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Some demos units were as thick as plasma or LCDs from the era when they were being shown off as if they still had a future.

No Lochlear - here is the best I could find: http://girls.c64.org/p_bloempjes_and_byties_01.gif (an amazing 160x200x16 colors)

http://www.micro-paradise.com/Gifs/Images/Amiga/Amiga_sex_tetris_01.png (352x240x64 colors)
http://www.micro-paradise.com/Gifs/Images/Amiga/Amiga_sex_tetris_02.png (Amiga Tetris)

Stickman from 1986 - http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0128777032aa970c-pi (4100 colors)
Another Amiga image - http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/h/ha/ham6example.png

They tried this approach with the Italians in New York in the early 20th century, but it didn't work then either.

They tried a hell of a lot harder than that right there in Louisiana back in 1891 and that didn't work either.

Cheapskate Troll,

NASA costs $57.10 per taxpayer per year. The average taxpayer pays a total of $25,000 per year.

Wiki Answers
Absolute Astronomy

Oh I don't know, say heat buoyancy, turbulence? Of course, this physics and math stuff doesn't belong in your proper science.

Meh; would have been funny except for the "community college" fail. (Especially since the reality of a wishfully elite church-affiliated libarts school offers much better material ;-)

Basically, whenever there is a hiatus between two vowels, the diaeresis mark can be used over the second (like GP did) to indicate that it is not a diphthong. I've had teachers insist that I use either a diaeresis or a hyphen on this word, but this is a stupid attitude because of its lack of ambiguity and the fact that not many other English words are really pronounced how they look either. However insisting on it is no more stupid than saying that it is incorrect. This is an often cited example of an English word with a diaeresis such as here I think it is reasonable to use one here if one wants, it is as valid as any other spelling and is _the_ valid spelling in certain reference books.

So, what'll happen, is anywhere the mines have degraded and cracked open and are thus probably inert, will glow green, so people will avoid those "dangerous" areas, and anywhere the mines remain hermetically sealed, will not glow, thus it looks "safe" but is actually very dangerous.

If machine scanners can detect explosives what makes you think living things can't? Are these scanners just scams to get money from airports, border crossings, and seaports?

Even worse, its not failsafe. If a spot is not glowing, is that because coverage was not 100% because a vehicle was parked there, or maybe the heat from a fire killed the bacteria, or ...

I agree nothing may be failsafe but...

Safest thing to do, is just ignore the results. No one benefits but the contractors, which was probably the whole point to begin with.

... these bacteria could be helpful for clearing mine fields by mine sweepers. Someone above said how Afghanistan is the most heavily mined country in the world. I don't know if it is true but it was mined when the Soviets invaded and continued to be mined after the Soviets left, in fighting between the different factions of Mujahideen. Southeast Asia was pretty heavily mined as well as Angola and other nations. Even today unexploded ordinances are found in the Ardennes region of France from WWII as well as in the US from the Civil War.

Falcon

First, let's look at a fair attempt to explain why quantum indeterminacy is not just the same thing as classical indeterminacy (like your two particles, which by your question were presumably determinate in the classical model, at least until they became entangled). You seem to be reasoning much as the following note claims early quantum physicists tried to, when they first grappled with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the question of knowing the position and velocity of an electron simultaneously. I give you someone deliberately trying to put the concept in normal, natural language and not use any actual math:

http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~ronald/310/Quanta.htm

One point is, the interpretation that we can't know both position and velocity at the same instant, therefore the electron doesn't have both at the same instant, doesn't explain that thing you refer to as "with no regard to distance". This is what sometimes gets called "Spooky action" and is related to non-locality in general. Starting from the interpretation that it's not our not knowing that causes the indeterminacy but the indeterminacy which causes our not knowing turns out to be putting the horse back in front of the cart. Once people started working from the idea that the indeterminacy is fundamental and not like your example of the balls (where there is a definite color for each, and the observer just doesn't know it yet), they started making progress on figuring out how entanglement could be faster than light.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Quantum_indeterminacy

This is about what non-locality really means: One consequence is that we can't assign a local cause (such as: a localized observer hasn't looked yet) to explain why something on the quantum level is determinate, or we lose the ability to explain how the faster than light part happens.

Just as the original QM problem was about determining position and velocity, talking about "non-localizable" (position), and instantanious/faster than light (velocity) is two ends of the same stick. The more you prove that the action happens much faster than the limitation of light-speed, the more you can't claim the action is caused by anything in a particular locale.

I know the Soviet's did this to the UK:

    http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Klimov_VK-1

Are you sure it was an Asian company?

