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Comment Re:WRONG USE PERCENTAGES HERE (Score 1) 68

Mice live about 18 months. A 10% increase is about 2 months. Some idiot sees the 10% increase and thinks 10% of 80 years = 8 years more human life. Nope. Longer lived creatures tend to benefit far less from these things. If something adds 2 months to a mouses life span, it will likely add about 2 months to a human's life span, not 8 years.

Also, the mice got something like 500mg of psilocybin per kg of body mass. For humans, 280 mg/kg is considered a lethal dose (LD50). It's really unclear how this research could transfer to humans.

OTOH, it's a starting point. Rather than concluding that this means humans should trip on massive doses of shrooms to live longer, we should think that further research may elucidate the specific mechanisms and yield other insights that can transfer -- and might even be vastly more effective.

Comment Re:Hallucinating (Score 1) 68

I'll trust psychonautwiki over your random speculation. Not to be mean, but I would like to add that if you're not familiar with it you probably don't have that much authority on the subject.

I agree on the matter of authority... but if you read the link, it largely suports what garyisabusyguy said. The link says:

the most commonly used mushroom is Psilocybe cubensis, which contains 10–12 mg of psilocybin per gram of dried mushrooms

Which is exactly what garyisabusyguy said.

It also says:

For example, if you want to consume 15 mg psilocybin (a common dose) from cubensis with 1% psilocybin content: 15 mg / 1% = 15/0.01 = 1500 mg = 1.5 g

But it also says that "strong" and "heavy" doses are 2.5-5g (25-60 mg psilocybin) and 5+g (50-60+ mg psilocybin). There's also a bit of inconsistency on the site, because if you look at the page devoted to Psilycybe cubensis, it gives different, slighly larger numbers. It says a common dose is 1-3g, a strong dose is 3-6g and a heavy dose is 6+g.

That all accords pretty will with what garyisabusyguy said, assuming his experience is with people who take doses at the high end of common and greater.

Of course, his ranges still suggest a maximum dose of ~84mg. A typical lab mouse weighs about 30 g = 0.03 kg, so they're taking a dose of 15 mg / .03 kg = 500 mg of psilocybin per kg of body weight. If an 80 kg human takes an 84mg dose, that's 1.05 mg of psilocybin per kg of body weight. So the mice are getting 475 times what appears to be a quite heavy dose for humans.

Further, the LD50 (dosage that is lethal 50% of the time) of psilocybin is 280 mg/kg of body weight. So the mice in the experiment got nearly twice what is usually considered a lethal dose in humans. It's unclear to me how or whether this can apply to humans.

Comment If you are going to cut $900M in science ... (Score 1) 56

... funding, this ranks relatively low on the "harm to the human race if we don't do this research now" scale.

Yeah, this hurts and I wish it wasn't happening, but many of our other science cutbacks hurt a lot more per dollar "saved."

As others have already pointed out, the data isn't going to disappear on us any time soon.

Comment Re:How Hot Can It Get, Literally? (Score 2) 42

And if it is our fault, there's nothing we can do about it.

All joking aside, there may be a day within my lifetime where this statement is true. Well, at least close to true - we will always be able to do something about it, but there will come a time when we can't bring ourselves back to pre-industrial-times temperatures within a reasonable period of time (say, 100 years) without causing some other massive harm.

Comment Re:Hardly anyone is ready for children early enoug (Score -1) 252

Correct, the headline should be: Why is Fertility So Low in EXPENSIVE Countries?

The reality is that 'high income' more likely than not means high prices, constant pressure to keep earning money, because there are very few things in 'high income' (expensive) countries that doesn't cost money. We are constantly forced to pay taxes, never mind that in expensive countries large parts of the population live in dense urban areas, in cities and nobody has land that they can live off of. If you have no source of food other than the store and you cannot avoid paying taxes and paying high costs of owning or renting a property, then you are constantly under pressure to earn money.

In an expensive country you have expensive government and this government never ceases to pressure you to pay more taxes, makes things truly unaffordable by pretending to give it to you for free, basically in expensive countries you are forced to provide not only for yourself and for your children and maybe for your elderly parents, you are forced to provide for your expensive government.

