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Written in 1948, to be precise. But going for the 1982 reference was the only way I could try to make it sound like an 80s hair metal band was ahead of the literary curve. (Besides, I'm still bitter that "air guitar" wasn't an option in the "favorite musical instrument" poll. :)

So yes, YHBT. As punishment, you are ordered to listen to the General singing "As the Eagle Soars", and then to imagine him (perhaps as part of the 2004 election campaign to project a more "hip" image to today's thirtysomething generation) performing a cover of Turbo Lover.

"Iiiiii'm youuuur tuuuuuuurr-booooo LOVER!
Tellllll meeeeeee there'ssssss noooo OTH-Segmentation violation: reality dumped.

Obviously, you've never read things like the Didache, I Clement, or the like from the 1st century, nor the others in the second century. There are lots of rules in those. Of course, as Christianity spread from Palestine all the way to Rome, it also spread as far as India, and those churches still exist, and they all have many rules, very similar doctrines, and so on (with the exception of Roman Catholicism which is the most different of the bunch), including lots of rules.

Another mistake is that the Roman Empire fell in two phases, realistically, one in 476 and the other in 1422. In 476, the Goths only took Rome, but the capital, primary emperor, and central administration had long since been moved to Constantinople, and neither order nor the old mores of civilization were disrupted there, and it most certainly was part of the "known world," as were the places further east, and the Western Europeans knew about all the rest, because they talked about it frequently and passed through it to wage the Crusades.

The myth that your post presupposes that Rome and all civilization Christianity knew fell in the fifth was created by the Germanic, not to be confused with German, peoples occupying Rome to discredit the "Byzantine Empire." In so doing, they set up their own "true" empire, the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither "holy" nor "Roman." In fact, the Roman Empire remained quite stable during this period.

So, if I take what you say seriously, then somehow the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century (and you must mean this fall, because the Latin and Greek churches had long since split by the time the Roman Empire ultimately fell) caused Christianity to form the same rules and regulations everywhere it had reached, including places that had long since been separated by distance. Fortunately, I don't have to believe it anymore than I have to believe that the world was made 6k years ago.

For your reading pleasure, I googled for a bit and found the following for you: Assyrian Church, Coptic Church, Coptic Church, Syriac (and Indian) churches, and so many other "churches," but I've googled for enough. As for "Byzantine" Empire, about's site and another site.

There's always more information if someone wants to google. Your statement on Roman Catholicism spring from Reformation religious feuds and hubris. The belief in this great primordial change when the "known world" descended into chaos was propigated by the Reformers to rationalize their actions. After all, they waged incessant wars with Catholicism and each other for religious supremacy, altering the contents of their Bible by excising whole books and adding or subtracting words in their translations to suit their doctrines, and declaring "antichrist" anything that disagreed with them (Martin Luther was especially bad about this). They are hardly a good place to get history from, but that is where the Roman Catholic fall and restoration, ultimately comes from. The other catholic churches, to my knowledge, do not hold that view despite an equal animosity between them and the RC.

It still more depends on the concept of the "known world" falling into chaos. This was created by Germanic, not German, politics and the same bigoted racism Western Europe later exported to other civilizations even as they exterminated so many of them. Unfortuanately, they exported their racist history everywhere they went, so that their interpretation is the dominant one. Fortunately, it only takes a cursory examination of the facts to see through it.

Before you pat yourself on the back about how you can have an intelligent discussion about religion, without screaming and shouting, sit back and a

Like any good IT worker, I deal with the same issues. And I know a number of very smart software people who often find themselves in the same high pressured situation. Sometimes it is easier to blame someone else, but the reality is, it's just the American way (pardon me if other countries experience the same problem, but I only have work experience here). We believe in fighting our way to the top; if you let up, someone else out there would be happy to take your place. The system is the system, and accepting that to some degree helps.

But what really works for me is Meditation. I've done it on and off for years, and without a doubt in my mind, life just clicks along much more smoothly when I do it regularly. As long as I keep it up 4 or 5 days a week (even 20min at a time is enough), I'm able to approach most situations with a "how can I make this better" attitude as opposed to a "why me?!" attitude. I recommend Autogenic Training as an honest non-religious way to chill out. After following the steps for a few months, I found myself able to plop down and completely relax in less than a minute. I'm sure there is a very good scientific explanation for whats happening, but I'm not going to offer one. If you believe in working your way to the top, and it does take some work, then you should be willing to try it out for awhile to see if it works for you.