Spot on. Tuly remarkable. Just as impressive is tracking Pioneer 10; a 2.7m wide hunk of shiny metal over 100 AU from the sun. I want to be at the finish line at Aldebaran in 2 million years. At least the champers will be cold :-) Of course, Voyager 1 is now all the go, because it is moving much faster than Pioneer 10, it is now the futherest man-made object at 108 AU. See here; http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Voyager_1 I wonder if people will remember Pioneer 10?

Carbonization is often exothermic, which means that it could in principle be made self-sustaining... http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Carbonization

Feathers are carbohydrates, meaning they are carbon structures with hydrogen and a small portion of oxygen. The Carbonization process cooks off the hydrogen and oxygen, leaving the carbon structure. The hydrogen combines with oxygen to form H20, which is certainly exothermic. My guess is that it produces more heat energy that was consumed to bring it up to carbonization temperature in the first place.

So little or no energy is wasted -- unlike as with solar cells that take 5-10 years to generate as much energy as was used to make them.

Yeah, cuz it's not like Galileo was purposefully designed to be easy to jam in the event of hostilities..... oh wait......:

Any satnav system is going to be easy to jam. I used to know somebody who had a cottage industry manufacturing GPS jammers for the UK military; commercialised they would have been cheap enough to drop as chaff. The only issue with Galileo is that it and GPS can be jammed independently.

The US did not want to lose the ability to themselves use accurate [Global navigation satellite system] while denying enemies the use of accurate GNSS. Some US officials became especially concerned when Chinese interest in Galileo was reported.

This is what led to some US officials to go as far as threatening to potentially shoot down Galileo satellites in the event of a conflict.

Even before Galileo was announced -- and certainly before the Chinese became interested -- the US DoD announced that in a conflict any ground stations for such a system would be "valid military targets, even if on friendly soil". So that bit about setting up your own satnav system also needed to have the rider "and you are confident that you can take on the US military and win".

Yeah, cuz it's not like Galileo was purposefully designed to be easy to jam in the event of hostilities..... oh wait......:

The US did not want to lose the ability to themselves use accurate [Global navigation satellite system] while denying enemies the use of accurate GNSS. Some US officials became especially concerned when Chinese interest in Galileo was reported.

This is what led to some US officials to go as far as threatening to potentially shoot down Galileo satellites in the event of a conflict. The EU for a long time held the stance that Galileo was a neutral technology, available to all countries, with no military able to only deny their opponents the use of highly accurate GNSS. For a time, EU officials were considerably unsympathetic towards the US' desire to maintain their ability to use accurate GNSS for military purposes while denying non-US forces access to equally accurate GNSS. However, this EU-US standoff was eventually resolved by the EU agreeing to make Galileo use a different frequency, and the US would be able to locally interfere with/block the Galileo signals at the new frequency without interfering with their "military" GPS signals. In theory however, the "military" GPS signals could also be interfered with/blocked by a suitably equipped adversary, but interfering with either Galileo's signals at the new frequency or "military" GPS signals doesn't automatically block the other.

I'm thankful Star Trek never used that as a plot. Oh, wait...

Yep. Unfortunately I was wrong. Miller Lite at one point contained several ingredients not normally found in beer, including manufactured chemical additives. "The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a Non-profit organization watchdog journalism and consumer advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C.... reported in 1982 that Miller Lite contained Propylene glycol, alginate (a seaweed extract), water, barley malt, corn syrup, chemically modified hops extracts, yeast, amyloglucosidase, carbon dioxide, papain enzyme, liquid sugar, potassium metabisulfite, and Emka malt (a food coloring). Today, the company claims their beverage contains water, corn syrup, malted barley, and hops." Apparently I must have gotten it confused with Budweiser or Miller Genuine Draft.

I was obsessed with the NS Savannah recently because she is such a beautiful ship - I love ships and this cargo ship looks like a yacht. Whilst I am not a fan of the Nuclear Industry in it's current form her reactor appeared to be reasonably well constructed and whilst designed to cruise at 21 knots, she outperformed her design spec by steadily cruising at 24 knots - pretty fast for a cargo ship. Check page 16 of the MARAD documentation (warning - pdf).

There is significant historical information about her operation. Until 9/11 she was part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) but her reactor was permanently disabled due to concerns she could be used as quite a convenient weapon of terror. Sadly, her hybrid design condemned her to a short operational life (10 years) and she is now a ghost ship. There are plans to make her a museum ship whilst waiting for her decommissioned reactor to cool down for eventual disassembly, but no one seems interested in the project. Despite that the seafarers Union have been working to maintain the ship by improving her general appearance.

