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Science is right, There is a God

After reading "The Shadow Factory" ( http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Factory-NSA-Eavesdropping-America/dp/0307279391/ ), I assumed the NSA already had spyware in all of our infrastructure.

As the parent says: "IQ tests still predict performance very well in many jobs. It's both fantastic and fantastically politically unacceptable". This is so well known as to be beyond any credible dispute. As an overall predictor of success, IQ is known to be quite good. Here's a nice summary. Note that the correlation between IQ and professional success is even stronger than the correlation in height between parents and children.

If China uses this policy widely, over a long period of time, it will be interesting to watch the media try to spin it. Such a test must somehow be evil, because there will undoubtedly be disparities in the gender and/or race and/or background of the people who pass the test. Yet everyone will know - whether or not they dare say it - that the test is purely economic: get the best people for the money.

The elephant in the room: what everyone knows but no one will admit. Shades of The Bell Curve.

I will take exception to one of your conclusions. The "Feminist movement" actually does want equality. You forget that not all women are feminists. There are those (I met a few recently who openly admitted this in their own case) who despise feminism because it meant they couldn't be 'pretty little girls' all their lives and had to step up and fend for themselves. These are the women who actively opposed the feminist movement when it first gained steam.

In fact, many modern feminists would agree with your essential points (that feminism is being distorted and that the principle of gender equality has gone down the crapper). There two provocative books on the subject by Christina Hoff Sommers Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women and The WAR AGAINST BOYS: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. I heard about the latter in a radio interview and the examples she raised then were about male portrayal in the media today. Essentially, her view is that revenge for past female oppression is not a worthy goal for feminists and it doesn't help the cause either.

I will take exception to one of your conclusions. The "Feminist movement" actually does want equality. You forget that not all women are feminists. There are those (I met a few recently who openly admitted this in their own case) who despise feminism because it meant they couldn't be 'pretty little girls' all their lives and had to step up and fend for themselves. These are the women who actively opposed the feminist movement when it first gained steam.

In fact, many modern feminists would agree with your essential points (that feminism is being distorted and that the principle of gender equality has gone down the crapper). There two provocative books on the subject by Christina Hoff Sommers Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women and The WAR AGAINST BOYS: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. I heard about the latter in a radio interview and the examples she raised then were about male portrayal in the media today. Essentially, her view is that revenge for past female oppression is not a worthy goal for feminists and it doesn't help the cause either.

Actually, it goes deeper than that -- as far as I know, you can't even buy a phone running Symbian, period, that's capable of 3G data on any network in the United States (with the *possible* exception of an imported Japanese phone that by some miracle of God might work on Nextel). For whatever reason, Symbian is almost a synonym for "Expensive GSM phone that nevertheless can't do EDGE, and is capable of 3G UMTS only at 1900/2100MHz". Thus, no sane American likely to be remotely interested in a phone running Symbian is going to go out and spend $500 or more to buy an unlocked phone that's basically a GPRS paperweight capable of making voice calls in a pinch.

Wow. Just. Wow.

I'm sorry, I honestly don't mean offense, but I'd like to point out that in less than half the time it took to type all that you could have gone to Amazon and typed "Nokia unlocked 3G" and extended "as far as I know" into actual accurate territory. Nokia's had 3G capable phones in the US for some time now. They work great. I own one.

Cheapest result:

Nokia 5230, $183 UNLOCKED: http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Unlocked-Touchscreen-Camera-microSD/dp/B003DZERC6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=wireless&qid=1278529745&sr=1-1

There's a whole page of them, most under $500, many under $200, and many of them support US 3G. You have to shop carefully if you want T-Mobile, AT&T, and/or European (some of them support only one, some support two, only a few support all three).

I have the $270 Nokia 5800 and I can assure you it works just fine on 3G in the United States on the AT&T network. I don't have a data plan and forgot to delete the carrier connection, and it clearly showed a "3G" indicator (and burned through a decent bit of data in the few seconds before I realized it was using Carrier Internet and not my WiFi connection, thereby incurring a data charge).

I'll grant that Nokia doesn't appear to make any Verizon-compatible phones any more, and that none of the carriers seem to carry Symbian phones in their stores based on a brief web search.

Kids of "uninformed" parents are just as likely to get this

Yesterday, I just starting reading a book about the documented health risks of GMOs. I had recently heard the author talking about his book on a late-night radio show. I have only just barely started reading the first chapter, so I am not yet very far into the book.

