[Good News] Holy Fuck!

Aldo

In today's news: something good happened!

After months of bad news, worse news and dramatic news a reporter in Colombia has finally found that one ray of sunlight in the region's bleak existence in the form of a 384 meters tall escalator in a suburban area of Medellin. The escalator is being built to connect this part of the town to the city centre, allowing the population to take part in the economic process of the country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG81etyg49U

--

Lets talk about good news for a change. I'm not talking about how company X made Y$ profit or how sports team A won prize B, but about real stuff that is happening to real people. What news has made your day? How are people going to benefit from this without stealing from other people? How is something going to save people from misery? Do tell! Do tell!

Pictures and video are encouraged!

electricitylikesme

Is this real?

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

that video has to be a joke, right?

ed: huh I guess it's a real thing

well, good for them I suppose

Lady Eri

I feel bad that I had the same reaction.

electricitylikesme

It reminds me of the Deus Ex 2 first level with the Inclinator or whatever.

Aldo

Oh yes, it also has to be real news. Otherwise The Onion would have some great stuff as well. :P

ronya

It'll break down and not be fixed. The problem in developing countries is often not construction but maintenance.

The Ender

That's the most fucked-up thing. Wow. Pristine, shiny escalator just cutting right through the slums.

Priorities.


Good news? here you go. Kepler 22b. An extrasolar planet in a habitable orbit that we found on the 5th with our new toy, that just maybe might be a super-sized version of Earth. And, just maybe, might come with a side of life.


It's 600 light years away, so get working on those hyperdrives.

electricitylikesme

The Ender wrote:

That's the most fucked-up thing. Wow. Pristine, shiny escalator just cutting right through the slums.

Priorities.


Good news? here you go. Kepler 22b. An extrasolar planet we found on the 5th with our new toy, that just maybe might be a super-sized version of Earth. Adn, just maybe, might come with a side of life.


It's 600 light years away, so get working on those hyperdrives.

You know one of the principle reasons I want to get in contact with aliens? Because I want to read their history. And their news. I want to know that this level of complete fucking insanity is some type of universal limitation of sentient life, and not just our own problem. Or even the contrast: that it's not. That it's completely unique, and something which doesn't infest the rest of the universe, and that we should be proud of the fact that we even got this far. Both would be wonderful.

I don't know what the lose condition here is...I suspect it's just "we're alone, and the only ones trying to figure this out". Which is somewhat akin to "god is just the future us".

Tiger Burning

I'm not sure if I would be relieved or depressed to find that aliens have their own version of FOX News.

Atomika

Tiger Burning wrote:

I'm not sure if I would be relieved or depressed to find that aliens have their own version of FOX News.

Could be worse. They could be going through the Crusades on Inquisition when we show up.

Human life on this planet was sentient for millions of years without having much to show for it.

Aldo

ronya wrote:

It'll break down and not be fixed. The problem in developing countries is often not construction but maintenance.

Oh hi Debby Downer.

The Ender wrote:

That's the most fucked-up thing. Wow. Pristine, shiny escalator just cutting right through the slums.

Priorities.


Good news? here you go. Kepler 22b. An extrasolar planet in a habitable orbit that we found on the 5th with our new toy, that just maybe might be a super-sized version of Earth. And, just maybe, might come with a side of life.


It's 600 light years away, so get working on those hyperdrives.

Yup, and now that we found a particle that might go slightly faster than the speed of light so we might be able to trash [part of] Einstein's theory and come up with a way to make hyperdrives reality. Not sure if it's something we will see in our lifetime (you have to keep in mind we have been shooting things into space by strapping them to huge rockets and hope we blow them far enough into the sky to get rid of the gravity of earth), but good news for everyone regardless!

redx

Without pointing to any particular new story, folks have been making pretty great strides with brain–computer interfaces. Basically ways of hooking a computer directly up to a person's brain and allowing them to control a computer(and anything attached to it) with their thoughts. It's a pretty great thing for quadriplegics and folks with degenerative muscles/nerve diseases, because it gives them access to basically all human knowledge and the ability to communicate with pretty much anyone or anything in the world.

For that last few thousand years, folks like this pretty much had the option of staring at whatever was directly in front of them 24 hours a day 365 days a year, or trying to get someone to kill them.

That's one hell of an improvement in quality of life.

Tiger Burning

There was a thing on NPR a few weeks ago about research showing that long term trends in human violence are way down. Hard to take much comfort given the scale we operate on, but it's nice to know we aren't as terrible to one another as we used to be.