NS Savannah's crew dispute was because the executive officers traditionally got paid more than the engineering crew on board the ship, this dispute, high running costs, low oil costs all contributed to her eventual demise. An interest group (with mailing list) is looking for photos and artefacts whist she was in operation.

lots more photos, her community organisation, glory days, historical landmark program, service history and specifications, floorplan and schematics, current status, passenger lounge, reactor control room, dry docked , and finally a flickr photo stream and a rather excellent photo essay of the NS Savannah. A little bit of history for you to enjoy.

I was obsessed with the NS Savannah recently because she is such a beautiful ship - I love ships and this cargo ship looks like a yacht. Whilst I am not a fan of the Nuclear Industry in it's current form her reactor appeared to be reasonably well constructed and whilst designed to cruise at 21 knots, she outperformed her design spec by steadily cruising at 24 knots - pretty fast for a cargo ship. Check page 16 of the MARAD documentation (warning - pdf).

There is significant historical information about her operation. Until 9/11 she was part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) but her reactor was permanently disabled due to concerns she could be used as quite a convenient weapon of terror. Sadly, her hybrid design condemned her to a short operational life (10 years) and she is now a ghost ship. There are plans to make her a museum ship whilst waiting for her decommissioned reactor to cool down for eventual disassembly, but no one seems interested in the project. Despite that the seafarers Union have been working to maintain the ship by improving her general appearance.

NS Savannah's crew dispute was because the executive officers traditionally got paid more than the engineering crew on board the ship, this dispute, high running costs, low oil costs all contributed to her eventual demise. An interest group (with mailing list) is looking for photos and artefacts whist she was in operation.

lots more photos, her community organisation, glory days, historical landmark program, service history and specifications, floorplan and schematics, current status, passenger lounge, reactor control room, dry docked , and finally a flickr photo stream and a rather excellent photo essay of the NS Savannah. A little bit of history for you to enjoy.

Zimbabwe has a relatively modern and (at least until very recently) well regarded military and they still field mounted infantry. They are considered special forces and descend from the Rhodesian Grey's Scouts, who fought very effectively during the Second Chimurenga.

There is a difference between "s"tates and "S"tate.

states are part of a federation. Statism would be state's rights.

State is the national government. Statism would be facism/corporatism/ centralization of power to "the state" as opposed to "a state".

---
From etymology.com

Etymology of the English word statism
the English word statism
derived from the English word state
derived from the Old French word estat
derived from the Latin word status (appointed; position, situation, condition)
derived from the Latin word stare (to stand; stand, stand still, stand firm)
derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *st-

---

The wiki says
"belief in the importance of the power of the state over an individual"
Not sure which wiki entry you are looking at.

---

Looking under "statist", it looks like the negative meaning goes back to 1873.

---
A nice article here: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Statism

That's ok, we don't understand gravity either. See http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Pioneer_anomaly

Not all, but many are, yes. It's a double standard in our society that bugs me. Expecting your date to put out because you bought her a nice dinner is OK, but paying her cash for sex isn't.

How about this, copulation or having sex with someone you're not married to has also been illegal. In those places having sex with your date would be illegal unless you two were married to each other.

Fslcon

Ah, history ! (And farce)

"Heydrich began building the Gestapo into an instrument of fear. He improved his index card system; since he created more categories of offenders, the cards were now color-coded. The line between criminal and law abiding citizen became blurred and the most trivial things became crimes; even if someone made an anti-Hitler comment in jest, the penalty was death.
The Gestapo had the authority to arrest citizens on the mere suspicion that they might commit a crime. People were arrested for walking suspiciously, and since the Gestapo obeyed no law but their own, it was their discretion to decide what was considered "walking in a suspicious manner". The Gestapo had the right to arrest, beat, and murder whomever they wished. People were hesitant to speak in public places out of the morbid fear that their words might be misconstrued and they would find themselves under arrest. The members of the Gestapo were instructed to be merciless and people began disappearing throughout Germany never to be seen again. Sometimes a person would disappear for no apparent reason and at a later date, their family would receive an urn containing their ashes. Under Himmler and Heydrich, Germany became a legitimate and terrifying police state."
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Reinhard_Heydrich

Enjoy your "re-enactments".

In undergrad we spent a few weeks attempting to reproduce Dr. Taleyarkhan work on sonic cavitation experiments in deuterated acetone. While there is much controversy surrounding the this type of fusion, it is an interesting and simple experiment, but hard to get reliable results.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Bubble_fusion

I am wondering why you linked to that site. It looks like it's an outdated copy of the Wikipedia article on the subject.

