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the Alex de Tocqueville institute is forgotten, as is Dan Lyons...

Lyons actually went on to create the mega-popular Fake Steve Jobs blog, which he spun into a book deal. So it's a bit of a reach to call him "forgotten".

The one I keep in my truck.

http://www.amazon.com/Bare-Tool-Cordless-Reciprocating-Contractors-Special/dp/B000VEUVZE

Celiac disease is another possibility but again this is not a difficult diagnosis

Tell that to every doctor I'd ever seen in my life (being visibly malnourished, and complaining of symptoms associated with malnutrition), until I was 33 when my celiac was self-diagnosed and confirmed by testing. And to my cousin and grandfather (both on my mother's side of the family) who died of gastrointestinal cancers, both associated with undiagnosed celiac. And to my mother, sister, and another cousin who all have celiac which was undiagnosed until I brought this condition (so common I don't like to call it a "disease") to their attention.

In the U.S., it is standard medical practice to misdiagnose celiac, and most people have to self-diagnose in their 30's, 40's or 50's (keeping in mind that this is a genetic condition, and so present from birth). Or more likely, stay undiagnosed and die of a gastrointestinal cancer, or some other condition caused or worsened by malnutrition. Celiac affects 1 in 133 Americans, but only 1 in 5,000 is diagnosed.

Unless you're saying that 1 in 133 of your patients (or more, if you see many patients with gastrointestinal symptoms) has been diagnosed with celiac, then you have no business saying it's "not a difficult diagnosis."

Celiac disease is always my first thought when I hear of a somewhat geeky underweight person. Undiagnosed celiac is associated with Asperger syndrome. For more about this, see Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder by Karyn Seroussi.

You need to get a VCR with an ATSC tuner:
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-DVDR3545V-37-Upscaling-Built/dp/B000N81C42/ref=pd_sim_e_5
http://www.amazon.com/JVC-DRMV100B-Upconverting-Recorder-Built/dp/B0015IL57I/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231275255&sr=8-24

They're $200, but it's worth it because you can set up timed recordings on whatever channel you want, and they also include a DVD player.

You need to get a VCR with an ATSC tuner:
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-DVDR3545V-37-Upscaling-Built/dp/B000N81C42/ref=pd_sim_e_5
http://www.amazon.com/JVC-DRMV100B-Upconverting-Recorder-Built/dp/B0015IL57I/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231275255&sr=8-24

They're $200, but it's worth it because you can set up timed recordings on whatever channel you want, and they also include a DVD player.

First off, nothing bounces... jumping doesn't send things down.

Ah, I knew it - you haven't actually played the game. One of the most frustrating points for me was those dang spring-mounted platforms that you have to bounce on to get launched higher. For some reason I have a hard time getting the rythm right, but my kids go flying around with abandon. Oh yes, I assure you, jumping does send things down.

In Rock Band's case, you lose out on basically all the online stuff that you get through Live on the Xbox 360 since the PS3 doesn't have an online service.

I'll grant that apparently some of the songs take as long as a week or so to become available on the PS3 compared to the 360 version... I guess that's the 'content... after the main version' bit. That's rough, I know. But as to 'online stuff'? Um... nope. Not true. Basically, with the PS3 version you get a wireless guitar, but with the 360 version, you get achievements. That's the only online difference I'm aware of - got anything else?

(Of course, all this ignores that the original troll was about someone noting that the PS3 had games other than "generic, rehashed FPS games played with shitty controls", and the list was examples of other games. Me, I actually like flOw and High Velocity Bowling and Echochrome and Monsters and Eden... not an FPS in the bunch. Motorstorm isn't a perfect game, but it's still a lot of fun, and impressed my 360-owning friend.)

Dude, if you want to attack the PS3, note things like the 360 getting more exclusive content (though much of that is because Microsoft can afford to essentially bribe developers for that) or the higher up-front price (though once you add in wifi and a hard drive, let alone a Live subscription, the price difference vanishes). Attack Home for being useless (it certainly is, for now at the very least, possibly forever). Attack the questionable decision to remove PS2 backward compatibility. Don't just make stuff up.

What I want is a reader that is bathroom and bathub friendly. Also one I could take outdoors and not worry about it getting rained on or something if I happen to leave it out on the deck by accident.