But in the first chapter, I read about a 1996 study in the UK, where GM potatoes affected "virtually every organ system of young rats - with most changes found after just 10 days. Their brains, livers, and testicles were generally smaller." Mr. Pusztai, the head researcher was interviewed on TV with permission from his director. A couple of days later he was released from his job and silenced with threats of a lawsuit, the 20-member research team was disbanded, and the project terminated.

Then the first chapter goes on to talk about a rat feeding study where rats fed GM tomatoes got bleeding stomachs and several died.

Also in the first chapter, there they mentioned a 90-day rat feeding trial where the rats were fed Bt corn. "During the 90-day rat feeding trial, a group of 20 males and 20 females fed the corn developed multiple reactions. Changes included those typically found in response to alergies, infections, toxins, and diseases including cancer, anemia, and blood pressure problems." "Also found were increased blood sugar levels, kidney inflammation, and liver and kidney lesions."

Flipping ahead beyond the few pages that I have read so far, I see headings like "sheep died after grazing in Bt cotton fields" and "farmers report pigs and cows became sterile from GM corn." A few pages further on is the heading "Mice fed Roundup Ready soy had unexplained changes in testicular cells."

The introduction to the book mentions that "soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% in the United Kingdom, soon after genetically engineered soy was introduced." I plan to keep reading until I finish the book. I also plan to continue avoiding foods such as corn, soy, canola, and cottonseed, which are the most likely to be from GMO crops.

The Wall Street Journal article talks about the "selective eating" psychiatric disorder, which will be in the new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The article says that "doctors worry that over the long term such eating habits could lead to nutritional deficiencies linked to health concerns, including bone and heart problems." Despite being a selective eater, I eat a healthy wide variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, walnuts and grass fed buffalo meat. I believe my long term eating habits have been a varied, well balanced safe diet. However, I do try to avoid soft drinks, sweets, junk food, trans-fats, saturated fat, excessive pesticides, and GMOs.

Decades of "selective eating" has not hurt my health. I am 55 years old. With the help of a good diet and daily exercise, my total cholesterol is only 135 without the help of medication, my triglycerides are a reasonable low 108, my glucose level is 73, and by blood pressure is typically 125/74 without the help of medication. I recently spent a week in the summer heat, digging a ditch and prying up rocks by hand with a pick and shovel, in the hard dry rocky soil of the Arizona mountains. Unlike many other people my age, I can still do hard physical work, just as well as when I was in my 20's.

• Genetic Roulette by Jeffrey M. Smith
• The Non-GMO Shopping Guide

Here's the rub: We've been genetically engineering food since the dawn of society. Society as we know it came from the ability to improve plants through breeding and mutations.

Before GM, we've been cross breeding and irradiating plants using X-rays or using mutagenic chemicals to increase mutation rate until we get what we're looking for. This is much more potentially harmful then carefully changing only the genes we need to.

All food is GM food. What gets that label is the carefully, methodically changed, safer food, while all of our foodstock has been randomly and chaotically modified over thousands of years. New GE plants are tested by the FDA, the NIH, and the EPA. New conventional crops get no testing. There have been toxic chemicals found in food sold that have been "traditionally" engineered, but none that have been "on purpose" engineered in in what has become known as GE.

GM food is safer then it's counterparts. I'll take the GM food, please..

BTW, for an excellent reading on the topic, I recommend the Whole Earth Discipline. Where he talks about his expertise (he's an ecologist/biologist by training) he's spot on. I don't agree with him on all the topics included in the book, but the arguments he makes on the rest (like urbanization and power generation) are also worth reading, if not the final word. But the GE and other ecological/biological topics he touches on are full of good insights.

Grade school level math. The most complicated math in the series is this: “if a times b is less than 6, and we measure a to be 2, then b must be less than 3.” If you can follow that, you’ll be fine.

Physics that uses no more math than this is not graduate-level physics.

Physics that uses no more math than this is not college-level physics, unless you want to count the first week or two of the not-for-majors version of the 100-level stuff. Even that requires a fairly decent grasp of algebra and trigonometry.

You can talk about quite a few concepts in college-level physics provided that you do so in relatively broad terms. But reaching graduate level physics in any honest sense requires quite a bit of advanced math. Further, it is not something you can learn in any real sense over a period of two months even if you somehow happen to be the smartest human ever born.

