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More ignorance. And history revision. The protectionist law Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act was enacted on 17 June 1930. The State Department itself says "Such policies contributed to a drastic decline in international trade". The Great Depression though started on Black Tuesday, 29 October 1929.

You need to go to economics school. The Chicago school of economics, at the University of Chicago, with more Nobel Prize laureates than any other is a great one. Milton Friedman, one of those Nobel laureates, exposes the Great Depression Myth (almost 10 minute video). In "New Deal or raw deal?" 2 New Deal historians debate whether the New Deal helped during the Great Depression or made it worse. In "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" the political economist Amity Shlaes argues FDR's policies didn't end the depression, that WWII did. Massive government spending, which Obama is advocating, did. In finishing an economics study UCLA economists calculate "FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years".

I provided links to data to government and to economics resources, where are yours? Or do you only have voodoo economics yourself? Of course if you provide any I will research it and see what other economists say.

Falcon

Oh, and I dare you to point out anywhere where i mentioned Ayn Rand previously in regard to this thread. You can't because you're making things up that fits into your own world view and not in reality.

Hmm, one of the highly regarded reviews on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1JI5VZRW1ILWU/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0375423729&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=

thinks it's not a general audience book:

Some of the narrative may seem pretty heavy- going. For readers who are not versed in the subject, it may seem to be almost impenetrable. After a bit, one realizes this book is not written for the general reader.

What about ESP is "extraordinary" to you?

It doesn't match everyday experience and has a history of charlatans. The people investing it have been prone to being fooled and running badly designed experiments. There isn't strong evidence that can be reliably repeated that it exists.

Actually, that's not quite the case. ESP/psi does indeed match everyday experience - it turns out to be a very common set of phenomena - but it can't reliably be engineered. Psi effects are very strongly coupled to individual personalities, life circumstances and emotional involvement, and don't lend themselves to the normal scientific approach of isolation and depersonalisation and experimental control. This is vey frustrating to researchers who want to be able to run clinical trials and remove the personal factor, but some newer experiments, particularly the autoganzfeld ones, are very promising and seem to show strongly repeatable effects like precognition. Many people report synchronicities and precognitive dreams connected with strongly personal life events. Even the 1970s SCANATE remove viewing protocols show very striking above-chance correlations. What seems to be very difficult, however, is any attempt to "scale up" these small and very personal psi effects into any kind of automated, industrialised psi-on-demand, as we've been able to achieve with disciplines like physics which underwrote the Industrial Revolution. And yes, the "trickster" effect - where real verified psi seems to get inextricably mixed up with equally verifiable malice and fraud - also complicates things immensely.

It's not surprising, though, that psi should be so awkward, if you think about it. We're talking about something deeply embedded in the human personality, which is a very complex system deeply entangled with personal lives and circumstances. The normal hard science approach of "cut it into tiny pieces, study each piece" works less and less well as you go up the tower of complexity from physics to chemistry to biology to psychology/sociology. The more we deal with living, conscious, self-reflective systems, the harder it is to isolate and control a subsystem. And psi seems to reside in the deepest recesses of the human mind, alongside dreams and religion, where things get very strange and even the most rigorously scientific of us aren't entirely sane. The result is that attempting to standardise and codify this mental underworld that we really don't understand at all can get you lost very quickly.

For a gentle yet scientific introduction to this fascinating subject, I'd recommend Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer's "Extraordinary Knowing, followed by Dean Radin's Entangled Minds. Both of these summarise the last 150 years of psi research, which many skeptics completely ignore. For a deeper treatment, look at the book in my sig, which is a university psychology-level textbook summary of the same research.

What about ESP is "extraordinary" to you?

It doesn't match everyday experience and has a history of charlatans. The people investing it have been prone to being fooled and running badly designed experiments. There isn't strong evidence that can be reliably repeated that it exists.

