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see Eight Ways to Run the Country: A New and Revealing Look at Left and Right

• Pay only for what you use.
• $0.10 per instance-hour consumed (or part of an hour consumed).
• $0.20 per GB of data transferred into/out of Amazon (i.e., Internet traffic).
• $0.15 per GB-Month of Amazon S3 storage used for your images (charged by Amazon S3).

One of your questions was "Why do conservatives disregard conservation?" There is actually more than one type of conservative. I don't know how British conservatives compare to American conservatives. But, someone can be an economic conservative without necessarily being an social conservative. In the U.S., the religious right could be classified as a type of social conservative. Among other things the religious right voters are strongly against abortion, stem cell research, gay marriages and they seem to be the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq. The few religious right Republicans that I know still seem to strongly support George W. Bush and seem oblivious to the other criticisms against his various other policies.

I am also a Republican, but personally I am a economic conservative, but not a social conservative. The best example of an economic conservative would probably be Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1964. That was mostly before my time, but if I understand correctly, some of his views seem to be exactly the opposite of the current Bush administration. I once read a small portion of his, well written, early-1960s book, "The Conscience of A Conservative." Among other things, he believed in reduced government size, decentralized government and strong states rights, limited functions of the government, and strong respect for the Constitution and the limits that it provides. He also did not seem to be as much influenced by big business interests as the current Bush administration. During his last term, before retiring as a senator, I remember that he voted against a defense project that was being manufactured in in his home state of Arizona because he felt it was too expensive.

There is also a third type of conservative in the U.S., but I am not sure what they are called. Radio host and political conspiracy theorist Alex Jones the best known example of them. Alex and many others believe that there is a huge secret global conspiracy, controlled by various wealthy families, to expert political control and enact polices which are contrary to what the public would want. They seem to believe that the global elite controls much of the press and can even influence what candidates are presented to us as choices. They claim that in 2004, voters in the U.S. had a choice between two Skull and Bones Society members, Democrat John Kerry and Republican George W. Bush. Supposedly, both had been members of that secret society when they were at Yale. If I understand correctly, many of his listeners believe that 911 was allowed to happen so that the government would have the excuse that it needed to expand government power, reduce civil liberties, and to override privacy concerns to allow the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations. I don't know how to prove or disprove if what they say is true or not (I hope not), but there are increasing numbers of people in the U.S. and Canada who believe that.

So simply saying that someone is liberal or conservative is not enough. Which type of liberal or conservative are they? Many of these several types of conservatives favor totally opposite polices. I am mostly a economic conservative/social moderate who uses Linux myself.

By the way, several of the most strongly pro-Microsoft people that I have met were very religious. I don't know if that is typical or not, but perhaps psychologically they prefer the safety of going with the most typical, safe, traditional, mainstream choices in both religion and operating systems. For example, I have a highly religious younger brother who works with computers

Microsoft Office Groove 2007.

If you've got a volume licence deal with Microsoft you'd do better upgrading to 2007 though: you'll need the Enterprise edition to get Groove bundled. And it is a pretty nice upgrade.

While it's an absolutely valid claim that I cannot generalize my motivations to an alien psychology, in the solution space of the possible outcomes of life's evolution and development to a technologically advanced level, basic common strictures like the scarcity of material resources, the difficult of interstellar travel, the evolutionary superiority (or even necessity) of observer-oriented goal systems, and the trend towards maximization of informational 'thought-space' for minimal mass-energy budget is going to have generalized effects for the average civilization.

No. You are doing it again. --You are assuming that alien beings have human limitations, human technology and exist in the same physical reality that we do. You are essentially assuming that you are dealing with humans, or at the most, Star Trek aliens, (humans in costumes). This is a very narrow view of the possibilities available, and indeed, the probable reality. UFO's are almost certainly not nuts and bolts technology, at least not in the sense a human engineer might grasp.

The second major logical fallacy here is that in support of a claim (that UFOs have visited Earth) I should assume that unknown other information exists that these hypothetical aliens know and which would cause them to seek to come to Earth, and that this is a reason to believe in these visitations in the first place! This is both circular and baselessly assumptive.

Leave for a moment the question of arguing over what you should believe, (it makes little difference to anybody but you), and look over the logic again. There's no fallacy there. --All I'm saying is that if the alien presence is real then the aliens automatically know more than you do about their motivations in coming here. This is by no means an unreasonable assumption. Just because you can't imagine a reason does not mean there is no reason. In fact, there ARE reasons of which people are aware. You simply do not know what they are because you've limited yourself to your current logical bubble.