If you want a look at what college-level quantum mechanics actually entails, the book "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David Griffiths is commonly used. But note that the lecture component of these classes easily covers more material than you can pick up by reading the book alone. Also note that students taking courses using this book have usually already taken at least 2 to 3 courses covering quantum mechanics and other topics in modern physics beyond the 100-level courses which provide a survey of elementary topics in physics, and that they have a fairly good grounding in things like linear algebra and differential equations.

http://www.amazon.com/Blakes-Region-Non-Format/dp/B000085RK5/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1278440411&sr=8-2
http://www.buy.com/prod/toshiba-all-multi-region-region-free-code-free-digital-cinema/q/listingid/39816733/loc/111/210876659.html

80 bucks tops and that gets you season Season 1. Many computer dvds will let you pick a different region up to 5 times. You could buy one of those and set it that way on your computer... Dig around a bit and I bet you can find a region free with hdmi and you wouldnt need a PAL tv.

There is much that is not on dvd out there I admit this. Yes it is a pain. However, perhaps you should write (not email) the BBC and ask them to come out with it on DVD/Bluray? Maybe they would? Its not like they have to do a bunch of work they already encoded it...

Lets be honest folks why we go to 'pirate' sites. We are being cheap. Oh sure there is *some* stuff you cant get anywhere else, or like the above example a pain to get. But 99% of the time we are being cheap. We are doing it as we see the value of those things as very low, or we do not have the money.

Just because we perceive it as a low value thing does not mean it is. For example if I had a gold bar. It would be relatively useless to me. Not of much value (much like all money). But it does have value to get other things. But if I hold onto that something it is still valueless. There are no buyers (as I am hording it) so it has no value. Now if I were to sell it *THEN* it may have value. With 'pirating' there is a demand so some sort of value is placed on it. If you didnt value it at all you wouldnt bother downloading it at all. For example if you are a widow in his 60s would you download the entire back catalog of barney the dinosaur? No, it has no value to you. But if you are a parent who has a 2 year old who likes barney you might be downloading it. It has some value to you. Now it is a matter is it worth it to you to part with some cash.

On the other end you have people who make DVDs. To make a 10k or 5k run of DVDs is not exactly cheap (I would estimate about 40-80k). They are also going to want to make a healthy profit (which is usually at least double the production costs). Ever wonder why bargain bin prices are usually 2-5 bucks that is why. It is close to production cost they are just getting rid of them at little profit. Pressing a DVD is cheap, hiring people to encode it, make menus, test it, etc is NOT. Now logically people would think oh then if they make more and sell more of them the cost should be lower. That is not true at all. People are willing as the *PERCEIVED* value is high and are willing to spend up to 4-5x the cost of production (hence the 20-25 price point for new stuff). Notice it is the perception that set the value not actual costs of production. If that perception is less than production costs companies will not make the DVD. In your case they see region 1 as a low proposition. You need to *SHOW* them there is demand there, you need to show them they have low cost to get in. Talk to them like businessmen and they will listen to you. Talk to them like a beggar and they will ignore you.

The American media still love to jab the Russians. It's an old, childish resentment going back to the Cold War and the space race. Even today, you'll find thousands of American-made documentaries about the space race in which the Soviets are only mentioned as an afterthought (even though they pioneered almost every space "first" from 1957-1969). I've only seen one English documentary that even tried to deal seriously with the Soviet space program (and, of course, you can't buy it in the U.S., it was only released in Region 2 and only aired once in the U.S., on the National Geographic Channel)

The big exception to this has been the United States since 1980. Anyone complaining about excessive taxation or regulation today ought to read up on what US law looked like in 1960 or so.

Anyone who complains the USA doesn't have enough taxation and regulation needs to read Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The one problem with the era it was written in was slavery.

Falcon

While I am not disputing what you are saying, I believe shelling can also be hugely ineffective. In Fred Bridgland's book A War for Africa he tells of how South African G5 (155 mm) shells were unable to injure or kill enemy soldiers if landing more than 3m from the target. Bridgland attributes this to the thick sand in which the shells landed.

Air burst fuses are nowadays common on larger artillery shells and inflict much more damage than explosion on impact.

Sure they can. It's called "lying". All humans have the capacity, and the last time I looked cops were still human.

Not really - they can lie all they want and be free from prosecution, but normal humans are prosecuted for such things in the system. Watch 10 Rules for Dealing With Police at YouTube and read Constitutional Chaos for advice (former) and academic study of the problem (latter).

This was the very goal of the 9/11 attacks and we have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.

That's what bin Laden wrote, years before 9/11. That was his plan. Read Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America., published in 1999.