Aspirin was a trademark of the Bayer Corporation in Germany, but was forced to give up the trademark as part of the treaty to end World War I. Interestingly enough, Heroin was also a Bayer trademark. See this article for more info (see last paragraph)

Sure the world has natural temperature fluctuations. However, your logic is really flawed. Combine this data with the other data and we begin to see that the odds that this is not a coincidence are growing. For example have you ever heard of Global Diming. Global diming is caused by increased pollution in the atmosphere which blocks light from reaching the earth surface. It also makes sense that more particles in the air will mean more objects which can absorb solar heat. When you combine what we know about Global Dimming with this new data on Atmospheric temperature one could logically conclude that polution is most likely cause for the warming.

It's dangerous to be apathatic and reason that the issue is too complicated so we shouldn't be bothered.

In seriousness, there are the 4 million brits who stand to lose their homes,

God didn't create Holland, the dutch did.

Build it on this chassis. It can climb stairs and it's made by the same man who made the Segway HT, Dean Kamen.

Chris Benard

Do you seriously consider people freaks for choosing to live together without getting married? In several Western countries it is even the norm to live together for a while. Some marry after years of co-habitation, others never marry at all. And when people do marry, it is usually for romantic or practical reasons, which often have nothing to do with children.

The "institution of marriage" has never been the unchanging, holy union some would like to see it as, not even in recent US history. Up until fairly recently, marriage was a arrangement between two families, not the romantic one-on-one affair we currently see as the ideal.

If by "freaks" you mean gays and lesbians, I can only pity you. There is noe reasoning with homophobia.

Clay Tablets, they seem to have the best proven track record for data as a whole. Of course, if you have the money, you can always use a norsam disk, they may last even longer than clay- but I doubt they're cheaper. Of course, for large amounts of data, storage is a problem.

Seriously, there should be a digital->clay device, like a printer or something, for super-archival 4000 year proven quality at a bargain. I have thought about making one for a while- a sort of dot-matrix for clay. I think it would be fun!

I think it depends on what information one considers important. The more different information you have, the less durable each corpuscle of it is. The more identical, permanent, memorable information you have, the more durable it will be. Of course, I think it would be difficult to put audio on a clay tablets, but not lyrics. We have the songs to Inanna by Enheduanna even today- that's some star power.

1. There's been a measured increase in Solar activity and radiation, which is *where* we get our heat from, obviously. Once the Sun gets over it's current temper tantrum, temperatures will get more moderate.

Ohmura's results suggested that levels of solar radiation striking the Earth's surface had declined by more than 10% in three decades.

As an Intelligence geek for the AF, I feel I should throw my two cents in here.

If you do want to be an intel geek, go officer. They have a pretty awesome responsibility, and plus- you're an officer! (Better pay, more of an opportunity to actually use your critical thinking and analysis skills) The AF Specialty Code (AFSC) for that is 14N (that'll come in handy when talking to a recruiter)

If you want to be enlisted (perish the thought with a college degree!!), here's a brief description of the fields:

1N0 - Briefers. These guys have to know a ton, and do some fairly cool planning stuff.
1N1 - Imagery (what's that blob mean??)
1N2 - Morse-Code... I don't reccommend this job, as it's being phased out, and just lost it's entire signing bonus
1N3 - Linguist - learn to speak Arabic, Chineese, or a plethora of other ("enemy") languages
1N4 - Intel Analyist... I'm not really sure what these guys do, but I'm told it's important!
1N5 - "Electronic Signals Explotation Operative"... This is what I do- basically the study/explotation of RADAR systems :)
1N6 - "Systems Security".... like reading peoples' email and then ratting them out for violating security proceedures?? That's what these people do!

In short, About.com is a great resource to use when thinking about joining the military... There's a lot of "minor" things recruiters leave out, so be sure to do your homework first!

Furthermore, when you're waiting for a clearance, expect to wait a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG time. Especially if it's a Top Secret one. Some bases will let you work with an Interim (temporary) clearance, and some won't... If the base you end up at is in the latter category, expect to be waiting over a year, doing nothing related to your job.

-Jokerghost

I make no claim to know what's true, but here's a little of what I found on the subject.

Addison Bain's working theory (RealPlayer link)

An About.com article


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Learning additional languages is certainly an advantage.

BTW, Spanish may supplant English in the US someday, but it is very far from it. According to analysis of the 2000 census: In total, 92 percent of Americans say they speak English very well.... After English (215.4 million) and Spanish (28.1 million), Chinese (2 million) was the language most commonly spoken at home, eclipsing French, German and Italian over the 1990s.

1948 Chicago Daily Tribune healine
No matter the medium, the rule is Caveat Lector, let the reader beware. What we take as "truth" is based upon our trust and experience and skepticism, and enough disparate sources of information to do our own parity checks for accuracy.