Actually, that's not quite the case. ESP/psi does indeed match everyday experience - it turns out to be a very common set of phenomena - but it can't reliably be engineered. Psi effects are very strongly coupled to individual personalities, life circumstances and emotional involvement, and don't lend themselves to the normal scientific approach of isolation and depersonalisation and experimental control. This is vey frustrating to researchers who want to be able to run clinical trials and remove the personal factor, but some newer experiments, particularly the autoganzfeld ones, are very promising and seem to show strongly repeatable effects like precognition. Many people report synchronicities and precognitive dreams connected with strongly personal life events. Even the 1970s SCANATE remove viewing protocols show very striking above-chance correlations. What seems to be very difficult, however, is any attempt to "scale up" these small and very personal psi effects into any kind of automated, industrialised psi-on-demand, as we've been able to achieve with disciplines like physics which underwrote the Industrial Revolution. And yes, the "trickster" effect - where real verified psi seems to get inextricably mixed up with equally verifiable malice and fraud - also complicates things immensely.

It's not surprising, though, that psi should be so awkward, if you think about it. We're talking about something deeply embedded in the human personality, which is a very complex system deeply entangled with personal lives and circumstances. The normal hard science approach of "cut it into tiny pieces, study each piece" works less and less well as you go up the tower of complexity from physics to chemistry to biology to psychology/sociology. The more we deal with living, conscious, self-reflective systems, the harder it is to isolate and control a subsystem. And psi seems to reside in the deepest recesses of the human mind, alongside dreams and religion, where things get very strange and even the most rigorously scientific of us aren't entirely sane. The result is that attempting to standardise and codify this mental underworld that we really don't understand at all can get you lost very quickly.

For a gentle yet scientific introduction to this fascinating subject, I'd recommend Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer's "Extraordinary Knowing, followed by Dean Radin's Entangled Minds. Both of these summarise the last 150 years of psi research, which many skeptics completely ignore. For a deeper treatment, look at the book in my sig, which is a university psychology-level textbook summary of the same research.

TFSummary is useless. Try here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3OMTTV92OY7LG/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0375423729&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=

You could put two dozen copies of Ass Goblins of Auschwitz in
every grocery store, book store, and magazine stand in American and I promise it would still not be a best seller.

If 'Angels And Demons' can become a best-seller, 'Ass Goblins of Auschwitz' certainly can.

You could put two dozen copies of Ass Goblins of Auschwitz in
every grocery store, book store, and magazine stand in American and I promise it would still not be a best seller.

I don't know about anyone else; but I now know what MY next ebook purchase will be - if only to spite the publishing racket's more vengeful flavor of dinosaur (even if I hate the rigmarole I have to go through to convert Kindle books to epubs: Bleh).

Maybe they got tired of having to qualify every eBook price with "This price was set by the publisher".

Want to know what's wrong with the eBook market? Just check out this page; $15 for a poorly scanned version of a book that was written more than 40 years ago, that's available new in paperback and even hardcover for less. Seriously? Who the hell comes up with these pricing models? Even as a huge eBook fan there's been plenty of books that I've passed on because I just can't justify the cost for a digital copy, even ignoring the fact that the digital copy is DRM'd to Amazon's tool set.

Then go buy the hardcover version, and leave the free market to correct itself.

Maybe they got tired of having to qualify every eBook price with "This price was set by the publisher".

Want to know what's wrong with the eBook market? Just check out this page; $15 for a poorly scanned version of a book that was written more than 40 years ago, that's available new in paperback and even hardcover for less. Seriously? Who the hell comes up with these pricing models? Even as a huge eBook fan there's been plenty of books that I've passed on because I just can't justify the cost for a digital copy, even ignoring the fact that the digital copy is DRM'd to Amazon's tool set.

Besides the fact that you're singling him out for a joke skit decades ago which was written by someone else, I guess you've missed the part where, in the years since, Shatner wrote a book also called Get a Life! where he explains the skit and comes to grip with Star Trek culture. Or the dozens of things he's done since then including create a documentary about Star Trek captains.

People hate to be typecast. Hell, look at Leonard Nimoy who published a book called I Am Not Spock and then years later another book called I Am Spock .

I don't think it's humanly possible to miss the point and not get the joke any harder than you have in this instance.

Only off by 5 years: http://www.amazon.com/Peshawar-Lancers-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451458737

Larry Niven is rubbing his hands with glee and saying, "I knew it!"

... Even if this medicine turns out to be affordable, the treatments to keep the body going beyond its designed lifespan most likely will be very expensive. So on what basis will this life-extending drug be given out? ... Or will anyone able to pay for it be able to obtain it?

Niven's future problem revolved around the perfection of organ transplants. In a world where everything but the brain and spinal column can be successfully transplanted, and life thereby extended indefinitely, what kinds of problems would arise? Organlegging was one such problem.