>Guys running through exploding shells in movies pisses me off...
>the scene in Band Of Brothers when they are in the forest during
>the Battle of the Bulge... where trees are being shredded and people
>are vapourized... that is closer to the truth

While I am not disputing what you are saying, I believe shelling can also be hugely ineffective. In Fred Bridgland's book A War for Africa he tells of how South African G5 (155 mm) shells were unable to injure or kill enemy soldiers if landing more than 3m from the target. Bridgland attributes this to the thick sand in which the shells landed.

on Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea
"The Van Allen Belt Is On Fire!"

Look, I'm not going to wast my time arguing with someone who doesn't understand basic atmospheric physics and thermodynamics. It's not worth my time. There are an incredible amount of books, research articles, etc. that cover the topics. If you are unwilling to even make the most basic effort to understand what you're talking about, you aren't a rational skeptic or any kind of skeptic. Your just another torch-and-pitchfork, burn-the-witch ignoramus.

You want some sources? You can't figure out to use google? Here's a good book on the subject:

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Climate-Peixoto-P-Jose/dp/0883187124

And there are dozens of others recommended on Amazon that would also be good reading.

For modeling, you can try: http://kiwi.atmos.colostate.edu/group/dave/at604.html

This is a free (as in beer) introduction into the rudimentary concepts. Or you can start with simple zero dimension energy balance models such as this one:

http://www.math.nyu.edu/caos_teaching/physical_oceanography/numerical_exercises/ebm/zero_dim_ebm.html

And work your way up from there. Or if these are too advanced for you, you can start out with just about any introductory college level physics book that covers basic atmosphere and thermodynamics principles.

Or, if you're one of the climate science conspiracy nuts and you don't trust any materials related to climate science, then you can start with a good book on meteorology like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Meteorology-Understanding-Atmosphere-CengageNOW-Printed/dp/0495108928/ref=pd_sim_b_7

This should at least dispel your erroneous assumptions and reasoning from your earlier post.

I ENCOURAGE rational skepticism. It adds to a discussion. It makes people think in different ways. IT IS A GOOD THING.

I DO NOT encourage blatant willful ignorance, which is what you are demonstrating. It adds absolutely nothing to the discussion, and is a general waste of time for both skeptics and supporters.

If you are unwilling to expend the effort to truly educate yourself (and it seems like you are), then there is nothing further to discuss.

Look, I'm not going to wast my time arguing with someone who doesn't understand basic atmospheric physics and thermodynamics. It's not worth my time. There are an incredible amount of books, research articles, etc. that cover the topics. If you are unwilling to even make the most basic effort to understand what you're talking about, you aren't a rational skeptic or any kind of skeptic. Your just another torch-and-pitchfork, burn-the-witch ignoramus.

You want some sources? You can't figure out to use google? Here's a good book on the subject:

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Climate-Peixoto-P-Jose/dp/0883187124

And there are dozens of others recommended on Amazon that would also be good reading.

For modeling, you can try: http://kiwi.atmos.colostate.edu/group/dave/at604.html

This is a free (as in beer) introduction into the rudimentary concepts. Or you can start with simple zero dimension energy balance models such as this one:

http://www.math.nyu.edu/caos_teaching/physical_oceanography/numerical_exercises/ebm/zero_dim_ebm.html

And work your way up from there. Or if these are too advanced for you, you can start out with just about any introductory college level physics book that covers basic atmosphere and thermodynamics principles.

Or, if you're one of the climate science conspiracy nuts and you don't trust any materials related to climate science, then you can start with a good book on meteorology like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Meteorology-Understanding-Atmosphere-CengageNOW-Printed/dp/0495108928/ref=pd_sim_b_7

This should at least dispel your erroneous assumptions and reasoning from your earlier post.

I ENCOURAGE rational skepticism. It adds to a discussion. It makes people think in different ways. IT IS A GOOD THING.

I DO NOT encourage blatant willful ignorance, which is what you are demonstrating. It adds absolutely nothing to the discussion, and is a general waste of time for both skeptics and supporters.

If you are unwilling to expend the effort to truly educate yourself (and it seems like you are), then there is nothing further to discuss.

This is BS. You don't actually mind the name, just THE ACRONYM. Any reason you're FORCED to use the most common abbreviated name instead of forming one of your own, or worse, USING THE FULL NAME?

Don't want to say "gimp"? Fine. So call it IMP, GNU-IMP, Image MP, etc. If the name bothered anyone all that much, they'd just use CinePaint instead.