Actually Amazon sells transparent covers for the Kindle that make it fairly impervious to rain, spills, tub accidents, etc. And, if you're worried about a bathroom disaster, they're priced low enough that they can be treated as disposable (I've actually thrown more than one away myself.)

Why one of these isn't bundled when you purchase a Kindle, I have no idea.

I take it you haven't read, or seen hogfather? The tooth fairy could lead to the end of existance!

When I follow your link to a check of Amazon it shows a book called "Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind" however the first review I read mentions only 5 plants. The missing plant wait for it .... Coca - in the book he refers to both Popeye and at least one Charlie Chaplin movie that appeared to be references to Cocaine. Your links seem reasonable - at the mo' I have loaned the book to my brother and can't refer to his rational.

It is a great read - amongst many interesting things I felt he put a great case for decriminalising drugs but at the same time making a great case for why addictive drugs (such as Cocaine ) should be avoided.

I was wondering if in fact there existed a censored version of the book ( he speaks not unfavourably of the use of the drug in its natural form so some Govt. might not like it ) - if you have read it let me know.

Happy Days

I agree that trackballs are the way to go, but I have to put in a plug for the Microsoft Trackball Explorer. It's far more comfortable (for me, anyway) to use my index or middle finger on the ball, and the five buttons are all quite easy to reach.

If only they still made them...

Player pianos only signal note on and note off with the paper. So everything is played at one volume level.

As others have pointed out, there's player pianos and there's player pianos. Mechanical ones reproduce (or reproduced) dynamics by means of a pneumatic system. There were Ampico recording pianos in the 1920s that were good enough to record Rachmaninov playing his own and others' works well enough that they compare favourably to many modern recordings -- in terms of not only the quality of the performer, but also the sensitivity of the performance. Really they have to be heard to be believed. Here's a sample -- the only one I can find on Youtube, and unfortunately not the greatest example as it doesn't show off the subtle shading of inner parts that you get in some of his other music.

Here's one CD that I'm probably going to buy soonish. A couple more: one, and two. (I was once comparing a set of about half a dozen performances of a particular Rachmaninov prelude on a road trip, and while Rachmaninov's own on a player piano wasn't the best in every respect, we agreed that it did win overall.)

Player pianos only signal note on and note off with the paper. So everything is played at one volume level.

As others have pointed out, there's player pianos and there's player pianos. Mechanical ones reproduce (or reproduced) dynamics by means of a pneumatic system. There were Ampico recording pianos in the 1920s that were good enough to record Rachmaninov playing his own and others' works well enough that they compare favourably to many modern recordings -- in terms of not only the quality of the performer, but also the sensitivity of the performance. Really they have to be heard to be believed. Here's a sample -- the only one I can find on Youtube, and unfortunately not the greatest example as it doesn't show off the subtle shading of inner parts that you get in some of his other music.

Here's one CD that I'm probably going to buy soonish. A couple more: one, and two. (I was once comparing a set of about half a dozen performances of a particular Rachmaninov prelude on a road trip, and while Rachmaninov's own on a player piano wasn't the best in every respect, we agreed that it did win overall.)

Player pianos only signal note on and note off with the paper. So everything is played at one volume level.

As others have pointed out, there's player pianos and there's player pianos. Mechanical ones reproduce (or reproduced) dynamics by means of a pneumatic system. There were Ampico recording pianos in the 1920s that were good enough to record Rachmaninov playing his own and others' works well enough that they compare favourably to many modern recordings -- in terms of not only the quality of the performer, but also the sensitivity of the performance. Really they have to be heard to be believed. Here's a sample -- the only one I can find on Youtube, and unfortunately not the greatest example as it doesn't show off the subtle shading of inner parts that you get in some of his other music.

Here's one CD that I'm probably going to buy soonish. A couple more: one, and two. (I was once comparing a set of about half a dozen performances of a particular Rachmaninov prelude on a road trip, and while Rachmaninov's own on a player piano wasn't the best in every respect, we agreed that it did win overall.)

Off topic but I thought I would mention that in "Seeds of Change " Henry Hobhouse mentions the use of Spinach was a thinly veiled nod to Cocaine and also generations of kids had to eat the stuff because it was a high source of iron - where as it is nothing special for a leafy green.

You need to do your research better. A quick check of Amazon shows that the book you mention talks about 5 plants, none of which is spinach; the 5 plants are quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, and the potato.