As for the war, your just showing your ignorance. The war was needed back when Clinton was president

Now you're showing your ignorance. War wasn't needed, Iraq had no WMDs when Bush invaded. When Saddam did have WMDs as presidents both Reagan and Bush Sr supported Saddam. Back then he could use WMDs against anyone and it was alright. Iran? Check. Kurds? Check. Marsh Arabs? Check. It was only after Saddam invaded Kuwait, a sheikdom not a democracy, when the support stopped.

Having said that many people don't know why Saddam invaded Kuwait. Why did Saddam order the invasion of Kuwait? Because Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields.

Falcon

Two different measures. You're measuring radius vs diameter. But then again, I made a NASA mars probe mistake, and was comparing KM for the moon to miles for Mercury. Oops.

The Moon:
3476 km in diameter, 7.349E22 kg

Mercury:
4,880 km, 3.30E23 kg

Mercury's 40% larger in diameter and about 5 times more massive.

We know from the linked article I provided Microsoft has put backdoors in Windows. Even if you want to deny that the NSAKEY went to the NSA it still existed. So they start the sentence with a lie and you expect me to believe the second half?

But you are arguing apples and oranges (pardon the pun).

The BitLocker (NTFS Encryption - Drive Wide) in Vista WILL NOT HAVE A BACKDOOR. PERIOD.

Do a search on this, it made news this week, as it was showcased to the FBI to ensure lost laptops would never be compromised easily.

The FBI and other US agencies like the NSA were happy about the level of protection for their own use, but were NOT so happy they would not have a backdoor for their own use to spy.

This is all from articles in the past week, go look it up.

Also if you want to debate the NSA items that you posted a link to, I am up for that, even though it is a bit off topic of my statement.

The NSA DOES NOT currently have a backdoor in Windows or IE. In fact is is highly debated whether one ever existed, even with the export restrictions on 128bit encrypted versions of IE, (as found in the NT 4 SP5 in question) (Seach for NSAKEY)

It was possible that a NSA requirement for the higher encryption versions and the IIS SSL handling required 128bit encryption technology to be able to be monitored by the NSA. (Remember back in the old days, when downloading IE there was the regular and 128bit encryption versions? The 128bit version was for release in the US only because of the encryption export laws that no longer exist.)

But things have changed, and even if that Key was for NSA access to IE or IIS for out of the US exporting monitoring of 128bit IE it has been gone for a while now.

What bugs me about your assertion is people are more up in arms about MS providing a NSA key for the export of the 128bit version of IE than people get up in arms about the current US president and the NSA randomly tapping phones and communications without legal warrant to do so.

Here is a link on the NSA Key info, and there are tons of other sites debating whether it ever was a backdoor for the NSA for IE communications or not. Either way, it no longer exists...

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/ref/nsakey5

Oh almost forgot...
They can't prove a negative without showing the source and build files. I don't expect they will and therefore don't plan to trust their solution for serious sensitive data. I can't imagine any other security-minded folks would either. If you want to keep the wife from finding your porn it's fine.

If you will look at what has happend in the past couple of years, the full source code for Windows has been provided to the EU and countries requesting it under the provisions of the EU. The same for the US goverment also has access to the full source code of Windows.

If Backdoors did exist in Windows, as you suggest, especailly ones pointing to MS or the NSA, the EU would have have been the first to raise flags as this is part of what they were looking for, and we would have heard about it by now as the EU would have shut MS Windows sales down and slapped MS upside the head until it was removed.

I'm not saying it isn't possible, I can put on a tinfoil hat too, but if the code and even build steps with easily comparable CRC information is provided to both the USA and EU and their govts, I would imagine someone would have found it by now.

Even in 'open source' work, we trust that the person writing the code isn't smarter than the other people reviewing it. At least with MS, if one was discovered, the lawsuits and consumer distrust would destroy them, so that does give the consumers a bit of an edge to keep them on the straight and narrow. And now that the source is no longer as locked as it used to be, at least non-MS people and competiting govts all are getting access to it and even in their own competition would bring issues like this to light.

Piroca and others might want to view this site:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/kanji_k entei

Kanji kentei means, basically, "Japanese Aptitude Test".

I stumbled upon it today, serendipitously...

It is a very informative site.

Japanese Name:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/japanes e_name

It has a TON of information, and I at first wondered how it fits into "astronomy", but I forgot my question after becoming absorbed by the site...

Enjoy!

Piroca and others might want to view this site:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/kanji_k entei

Kanji kentei means, basically, "Japanese Aptitude Test".

I stumbled upon it today, serendipitously...

It is a very informative site.

Japanese Name:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/japanes e_name

It has a TON of information, and I at first wondered how it fits into "astronomy", but I forgot my question after becoming absorbed by the site...

Enjoy!