Except when I want to point people to the homepage, gimp.org. Or when they launch the program and see GIMP in giant letters on the splash screen. And in their dock/taskbar. And their task switcher. And the titles of books written about it. And all over the Wikipedia page. Face it: GIMP is the de facto name of the program. If individuals try to call it something else, it will only lead to confusion, and a name change is too minor an issue to make an effective fork. Change needs to come from the project leaders recognizing that it's a stupid, counter-productive name that costs the project respect and marketshare.

Get a book about politics or political history; I suggest this one, it's been around for a while and has practically become a guidebook for American politics. In some places it is even used as a textbook in University classes. That's a good one but feel free to choose a different one. It will help you understand what is really going on and alleviate some of your confusion.

Odd, I went to Amazon and listened to a sample of the 60 minute single song album, and it included this very portion.

http://www.amazon.com/Amarok-Mike-Oldfield/dp/B00004T9AT

I have no Idea if that is repeatable or if the samples are chosen at random.

Let's see if we can leverage the wisdom of the crowds, or if crowds are all idiots (slashdot included, of course).

Hi, this is the smarmy sarcastic post that will be kinda funny but not really and will distract the crowd from garnering the bits of their collected wisdom and divert them to a completely unrelated subject but still will be tangentially related enough that it won't be considered offtopic.

Straight from the source:

The following is a partial list of merchants selling items at Amazon.com which may be included in your order, and the states in which they charge sales tax.

        * Amazon.com LLC: KS, KY, ND, NY and WA
        * Amazon Digital Services, Inc.: KY, ND, NY and WA (Kindle content, MP3s, and digital videos are only taxable in KY and WA)
        * Magazine Express, Inc.: AL and WA
        * Synapse Services, Inc.: WA only
        * Target.com/ITC: All states other than AK and VT
        * Hachette Digital, Inc.: AL, AZ, CO, CT, DC, HI, ID, IN, KY, LA, ME, MS, NC, NE, NJ, NM, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, WA, WI and WY*
        * Harper Collins Publishers, LLC: All states other than AK, AL, AZ, DE, HI, MT, NH, NV, OK, OR, SD, VT and WY*
        * Penguin Group (USA) Inc: All States*
        * Simon & Schuster Digital Sales, Inc.: All states other than AK, DE, MT, NH, and OR*
        * Macmillan: AZ, CO, CT, DC, HI, IN, KY, ME, MS, NC, NE, NJ, NM, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, WA, WI and WY*
        * Zondervan Corporation LLC: CA, CO, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, LA, MA, MD, MI, MO, NC, NV, OH, PA, SC, TX and WA*

* Kindle books sold by various publishers are subject to sales tax based on the publisher's state tax reporting obligations and the taxability of digital books in those states. As a result, sales tax for Kindle books sold by the publisher may differ from the sales tax to which you've been accustomed for Kindle books.

If you have questions about tax on items purchased from these listed merchants, please contact Amazon.com Customer Service.

Purchases made by buyers in Kansas, for example, have to pay sales tax on Amazon purchases, because Amazon maintains a distribution center just north of Coffeyville.

I don't quite agree with your ranting against CS. For starters, I don't really see you mentioning the fact that CS typically has different tracks.

At my university we had two main tracks, applied computer science and theoretical computer science, with the first being further sub-dived in "computer systems" and "software engineering" and the theoretical track being sub-dived in "algorithmic" and "foundational computer science".

In the bachelor part of the education (3 years), you get a mix of subjects from all tracks. The computer systems track will give you courses like computer architecture ,which allows you to read this particular nice book: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Approach-4th/dp/0123704901 and where you write your own CPU emulator. It will also give you the subject operating systems, which gives you time to read this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Operating-System-Concepts-Abraham-Silberschatz/dp/0470233990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278151357&sr=8-1 or this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Operating-Systems-International-Version/dp/0138134596/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278151357&sr=8-3 and typically gives you assignments where you write some kernel module like an IO scheduler or memory manager.

The software engineering track will give you subjects about requirements engineering, software engineering (obviously) and teach you diverse stuff like UML diagrams, development cycles, design patterns, etc.

The algorithms track on its turn invited me to look at a diverse range of algorithms (obviously again), but also to datastructures (how does something like a hashmap works internally, what kinds of trees do we have, what variations on linked lists are there, etc).

The foundational track then let me look at stuff like turing machines, grammars, finite state machines, theory of computation etc. This is the stuff few 'programmers' would study by themselves if not told they should.

Finally, knowledge of several tracks was combined for the subject compiler construction, where you had to write in C a Pascal to MIPS compiler. For this course you needed to have (C) programming skills, enough skills to understand a language you might not know yet (Pascal), understand how a machine works at the low level (registers, assembly, etc) and have some idea about context free grammars.