No, assuming unspecified evidence that I don't have a) exists, and b) proves your claim, is NOT more logical. Look at it like a scientific claim, or a legal case: The vast majority of UFO reports are based solely on unverified eyewitness accounts, frequently by highly unreliable individuals. Those that aren't, or that are based on larger numbers of witnesses, have equally coherent explanations that require fewer assumptive leaps - natural phenomena and military testing, primarily. Ockham's Razor. Moreover, most of the particularly major or famous examples have been shown to be hoaxes. And this doesn't even begin to cover the issue of totally baseless derivative conspiracy theories... Simply put, using a string of unspecified assumptions to conclude from limited evidence of low reliability that lifeforms of unknown origin and evolution used ridiculously advanced technology to travel to a world self-evidently beneath them for unknown reasons or motivations is ludicrous.

You're telling me that you think your opinion trumps sixty years worth of observation and research? I see. The problem is that many, if not all of your factual claims in the above paragraph are false.

I refer you to Richard Dolan's book which contains, among many things, a series of documented witness accounts. However, when sifting through the available accounts he could include, (using the FIOA), Dolan, thinking much as you do, that he should discount any witness testimony from anybody in the civilian sector. It only deals with sightings made by military officers, pilots/air traffic controlers and police officers, all of whom are generally hired with a thought to their mental stability and reliability as people. They were also the ones who kept documents of their encounters. Secondly, Dolan discarded single-person encounters. All the accounts in his book involve multiple-witness events. --And even

> it's all fake and made up.

NASA begs to differ...
and so do these government and military witnesses

Google for:
- Evidence: The Case For NASA UFO's
- The Disclosure Project

--
Why does C++ still suck with this 'short', 'long long', and 'double' garbage??

I'm really trying to point out that taking the chapest option which meets your needs is the truly competitive American way.

"The truly competitive American way" is sufficiently vague that it can be applied to any policy, or lack of policy.

If you mean, "best for maximizing the value of the total output of the American economy", your statement is false from first principles.

If you mean, "something that Americans try to do, whatever the negative effects", you have a point, if you mean in recent times.

Just remember that that famous enemy of the American way, Thomas Jefferson, advocated producing goods domestically over importing them, even if the imports were cheaper, and that early America was highly protectionist. It's a fact that high-investment, increasing-returns-to-scale industries thereby got a foothold in early America, rather than being kept out of business by imports.

Uhm... No.

In fact, he defends the tax so much he wrote a book about it. The argument of the book is basically saying the law that is in place is too lenient and it should be repealed for something like the old one that didn't have loopholes. He wants the rich to pay more taxes when they die.

From Wikipedia:

Gates is co-author, with Chuck Collins, of the book Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, a defense of the estate tax.[2]

The book on Amazon.com Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes

I haven't finished it yet because I use it to fall asleep... however your statement is not true in fact and spirit.

Sadly, the movie was nowhere near as good as the book. In the book, the age was 21, so, they'd be dead long before the current MS age.

That and you turned yourself in for 'sleep'...if you didn't show up for sleep on 'lastday'...you were a runner.

The guns in the book were pretty cool...especially the HOMER...you couldn't get away from that once it was shot at you, homed in on body heat.

Try to find the book if you liked the movie at all...much better and is a fairly short read.

Here it is . The new cover sucks compared to the original...I've got an old orig. somewhere packed up...pre-Farrah cover.

Sorry to have to tell you this so late in the game... Office Home and Student 2007 edition, which includes word, excel, powerpoint, costs $149. http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Home-Studen t-2007/dp/B000HCZ8EO/ref=pd_lpo_af_txt/103-7288175 -1908633

A far cry from the $430 it can cost to buy the full version outright.

Also, many universities have deals that allow you to buy several full-version Microsoft products (Windows, Office) for dirt cheap ($5.95, $10.95, respectively).

I've got a Vaio VGP-XL1B 200-CD/DVD changer, which includes a 12x ripper drive. But it's FireWire, and the PS3 has no FireWire, only USB. Any idea where to get an adapter?

Was the labotomy painful?

Perhaps you'd care to read an article on how Vista is less intuitive than previous versions? Perhaps a simple Google search would sway your opinion on Vista being slow? What about one of the countless articles on the net advising that Office 2007 has no added value, just a steep learning curve?

No? Didn't think so.