I've hunted around for some web resources that give good overviews of the events that took place. Some are biased, but contain good information nonetheless. As with many such things, a balanced overview can only really be obtained from "averaging" several sources.

A rather good (if biased) article with an extensive list of references can be found at http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/ReligGalileoMyth95.h tm

There is another good resource at http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/g alileo/galileo.html. Again, somewhat biased, but it includes some interesting translations of original trial documents, including the inquisition's verdict.

A link to a book review which nevertheless contains some key points such as the fact that Galileo had no actual proof for his heliocentric beliefs:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookRevi ewTypeDetail/assetid/49581;jsessionid=baaesdBdzFeP Uj

A quick overview of the history of heliocentricism (including some good links) is here:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/helioce ntrism.

Obviously biased (considering the source!) but nevertheless interesting is the entry for Galileo in the Catholic Encyclopaedia. One of many links to it is at:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm

I hope you find these links both useful and interesting. If nothing else, the fact that some of them cite sources means that they can be used as "jump points" for further reading.

by german author "andreas eschbach" (original title: eine billion dollar) (one trillion in the us equals "eine billion" in german)

check the storyline at

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/eine_bi llion_dollar

interesting plot about what would happen if you had a fortune of one trillion dollar in cash and what good you would do for mankind and your planet.

A more accurate list of Teslas accomplishments.

While I am not particularly impressed by people mentioning their PhD either, the guy was completely correct. The Mach number IS dimensionless just like the Reynolds number, Nusselt number, Prandtl number,... whatever number. These numbers (mostly having to do with fluid dynamics) have exactly been devised to be dimensionless. The are invented to scale experiments. As long as the dimensionless number of your experiment and the real thing are the same (e.g. by making everything 10 times smaller but in 10 times lighter material and under higher pressure or so), conclusions about the relevant parameters will be unchanged. More info here.

Actually... According to Microsofts original anit-virus software (MSAV), Windows *IS* a virus.

Try to find an old sega pico. They should be pretty cheap on ebay. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/s/se /sega_pico.htm

I often wonder if promiscuity is shunned in almost all of oldest civilizations because it comes from an implicit form of survival.

I'm not sure how you're employing the term 'evolution' here.

I think strong cultures tend to dominate weak ones.

But perhaps this issue has as much to do with the creation of families as with STDs. Nations with strong families invest in their children, build technology, and dominate other cultures. There's a long history of Roman heads of household "exposing" (abandoning\killing) kids they thought weren't theirs. And that was their right under the law. Historically, wealthier men have had several women because they could afford to take care of them. This could be both about protecting against STDs and about enforcing paternity. And this was at least tolerated, except by the poorer folk, who lost out because of it.

But consider the second half of that; jealousy may be a factor in cultural attitides as much as anything else.

In another way of looking at it; The notion of 'one man and one woman for this lifetime' is a form of Christian socialism (or alternately a form of jealousy.) No one rich guy gets to hog all the women. The portions of Christianity advocating communalism have been mostly thrown out in modern American culture.

Also consider that the preistesses of some earlier religions were effectively prostitutes. The hindi expression "children of God" does not nessicarily have the same pure connotations that it does to the JudeoChristian world.

While there are ancient descriptions of STDs, they only started being massively lethal with the rise of cities. Syphilus, for instance, was just a minor skin infection till the rise of French cities. Gonnorhea, herpes and similar infections have a long history. It's truly said that 'the sins of the father are passed on to the son to the third generation.' Very often that was true with STDs before antibiotics and possibly with some viral diseases since then (although the body does seem to work hard at breaking the transmission from parent to child.) But the majority of STDs were not more lethal than the other types of bacterial or viral infections a person could get in day to day life.

I think cultures that don't build strong families tend to die out. Disease may be a part of weakening the culture, but there just weren't so many lethal STDs in the ancient world, and non sexually transmitted diseases were more lethal. While antibiotics have played their part in allowing promiscuity, I think it was the development of a birth control pill that really changed our culture and the epidemiological landscape since it separated sex from pregnancy, but not from disease transmission.

"Who cares if it's easy to deface, it's got great moderation!"

Swift (and not so swift) moderation doesn't do very much good. A friend added me to a list of famous erotic authors. It was removed.. a few weeks later. Get what? I (Aaron Gyes) am still, months later, all over the damn internet.