Now all of this is in the bachelor, meaning all the subjects are basically introductions to their respective fields. You're not a scientist yet if you have completed them. In the Master phase, you choose a specific track to specialize in but you can still take subjects from the other tracks if you want. In my case I choose the computer systems track and learned some additional stuff about grids, parallel computing, software architecture, etc. Now the thing is, you can't really say that CS educates you to become a scientist or not or that CS skills have no practical value if you don't take into consideration the track chosen by the student. Obviously an applied computer science track has more practical value for the average company than the theoretical track, but it depends on what you want to do really.

Most of all I don't agree with your point that CS somehow tried to cram knowledge in the heads of dumb students. Far from it... the way I experienced CS was a period of my life where I was simply allotted time and opportunity to directly dedicate on bettering myself. Classes weren't there to teach me stuff, but to *support* me in learning. Basically what the CS program does is compiling a lis

That would be funny if it wasn't true. You can get it from Amazon too.

check out the reviews on the amazon link - hilarious

I like how you accuse one group of alarmism

[citation needed]

Very funny. The citation was my quote from you at the beginning of the post.

...Where's your evidence that environmental regulations will even come close to destroying the economy if passed?

Start here.

Funny thing, that book you refer to, it doesn't seem to refer to destroying economies at all. Destroying crops, babies, reproductive capacity, and old trees are all mentioned, but not the economy. The closest he comes is stating that a high rate of profit due to monopoly will "destroy that parsimony which, in other circumstances, is natural to the character of the merchant." I think we can all agree that environmental regulation is a very different thing from a mercantile monopoly. Care to try again?

I like how you accuse one group of alarmism

[citation needed]

, and then go on immediately to blithely dismiss all manner of regulation as attempts "to destroy the economy". In other words, you start with the claim that some people are trying to regulate, "and end with the claim that therefore catastrophe will result." I'd say impending wholesale destruction of an economy is an extraordinary claim, and like you say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So where's your evidence that environmentalists are trying to destroy the economy? Where's your evidence that environmental regulations will even come close to destroying the economy if passed?

Start here.

I'm here to tell you, I think this is a good idea. I like the design. See, my wife is generally quite smart. She's got BAs in chemsitry and biology and a MS in forensic science and she still can't put batteries in the WiiMote correctly.

I can't help you with any other various battery operated devices, but for the Wiimote, you really can't beat an inductive charger/battery pack combination. They come with battery packs that only go in one way and are available in models that are compatible with both the silicone sleeve and the Wii Motion Plus. I have a four port set up (similar to this) and find it to be a valuable accessory.

One I just read is Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style by Randy Olson. It's not a great book but it sure covers the basic ideas. People go into discussions with preconceptions and prejudices. That's always the case. The question is how much they let those preconceptions steer their thinking. People who spend a lot of time on research are somewhat more likely to let go of their preconceptions because they're used to doing that, but most people aren't. In general people would rather believe something they want to be true, whether or not it IS, and it's easier to influence people if you say something interesting that's sort of factual, than if you say something boring that's 100% factual. People who spend a lot of time doing research find it much easier to be boring and 100% factual, and as a result, they do a poor job of convincing the rest of the world that what they're saying is relevant or worth thinking about.

What they find is that, in states and countries where there is a big gap between the incomes of rich and poor, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity and teenage pregnancy are more common, the homicide rate is higher, life expectancy is shorter, and children’s educational performance and literacy scores are worse . . . [Wilkinson and Pickett] emphasise that it is not only the poor who suffer from the effects of inequality, but the majority of the population.

That would be funny if it wasn't true. You can get it from Amazon too.

I'm not sure which is funnier/sadder; That there are almost 400 reviews for this cable or that a "refurbished" one costs $1000.

That would be funny if it wasn't true. You can get it from Amazon too.

Some pretty funny reviews there too :)

And it's old technology... read comments to appreciate: http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM

That would be funny if it wasn't true. You can get it from Amazon too.

I dislike the idea that credit cards and drivers licenses will probably all eventually have RFID chips in them. I also dislike the idea of grocery stores using shoppers discount cards to track people's shopping habits. I use an RFID blocking wallet, even though my credit card and driver's license probably do not yet have RFID tags in them.

A few companies have experimented with putting RFID tags into clothing for inventory purposes. Unfortunately, those passive RFID tags would then remain in the clothes when worn by customers. The uniquely identifiable serial number on each item in my clothing or wallet, would then make me trackable when going from store to store.