The reason, Mr Shill (and I hope you're getting paid for this), all these companies are refusing to upgrade is that all this won't actually give them any greater functionality, or improve their workflow (due to the learning curve). Especially when you take into consideration how much this software costs! Even considering the heavy discounts these organisations will doubtless get, Microsoft should not expect money for nothing.

OpenOffice might be bloated, but at least it uses a file format that's open and supported by many other office suites. Unlike that binary bilge Microsoft keep peddling and trying to force through standards agencies. My hope is that the DOT realise that before they get labotomised and start speaking like Microsoft drones: 'in order to leverage interoperable cross-markets, we're standardising on Microsoft Bullshit Ultimate Shill Server Lazy-Wanking-Bastards Edition'.

Was the labotomy painful?

Perhaps you'd care to read an article on how Vista is less intuitive than previous versions? Perhaps a simple Google search would sway your opinion on Vista being slow? What about one of the countless articles on the net advising that Office 2007 has no added value, just a steep learning curve?

No? Didn't think so.

The reason, Mr Shill (and I hope you're getting paid for this), all these companies are refusing to upgrade is that all this won't actually give them any greater functionality, or improve their workflow (due to the learning curve). Especially when you take into consideration how much this software costs! Even considering the heavy discounts these organisations will doubtless get, Microsoft should not expect money for nothing.

OpenOffice might be bloated, but at least it uses a file format that's open and supported by many other office suites. Unlike that binary bilge Microsoft keep peddling and trying to force through standards agencies. My hope is that the DOT realise that before they get labotomised and start speaking like Microsoft drones: 'in order to leverage interoperable cross-markets, we're standardising on Microsoft Bullshit Ultimate Shill Server Lazy-Wanking-Bastards Edition'.

Any honest congressman, when asked to vote on a bill they have not read for any reason, should vote no.

No, they should abstain in order not to skew the vote for the people who actually have read the bill and can vote correctly.

Read http://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Constitution-Rober t-D-Cooter/dp/0691058644 for a pretty good review of economic based policy making.
Ben

Amazon puts a lot of guff in its URLs. You can usually just delete it. eg: http://www.amazon.com/Skyhook-John-J-Nance/dp/0515 13712X.

Skyhook is a book centered around this concept. The interesting part was that they wouldn't actually deploy this system in commercial aircraft, they'd just have a press release to make people think they had.

(And no, that isn't a referrer link where I get money. I don't know why it has 'ref=')

Alan Cooper: "The inmates are running the asylum"

Read a little Marcinko in your spare time to see how he felt about the US' intelligence abilities for special forces in the 70's. Its quite entertaining at times.

Special forces would of course love to have perfect intel even now, and I'm sure if you found a couple guys at the bar talking about recent excursions, they'd handily admit how often things go FUBAR based on bad intel (even without admitting which ops these might be).

What you need to do is interact, one-on-one, with (a) the people putting information in, and (b) the people taking information out. If it's the same people, so much the better. But don't go into a stuffy room with a whiteboard -- not yet. Find key users (not managers!) and start by asking them two simple questions: (1) What do you do all day? (2) Can you show me? Every time you see something, discuss it with them until you understand it well, then write it down, right then right there. Ask them what's tedious. Ask them what's important and why. Ask them what happens if a particular step is omitted.

Take all this back to your own desk and start doing mockups. Take these back to the users for round two, complete with observations like "I noticed that you spend a lot of time matching the numbers on this sheet of paper to the numbers on this other one. It looks like we could merge them together right here." Be prepared to have your design ripped to shreds, but have

Failing that, call your grandma on the phone and tell her that the users are writing "terrorist accounting software." The CIA, who is tapping your phone, will abduct them and fly them to one of those countries Amnesty International is always talking about, where a Haliburton sub-contractor will gather requirements for you. Six weeks later a New York Times reporter will discover the users wandering a dusty third-world street. The reporter will piece together the whole story into a five-part series that eventually wins the Pulitzer Prize. Part three of the series will be all the sordid details of the software, obtained from an anonymous whistle-blower at the Justice Department. The following spring a book called The Best Reporting of 2007 will be available in paperback, peaking at #237 on Amazon. Buy the book along with Karl Weigers's excellent Software Requirements, Second Edition so that you'll qualify for Super Savers Free Shipping. Using the two together you'll be on your way to award-winning software, but after the awards ceremony, don't accept offers of free rides in unmarked vans, even if they say they have a Wii console in there.