L Ron Howard

Tiger Burning wrote:

There was a thing on NPR a few weeks ago about research showing that long term trends in human violence are way down. Hard to take much comfort given the scale we operate on, but it's nice to know we aren't as terrible to one another as we used to be.

I blame video games.

RMS Oceanic

I believe America will be ending ethanol subsidies? I am told this is a good thing.

matt has a problem

RMS Oceanic wrote:

I believe America will be ending ethanol subsidies? I am told this is a good thing.

It's $45 billion worth of good things.

bowen

wat

Nerdgasmic

Thank you for making this thread. D&D can be so be depressing sometimes.

RMS Oceanic

matt has a problem wrote:

RMS Oceanic wrote:

I believe America will be ending ethanol subsidies? I am told this is a good thing.

It's $45 billion worth of good things.

Just for ethanol? Woah. What would ending all corn subsidies be worth?

TL DR

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20111224/AUTO01/112240320/1148/rss25

The United States has ended a 30-year tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol that cost taxpayers $6 billion annually, and ended a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

matt has a problem

RMS Oceanic wrote:

matt has a problem wrote:

RMS Oceanic wrote:

I believe America will be ending ethanol subsidies? I am told this is a good thing.

It's $45 billion worth of good things.

Just for ethanol? Woah. What would ending all corn subsidies be worth?

Whoops, sorry, that's the estimated amount paid out since 1980. It averages about $6bn per year now, just for ethanol. Plus they removed the tariff on imported sugar-based ethanol.

Aldo

matt has a problem wrote:

RMS Oceanic wrote:

matt has a problem wrote:

RMS Oceanic wrote:

I believe America will be ending ethanol subsidies? I am told this is a good thing.

It's $45 billion worth of good things.

Just for ethanol? Woah. What would ending all corn subsidies be worth?

Whoops, sorry, that's the estimated amount paid out since 1980. It averages about $6bn per year now, just for ethanol. Plus they removed the tariff on imported sugar-based ethanol.

Sweet! I hope EU follows suit one of these days. You wouldn't believe how much money everyone's been paying to keep some farmers happy.

Bagginses

If memory serves, there were two huge breakthroughs on the HIV front either this year or last year.

Aldo

Bagginses wrote:

If memory serves, there were two huge breakthroughs on the HIV front either this year or last year.

Well, the only man who has been cured of AIDS is still alive, so that's something. His biggest wish? For someone else to be cured of it as well, because holy shit this is awkward.

What breakthroughs have you heard about?

HeraldS

TL,DR wrote:

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20111224/AUTO01/112240320/1148/rss25

The United States has ended a 30-year tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol that cost taxpayers $6 billion annually, and ended a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

Fucking awesome. Corn-based ethanol is bullshit. Good work government!

Suriko

The Ender wrote:

That's the most fucked-up thing. Wow. Pristine, shiny escalator just cutting right through the slums.

Priorities.

This actually isn't as dumb as it sounds. The local TV news covered this, and their angle made a lot of sense - elderly people were pretty much screwed by having to walk over 300 steps up and down daily, meaning some were practically housebound and had to ask others to do things for them.

Tackling the issues that cause hundreds of thousands of people to have to live in slums is a much more expensive, complex, and long-term proposition than an escalator. Working on the latter doesn't proclude the former.

Bagginses

Aldo wrote:

Bagginses wrote:

If memory serves, there were two huge breakthroughs on the HIV front either this year or last year.

Well, the only man who has been cured of AIDS is still alive, so that's something. His biggest wish? For someone else to be cured of it as well, because holy shit this is awkward.

What breakthroughs have you heard about?

I think the more recent one was a long-term patient found to have antibodies.

Tofystedeth

Bagginses wrote:

Aldo wrote:

Bagginses wrote:

If memory serves, there were two huge breakthroughs on the HIV front either this year or last year.

Well, the only man who has been cured of AIDS is still alive, so that's something. His biggest wish? For someone else to be cured of it as well, because holy shit this is awkward.

What breakthroughs have you heard about?

I think the more recent one was a long-term patient found to have antibodies.

Also this one, where they were able to insert a gene into mice with a virus that let them produce an antibody which gave resistance to HIV infection.