As for Spinach, it is widely believed that Spinach was a metaphor for hemp / marijuana, not cocaine. The term "spinach" has been slang for marijuana since the early 20th century. A simple Google search for the terms "Popeye marijuana" brings up this article, as well as this follow-up article which includes a scan of an October 1939 Popeye comic book cover.

Highly recommend book "When Genius Failed"
About the "rise and fall" of Long Term Capital Management -- based on the massive 1998 failure of a hedge fund based on mathematical risk models and included a Nobel prize winner among its directors.
ISBN-10: 0375758259
ISBN-13: 978-0375758256
Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231168194&sr=1-1
Also see wikipedia writeup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTCM

The proper way to do this would be with division and modulus, which gives you a nice constant time solution even if you're still using your Zune in 2108. They ought to read Calendrical Calculations by Nachum Dershowitz and Ed Reingold and learn how to do this properly.

Nobody, but nobody is claiming that TDD catches every single possible bug. But done properly, it's extremely useful, and it does a great job of preventing regressions.

And you are a programmer, I would highly recommend the book Deep C Secrets. It's partly practical and partly culture. It covers some well (and lesser) known bugs that while very small and "stupid" had very real consequences.

What's maddening is that nobody involved in this debate seems to realize that:

1. We solved resonance and pogoing issues in the 1960s vis-a-vis the Saturn V stack.

2. We can simply dust off the Apollo 18-20 J-series mission plans and the Apollo X/ALSS/AES/LESA studies, and execute them.

3. All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.

4. SRBs are insanely dangerous due to their non-throttalability, and should not be man-rated beyond the poorly-designed Shuttle stack.

We knew all this *more than 40 years ago* (we ignored the SRB issue back then, which led directly to Challenger); how can these people be so ignorant?!

Here's a link to just a few of the studies which were done of follow-on missions. Here are links to Apollo X, ALSS, AES, and LESA.

Stephen Baxter's Voyage is an interesting alternate history based upon some of these mission plans (although he's way too hard on the Germans, IMHO).

The bottom line - if NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.

1) We *are* smarter.

2) I mean, we at least know not to release more kudzu. That's gotta count for something.

3) You clearly haven't read up on "global warming in its wildest forms." Read "Under a Green Sky." Or just its Amazon reviews, if you're busy. That should give you the flavor of the true disaster scenarios.

In other words, despite our admitted incompetence, we might still have to do some reckless geoengineering, for the same reason that they test out highly experimental medicines on patients with terminal illnesses.

The United States under the Clinton/Gore administration already tried something similar to this; five words spring to mind: "Clipper, Skipjack, and Key Escrow". (If you need a refresher, I suggest the book "Crypto" by Steven Levy.)

The **last** thing I want is for my government to be the entity that issues the requisite public/private key pairs to the private institutions and companies with whom I do business. My business is **my** business - and not the government's business - until a **legitimate** search warrant or indictment says otherwise. And even then, it's still **my** business.

As the article posting indicates, SSL is built around a Chain of Trust. People buy SSL certificates from the likes of VeriSign, Thawte, Equifax, etc., because they are well-known and (ostensibly) trustworthy organizations.

I, for one, do not entirely trust my government. I don't trust VeriSign and crew all that much, either, but their reputations are a strong motivation for them to do their jobs reasonably well, and provide products that perform as advertised. To do otherwise would damage their reputations, resulting in lost customers and weaker profit margins.

Most governments, on the other hand, don't care much about their reputations, and have little regard for profit margins (just look at the US Government's annual budget deficit). They therefore have no compunction against using excuses such as "national security" and "protect the children" to provide (at best) or mandate (at worst) inferior solutions to technological problems.

Admittedly, some companies - like AT&T, for instance - are so large and well-entrenched that they sometimes bow to the mandates of government, and little heed the damage done to their reputations because of it.

But most companies are not that large, and can ill afford to lose face in the marketplace. Reputation is their bread-and-butter, so they do what's in their own best interests, which may even coincide with their customers' best interests.

Try reading The Long Emergency or Kunstler's blog. While he's a little doom and gloom, the basic fact that we aren't living sustainably, and when the oil gets more scarce or environment starts getting all up in it, there's going to be a lag before any major energy change or sustainability movement is going to kick in - and it is likely going to require a significant reduction of the human population.