Now that communism is dead, I guess it's OK, even with Americans, to recall some of it's good apects: Religion is the opium of the people. (simple interpretation here)

People today have been brainwashed by MTV and all that crap into thinking you should grow up and want to be a rap star or a movie star, and that people that like math and science and engineering are rejects of society, in America, being dumb is good, look at all the idiotic business majors that all they can do is talk smooth.

It's interesting that everybody wants to have new cell phones or faster computers, however no one wants to engineer these products.

Another thing, get rid of calculators in school, make kids learn how to do math rather than relying on a calculator.

One thing to look into is Vedic math:

http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/aa062901a .htm

For a brief intro. It actually is quite interesting, I have studied it a little bit, it does seem to be an interesting approach to mathematics.

You are allowed to use an apostrophe to pluralize acronyms that are pronounced as letters instead of the word (CD's - yes, RISC's - no).

That's not how copyright works. Most often you don't even have to publish anything and the copyright still applies. AFAIK it applies to the love poem notebook you hide in the closet under the pijamas. Check this out for a nice rundown of copyright vs patents vs trademarks, plus more insight into patents.

Why not just mod me up instead? I provide links!

And then we have the tired DU arguement, when there is NO science whatsoever suggesting any significant danger from DU rounds. Men place those rounds into A-10 Warthogs and AC-130 Gunships every fucking day, and I dont see airmen dropping dead in numbers. Do you? No. Read up on Depleted Uranium before spouting off, why dont you?>

But, hey, never let the facts get in the way of your alarmist nonsense, when its all you have, hell you've got another election to lose! Sorry dude, but you are going to have to come up with another method of scaring voters into voting for your side. The facts dont help you at all.

I was reading the history of the laser here and found no mention of your story about a laser patent. The only mention of patent troubles actually had to do with the original inventor NOT recieving a patent. Are you sure your story is accurate? I always thought the reason for the "explosion" of lasers had nothing to do with patents but rather that there were technological developments that made the lasers cheap enough to be used in every day applications.

Correct. Many Hondas sold in the US are made in the US. If you want to check, look at the first character of the vehicle VIN. If it is 1 or 4, then it was made in the US. My Honda Civic Hybrid's first character is "J", indicating it was made in Japan. Here is a partial decoder.

Well, if you're going to get into this, here's some prior art for ya...

George Eastman invented flexible photographic film around 1884, and patented a film camera in 1888.

Perhaps you have heard of the company he founded, "Eastman Kodak". It makes film, among other things.

Let's not forget this
I'm with the pro-wood camp.

I just had a Moog Prodigy for a couple of days. The real wood case didn't take away from the technology at all

They are not the same thing.

Actually Japan IS a third world nation along with the swiss. For a similar but differing view look here

Ever heard of a brand called Asprin? They didn't protect their trademark, now it's generic and they've lost it.

No. The German chemical firm Bayer lost their trademarks and patents on aspirin and heroin per the Treaty of Versailles; they were surrendered as reparations for World War I. See http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blasp irin.htm or just search for aspirin and versailles on google.

To the best of my knowledge, no company in recent memory has lost a trademark due to dilution from generic usage. Not Xerox, not Kimberly-Clark (makers of Kleenex brand facial tissues), not Johnson & Johnson (makers of Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages).

-Isaac

And just like you point out the O'Franken factor, you could just as easily point to Rush Limbaugh (sp?). People will see what they want to see, even if two people see the same set of facts. Very easy to put the spin you want on a topic. While I personally didn't care for Clinton, I don't find Bush to be a much better choice, but I do find him at least a little better. As for Bush's IQ, an email circulated a while back and has been debunked on various sites including this Urban Legends Site.

And for your line about attack dogs, what polictical party doesn't have something bad to say about the other one? Can you honestly say the Democratic party isn't taking shots at the Republicans? It happens on either side.

> 'Can we know what we know?' Fascinating stuff.

Reminds me of Rumsfeld... "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

About.com had a write-up a month ago.

I loved the blackout. Between that and the Ice Storm, the greatest of all WCC slogans actually came true!

About.com had a write-up last month reviewing and rating several DEA services. Their top-rated one (Zoemail) doesn't appear to work with your current email address, rather they will host your email account. The others that I listed definitely work with your existing account, however. I've been a happy use for a few years and probably have a couple of hundred aliases.

Similarly, I used to think chopsticks originated in Asia, at least until someone made me aware of their creation as an enticing gimmick by immigrant restaurant owners in American mining communities in the 1800s and subsequent exportation to the Far East as a unique dining tool.
This is offtopic - but are you sure about that?
A quick google search yields many sites that report otherwise...