However, most of the problems actually had to do with the upper class hoarding the technology for themselves (the rich were the ones in power, which means they could pass new laws governing the technology, etc.). Niven's excellent The Jigsaw Man short story dealt with that from the "criminal's" point of view, and his book A Gift From Earth introduces an entire culture built around this problem (and what happens when better technology comes along to upset the applecart).

While the problem is slightly different, Niven's ideas of the problems and consequences of this kind of technology are amazing. I heartily recommend reading his Known Space collection, which is where this problem is addressed.

Support-specific exercises are especially helpful. A developer friend of mine has been free from chronic pain since a few months after my mom gave him Pain Free. It has been helpful to me and others as well.

Another relative here, in the USA. :-) Send me an email if you want, my address is easy to find.

She was my father's aunt IIRC. I only met her once that I can recall, when my father and I visited her home around 1985. But she might have been at some get together or other other times we visited that does not stick out in my mind. I don't remember her speaking English and I do not know that much Dutch. They talked and I went for a walk around the area. I was overdressed in a overcoat and hat, and some neighborhood kids pointed at me and said "gangster" and chased me a bit, and I went into a store to avoid them. So, that's mostly what I remember of that visit. :-)

I feel diet and lifestyle (and the extent to which genes may interact with interests and habits) have a lot to do with this though. So does very early life experiences. Even being born premature might have had some value, in that the slower we grow perhaps the slower we age? Not having kids may have been a factor too? Also, there is a lot to be said for a positive outlook on life however you get that.

Related resources on healthy diet:
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Fasting (like for lent) which often connects to religion (and eating less in the past from being less wealthy) can also help:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting.html

And on getting enough vitamin D (and she was out and about plus maybe got some from herring she liked):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext

Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/walkingwhileworking

Community level ideas for health:

Another relative here, in the USA. :-) Send me an email if you want, my address is easy to find.

She was my father's aunt IIRC. I only met her once that I can recall, when my father and I visited her home around 1985. But she might have been at some get together or other other times we visited that does not stick out in my mind. I don't remember her speaking English and I do not know that much Dutch. They talked and I went for a walk around the area. I was overdressed in a overcoat and hat, and some neighborhood kids pointed at me and said "gangster" and chased me a bit, and I went into a store to avoid them. So, that's mostly what I remember of that visit. :-)

I feel diet and lifestyle (and the extent to which genes may interact with interests and habits) have a lot to do with this though. So does very early life experiences. Even being born premature might have had some value, in that the slower we grow perhaps the slower we age? Not having kids may have been a factor too? Also, there is a lot to be said for a positive outlook on life however you get that.

Related resources on healthy diet:
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Fasting (like for lent) which often connects to religion (and eating less in the past from being less wealthy) can also help:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting.html

And on getting enough vitamin D (and she was out and about plus maybe got some from herring she liked):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext

Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/walkingwhileworking

Community level ideas for health:

Many people find that a vertical mouse provides a better hand/wrist position than a standard horizontal mouse. Something like the Evoluent or the 3M Ergonomic. There are also a number of keyboards, from partially split to fully split, that allow for more natural hand-elbow-arm position than a standard rectangular model. The Goldtouch has been highly recommended by physical therapists.

Many people find that a vertical mouse provides a better hand/wrist position than a standard horizontal mouse. Something like the Evoluent or the 3M Ergonomic. There are also a number of keyboards, from partially split to fully split, that allow for more natural hand-elbow-arm position than a standard rectangular model. The Goldtouch has been highly recommended by physical therapists.

Many people find that a vertical mouse provides a better hand/wrist position than a standard horizontal mouse. Something like the Evoluent or the 3M Ergonomic. There are also a number of keyboards, from partially split to fully split, that allow for more natural hand-elbow-arm position than a standard rectangular model. The Goldtouch has been highly recommended by physical therapists.

Mouse you should just get a normal one that isn't too large.

I guess that's another area where you just have to see what works for you.

My favoured instrument is the Logitech Cordless Trackman Wheel. I think Logitech abandoned trackballs for a few years since this product was introduced, but they seem to have had second thoughts and reintroduced the line.

If you like it, you'll probably never need to replace it, since the thing is so damn ruggedly built. I've had mine for years, and there are no signs of wear on it at all. It would be hopeless (I imagine) for gaming, but for any kind of office work (especially where your desk is crowded), it is IMO incomparable.

