Toxn

No, I'm arguing context. Marikana wasn't just this isolated incident where a bunch of miners appeared on a hill and charged a gun line of trigger-happy cops. Similarly, reducing Ferguson et al to 'cops have a hard job, protesters don't know shit' is disingenuous. I don't know the exact thinking behind the video, but from the outside it seems like a rigged game. The dude had no training, no backup and no tools other than a gun. And he was facing people who acted as if they were suicidally determined to ignore his voice and body language. How were any of those scenarios going to end except by him shooting or getting shot? Which is probably the point, of course, but doesn't do anything to convince people that you're not just fucking with someone to make him look bad. Worse, I think the inclusion of reporters simply meant that the PD managed to effectively insult the only person willing to reach out and break bread with them. So much for making bridges and building understanding.

Part of it was entertainment value, no doubt. But part of it was the simple acknowledgement that, even when intentionally speaking drivel, you still made a better argument than ISS and company. You beat them on form when they couldn't even dream of offering content. Good show, in other words.

I would love to see some try to make a working model. Preferably from a safe distance.

Did this guy get any prior training, btw? Or were they just letting him wing it without a baton, taser or spray on the assumption that he'd make a fool out of himself?

Cops do have a tough job. The problem is that stuff like this doesn't just come out of the ether: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt11f7p13f0 Nor, apparently, does stuff on your side of the pond.

Muhhrage III:

Concept image from 2009:

On a related note*, archaeological evidence shows that the vast majority of casualties in any given battle occur after one side breaks and runs. Which is one of the reason why the Romans owned the battlefield so hard - having a professional, well-drilled army meant that your guys held together much better than the other side. A good deal of the time, this would result in you winning by default as the enemy would get tired/scared and break. * Which I'm sure is not new information to the folks here.

Courtesy of Colli:

Shootin Stah:

As always, give me a (massive) budget and (lots of) time: it will be done.

Please do

We need someone capable of setting terms judging things though.

Renamed . Guys, should we do a design-a-fighter competition in KSP? Because I have a Mig-21 clone that's itching to get owned by someone's F-4-esque...

The Hurrier mk1:

Enthiran. That is all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNXHveyzUvY

I used to play that game with my brother and friends when we were younger. Generally it ended with someone getting pissed off enough to just run up to punching range and start shooting from there. On the plus side, it turns out that I can win a pain-threshold fight with pretty much anyone except my brother.

I don't know him from a bar of soap, so as far as I'm concerned he can be as optimistic as he wants. Moving on to the big confounder in my little estimate; there is plenty of time in that one to three decade-long process for the technology to improve. If cloning technologies improves along with our understanding of the genetic causes of rejection, there is a possibility that you could do a one-shot program. That would involve going directly to the full mammoth genome (properly methylated and all the rest) and shoving it straight into the donor. That would cut the timeline down to 5-10 years. However, considering the slow pace of improvements on our existing cloning process, I feel that being a pessimist is warranted here.

On approaches, I neglected to explain in much detail the hows and whys. Looming over all of these is the decision whether to bring back a genetically-identical creature, a phenotypically-identical creature or simply settle for something good enough. For the first, the only thing that would work is somehow find a viable mammoth cell and go from there. For the last, you could simply do what they did for the quagga project and breed hairy elephants. For the middle option, you have to decide what makes a mammoth a mammoth and roll with that. My approach, which seems to be pretty popular, would be to forget about mitochondrial genetics and whole-genome transfer, and use an elephant donor egg. Then, I would compare the elephant and mammoth genomes to see where they are alike and where they differ. Having done so, I would decide on the most important differences and work to transform my donor eggs using something nifty like Crispr/Cas-9. The result would be a series of donor cells, with each being closer and closer to the original mammoth genome. Once I had my donors ready, I would do the whole cloning thing (which I would have tried out on elephants already, just to make sure it is possible) using my pseudo-mammoth genomes. I'd be careful to include a few attempts using donors intermediate between my elephant and mammoth genomes as well - in case there is some weird interspecies block which would fuck up the process. Finally, after going through what would probably be hundreds of induced elephant pregnancies, I'd end up with a small pool of pseudo-mammoths to breed with. With careful and thorough breeding, you could get a decent founder population of pseudo-mammoths going, then go from there.

The core problem with the whole endeavour is that, as I explained earlier (somewhat badly, apparently) cloning is a big issue all by itself. We're talking a sub-1% success rate here. And, as I also mentioned, interspecies surrogacy is also incredibly hit-and-miss. The end result is that, if you use the approach I outlined, you're going to go through a lot failed elephant pregnancies (each taking close to two years to come to term) before you get your first viable baby mammoth.

Here is a more technical article covering the same subject.

I know there is a plan to bring back the passenger pigeon using an approach like the one I outlined, but I honestly don't know enough about eggs to give a good answer to this question. My gut instinct is that, so long as there is a way to get a viable egg (cell) into an environment where it can develop, the same general rules will apply. Here is an article on nuclear transfer, which is one of the techniques this whole thing would hinge on. In a recurring theme; it's interesting to note how the guy who cracked the problem had endless issues with obtaining funding. Truly, good science and fundable science are two completely separate beasts. Come on guys, I even put up an ask-a-geneticist post Are there any specific things I can help with in terms of understanding?

Part of the issue with cloning mammoths is that your surrogates are going to be elephants, and elephants tend to have ridiculously long pregnancies (edging up to two years). Meaning that you'll be spending an enormous amount of money and will only get the payoff decades down the line (if at all*). Anyway, here is the program I worked out for the project. Note that this assumes a stepwise germline-transformation approach (rather than a one-shot attempt at full genome synthesis) piggybacking off of a standard cloning study: Phase 1a: elephant cloning program. Expected timeline: 5-10 years. Phase 1b: elephant/mammoth genome comparison and transgenic strategy study. Expected timeline: 2-5 years. Runs in parallel with 1a. Phase 1c: elephant/mammoth hybrid cell line transformation and culture. Expected timeline: 2-5 years. Runs after 1b. Phase 2: round 1 elephant/mammoth hybrid nuclear transfer/IVF experiment. Expected timeline: 2-5 years. Hybrids would include partially and fully-transformed cell lines. Interphase: follow-up rounds of nuclear transfer and IVF, growth and maturation of F1 generation (if any). Expected timeline: 9-14 years. Phase 3 (optional): follow-up hybrid nuclear transfer and IVF on F1 generation. Expected timeline: 2-5 years. hybrids would all be from fully-transformed cell lines. Phase 4: beginning of conventional breeding program. Total time: 16 - 35 years. The budget would be in the billions of dollars, and would include things like a large molecular genetics lab, clean lab for cell line propagation and transfer, stable and paddock facilities for elephants, elephant-capable theatre facilities and a number of park areas for the parent population and hybrids. A one-shot approach would, of course, be cheaper and quicker. But it would also have a much lower chance of success. On the other end of the spectrum; an incremental breeding/transformation program would be very likely to succeed on some level (and might also be cheaper), but would take something like 50-100 years to complete. * One of the biggest issues with interspecies surrogates is that we just don't have a clear handle on what might cause rejection. As an example, there are two closely-related rat species that have been tested for surrogacy using lab rats. One works fine, the other doesn't work at all and there is nothing much that points to why. Worse, we still don't have a strong handle on why cloning fails either. So most of the interspecies surrogacy experiments end with the foetus being rejected or the animal dying a short while after birth.

I'm down with backup characters and lots of death