifference and lack of involvement can only result in negative outcomes for a child (e.g., sense of insecurity, lower feelings of self-worth, delayed development in certain areas due to lack of stimulation). I’m just curious what definition of “success” you are using in your final sentence. Not being snarky here - I’m honestly interested. There can be no question that having financial stability as an adult can be considered a form of success in that it provides security, shelter, access to a healthy lifestyle. Being raised by parents who have significant monetary wealth likely increases the chances that the child will have similar opportunities for financial gain as they become independent. I just wonder if parental involvement is at least equally important by teaching proper social interaction skills that can lead to favorable relationships later in life (i.e., the “it’s not what you know but who you know” effect).
Yes, Lamarck is alive and well. I frequently hear colleagues in biology with years of experience making lazy statements such as, "Humans evolved to walk because..." as if evolution is a conscious act. In many cases, these people are using the term evolution as shorthand for, "Random mutations gave rise to new gene variants (alleles), and over numerous generations, natural selection leads to an increase in the prevalence of beneficial variants, specifically those that provide a reproductive advantage. The genetic variants that combined to enable bipedal locomotion provided such an advantage to the human population". Evolution is a passive, natural process driven by genetic variation, environmental changes, and the differential reproductive success of individuals with advantageous traits. This in turn results in population changes. Evolution doesn't involve a conscious choice or direction. Evolution is the result of the cumulative effects of these factors over long periods of time.
“Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go”. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451. After reading this as a kid, I always found this to be true. In particular, the public library pulp paperbacks on those rotating wire racks back in the 1980s.
I'm a biologist who purchases reagents from Bio-Rad. I received this email last night: December 10, 2019
"Bio-Rad
Dear Valued Customers:
At approximately 5:30 PM (Pacific Standard Time) on December 5, Bio‑Rad detected a ransomware attack on our global network. We immediately took certain systems offline as part of the company’s comprehensive response to contain the activity, which means there may be a delay in fulfilling your orders.
Work is ongoing to restore full system functionality as quickly as possible. Our top priority is taking care of you, our customers, so you can place orders and receive products as quickly as possible."
Good article, and I agree that Kennedy's speeches are generally associated with the push for the Apollo program ("We choose to go to the Moon..."), but I would hardly say that LBJ's role was "unsung". They did rename the Manned Space Center in Houston to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1973. All flight control of the Apollo, Space Shuttle, and ISS operations have been, and continue to be conducted there. Kennedy's tragic assassination (56 years ago, yesterday) increased the public focus on "fulfilling Kennedy's dream", a glimmer of hope the American people needed after such a terrible event. True, LBJ isn't the individual most people first associate with the Moon landings, but for Apollo-geeks like me, Johnson's name and role are quite evident.
The "big deal", at least according to NASA and congress, was that the crew accepted funds ($7,000 each) to transport the items to the surface of the moon without informing NASA officials.
I don't have a firm opinion on the matter. I just remember feeling a bit sad when I first read the story as a high-school kid, thinking that the Apollo astronauts would need to supplement their NASA salary with the 1971 equivalent of eBay. That may not have been the case, though.
Interesting list. I wouldn't be too fond of my Gemini crew mate who brought the corned beef sandwich.
What was special about the Apollo 15 postal covers, and relevant to the OP, was that the crew accepted monetary compensation to transport them without informing NASA officials. This was where the legality debate came into play.
As for "postal covers" [1], I had to look it up, too. I always thought that they brought collectable stamps.
Interesting take and I agree. I always thought of it as a labor-relations issue rather than a crime. However, the article states, "a single day on Skylab was worth about $22.4 million in 2017 dollars, and thus any work stoppage was considered inappropriate due to the expense". Makes the Apollo 15 scandal seem like peanuts.