I prefer to do much of my shopping at the two grocery stores in town which do not use shopper's cards. The other store's database probably shows that I eat lots fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains, along with modest amounts of grass fed buffalo meat. It would also show that I prefer organic foods and low sodium foods, that I totally avoid transfats and GMO foods, and do not smoke, drink or eat junk food. Perhaps, I should hope that my health insurance company gets a hold of that personal information.

I am also dislike the idea of governments possibly being able to track everyone's daily movements by knowing where their cell phone is at all times.

Call me paranoid if you want. But, even though I am not a Christian believer, I would still definitely reject anything that might possibly be the mark of the beast. For instance, I would not ever accept having an RFID tag implanted in my body (or anything similar).

• The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance
• Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID
• Spychips.com
• NoCards.org

I dislike the idea that credit cards and drivers licenses will probably all eventually have RFID chips in them. I also dislike the idea of grocery stores using shoppers discount cards to track people's shopping habits. I use an RFID blocking wallet, even though my credit card and driver's license probably do not yet have RFID tags in them.

A few companies have experimented with putting RFID tags into clothing for inventory purposes. Unfortunately, those passive RFID tags would then remain in the clothes when worn by customers. The uniquely identifiable serial number on each item in my clothing or wallet, would then make me trackable when going from store to store.

I prefer to do much of my shopping at the two grocery stores in town which do not use shopper's cards. The other store's database probably shows that I eat lots fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains, along with modest amounts of grass fed buffalo meat. It would also show that I prefer organic foods and low sodium foods, that I totally avoid transfats and GMO foods, and do not smoke, drink or eat junk food. Perhaps, I should hope that my health insurance company gets a hold of that personal information.

I am also dislike the idea of governments possibly being able to track everyone's daily movements by knowing where their cell phone is at all times.

Call me paranoid if you want. But, even though I am not a Christian believer, I would still definitely reject anything that might possibly be the mark of the beast. For instance, I would not ever accept having an RFID tag implanted in my body (or anything similar).

• The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance
• Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID
• Spychips.com
• NoCards.org

Infotopia. read it.

If only there was a way that you could listen to a song before buying it, or read someone else's opinion about a movie before watching it. And if only there were free sources of music and movies to watch...

Like it or not corporations have made America into the economic giant it is today. And we all benefit from them. Only a corporation could take a product (like an iPhone for example) and turn it into a billion dollar industry overnight. I recommend "The Company, A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea" http://www.amazon.com/Company-History-Revolutionary-Library-Chronicles/dp/0679642498 by the editor the The Economist. He makes the point it wasn't England that colonized the world, it was companies, The Dutch East India Company, The Hudson's Bay Company, The Royal African Company, The Virginia Company, etc.. What's more companies today are relatively tame in comparison.

|Like an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold Is a wise reprover to a listening ear.| |A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.| Contemporaneously -|||- Immense specificity of individual breadth of understanding is being gathered feverishly by the upcoming Institution manipulators. Each opportunity given for one of us to respond to material events/revelations illuminates the landscape constituted by the intellects and hearts of those who participate. Even observation of the matter and the responses given is observed by elevated outlooks(net analysis). This results through inductive reasoning in knowledge of each Cloud traveler and their tendencies. Simply put_No response is garbage unless it was created out of pure chaos and remains indeterminable. A recent short novel "The Devil's Earring" [Matthew Ellise] inquires into the results of our society recreating the primordial collective unconscious into a rudimentary pseudo-material form. It goes on to explain some of the ultimate ends of the aims being taken daily by Global Citizens to remain connected. Not a bad read for 90 pages. http://www.amazon.com/The-Devils-Earring-ebook/dp/B003OUXBVI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1277858185&sr=8-2

This is not a new concept. David W. Moore discusses something very similar in his book, The Opinion Makers

Basically, Moore argues that the purpose of polling is to measure the opinions of those who have considered an issue, not to measure 'top of mind' opinions.

One of the most interesting examples discussed in the book was a poll done leading up to the invasion of Iraq. The poll asked respondents if they felt the U.S. Government should invade Iraq, then depending on how the respondent answered, the pollster followed up with a second question that basically asked if the respondent would be disappointed if the Government performed the opposite action. I don't recall the exact breakdown, but basically if you evaluated only the first question, it appeared that around 60% of those polled wanted us to invade Iraq, but after evaluating the second question, only 28% desired us to go to war and 30% desired us not to go to war. A plurality were indifferent to the actions of the Government.

I am waiting for the android based tablets.

Wait no more.