I've found in the domain I work in (medicine) that story-driven projects tends to work pretty well, both in the way that estimation can be achieved and the degree of cohesiveness with which the "specs" or stories come together.

1. Identify each potential user of the piece of software;
2. Use a sample size of that group (e.g. an auto mechanic, auto body specialist, etc.) or proxies for those users, and given the direction of the project (workshop management tool, per se), solicit stories for development. A story should be short and describe a measurable unit of work from the users perspective (e.g. As a mechanic, I must be able to find a wrench in my toolbox.) Define any constraints (The mechanic may not search through the toolboxes of other mechanics) and acceptance tests the user can refer to to see that the story is complete (Any known wrench in my toolbox should be retrievable).

This approach allows you to avoid the technology and focus on the true business requirements. From this process, you can then size each story, scope the project based on features desired or a given deadline, and then things proceed fairly naturally. This has worked very well for me with Agile and working with small iterations so the users can see the manifestation of the ideas that produced the stories, and provide feedback so that you can add additional stories, remove ones that are no longer valid, and above all else - demonstrate progress.

Some good books on the subject:

User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn
Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn

Single author (no, he's not a friend), but both books that have been fantastic for me in terms of taking a fairly unmanaged project group and making it a much less squeaky wheel within my department.

I've found in the domain I work in (medicine) that story-driven projects tends to work pretty well, both in the way that estimation can be achieved and the degree of cohesiveness with which the "specs" or stories come together.

1. Identify each potential user of the piece of software;
2. Use a sample size of that group (e.g. an auto mechanic, auto body specialist, etc.) or proxies for those users, and given the direction of the project (workshop management tool, per se), solicit stories for development. A story should be short and describe a measurable unit of work from the users perspective (e.g. As a mechanic, I must be able to find a wrench in my toolbox.) Define any constraints (The mechanic may not search through the toolboxes of other mechanics) and acceptance tests the user can refer to to see that the story is complete (Any known wrench in my toolbox should be retrievable).

This approach allows you to avoid the technology and focus on the true business requirements. From this process, you can then size each story, scope the project based on features desired or a given deadline, and then things proceed fairly naturally. This has worked very well for me with Agile and working with small iterations so the users can see the manifestation of the ideas that produced the stories, and provide feedback so that you can add additional stories, remove ones that are no longer valid, and above all else - demonstrate progress.

Some good books on the subject:

User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn
Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn

Single author (no, he's not a friend), but both books that have been fantastic for me in terms of taking a fairly unmanaged project group and making it a much less squeaky wheel within my department.

The Larry Niven short story where the galactic core was explored was "At the Core" (now collected in Crashlander ). That was a Beowulf Shaeffer story, not a Louis Wu one. And, of course, Niven's vision of the galactic core--just lots of densely packed stars--is superseded by the current speculation that it's a black hole.

The guys who write the anti phishing stuff would probably not be too keen on that sort of thing anyway.

If you read Showstopper the Dec guys who were hired to create Windows NT used to call traditional Microsoft OSs as Microslop. Interestingly, Bill Gates approved of this contempt. He was quoted as saying that he "Didn't hire Dave Cutler for his charm".

It makes sense really, if your company is bad at something - protecting OSs from malicious programs on the same machine before NT, and protecting OSs from malicious programs on other machines before the recent push to security, and you have a lot of money, you solve it by hiring people from outside. And then when people inside the company complain about them being obnoxious, you say the sort of thing that Gates said about Cutler.

Ok, I'm not sure if the current security stuff is quite as radical as this - it seems to be done by the team that did the original code - but if they want it to work, they need it to be. And they definitely shouldn't have special cases that allows Microsoft stuff to sneak under the defenses, since it compromises the whole system.

I'm still a bit confused as to how he is so confident that this is how the neocortex works given that this is still one of the 23 unsolved problems in system neuroscience. But hey, he made a lot of money off Palm, that gives him way more street cred than people who have been working on this problem for their whole lives.

• It's worth $590 in US (as opposed to Australian) dollars.
  
• It's not the edition corporations will buy. Enterprises with volume license agreements will buy the volume-licenses Enterprise edition. Small businesses will buy the Small business edition. Or possibly the Professional edition. Or Professional Plus edition. Anyway, the one edition corporations will not buy to roll out en mass is the all singing all dancing "We've got everything!" edition.