Before I clicked on the story, my first thought went back to the Apollo 15 "Postal Covers Incident". Each of the three crew members received $7K from a stamp dealer to bring stamp collector memorabilia to the lunar surface and then return them to be sold by the dealer. No criminal charges were filed, but I wonder if the incident might be more properly considered the "first allegation of a crime in space". From the the Wikipedia article: "There was a Justice Department investigation into the covers. Its Criminal Division decided in 1974 that no prosecution was warranted, but the Civil Division the following year assumed the covers would be retained by the government. Kraft wrote, "it was questionable that any law had been broken and [the Justice Department] realized that dragging astronauts into court would not be a popular pastime."
I was surprised that it was not mentioned in the BBC story.
Pretty close on the populations. The moon colonies, not so much.
“In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000”.
Very astute comment about external motivation versus internal motivation. The fact that someone else is depending on me will spur me to push through a task, particularly if it is for someone close to me (e.g. my daughter). However, in a small percentage of cases for work clients, I can experience mental resistance, almost like a internal rebellion, that will cause me to procrastinate. Happens even if the client is very nice and I like them, which makes me feel all the more guilty. Luckily, it is not the norm, or I would be out of a job pretty quickly.
I'm curious about why the filename for the PDF is "Pretend-Paper.pdf"? I double-checked and it is published in the peer-reviewed journal, "Personality and Individual Differences".
Aside: I'm also curious about whether statements/questions like, "I'm curious about..." require a question mark after them.
"Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go". - Faber, the retired English professor in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
The scent of old books always makes me think of this quote.
Thanks very much. I'll look into the Kinesis keyboard. I have a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 connected to my MacBook Pro right now, but the design of the Kinesis looks interesting. My non-mouse hand (left) is the issue, but perhaps I will think of switching to a trackball as a preventative measure for my right hand. Fiftieth B'day coming up next month - don't get old! (actually, it's not that bad - yet).
I'm glad to hear that your rsi was helped by using the iPad Pro as a (near) laptop replacement. I, too, suffer from some form of rsi in my left hand (i.e. not my mouse hand) and was wondering what other steps you took to "fix" your rsi. Was it mainly due to the reduced use of a keyboard with the iPad, or did you take other actions at the same time? Thanks for the great review of the pros and cons of your experience.
This. I was born the year that the Sesame Street premiered and it was part of my morning toddler routine in the early 1970s. Watching the show with my daughter in the 1990s, I noticed Elmo's presence transmogrify from just another Muppet character to having his own segment. As his airtime expanded, that scratchy, helium-stricken voice could no longer be borne by my sensitive ears. To me, that was the death knell for Sesame Street. Kudos to Mr. Rogers for not giving Henrietta Pussycat her own segment ("Meow meow I'm da meow meow bomb meow meow").
As a molecular biologist whose been in the field for nearly a quarter of a century (ouch, I'm old), I can't tell you how important your comment is. Too many times I've been to conferences where a small group of researchers is informally discussing a common roadblock in a procedure or technique and one in the group says, "We found out months ago that you can't use compound Y because it inhibits X downstream". For the love of all that is good, why didn't you publish that?! You could have saved countless combined hours and materials for other labs and increased the rate of progress. We all know the answer: Reviewers and editors want to publish flashy new discoveries, not fizzled experiments. Online discussions and open access has helped the issue, but the underlying pressure on scientists to publish only positive findings and leave out the critical trial-and-error data must end as it is is essentially fudging research and does a disservice to other researchers and science as a whole, intended or not. Whew, that was cathartic. I'll fade back into the shadows now.
Just a guess, but because the base of the toilet needs to support users of all body weights, a sturdy material like porcelain (or clay) is used. The tank lid is likely poured and fired at the same time as the base so that they match. Agreed that it makes for a darn heavy obstacle to get at the mechanism. And to all who have posted about having tinnitus, I feel your pain. My left ear has been affected for two years now and I've had to learn to live with it. I hope you all fare better.
I wouldn't make this up even I could. I am LITERALLY fixing the toilet mechanism with the tank lid off and checked HN while waiting for a hot glue gun to heat up. I'm thinking Pulp Fiction divine intervention.