See the following books:

• Vatican II, Homosexuality and Pedophilia
• The Rite of Sodomy Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church
• The Devil's Final Battle

Although there hasn't been a serious suggestion that I am aware of that Benedict XVI is a freemason, objectively speaking, he is too close to the situation, having participated in Vatican II and having been the sexual misconduct watchdog under JPII, and continuing to this day to participate in coverup and permissiveness. There is no need for me to report him to the authorities because he has already been served with a lawsuit.

And as for Freemasons in the United States at least, as a group they have zero interest in supporting child pornography or bringing down the Roman Catholic church.

From Albert Pike's book Morals and Dogma:

Thus the Order of Knights of the Temple was at its very origin devoted to the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome and the crowns of Kings

There were millions and millions of Native Americans here. The Native Americans died en masse due to disease; this disease spread quickly and advanced way ahead of the Europeans. By the time Europeans got to most areas of the Americas, native populations were reduced by as much as 90% (Source: http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X). Due to the losses in Native American populations (who did not just live "harmoniously" with nature like people are taught in school - they clear cut trees, redirected rivers, and did many things not that different from what we do today) the native management of the environment was disrupted. All the trees that they had cleared out started growing back. Increase trees-->decrease carbon-->decrease heat.

I'm not saying I think the research is sound - I have no idea, I haven't read the study - but the hypothesis is not far-fetched. The /. summary is confusing though.

This is a roundup of a lot of scholarly work on what the Americas were like before Columbus. In short, the book contends that there were an awful lot of people in North America prior to the Age of Exploration who were extraordinarily susceptible to European diseases. While many practiced straight-up agriculture, a lot of others essentially "farmed" wild game - early European colonists into the Ohio Valley noted that the land often looked like European parks (i.e., trees spaced far enough apart that wagons could easily be driven between them, with occasional copses, making perfect habitat for deer), and that an extraordinarily high percentage of the trees that were there were nut-producers (i.e., they planted those and cut down anything else). It also argues that the early explorers (especially de Soto's expedition) weren't making things up when they talked about cities with tens of thousands of inhabitants lining the sides of rivers. When they died en masse, the "old-growth" forests arose.

I agree that this is a bit of a PR overstatement. We've known about hydrophobic effects for a long time, and have been able to account for oil/water separation for a long time. That's not to say that we fully understand the hydrophobic effect. And this new paper does indeed add to that knowledge base, but it's not the "we suddenly go from understanding nothing to understanding everything" that the hype implies.

I'm a little surprised by the hype, actually, since the principal investigator for this work is Jacob Israelachvili, who literally wrote the book on surface forces. If anyone knows about the state of the art in understanding the hydrophobic effect, it's him!

Between two really unattractive options, backing DoD or pharmaceuticals, I think we picked the wrong side of that one. Pharmaceutical companies are just about the most corrupt, manipulative organizations around. And I'm not saying that because of some CNN sound bite, I've read some good books by business ethics and public health experts on the topic. This one was not only argumentative but surprisingly scholarly and accessible; great stuff. Profits Before People

The people in sales and marketing of prescription drugs are seriously the scum of the Earth. They manipulate prices, patents, medical education, public opinion, public policy, and a thousand other things. What makes them especially annoying to me is their constant press statements and ad campaigns about how they're so generous, so sensitive, and how they're practically non-profit in the long run. At least banks and arms dealers occasionally admit it's all about the money.

What happened to:

  - knotting / macrame --- a few lengths of small stuff, some beads (which can easily be whittled, see below) and one can make all sorts of things --- http://www.amazon.com/Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford-W/dp/0385040253
  - whittling / carving / carpentry --- I used to make all manner of things w/a pocket knife (and saws, planes and drills from my father's tool box) when I was a kid --- http://www.amazon.com/Carving-Kids-Robin-Edward-Trudel/dp/1933502029 / http://www.amazon.com/Carpentry-Children-Lester-R-Walker/dp/0879519908
  - making ceramic pots and other items --- I built a small kiln in the backyard so that I could fire the things which I made of a natural clay deposit in the field next to my house --- modern materials like Sculpey mean that one needs nothing more than a toaster oven (if that, some are air-drying)
  - solutions &c. for basic chemistry --- made black powder using saltpeter collected from under the cow manure in local farmer's fields, sulfur from sulfur candles purchased at a local store and charcoal which I made in the afore-mentioned kiln --- http://chemistry.about.com/library/goldenchem.pdf
  - basic metalworking --- used to grind basic tools --- a teacher actually took one of my screwdrivers, heat treated it (and kept it ::grr::) --- still furious w/ my father that he sold his anvil. Next project at home is a lathe (since it's the one tool in a metal shop which can reproduce itself and be used to make other tools: http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/lathe1.html / http://www.amazon.com/Charcoal-Foundry-Build-Metal-Working/dp/1878087002/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1318508452&sr=8-2 )