• Office 2007 doesn't even USE .doc; it uses Open Office XML. If you don't like that, I think there's an addon that lets it save in ODF. Legacy .docs can be converted to OOXML (tool provided by MS) or ODF (tool not provided by MS); and OpenOffice reads and writes to .doc perfectly fine.

I'm a bit stuck on 'glibness'? Got any clues?

Seriously, I'm qualified in Psychology and have written dissertations about definitions for paranoia and a raft of other conditions of mind. You seem to suggest entertainment is value-free which it is not. Nationalistic hubris is clearly represented in shows like these as speculated upon by the GP. I'm not saying there is an over-arching plot to control the thoughts of people it is more complex and subtle than that.

Perhaps you should read this:

http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Disc ourse-Business/dp/014303653X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-1 992401-1236736?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173230386&sr=8 -1

to begin to understand something of what I'm talking about.

I just bought this and it provides all the features you mentioned (except buttons on the steering wheel)--

Check this one out:

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-HF850-Deluxe-Blueto oth-Car/dp/B0009835UA

Technical Details

        * One 6.5-ounce package
        * Made with enriched wheat flour and natural vanilla flavoring
        * 100% cholesterol free and sweetened with sorbitol
        * America's number one brand of sugar-free cookies
        * Creme-filled, vanilla cookies perfect for low-carb diets

There's a good reason why the book had a Lego man on the cover!
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland"

Mathew Alper's book The "GOD" Part of the Brain postulated this years ago. At least my copy is dated from the year 2000.
-metric

Maybe Shaft?

Or like what Phillip K. Dick did back in the last century...

So the book reviewed seems to be about graphics, but there's a book called 'Character Development and Storytelling for Games' by Lee Sheldon, which I thought was pretty good. Though it's (obviously, from the title) not about the graphics, but the more important parts.

http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Watercourse-Way-Alan-Wat ts/dp/0394733118

Almost same experience. I use XP x64 bit to run my CAD and EE programs atm, but a few weekends ago I gave ubuntu64 it a try. Grub error right off the bat, but no biggie I had a linux and a windows boot disk. An hour later still no Linux, put in windows boot disk and back to windows for awhile. Do some research and find an old copy of partition magic, no workie. Went into town and bought the new version 8.0 and it finally boots without error. The Grub bootloader is still needlessly arcane after years of development but boot magic just works.

So if they don't enter our bodies and result in healthier (and more productive) animals,

Agribusiness managers don't give hormones to their herds to help them become healthier. They do it for profit, pure and simple. Antibiotics don't make a feedlot cow healthy - they keep the sick ones alive.

Simply put, organic is not a viable long-term approach.

Neither is the system we have, where midwestern topsoil is depleted by monocropping corn & soybeans, which compose a substantial part of feedlot feed. Not to mention the excessive amount of natural gas that gets used to create synthetic fertilizers. It would be much more sustainable to feed the cattle directly on midwestern grassland...

The only group that benefits from the status quo are the argibusiness and chemical companies - Monsanto/et al. The consumer gets tasteless food; the farmer doesn't get any extra profit from their farm. Organic and all-natural farmers (the ones who know what they're doing) may get less output from their fields, but they more than make up the difference in reduced outlays for fertilizer/pesticides/etc and increased market price.

The meat production industry often gets an undeserved reputation, and there appears to be very little actual information out to combat those opinions.

The modern incantation of the industry deserves every slander it gets. I happened to find a copy of The Meat You Eat at the library two years back - I don't remember many of the specifics, just that it confirmed my selection of the most natural meats I can find. It was quite neutral in tone, except when it came to Veal.

I became friends with a grassfed beef farmer myself when I was in college. Went out to his farm one day at the end of my stay, and helped him move his cows around. Frank's meat was excellent (the best I've ever had), and his eggs had an exquisite flavor to them that I've never found the equal of. The chickens followed his cows through the pastures, and they'd go stomping through the cow manure chasing bugs and the like. Mmm... He wasn't certified, but his operation was certainly philosophically pure.

As for your bit about "scientifically unfounded fears" - science does advance, you know. Eventually certain ideologies will be substantiated, and all the rest will chuckle at what they used to believe.

Opportunistic eaters, such as bears, human, and chimpanzees, aren't that picky when it comes to plants... In order to understand the difference between reality and hallucination, you have to become self-aware...you must begin to understand what your mind is, how it works, and what it is capable of creating

So do bears possess consciousness or are they dying off by huge numbers from eating funny mushrooms? I'd love to live by Christopher Robin's woods, but so far the bears around here just like to eat the sunflower seeds out of my feeder (BTW, the mother bear teaches the young which foods are good to eat - they have a special organ in the roof of their mouths to discriminate plants).