So, make sure you have some basic tools on hand and have done what you can to prepare. The next few decades are going to be interesting.

Quick tip from a fellow nerd: when people say something that is obviously retarded or meaningless when interpreted literally, they often are speaking figuratively.

For example, "it is what it is" is often used to mean that they want people to focus on what's possible in the current situation, rather than what is ideal.

A lot of what I previously thought of as psychobabble actually now makes good sense to me. Once I realized that although I'm intellectually bright, I'm relatively weak in both interpersonal and intrapersonal areas, I spent some time studying hard in areas that come naturally to most people. If you're interested, I'd start with Emotional Intellgence, which is a pop-sci examination of how intelligence is not a single axis, but has a number of areas along which people vary somewhat independently. Then run with the references from there.

Mr. Masnick's techdirt post is a welcome call for calm and even optimism. It is a reminder of the importance of perspective, the sort of wisdom encapsulated in the expression "This, too, shall pass" -- that is, just as most joy and glory is transient, so will the troubles and woes of today eventually vanish.

That said, his post is revealingly presumptuous. He writes about people trying to "hold back progress" and describes his frustration at not being able to convince them "of just what opportunities moving forward provides." But perhaps the reason he is so frustrated is that he misses a basic truth: that the people he describes aren't actually seeking to "hold back progress" -- they just have a different understanding of what is progress and what isn't, of what counts as "moving forward" and what doesn't. People do not agree on what is in the public interest; they do not agree about what is best for society, for the state, for the family.

Persuading those who disagree with you is not always a matter of marshalling facts or, as Mr. Masnick puts it, "clearly paint[ing] a picture." Often the people who disagree with you already understand the facts full well and already see the picture clearly -- they just disagree about whether what you call progress is indeed progress. This disagreement might well be rooted in a vision of the future that is fundamentally in conflict with your own. (See, for example, Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions and Yuval Levin's Imagining the Future .)

This, incidentally, is why the book that Mr. Masnick approvingly cites, Robert Friedel's excellent A Culture of Improvement, deliberately eschews the term "progress". You might think human cloning or nuclear weapons or Windows Vista are all examples of unambiguous progress; your neighbor might well disagree.

Oh, no doubt, my primary concern in that post was refuting the common statement that netbooks are just about cost. But as for the market for small tablets and "netbooks" being not worth it I've written about this market twice before, though I focused more on keyboarded devices and, in short, having actually done quite a bit of research on this, some of it as an IT director for big enough departments to get honest answers out of the manufacturers, I'm pretty damn sure that the markets are more than big enough to justify the cost. They didn't get withdrawn from lack of users. They got withdrawn because of Microsoft sabotage and corporate groupthink. To go broad, the fucking MARINE CORPS was looking into the Newton when it got canceled. Doctors loved it and were starting to get it specced for hospital use. Insurance companies were handing them out to their agents. Plenty of users there to pay for a product line that's already up and running and has no real competitors. This wasn't rational behavior. Seriously.

It's dangerous to assume that because companies did something, they should have done that thing. Companies do stupid shit all the time. That's a large part of why U.S. automakers are in such trouble right now. They do what is best for the executives making the decisions. Or what their friends think is cool. Or simply what's easiest to understand. I've done corporate workflow consulting and I can tell you that there's a reason that the Nobel prize in Economics went a few times back to a guy (Thaler) who specialized in articulating repeated patterns of irrational decisionmaking. One of the hottest management books right now is something called The Innovators Dilemma . Personally, I think that it wusses out on some key factors, but it shows that even in "c-level" offices they're starting to figure out that the current management paradigm frequently leaves them with their head up their asses. And, even worse, telling each other how sweet the smell is up there.
 
Go ahead, prognosticate. It can be fun. But don't succumb to the assumption that just because a product went south, that kind of product isn't viable.

I will use this as an opportunity for self promotion. I have a published book about the topic of FOSS games (it was also my masters thesis). You can purchase the book at http://www.amazon.com/Can-Open-Source-Games-Compete/dp/3639100603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230920840&sr=8-1 or read it for free at http://etda.libraries.psu.edu/theses/approved/WorldWideFiles/ETD-3146/Thesis_Final.pdf

Why hasn't Viacom produced a 24 hour Spongebob channel?

It has. You can get a lifetime sub for under $25 per season.