That kids don't do these things is a arguably a big part of why manufacturing jobs are going overseas.

William

What happened to:

  - knotting / macrame --- a few lengths of small stuff, some beads (which can easily be whittled, see below) and one can make all sorts of things --- http://www.amazon.com/Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford-W/dp/0385040253
  - whittling / carving / carpentry --- I used to make all manner of things w/a pocket knife (and saws, planes and drills from my father's tool box) when I was a kid --- http://www.amazon.com/Carving-Kids-Robin-Edward-Trudel/dp/1933502029 / http://www.amazon.com/Carpentry-Children-Lester-R-Walker/dp/0879519908
  - making ceramic pots and other items --- I built a small kiln in the backyard so that I could fire the things which I made of a natural clay deposit in the field next to my house --- modern materials like Sculpey mean that one needs nothing more than a toaster oven (if that, some are air-drying)
  - solutions &c. for basic chemistry --- made black powder using saltpeter collected from under the cow manure in local farmer's fields, sulfur from sulfur candles purchased at a local store and charcoal which I made in the afore-mentioned kiln --- http://chemistry.about.com/library/goldenchem.pdf
  - basic metalworking --- used to grind basic tools --- a teacher actually took one of my screwdrivers, heat treated it (and kept it ::grr::) --- still furious w/ my father that he sold his anvil. Next project at home is a lathe (since it's the one tool in a metal shop which can reproduce itself and be used to make other tools: http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/lathe1.html / http://www.amazon.com/Charcoal-Foundry-Build-Metal-Working/dp/1878087002/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1318508452&sr=8-2 )

That kids don't do these things is a arguably a big part of why manufacturing jobs are going overseas.

William

What happened to:

  - knotting / macrame --- a few lengths of small stuff, some beads (which can easily be whittled, see below) and one can make all sorts of things --- http://www.amazon.com/Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford-W/dp/0385040253
  - whittling / carving / carpentry --- I used to make all manner of things w/a pocket knife (and saws, planes and drills from my father's tool box) when I was a kid --- http://www.amazon.com/Carving-Kids-Robin-Edward-Trudel/dp/1933502029 / http://www.amazon.com/Carpentry-Children-Lester-R-Walker/dp/0879519908
  - making ceramic pots and other items --- I built a small kiln in the backyard so that I could fire the things which I made of a natural clay deposit in the field next to my house --- modern materials like Sculpey mean that one needs nothing more than a toaster oven (if that, some are air-drying)
  - solutions &c. for basic chemistry --- made black powder using saltpeter collected from under the cow manure in local farmer's fields, sulfur from sulfur candles purchased at a local store and charcoal which I made in the afore-mentioned kiln --- http://chemistry.about.com/library/goldenchem.pdf
  - basic metalworking --- used to grind basic tools --- a teacher actually took one of my screwdrivers, heat treated it (and kept it ::grr::) --- still furious w/ my father that he sold his anvil. Next project at home is a lathe (since it's the one tool in a metal shop which can reproduce itself and be used to make other tools: http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/lathe1.html / http://www.amazon.com/Charcoal-Foundry-Build-Metal-Working/dp/1878087002/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1318508452&sr=8-2 )

That kids don't do these things is a arguably a big part of why manufacturing jobs are going overseas.