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-authors-of-er otic-works
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/l/li /list_of_authors_of_erotic_works.htm
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List%20o f%20authors%20of%20erotic%20works
http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/List_of_erotic _authors
http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/List_of_erotic_au thors
http://web.linix.ca/pedia/index.php/List_of_erotic _authors
http://www.europe.com/index.php/List_of_authors_of _erotic_works
http://www.medicalrace.com/dictionary/List_of_erot ic_authors
http://www.dictionaryofeverything.com/explore/112/ List_of_authors_of_erotic_works.html
http://list-of-authors-of-erotic-works.iqnaut.net/
http://www.omnipelagos.com/entry?n=list_of_authors _of_erotic_works
http://www.gardeningdaily.com/flowers-and-plants/L ist_of_erotic_authors
http://www.braindex.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Lis t_of_erotic_authors
http://en.efactory.pl/List_of_erotic_authors
http://www.art-fresh.net/DisplayArticleFull314102. html
http://www.thefreeencyclopedia.com/definition/word .aspx?w=List_of_erotic_authors
http://bigpedia.com/encyclopedia/List_of_authors_o f_erotic_works
http://www.dogluvers.com/dog_breeds/List_of_erotic _authors

there are cases where the observations are such that no other solution per the proven theory seems plausible

There are alternatives, for example the gravastar:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/g/gr /gravastar.htm

Such alternatives would yield the same observations.

There are major problems with current black hole theory - for example, the information paradox, and the central singularity. I think it is pretty reasonable to state that current black hole theory is at the very least incomplete, if not actually wrong.

Doom 3 is actually different in the whole scheme of things, in regard to "Sequels for money and profit". From what I recall, there was a big "gathering" at iD where the staff said "We make Doom 3 or else!!!". So the staff actually WANTED to do this addition to the Doom series.

Here is a quote from a non-difinitive source (found via some googlin'): http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/d/do /doom_3.htm

"Kevin Cloud and (Click link for more info and facts about Adrian Carmack) Adrian Carmack, two of the id Software owners, were always strongly opposed to remaking Doom. This is after many old fans complained that id was going back to the same well too often. However, after the warm reception of (Click link for more info and facts about Return to Castle Wolfenstein) Return to Castle Wolfenstein and latest improvements in rendering technology, most of the employees agreed that a remake was the right idea and confronted Kevin and Adrian with an ultimatum: "allow us to remake Doom or fire us" (including John Carmack). After the relatively painless confrontation (though artist (Click link for more info and facts about Paul Steed) Paul Steed, one of the instigators, was fired in retaliation) the agreement to work on Doom 3 was made."

Though, I THOUGHT someone DID get fired as a result of that ultimatum, I can't find anything to back that up

Or for that matter, Pluto's Kiss.

Please see http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/c/ch /chewing_gum_ban_in_singapore.htm for the history and the reality of chewing gum in Singapore. Your sources need updates.

The people and government of Singapore are very realistic in some ways, but I don't defend them; they have to do that. My citations are strictly addressing another lens to look at the problems in a pluralistic society of derogatory racial tension prevention as regards the apparent suppression of free speech.

Check it out: Electric Currents and Transmission Lines in Space [lanl.gov] Immense Flows of Charged Particles Discovered Between the Stars [lanl.gov] (repeat: I do hope you actually take the time to read some of the pages to which I've linked.)

I have. The first one, while somewhat interesting in it's own way, has not a heck of a lot to do with the claims of the Electric Universe folks. It makes heavy use of analogy to explain large-scale electromagnetic properties of planets, basically. This is the stuff that is actual, fairly solid conventional science... upon which a bit too much is claimed by the Electric Universe crowd. Again, not everything is explained in that manner.

The second link, however, is a press release, and not one from the LANL. Not saying it's conclusions are wrong, just that it might not be what it appears at first blush. It boils down to 'particles in space become ionized when heated by stars'. Again, actually nothing even controversial there, I believe.

The thing is, it's a *huge* jump from knowing something about the nature of electromagnetism to claiming that it's effects are responsible for the phenomena of supernova. Perhaps partly responsible for some of the resulting structures? Sure. Perhaps a large electromagnetic event is associated with the supernova? Possible, though I didn't see where that's measured ( or measurable )... but the cause of the event? You're really saying that article had that evidence somewhere? Because you seem to be the only one... correlation is not causation, here, that's what I'm trying to get across. Electromagnetic properties are valid, but across light-years? Stronger than other properties for masses as large as stars? It just seems unlikely.

Here's a nice link for you. It's not that the Plasma guys aren't being taken seriously, for the most part, they are... until they take things too far, by, say, claiming that electromagnetic forces are responsible for supernova, or that their data refutes fully the big bang theory when it doesn't.

Seriously, Lerner has done a lot to hurt the Electric/Plasma Universe crowd, IMHO. And, really, I'm not entirely sure the two are exactly the same. From what I've read, the Plasma folks are trying to distance themselves from the Electric folks... even they think the Electric Universe guys have taken it too far, and the article in the story you posted is of the Electric variety.