...
Since these broadly neutralizing antibodies are the sorts of things we want out of the vaccination process, a team of labs at Caltech and UCLA decided to short-circuit the need for a vaccination, or even antibody-producing immune cells. They created a disarmed adenovirus that contained the genes needed to produce a broadly effective antibody from humans, optimizing the DNA to make sure that the antibody was made in muscle cells, and then secreted into their environment.
...
Not all antibodies effectively blocked new infections, but at least one did so consistently. The resistance to new HIV infections persisted for the life of the experiments.

Here's the article that article is sourced from in Nature. It is behind a paywall.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10660.html

RandomEngy

TL,DR wrote:

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20111224/AUTO01/112240320/1148/rss25

The United States has ended a 30-year tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol that cost taxpayers $6 billion annually, and ended a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

Yes! I love this thread already.

Capfalcon

redx wrote:

Without pointing to any particular new story, folks have been making pretty great strides with brain–computer interfaces. Basically ways of hooking a computer directly up to a person's brain and allowing them to control a computer(and anything attached to it) with their thoughts. It's a pretty great thing for quadriplegics and folks with degenerative muscles/nerve diseases, because it gives them access to basically all human knowledge and the ability to communicate with pretty much anyone or anything in the world.

For that last few thousand years, folks like this pretty much had the option of staring at whatever was directly in front of them 24 hours a day 365 days a year, or trying to get someone to kill them.

That's one hell of an improvement in quality of life.

As someone tangentially involved in the field, let me tell you it is so fucking exciting to be working on things like this.

It gets a little weird at times when I stop and think that computers are getting to the point where they can reliably recognize one thought patter from another, though. It feels like I'm living in a sci fi story.

Spanish Inquisition

The amazing thing would be if these escalators aren't water proof.

And fucking finally the "make the giant farm corps rich" subsidy is gone.

Well, one of them.

Bagginses

There's also the elimination of Rinderpest last year.

Let's look at the "news" section of today's Times:
Anti-Putin protests have an influential supporter with info on vote fraud
Fun times for protestors in Bahrain
Tensions over the Mujahedeen Khalq in Camp Ashraf are being reduced by moving them to an old military base
Employees in China are actually going on strike
Indian parliament passes anticorruption law
Monks engage in broom battle (okay, more hilarious than good)
Yemen protests spreading
Obama doesn't shmooze
Central Park is safe enough for women to feel safe walking dogs through it alone at night

Heir

I love this thread. I did something similar on Facebook earlier this month. On my phone, so I can't link but here are a few good things:

1) the US hit some milestone in dismantling nuclear bombs. Of course we still have all our missiles and whatnot.

2) Smog levels have dropped by 67% over the past 30 years.

3). Microsoft is creating an automatic upgrade to force the end of IE6. Yes please.

dbrock270

Half Life 3 might be coming out soon based on the fact that Valve staffers are wearing Half Life 3 shirts.

Or they could trolling us, but I remain optimistic.

Aldo

Heir wrote:

I love this thread. I did something similar on Facebook earlier this month. On my phone, so I can't link but here are a few good things:

1) the US hit some milestone in dismantling nuclear bombs. Of course we still have all our missiles and whatnot.

2) Smog levels have dropped by 67% over the past 30 years.

3). Microsoft is creating an automatic upgrade to force the end of IE6. Yes please.

Wow, those are good ones! Although I remain cynical about the last one: ITers are probably going to disable automatic updates just to make sure whole companies remain in the IE6 Age.

Incenjucar

HeraldS wrote:

TL,DR wrote:

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20111224/AUTO01/112240320/1148/rss25

The United States has ended a 30-year tax subsidy for corn-based ethanol that cost taxpayers $6 billion annually, and ended a tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

Fucking awesome. Corn-based ethanol is bullshit. Good work government!

Oh man.

This is beautiful.

Honk

I am curious about Kepler 22b. While I think that's obviously very cool and all that.

Even if we had FTL travel - such a planet would be pretty much useless to us, would it not? Considering the size difference, wouldn't it pretty likely have an extremely stronger gravity?

Aldo

Honk wrote:

I am curious about Kepler 22b. While I think that's obviously very cool and all that.

Even if we had FTL travel - such a planet would be pretty much useless to us, would it not? Considering the size difference, wouldn't it pretty likely have an extremely stronger gravity?

So we use it as a mining planet. You have never played a 4X game, have you?

Honk

I have not had played enough 4x games!

I am confused how we would even get stuff off of the surface. But then again - humans with FTL drives might have more of a clue.

Honk

I really want us to find a "God-planet" within my lifetime. That would be super sweet.