William

What happened to:

  - knotting / macrame --- a few lengths of small stuff, some beads (which can easily be whittled, see below) and one can make all sorts of things --- http://www.amazon.com/Ashley-Book-Knots-Clifford-W/dp/0385040253
  - whittling / carving / carpentry --- I used to make all manner of things w/a pocket knife (and saws, planes and drills from my father's tool box) when I was a kid --- http://www.amazon.com/Carving-Kids-Robin-Edward-Trudel/dp/1933502029 / http://www.amazon.com/Carpentry-Children-Lester-R-Walker/dp/0879519908
  - making ceramic pots and other items --- I built a small kiln in the backyard so that I could fire the things which I made of a natural clay deposit in the field next to my house --- modern materials like Sculpey mean that one needs nothing more than a toaster oven (if that, some are air-drying)
  - solutions &c. for basic chemistry --- made black powder using saltpeter collected from under the cow manure in local farmer's fields, sulfur from sulfur candles purchased at a local store and charcoal which I made in the afore-mentioned kiln --- http://chemistry.about.com/library/goldenchem.pdf
  - basic metalworking --- used to grind basic tools --- a teacher actually took one of my screwdrivers, heat treated it (and kept it ::grr::) --- still furious w/ my father that he sold his anvil. Next project at home is a lathe (since it's the one tool in a metal shop which can reproduce itself and be used to make other tools: http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/lathe1.html / http://www.amazon.com/Charcoal-Foundry-Build-Metal-Working/dp/1878087002/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1318508452&sr=8-2 )

That kids don't do these things is a arguably a big part of why manufacturing jobs are going overseas.

William

Well, not talking about ID, which is a specific idea with an agenda, but many legitamate scientists have come to the belief that some things are just too ... perfect. Some observable things are just... too beautiful NOT to have been ... conceived. The trend has been lightly documented... The New Story of Science is just one of a number of books concerning these non-scientific ideas popping up in popular science... that sort of documents how some scientists moved from atheism to agnosticism. The book is about science, not religion.

I would say we need these guys a lot more than we need thugs assaulting each other or random people in the streets.

If I got jumped by a bunch of guys, I would rather have someone in body armor show up with mace than no-one at all.

Then I would say you and these self anointed "super heroes"are supremely ignorant of the laws governing the use of force, deadly force and self-defense. There is centuries of well established law (dating back to medieval England) governing when it is appropriate for civilians to use force and deadly force against assailants.

Anybody who likes to consider them a well informed citizen should read Massad Ayoob's "In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection". Read this even if you have no intention of ever owning a gun. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gravest-Extreme-Firearm-Personal-Protection/dp/0936279001

If I got jumped by a bunch of guys, I would rather have someone in body armor show up with mace than no-one at all

But how do these Super Yahoos know who is who in a situation like that? In the aforementioned 3 against 1 scenario, were the 3 the instigators or did the 1 try to rob the three and then had the tables turned on him?

Is that husky male who appears to be beating a woman a rapist? Or is he a vice cop who is trying to arrest a combative prostitute (who are known to yell "Rape!" when being handcuffed as to create a distraction)?

See the problem? You don't think do-gooders like these Yahoos have ended up in prison for getting involved in something they knew nothing about? You think just because he "only" carries mace that some individual might not end up dead from a head injury because of their actions and end up being charged with murder or manslaughter?

Use your Google Foo and look up Massad Ayoob's Ayoob Files. He's been writing about this stuff for years in an effort to educate the public about the use of force and deadly force. Ayoob is my "Super Hero": all research, writing. educating and no glory.

>How likely is it that the Air Force already has this developed and is just bringing this out of the closet?

It is a common plot beginning with the 1969 movie "Marooned" and on through the Bruce Willis movie where him and his guys saved earth from a renegade asteroid. Both (and other movies) used same plot where NASA is in a pickle but the moment was saved because the USAF had a secret spaceship.

In some ways this is not new, Air Force been working on manned space planes before most of you /. were born. i.e. X-20 Dyna-Soar, and excellent book with lotsa technical stuff (and reprints of advertisements by Boeing, Grumman, etc) is "Dyna-Soar: Hypersonic Strategic Weapons System" by Robert Godwin. It even comes with a DVD with various footage including public affairs of a general introducing the X20 astronauts and describing how the program will give USAF capabilities in space. http://www.amazon.com/Dyna-Soar-Hypersonic-Strategic-Weapons-System/dp/1896522955/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318364033&sr=8-1

X-20 was cancelled in 1963, I wonder if the big barrier was reusable TPS? TPS of the Shuttle was a considerable success (other materials would have been heavy reducing payload capacity), see "Orbiter Structure + Thermal Protection System" by Tom Moser http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2jN_26m8LM

I hereby challenge them. Their software versus my fast moving kids who often show up in photos as blurs. I think kids have built in sensors to let them know precisely when a camera is going off, thus enabling them to move at the exact moment to blur and/or ruin the photo.