Exactly. I can recommend The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable to anyone. It's a great book, and written before the current financial and economical crisis. I'm not going to say he predicted it accurately, but reading it again knowing all this has significantly changed my opinion on the book. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/1400063515 Read it -- you won't regret it.

There's lots of material written on the subject which pretty much proves that such demarcations are futile.

But separating things that are clearly scientific from religious ideas rewritten in the language of science is much easier, this isn't a gray area at all. Within the scientific community there is no controversy, they can tell the difference quite easily.

Why is this not getting through to you? I'm referring to philosophy of *science* (i.e., the business of defining exactly what science is). You do realize that philosophy != religion and that philosophers think about lots of things (including science), right? Here's a few resources for you:

• Stephen Meyer, "Scientific Status of Intelligent Design" (as appearing in Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe)

• Demarcation problem

• L. Laudan, "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem," in Ruse, Science?, pp. 337-50.

and, here's a choice quote from Meyer which sums up the position I put forth here:

... When I say that design and descent are methodologically equivalent, I mean that both approaches to origins are equally capable or incapable of fulfilling the demands of various demarcation criteria, whether strictly methodological, epistemic, or semantic.

and another one:

The use of demarcation arguments to settle the origins controversy is also problematic because the whole enterprise of demarcation has now fallen into disrepute. Attempts to locate methodological "invariants" that provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed. Most philosophers of science now recognize that neither verifiability nor testability (nor falsifiability) nor the use of lawlike explanation (nor any other criterion) can suffice to define scientific practice.

So, at this point, if you still disagree with these statements, I would simply once again suggest a perusal of the material I recommended (after that, you still may not concur, but at least you will have the chance to after having actually read it :-)).

It's based on the same underlying theory as the fields of: forensic science, ...

Except for the fact that forensic scientist often try to reconstruct past events, I don't get the connection.

The practice of forensic science accurately (and to the criterion of 'beyond a reasonable doubt') identifies the activity of intelligent agents in the committal of crimes in the past. The only difference here is that 'design of life' is not a crime.

... cryptology/information science, ...

Which is where we get genetic algorithms, probably the best evidence of what evolution can do - including things like generate "irreducible complexity", incorporate new information, and even do some things better than humans can (like certain kinds of design work).

Which is where we also get the detection and decryption of encrypted signals; i.e., we can detect when a stream of seemingly random noise contains a message. No ID theorist I know objects to evolution as a mechanism for refining designs (neither in theory nor in practice--because obviously it is used in practice). They rather object to neo-Darwinism (which is essentially the marriage of Darwin's theory of natural descent, abiogenesis, & the philosophy of materialism). In particular, the 'abiogenesis' and the philosophical underpinnings are what give ID theorists the most concern--no one objects to the explanatory powers of descent (or evolution) alone.

People are wired to see causality everywhere, even where there is none.

Very true. There is an interesting book by Leonard Mlodinow called "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" which is all about the way humans misinterpret random events to see patterns that are not there.

http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375424045

http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040

To reply to the grandparent: color is not necessary. So much print is in black and white anyway. Besides, it will give apple space to sell you upgrades in the future when color does come online. Or, they can make it a double sided screen, with one side grayscale and one side lcd. Or somehow get the lcd and e-ink "merged" or stacked somehow so both can be used, I'm non familiar with the hardware enough if such a thing is possible.

It would be nice to take notes, and right now, only the iLiad allows this.

Forget the iliad then. I only wanted a DR1000S from iRex due to screen size for textbooks (to allow display of a typical 8.5x11 sheet sans margins), but I used the iliad. The wacom screen (?) or whatever it is based on, isn't that nice for notes. The refresh rate irked me, having the "ink" always trail the pen by that little bit. But I do like the open sourcing of iLiad and would almost buy it if the battery life of it were not so lousy (daily recharging).

If you don't care about a big screen size, look into something like the Sony PR-505 or Amazon Kindle, or wait until Plastic Logic's unit comes out. Then consider getting a Pulse Smartpen for notes, they are fantastic for that purpose. Then you canhave all your notes in PDF without scanning as soon as you can transfer it to the computer and back to the reader:
http://www.amazon.com/Livescribe-1GB-Pulse-Smartpen-APA-00001/dp/B001AAOZHI/

I picked up 10-15 HD movies the other day for an average of $8 each (brand new, not the used ones Blockbuster is selling). That's way more attractive to me than the $30 average price for the BlueRay stuff (which I also buy for my PS3).