In a practical, layman-scientist's view, over large distances, electrical forces both attract and repel, and that's what's at a fundamental level put the general community off, especially when there are things ( where are the matter/anitmatter collision gamma rays predicted ? ) not explained by the theory, and other, classical, accepted ways to explain things it's proponents attack... like how supernova are triggered. Who knows, maybe later parts of these theories will test out to be true and accepted, but... the story you linked did not 'prove' or 'decode' anything serious about supernova, and generally lacks credibility.

And I do hope you've read the articles I've linked to... and generally absorbed the notions that (a) the general consensus seems to be that the Plasma Universe guys take things a little too far where conventional physics offers reasonable explainations and (b) the Plasma Universe guys think the Electical Universe guys take things WAY too far... so that leaves them way out there... and that's the article you choose to post a story on without any other references to back it up. Sorry, that perhaps shows a lack of critical thinking on your part. Seriously. Think about it. I'm trying to help.

With your historical bent, maybe you could point out that the history of IQ tests according to http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/i/in /intelligence_quotient.htm and http://www.audiblox2000.com/dyslexia_dyslexic/dysl exia014.htm has more to do with Alfred Binet in France in 1904 diagnosing learning disabilities in children.

If those 2 links are wrong, perhaps you could point me towards a source for the correct data. Damn, since I don't take standardized tests to know whether I'd score in the top 1%, it's taken me until just this moment to recognise a troll ;-)

BTW, Indians *were* the first people to use Zero. Look here and here.

I couldn't find solid numbers.

But I went hunting for the types of systems that Power chips are being used in.

From http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/po /powerpc2.htm

"Design win summaryPowerPC processors are used in many products, among which are the following: Apple Macintosh post-68k models (called PowerMacs), IBM RS/6000 UNIX workstations, Cisco routers, Pegasos (a Commodore Amiga spin off), Amiga acceleration boards, the Nintendo GameCube video game console, and many embedded systems such as the TiVo personal video recorder. Sonnet Technologies and Daystar manufacture PowerPC-based CPU upgrades for use in Macintosh systems. Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, to be available from the 2005 holiday season, includes a 3.2 GHz custom IBM PowerPC chip with three symmetrical cores."

There's some more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC#Embedded_Powe rPC_microcontrollers

Considering that the embedded market is many times larger than the desktop market, I'd be surprised if there weren't more Power ships than x86 out there.

"Economic profit is not the only motivator for exploration and technological development, nor is it the only justification for a permanent offworld presence."

"I disagree. While I approve of using my tax dollars to fund the exploration of the solar system via probe, I don't approve of the enormous outlay required to do that exploration with human beings."

The "I don't want my tax dollars going towards X" argument is hardly a relevant response. We already know that you are looking for profit.

"There isn't any justification (in my mind) for doing with humans what can be done much, much cheaper with robots; and even if there were some small scientific gain to be had when using humans I don't think it justifies the cost."

As you say... "in your mind." I see a lot of justification in my mind: abundant resources, abundant energy, a manunfacturing environment that doesn't carry concerns over ecological damange or the consumption of non-renewable resources, an impetus for technological advancement, the eventual creation of offworld colonies that give the human race a chance of surviving a plantary calamity, etc.

"The rest of the solar system offers us space, raw materials, and energy in near unlimited quantities."

"That would be an economic incentive for the exploitation of space, would it not?"

Technically, yes... though I separated it in my mind because these efforts will start out being a consumer of money and resources, and you seem to be rejecting the idea because it won't make profits right now.

"Also, the Earth is a source of single point failure... one ecological or climatological collapse or a comet or astroid collision, and the human race could cease to exist, and those little green pictures of dead presidents will be of little use, value, or comfort."

"Your money would be better spent keeping the Earth from getting hit by some nasty comet or asteroid than in trying to move millions off-world."

"My" money, if spent on establishing a fulltime offworld presence, would yield many benefits... including the means to prevent Earth from getting hit by an asteroid.

"And hell, if you think big enough, terraforming is always a possibility."

"Where, exactly? You can't terraform Venus; it's tidelocked. And Mars is too small. If you want to terraform Mars you're going to have to rebuild all the atmosphere it's lost to space, probably by throwing thousands of comets at it from the Oort Cloud - and that means you'd have to remove all the current colonists for the few centuries it'd take to complete the task. While it might someday become practical, it would be more efficient to colonize Mars without terraforming it."

Fair points... there's always the possiblity of orbital habitats, either constructed like O'Neill stations, or within or on asteroids. Here is a link to many more ideas, and a discussion of the issues surrounding human presence in space.