Or... you could just buy a camera with a wide aperture and fantastic noise reduction at high ISO. That would allow you shutter speeds that would freeze even the fastest children. I guarantee the camera will be cheaper then Photoshop.

Case in point: Canon's G12 is at least $100 USD cheaper then Photoshop.

Pulitzer prize winner Laurie Garrett, author of e-book ‘I Heard The Sirens Scream’.

Listen to the audio interview with her
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201108261

Her audio-book at Amazon ($5.99):
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/B005DFHYQK/sciencefriday/

I can't say that they found the hand AFTER the hijacking. Perhaps it was swabbed from some surface prior to the incident? I don't know.

The Age of Paradox [1] provides a nice explanation. A society predicated on efficiency and productivity favors producing the same amount of work with less people, and paying those people more money. Inevitably, this leads to higher and higher unemployment and a situation where the remaining people (employed) are making more and more money. Note he is not referring to the top 1%. He is referring to you and I. Each of us is equally responsible for the situation we find ourselves in today. We work more overtime in order to make more money, and then wonder why there are so many more unemployed (who we just replaced by working more hours). One simple fix (suggested by me, not the author of the book) is to make it less profitable for one employee to do two people's work. As soon as it's more profitable to hire two people and stick to 37.5 hours of work, employment will go up and we'd all be happier people.

It's an interesting book. Give it a read!

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Age-Paradox-Charles-Handy/dp/0875846432

There's a new book called "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" that might be what you're asking for:

http://www.amazon.com/Car-Guys-vs-Bean-Counters/dp/1591844002

I haven't read it yet, but the reviews I've seen were positive.

That book exists: "Managers, not MBAs", by Henry Mintzberg. Well worth a read... and rather than a baseless rant, it's a well-argued book written by someone in the know.

What, nobody has mentioned Neal Stephenson's Interface, yet. A presidential candidate is interfaced with an instant polling system...

Disclaimer: I am NOT choosing sides in this post.

The notion that the Obama team is the only one in the prospective 2012 race to understand data mining and acting on numbers is pretty shallow. Rick Perry has a well documented (and apparently very well run) data mining team that he has used in the past and would no doubt use again in a presidential bid... More info here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/rick-perrys-scientific-campaign-method/ and here: http://www.thevictorylab.com/ and in this E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Rick-Perry-His-Eggheads-ebook/dp/B005HE8ED4

I didn't know Steve Jobs was Buddhist. That seriously improves his image a lot, as Buddhism is the only religion that can be taken seriously and isn't about judging and killing other people in the name of some imaginary person. Buddha himself has lived and told people to think things with their own brains instead of following some stupid book.

Someone should tell Buddhists that.

Alfie Kohn's body of work makes good reading for a sensible approach to education based on how kids actually learn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_Kohn

In this instance, his book "Punished by Rewards" is required reading.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=alfie+kohn&x=0&y=0

Essentially, when we reward for high scores (instead of focusing on improving actual learning), we get these kinds of decisions and further reinforcement of counterproductive outcomes.

The highly broken culture of education continues in a downward spiral.

Wrong search terms: "Magnetic Stripe Encoders" are what you are looking for.

~$300, won't handle the fancy card graphics and embossed numerals("Magnetic Stripe Card Embossers" are used for that, also perfectly licit off-the-shelf items); but will turn a card blank into something that an automated POS won't bat an eye at(and, in most cases, re-using a bank-issued card, even if the number on the card doesn't match the one on the stripe, should probably escape a retail employee's notice).

Magnetic card stock is also a legitimate off-the-shelf item, as are printers that will dump an arbitrary color image onto blanks(entirely non-suspicious, any organization that issues mag-stripe IDs probably has such a printer on the shelf somewhere.) Getting a card-stock supplier to do a large print run of cards identical to bank blanks would probably raise some eyebrows; so you would presumably have to steal or print your own.