That, frankly, is a rip-off. For just a few dollars more per disc you can have Blu-Ray version which you'll be able to play on new hardware going forward, and which generally offer better sound and video transfers.

I'd consider HD-DVD discs at this point more of a throwaway rental, and even then only if you already own a player for some reason - I wouldn't pay more than $3 a disc outright (much less "on average").

Just keep an eye out for sales which are on almost all the time - like the current
Amazon half-priced Blu-Ray sale.

The will of the people is nothing if their will is malice, bigotry, ignorance, or even plain stupidity.

And, of course, it should be you who determines what is malice, bigotry etc? Or would you say something even more idiotic, like, such malice, bigotry etc will be obvious to anyone who can think clearly? Now that we've established that you believe that everyone should submit to your personal moral compass, all you need to do now is get a large enough army of followers and you can go about imposing your will (thus "fixing" all instances of malice, bigotry, etc that you can find).

Or maybe you haven't really given much thought into the complexities and difficulties of creating the "best possible" societal/governmental structure. I recommend for your future perusal (if you really care) Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan , Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract , John Locke's Second Treatise , and Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto . These are, of course, just a sample primer for the not-so-simple world of political philosophy. If instead of spending ~$30 and hours of enjoyable and interesting reading, you'd rather just rant and rave about how stupid people are, with the overt implication that you could "fix" things if you were in power, go right on ahead, and I apologize for the distraction I've caused.

The will of the people is nothing if their will is malice, bigotry, ignorance, or even plain stupidity.

And, of course, it should be you who determines what is malice, bigotry etc? Or would you say something even more idiotic, like, such malice, bigotry etc will be obvious to anyone who can think clearly? Now that we've established that you believe that everyone should submit to your personal moral compass, all you need to do now is get a large enough army of followers and you can go about imposing your will (thus "fixing" all instances of malice, bigotry, etc that you can find).

Or maybe you haven't really given much thought into the complexities and difficulties of creating the "best possible" societal/governmental structure. I recommend for your future perusal (if you really care) Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan , Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract , John Locke's Second Treatise , and Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto . These are, of course, just a sample primer for the not-so-simple world of political philosophy. If instead of spending ~$30 and hours of enjoyable and interesting reading, you'd rather just rant and rave about how stupid people are, with the overt implication that you could "fix" things if you were in power, go right on ahead, and I apologize for the distraction I've caused.

The will of the people is nothing if their will is malice, bigotry, ignorance, or even plain stupidity.

And, of course, it should be you who determines what is malice, bigotry etc? Or would you say something even more idiotic, like, such malice, bigotry etc will be obvious to anyone who can think clearly? Now that we've established that you believe that everyone should submit to your personal moral compass, all you need to do now is get a large enough army of followers and you can go about imposing your will (thus "fixing" all instances of malice, bigotry, etc that you can find).

Or maybe you haven't really given much thought into the complexities and difficulties of creating the "best possible" societal/governmental structure. I recommend for your future perusal (if you really care) Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan , Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract , John Locke's Second Treatise , and Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto . These are, of course, just a sample primer for the not-so-simple world of political philosophy. If instead of spending ~$30 and hours of enjoyable and interesting reading, you'd rather just rant and rave about how stupid people are, with the overt implication that you could "fix" things if you were in power, go right on ahead, and I apologize for the distraction I've caused.

The will of the people is nothing if their will is malice, bigotry, ignorance, or even plain stupidity.

And, of course, it should be you who determines what is malice, bigotry etc? Or would you say something even more idiotic, like, such malice, bigotry etc will be obvious to anyone who can think clearly? Now that we've established that you believe that everyone should submit to your personal moral compass, all you need to do now is get a large enough army of followers and you can go about imposing your will (thus "fixing" all instances of malice, bigotry, etc that you can find).

Or maybe you haven't really given much thought into the complexities and difficulties of creating the "best possible" societal/governmental structure. I recommend for your future perusal (if you really care) Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan , Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract , John Locke's Second Treatise , and Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto . These are, of course, just a sample primer for the not-so-simple world of political philosophy. If instead of spending ~$30 and hours of enjoyable and interesting reading, you'd rather just rant and rave about how stupid people are, with the overt implication that you could "fix" things if you were in power, go right on ahead, and I apologize for the distraction I've caused.