An expensive government is obviously the cost of running the government itself, salaries, pensions, buildings, all expenses but it is also all of the laws, that are constantly adding more and more expenses to the system, thus mostly forcing the government to get deeper into debt and to steal your purchasing power through inflation (money printing).

Under these circumstances people who have access to contraceptives will use them almost always and this prevents almost all unwanted pregnancies. The other part of the population is just too stressed out and too tired from constant earning to pay for all of this 'high income' expensive stuff.

At the end children become a luxury for those, who can afford just a little more than the other guy or they become a way to suck money out of the system itself by getting onto various programs. They are an irrational choice for many, so to have them you either have to have a direct financial incentive or to be irrational or to be wealthy enough to afford them.

Comment Re:If you own a bar and you own a CD... (Score 1) 191

If you own a bar and you own a CD, you are allowed to play your CD in your bar. The article is pure idiocy. Bars don't need to pay licensing fees.

17USC106:

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following

[...]

(4) in the case of [...] musical [...] works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(emphasis mine).

17USC101 defines public performance:

To perform or display a work “publicly” means— (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered

it also defines perform as:

To “perform” a work means to [...] play, [...] it, either directly or by means of any device

So, playing your CD in a place that is "open to the public" is performing it publicly, and the copyright owner has the exclusive right to do that. This means that if you want to do it you need a license from the copyright owner.

Note also that a recording of music typically has three distinct copyrights on it. (1) The songwriter's copyright on the tune, arrangement, etc., basically everything you'd find in the sheet music other than the lyrics, (2) the songwriter's copyright on the lyrics and (3) the recording artist's copyright on the recorded performance. It's not uncommon for there to be a lot more than two songwriter copyrights, and in the case of recordings that contain significant sampling, there can be more copyrights in the recording, too.

To play the CD in your bar, you need licenses from all of the copyright holders. As others have mentioned, the record labels take this seriously and there's a high probability that infringing their copyrights this way will result in your being sued for millions of dollars, because the law authorizes statutory damages of up to $150,000 per offense.

Comment Re:Perspective (Score 1) 113

a.) It's a billion dollar company. They can hire and pay the needed workforce. I'm not doing it!

They can hire and pay the temp workforce, of course, but the cost of hiring a bunch of people for a few days is a lot higher than the hourly wage you pay them. Best case you can go through some temp agencies, and I'll be surprised if they haven't already done that, but once you've exhausted that resource you're going to be getting bottom-of-the-barrel personnel, if you can even find them.

It makes sense that Amazon finds it more cost-effective to retask office workers for a few days. And if you're going to do that, and you don't want to interfere with those office workers' normal work too much, it makes sense to pitch it as optional so the office workers can determine how much time they can spare without interfering with anything essential. Likewise, it makes sense to give them access to conference rooms with VC equipment in the warehouses, so if they can take any urgent meetings during their warehouse shift.

Comment Re:Priorities (Score 2) 113

It is important that money is saved in order to pay for Jeff's wedding cake.

They're not saving money. They're retasking office workers who make $100+ per hour to do work they usually pay a lot less for.

OTOH, if it keeps customers from having bad experiences because the system is overwhelmed, it may be a good use of those expensive workers.

Comment Re: My answer (Score 1) 113

Nobody is being asked to work for free. They are being asked to help out in the warehouse instead of their normal job duties.

That is definitely not what the word 'volunteer' means and it is used many times.

That is absolutely what the word 'volunteer' means in this context. "a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task." ("freely" in this instance is intended to mean "without coercion", not "without compensation". Think "free speech" not "free beer".)

Nah. These are salaried workers being asked to do something during their normal work hours. It's basically not possible to avoid paying them.

Comment Re: My answer (Score 1) 113

I would not put it past Amazon to levy the expectation that they should do an additional number of warehouse hours in addition to their normal salaried office hours. Thus, "volunteering."

Weekdays 10 am to 6 pm. That's normal work hours. Unless they're being forced to use vacation time, they're being paid.

Comment Re: My answer (Score 1) 113

So they are getting 30-50/hour to work in the warehouse? Id be pissed if I was there doing the same job as them for $14.

More likely 100-200/hour, more if they're software engineers or similar highly-paid office workers. $30/hour is only $60k/year. There's no way Amazon white-collar workers in NYC are making that little.

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