First off, I am a huge Martin Gardner fan and if this puzzle intrigues you and you haven't heard of him, get one of his books.

This problem hinges very greatly on how it is phrased and I think it's more a trick of English converting to statistics than it is a true puzzle. If you were to rephrase this problem as "My first child was a boy born on Tuesday now what are the odds that my next child is a boy?" But they don't. They phrase it as after the fact of both births we are now studying a set of two objects that have been determined prior to me asking the question. This ordering causes the set to be enumerable. Which brings in an interesting piece of information theory to this game. Whenever you say something about one child that is exclusive to that child and that trait is enumerable than you have just affected the outcome of that second child. In the original two childs problem this is just gender. But in the above problem it pairs gender with day of week the child was born on. Now since ordering matters you recognize that whether or not the older or younger child is the one in question creates a different scenario and you can't have twins because only one was born on Tuesday. The article does a good job of explaining this.

The interesting thing is that the answer to this comes down to 13/27. And the larger the enumerable set is of possibilities, the closer this converges to 1/2. If you did this with a specific day of the year, your answer would be 729/1459 which is even closer to 1/2. The general rule is that for a set with N possibilities you would have (N*2 - 1)/(N*4 - 1). Now, what's interesting is if N is unbounded or unenumerable? What if I said "I have two children, one of whom is a boy that likes the number 1835736583. What's the probability that my other child is a boy?" Wouldn't it converge to 1/2?

Alfa 1000mW 1W 802.11b/g USB Wireless WiFi Network Adapter With Original Alfa Screw-On Swivel 9dBi Rubber Antenna works great for me for $35. Using kismet or your choice of promiscuous sniffing tool.

If the interference is 2.4-based 802.11b/g, you'll be able to find it. Won't help you any with 802.11n, which may just be your problem. Might be someone's 2.4GHz phone. Might be someone who microwaves a bunch of stuff. 2.4GHz is a swap free-for-all.

Behold, decades of networking research and painstaking software development has brought us to this moment--watering tomatoes on a website.

And that's not going to change until you start wiring stuff into/altering people's brains.

Luster Leaf Rapiclip Foam Wire Tie. If it's great for tender tomatoes, I'm sure it'll work quite well for soft brains as well.

Oh, the things that are wrong with these sentences:

"Plato's ideas were a dangerous threat to Greek religion. He said that mathematical laws and not the gods controlled the universe. Plato's own teacher [Aristotle] had been executed for heresy. Secrecy was normal in ancient times, especially for esoteric and religious knowledge, but for Plato it was a matter of life and death."

Okay, I spent most of May and June TAing a course on Greek and Roman Myth and religion - and this really misrepresents how Greek religion worked in the first place. There was no such thing as heresy in the Olympian religion, because there was no dogma in the first place. For that matter, there was no concept of religion as we think of it.

Religion in ancient Greece was about action rather than belief. The closest thing we have to a phrase meaning religion is "sacre facere," which means "to do the sacred things," ie. sacrifice something and partake in the communal feast. This included matters such as religious festivals. What somebody believed was complete unimportant in ancient Athens - it was what they did that mattered.

Furthermore, there was no dogma - religious practices varied from cult to cult, and even the priesthood wasn't really organized. An ancient Greek priest was the guy who performed the sacrifice, and was a volunteer from the community. It wasn't his day job, there was no formal training, just a loose tradition that could be changed as circumstances required. The exception was the Elysian mysteries, of which even now little is known.

The actual impiety charge against Socrates was that he was "refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state and introducing other, new divinities." Now, the second one is interesting, as apparently, Socrates would talk to a "god" on his shoulder - hence, introducing a new divinity to the city. But refusing to recognize the gods was not a matter of him being persecuted for his beliefs (as noted, the ancient Greeks didn't care what somebody believed, only what they did), but for him forcing those beliefs on others in the Agora by accosting them and playing devil's advocate.

In fact, when you look at it (and the Apology by Plato), it seems that for the most part the impiety charge was part of Socrates having the book thrown at him for being a general nuisance that half of Athens wanted to get rid of.

If you want to know how ancient Greek religion actually worked, there's a very good book you can get here: http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greek-Religion-Desktop-Editions/dp/140518177X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277777750&sr=1-1

Get a VOIP phone, but avoid Skype at all costs. They're not particularly cheap for a VOIP gateway, and you're locked in with the phone and their service. Get a standard SIP device instead.
How about this one?

So what? It doesn't have like a soul and stuff, man!

Kibo cries!

As does Ray Kurtzweil.