"When I look to the future, I want "Star Trek"

"When I look to the future I want "Battlestar Galactica". Hot cylon babes like Boomer, hoowah!"

No, seriously... I want to roll around in a pile of naked, oiled Boomers as much as the next geek, but how do you seriously see the future? Do you see a future that is basically the same as today, with a fairly tiny proportion of the world's population controlling and consuming most of the resources, with population stresses causing environmental degradation, and where a few people get Ipod Mk. Vs while most of the rest wonder about the next meal or the next military attack?

I want better for the human race, and I think a vigorous expansion into space is one way of helping that happen.

Selling optical mice in 1983

Yes.

The first version of optical mice needed to be used with a special mouse pad, with a metallic rectangular grid on the surface. The accuracy was pretty bad, and having to use this pad was no fun either. As mechanical mice got better, optical mice disappeared for many years. The newer ones do a lot of image processing internally, have much better accuracy and don't need a special mouse pad - which is why they've more or less replaced mechanical mice.

Where did you get talking rats out of my post?

Here's a definition of sorts , and from the wikipedia about Anonymous Remailers ('nym servers')

Hope this helps....neat stuff, tho I've not played with it in a long while...

Our racial traits likely evolved because of a near-extinction (to humans) event 70,000 years ago: the Tobu supervolcano eruption. During that time, humanity went down to about 1,000 individuals and random evolutionary neutral traits (like eye-folds or hair shape) became more common in the then widely separated groups. But for all of our history before and after that event, humans have been moving around constantly, never allowing an isolated population to exist for that long.

Positive "racial" mutations like skin color changes (actually we all have the same skin color, its just that we have diffent saturation) or malarial resistance (sickle-cell isn't just a "black" disease) happened to any group of people who moved to significantly different areas. Race doesn't correlate with race, in other words.

Well, there are tons a great things that came out of the program to create nuclear weapons:

• Nuclear power - The nuclear power industry has benefited greatly from the development of nuclear weapons. Much of the research was directly applicable, because keeping N-plants from exploding is a key start to building safe and affordable power.
• Conventional weapons systems - Nuclear powered aircraft carriers and subs grew from bomb research. The first polar crossing under the ice was accomplished by the nuclear powered sub Nautilus.
• Nuclear pulse propulsion - Although never built, there are designs for spacecraft driven by atomic bombs capable of lifting upwards of 8 million tons (or about 2,300 fully loaded, fully fueled Space Shuttles.) This isn't sci-fi, but real systems that could not receive political approval. Imaging getting material into orbit at 32 cents per pound. (Shipping costs to orbit for the entire ISS would be about $320,000, or the cost of a moderate one-family home.) My hope is that some day we lose our fear of nuclear power and build devices like this.
• Deep space research - Deep space would be unreachable without RTGs. (Ok, you could get there, but couldn't do anything useful.) Like the other forms of nuclear power, research include nuclear weapons helped initiate peaceful uses of nuclear energy like RTGs.
• Numerous lives saved - Estimates are that 1,000,000 or more men and women would have been killed in a Japanese invasion. Tragically, somewhere around 250,000 people died directly and indirectly in the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The net result, however, was around 3/4 million people who didn't die if conventional methods had been pursued to end the war. Personally, I would have loved to have seen a peaceful, negotiated end to the War in the Pacific, but the Japanese military would never have let that happen.
• World stability - I saved this one for last because it's probably the most controversial, but I'd argue that since the development of the atomic bomb, the world has been a more stable place. At age 42, I clearly remember the concerns of the 60's, 70's, and much of the 80's when we were worried about a Soviet nuclear attack. (I didn't include the 50's in my list above because I wasn't alive then.) Regardless of the fact that we worried a lot about a nuclear exchange, the real fact of the matter is that nuclear war never came about. This wasn't accidental, but rather because world leaders (or in some cases, those around them) realized that a widescale nuclear exchange would have been disastrous not only for the defender but also the offender.

  Not only did nuclear weapons keep a cap on nuclear warfare, but on conventional warfare as well. The Soviet Union was on a mission to spread Communism throughout the world, and with a foothold in Eastern Europe it wouldn't have taken much to use those ambitions to move westward throughout post-War Western Europe. Without the threat of another widescale world war (often referred to as "World War III"), the Soviets may have been tempted to use their large conventional forces to completely change the political landscape throughout the European continent.

I hope that I've answered your question on how nuclear weapons research can be used for good. Whether or not the scientists were thinking about this when they built their weapons doesn't really matter. If it did, then everyone who ever created a technology that is used in any way for an evil purpose must be held directly accountable for its use.