Everything you need to produce fully functional magnetic stripe cards is fully licit, available off the shelf, and not particularly expensive. The only "secret" is the name and number prominently displayed on actual issued credit cards, and handed over during each transaction. The "chip and PIN" stuff is horribly broken; but at least it pretends to be concerned about card cloning...

Why in your right mind would be using any of these?

Because .NET helps you to be productive in programming for the OS with 90% of market?

Because the app store, sandboxed apps and a rigorously defined touch-oriented UI makes perfect sense for mobile devices?

--- and may make perfect sense for the mass market touch screen desktop or touch controller? Tech which isn't that far away.

Microsoft Touch Mouse

And I'm sure they will be boring and formulaic.

Right, because bestsellers aren't already.

And I'm sure they will be boring and formulaic.

Right, because bestsellers aren't already.

And I'm sure they will be boring and formulaic.

Right, because bestsellers aren't already.

I remember searching bookstores fruitlessly for one a couple decades ago (pre-Internet days), so I was surprised to find one still in print. I think there were probably several others published over the last fifty years focused specifically on Land (as opposed to histories of Polaroid) that are no longer available.

On a 99 cent book, the author gets 35 cents.

Depends on the sales system the author uses.

One of the biggest is Barnes and Noble. Their PubIt service gives the author 60%.

Amazon's Self Publish program gives 70% royalties to the author in certain markets, (List price minus delivery price of around 15 cents per megabyte).

Ebooks sold thru the major publishing houses usually yield far less than 35%, because they amortize the entire publishing process and some authors report they ding you for lost dead tree book sales due to ebook sales bases on a formula, which the author is contractually precluded from making public.

Sweet system bro, sweet. You'll have to let me know how much of a kick in the ass turbocore gives you, as that is the only reason I'm looking at switching my Deneb X4 for a Thuban is turbocore. I'd watch the passively cooled Radeon though, the temps AMD says are fine are a little hot for my tastes. After all they said up to 90C! was fine for the 48xx chips too. I'd watch the temps and if they aren't to your liking this one or the Accelero series are both really good VGA coolers.

We don't, and have never, lived in anything approaching a free market.

Unfortunately you're partially right. Except for slavery the 1820s was as close to a free market as we've had. This was when Alexis de Tocqueville toured the USA before writing his "Democracy in America". Almost all politics was local and there were no career politicians. There weren't all the laws, licenses, and regulations running a business. Or a farm, or inn, boarding house etc. Growing up before I was legally able to get a part-time job in high school from spring to fall I went around my neighborhood with a lawnmower and can of gas cutting grass to earn money. I helped people with their gardens, planning it, digging it out, and planting seedlings or sowing seeds. In many places now to commercially do lawn care or landscaping local governments require licenses. In my own back yard my family and I grew our own garden and I composted anything and everything organic. I tossed our dog's feces and the cats' litter in the compost as well. I few years ago the city I live in said I had to hide the composting feces in a box or other closed container. I couldn't just mix it in with the leafs, cut grass, and other yard debris. Unless of course they were contained too. Just this morning before going online I went outside to do some raking. In maybe 15 minutes I filled 5 large compostable yard bags yet all I did was put a dent in the leafs to be raked. And I'm supposed to have a bin large enough?

Stabilization policies should be used to minimize pricing variations, which is good. The dairy industry for instance benefited from this

I disagree, governments should not be regulating or have many of the policies they do have. The sole purpose of government is to protect life. liberty, and property as well as create a climate wherein everyone has equal opportunity, opportunity not outcome.

Oh, and actually I know of an ISP in Maine that drives DSL over some fairly long distances. He's made a nice business, but it requires a lot of work, and capital. And risk. Telcoms don't much care for risk.

Take away Telcoms' and Cable's monopolies and require them to compeat in a freer market. I don't mean a duopoly, allow any body to offer cable, telephone, and electrical services. Same with cable and fiber. It's not ideal but in "A Broadband Utopia" the IEEE "Spectrum" says how a group of communities in northeastern Utah got together to build a broadband infrastructure. Telcoms and cable cos would not build it so they did themselves. Of course having to face competition these monopoly businesses pressed Utah to pass a law outlawing the communities from delivering their own services. We've had articles on /. about how after a small city in MN asked broadband providers build the infrastructure and was refused it decided to build it out themselves.Of course those who refused to build out broadband themselves then sued the city to stop them. Judge Tosses Telco Suit Over City-Owned Network.

Falcon