You might enjoy Julian James's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind for an alternate theory of how the conscious mind evolved in humans.

It seems odd to me that there is this gap in the Twentieth Century during which nothing new was apparently learned about religion or the religious sentiment. All of this was being debated, with more articulation and learning on both sides, in the Twentieth Century. "Orientalism"--the fascination with all things Asian--was big at the time, and Buddhist "atheistic pessimism" was constantly being contrasted with "Emersonian atheistic optimism." If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience .

How are you going to be able to run surveillance backward from a car bomb detonating to the origin point of the bombers -- or forward, following them to where they're hiding -- without a pervasive net of surveillance? And once you have the capacity to do this in a hostile environment, where you can assume that the opposing forces will place a priority on disabling the surveillance system, it's no stretch at all, given the track record of the Heimatsicherheitsdienst, to see the government deploying these systems in the US for our 'protection', where the populace would have much less incentive to disable surveillance (after all, if you don't have anything to hide, why would you object to someone watching you?) -- particularly since this link in TFA, where it's specifically stated "The primary application is for homeland security"; you might want to try reading more deeply than just a light scan of the first few paragraphs. The potential of this technology reminds me strongly of David Drake's dystopian story collection Lacey and His Friends, written back in the '70s.

This is a good time to read (or re-read) Orville Schell's 1985 funny & sobering expose of the American meat industry, Modern Meat

This reminds me of a book I read recently by Robin Cook called "Abduction" - about a civilisation of humans (who evolved independently from surface humans) who live under the sea - a place they call "InterTerra".

http://www.amazon.com/Abduction-Robin-Cook/dp/0425 17736X

Anyway, the plot is terribly contrived and the writing is bad, but it was strangely compelling and I just had to find out what happened at the end.

So just be careful you don't go and piss off an advanced civilisation with your undersea drilling!

This was referenced in the article, but I think it bears repeating, since I read it and it was very good.

Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer

http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Explained-Evolution ary-Origins-Religious/dp/0465006965/ref=pd_bbs_2/0 02-4905741-9984855?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173054257& sr=8-2

To be honest, as a kid I never found the "500 in 1" kits to be up to scratch, but maybe that was just me.

A good textbook a decent breadboard and a good selection of components would be far more useful IMO.

My first ever book was Adventures with Electronics which was fun, but didn't really explain what happened well enough, so I'd combine it with something by M.W. Brimicombe to explain the why's and wherefore's (mine was a GCSE textbook) - unfortunately I can't track down the exact title as it seems to be out of print :(

Moving upwards though the book of choice has to be The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill - it's excellent!

http://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Wont-Go-Away/dp/0345 44034X/ref=sr_1_1/103-3082029-4762268?ie=UTF8&s=bo oks&qid=1173046013&sr=8-1 Why God Won't Go Away - Brain Science and the Biology of Belief

Assuming for the sake of argument that God can and does work through evolution and genetics.

The most relevant monograph for this discussion that I know is Swinburne's Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Swinburne sees no problem with humans naturally recognizing God, though through reason (essentially the cosmological and design arguments) instead of a gene, and argues that Christian notions of the Fall can work with the concept of evolution in positing that the first sentient ape-man to reject an obvious responsibility towards his Creator was the first to sin. Since the argument from design already posits, well, design, I don't think any Christian philosophers of religion hold that evolution is not a viable option.

Because homework is not educational. The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn is a great read on this subject. Be prepared to have your assumptions challenged.

Learning is not a behavior. Speaking of it in behaviorist terms such as "reinforce" shows how uneducated you are on the subject.
The research to support your claims does not exist.
http://www.amazon.com/Homework-Myth-Alfie-Kohn/dp/ 0738210854/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-1516831-6709560?ie= UTF8&s=books&qid=1173020107&sr=8-1 Read this book. It breaks down the argument for people who have not done the research.

You guys should read the book, "Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers." At least read the summary to see if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Hurt-Inside-Todays-Teenagers -Culture/dp/0801027322/sr=1-1/qid=1171911875/ref=p d_bbs_sr_1/105-6743750-7895649?ie=UTF8&s=books.

It talks a lot about this - not getting rid of homework, but if you read the book you might understand why lightening up on homework might not be such a bad idea.