On that note, Terry Pratchett recently released a new book which stands alone from all the others: Nation

One of his best books yet, as far as I'm concerned, and one I would heartily recommend to anyone between 10 and 110 years old.

Craig Biddle is a great writer. He's editor of The Objective Standard and wrote Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It. The article you linked to appears in the most recent edition of TOS.

I buy these bulbs, at about $1.25 per. Their color temperature seems closest to true daylight to me, and I've tried almost all of the different bulbs marketed as such. I hate the orange-ish glow of the "normal" bulbs now, and hate all of the CFLs' color I've tried too.

I wish I had the new 65nm cell chip - the fan in my PS3 is louder than anything else in the house, we have to crank up the volume to hear movie dialogue over it.

Now, assuming that I did plump out another $400 just to get a quieter box

Without knowing the specifics of your situation, would plumping out $270 (free shipping) for a Sony BDP-S350 be a better option? I know the PS3 used to be the "best Blu-ray player" (because it could be updated), but I think current Blu-ray players no longer have the deficiencies of first-gen players.

Of course, I don't know if you have another available HDMI port or if the fan bothers you during games.

Amazon has a few Geiger counters listed:

http://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Inc-Digital-Counter/dp/B000796XRS

although I'm not sure how reliable any of them are.

Oh, but they were oh so fun when you actually could pull them off and could play through the "movie".

I used to be able to beat Space Ace on 1 play (novice level only), but it was some of the most fun I remember having in an Arcade.

They also have Blu-Ray versions of the games available now for purchase (as well as DVD) available here: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-alias=dvd&field-keywords=Space%20Ace (link brings up DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD versions)

There's a good introduction here.

No idea, but there's a forthcoming second volume of PBF coming out February 2009.

Fallingcow, you should know that every comic he ever did (I think) is available in book format here.

Interesting to note he's apparently got another one coming out this coming February.

Fallingcow, you should know that every comic he ever did (I think) is available in book format here.

Interesting to note he's apparently got another one coming out this coming February.

...given the size of the universe, I would expect it to actually be fairly large that there is at least one other planet similar to ours....

That would SEEM to be true until you balance it against all the parameters that have to be correct in order for a planet that can support intelligent life to come into existence by any unplanned means.

If you want to learn more about this you can read this book:

ISBN-13: 978-0895260659

  or if you don't like to read watch this DVD.

http://www.amazon.com/Privileged-Planet-John-Rhys-Davies/dp/B0002E34C0

Life is we know it, must have water in liquid form. That implies a very narrow temperature range. In addition to temperature, the chemical and physical necessities of life are very specific and quite narrow. This is especially true of any intelligent life forms that could exist to observe and try to understand the universe.

When all these factors are evaluated and balanced against the billions and billions of stars and galaxies, the probability of another earth-like planet in the entire universe coming into existence by any statistical, unplanned process, not involving intelligence is so tiny as to be essentially zero.

Those of us who take the trouble to find out about these matters discover that US politicians really are "special people". They belong to one of two parties, and if they secure the backing of one of those parties they have a chance of getting into office. Otherwise, not.

Consider the many clever, influential, talented, people who tried and failed. Such as Ralph Nader, one of the most respected men in the entire world, whose two campaigns never even got off the ground.

Obama did get a lot of money from small donations. But if he hadn't first got approval from the Democratic Party bosses, that wouldn't have done him the slightest good. Ross Perot had so much money of his own that he didn't need any donations. But lacking party support, he too sank without trace.

Try reading the pertinent parts (mostly the early parts) of John McArthur's book "You Can't be President" for a more detailed explanation.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933633603/kqedorg-20

Speaking of Prime, one thing my family learned is that a single Prime subscription can be extended to multiple people (scroll to "How do I share Amazon Prime with members of my household"), and they don't have to live in the same location. That surprised me--I guess Amazon has a loose definition of "household". $80 for Prime for one person didn't seem worthwhile, but split between 4 people (living in 3 different places!) that all use Amazon occasionally, it made a lot more sense.

Hm, my M13 (P/N 13H6705) has a numeric keypad. I didn't realize there was a true M-series spacesaver with trackpoint. (I do have an 84-key opal spacesaver with no trackpoint in storage, great keyboard as well.)

Lack of USB isn't really a problem - PS/2->USB adapters are cheap and plentiful.