As this specific ship is a research platform, I'm not sure what they have in the way of "standard issue" gear. But on the AEGIS cruiser I was on, the quartermasters all routinely performed "old style" navigation skills using sextants, etc. (obviously as backups to the electronic systems)...

Here's a list of the QMs responsibilities (note - I was a "lowly" snipe, but did earn my Surface Warefare pin, so I had to spend a fair amount of time hanging around with the "top siders" and learning all about what they did...)

As this specific ship is a research platform, I'm not sure what they have in the way of "standard issue" gear. But on the AEGIS cruiser I was on, the quartermasters all routinely performed "old style" navigation skills using sextants, etc. (obviously as backups to the electronic systems)...

Here's a list of the QMs responsibilities (note - I was a "lowly" snipe, but did earn my Surface Warefare pin, so I had to spend a fair amount of time hanging around with the "top siders" and learning all about what they did...)

http://toycollecting.about.com/cs/transformers/a/t ransmovie.htm

"Now, the Transformers are set to undergo yet another metamorphosis, this one bringing them to the silver screen. Sure, they've been there before (back in 1986), but this new movie will be special; it will be live action!"

Now go back and look at the page the parent post links to...

From purely capitalistic point of view, the moral thing to do is to maximize profits in short term

That's called the fallacy of reification -- using a word, in this case, "moral", invalidly. One may as well argue that to a killer, the moral thing to do is murder as many people as possible, and therefore killing people, objectively, is good.

--Rob

The article gives a LD50 (lethal dose in 50% of cases) of 192 mg/kg in rats. About.com lists a range of 60-120 mg/cup for brewed coffee, so that would give a range of 6-12 g in 100 cups. That would be over the listed LD50 for a light person drinking strong coffee. Of course, that doesn't account for the possibility of tolerance. Somebody who regularly drinks a pot or two of strong coffee per day will have some physiological tolerance for caffeine and will likely have a higher lethal dose than somebody (or some rat) that wasn't a regular user.

But will anyone notice the difference?

And people drink hot spring water too. But I wouldn't drink water from any spring, hot or cold, that hadn't been tested.

There is, technically speaking, no moral or ethical reason why human bombs (AKA suicide bombers) are a Bad Thing[tm]. Remember, we saw an instance of this in WWII with the Japanese Kamikaze.

It is usually going to be easier to breach defenses one-way than to go in, hit the enemy, and leave. Arriving with the intent of blowing up frees you to focus on the task rather than be distracted by 'misguided' attempts to survive the execution of it.

Where it gets less great is when you do one of two things:
1. Not clearly identify yourself as a hostile target, causing the other side to naturally suspect EVEYRONE on your side and probably qualifying you as an unlawful combatant (the Law of Armed Conflict requires distinctive markings); or (much more seriously)
2. Target civilians, which is when you become not just a weapon, but a terrorist weapon.

There's no fundamental difference between a Palestinian wearing a uniform and a bomb blowing themselves up with a bunch of soldiers and, say, a US soldier storming a Japanese pillbox with a grenade knowing he's going to die. The issue is whether or not he's clearly marked and, more importantly, whether he's attacking soldiers on duty or civilians.

Or, as about.com puts it: MS's .Net IS Borland's Product

Or, as about.com puts it: MS's .Net IS Borland's Product

" Microsoft offered Anders Hejlsberg a signing bonus of $1.5 million and stock options. Microsoft doubled the bonus to $3 million after Borland made a counter-offer. Hejlsberg left Borland in October 1996."

(...) their OS (copied from DR and then Apple) (...)

Little correction: MS-DOS, to which you are referring I assume, was not copied from Digital Research; it was bought from a guy named Tim Paterson. It used to be called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) before MS bought it; they changed a few things, renamed it and 'sold it' to IBM.

A current theory is that the island of Santorini (Greece now, Minoan at the time), which was volcanic, did not erupt but instead exploded quite suddenly. That explosion was the largest in the history of human civilization; if you check a map only little remains of the landmass. The blast would have been powerful enough to devastate every culture in the region. The fertile crescent flooded, leaving Sumerians upset. Minoan civilization vanished. The Greeks have a myth about humanity being wiped out. Down in Eygpt, water surged up the Nile, kicking up nutrient-rich red silt, which removed oxygen from the water, which caused the creatures (like, say, frogs) to flee the river and die, bringing flies, which made people sick.....and then all that firey ash starting falling from the sky and their Israeli laborers ran away. Sound familiar?

====--====

Here are some links to the history of television.

Telephone - Either Bell (British) or Meuci (Italian)

Automobile - Karl Benz (German)

High rise building - Quite tall, no?

and so does this guy

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Too much repetition.