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I'd say that the energy crisis is, with the environment being a subset of it with world terrorism being another subset.

If we start growing oil (carbon-neutral) instead of buying it from the Middle East, the oil monarchies/theocracies suddenly run out of money to finance the schools that condition kids to provide the cannon fodder for terrorism in order to distract them from asking questions like "where are all these hundreds of billions the West is paying for oil going?" as they look around their Third World shitholes. We also stop dumping excess CO2 into the atmosphere as the CO2 is taken from the atmosphere.

That blimp to orbit project discussed here earlier suggests strongly that it wouldn't take a whole lot of money (relatively speaking) to make shipping the components to orbit for the Space Power Satellite the Bush Administration killed. (Remember the scramjet demo in the news? That's the last flight, Bush defunded it, too.) While there's plenty of coal, IMHO, "clean coal" is an oxymoron. Even if the ordinary pollutants can be scrubbed, the CO2 is a far more intractable problem. I've seen proposals to pump the CO2 from power plants into the seabed.

For more info on answers to the problem, click here

Needless to say Kerry would have been much better then Bush when it comes to the environment.

Only in that he wouldn't be actively trying to make things worse. Anybody who uses the words "HYDROGEN ECONOMY" with a straight face is automatically proclaiming his cluelessness. I read the Kerry and Democratic Party web pages and white papers on energy. Depressing.

The cause of this wave of terrorism really doens't have a lot to do with US government policy and less to do with Israel/Palestine.

It is because there is a great deal of anger and frustration brought on by the use of the money we have spent on oil in the Middle East not on public education and infrastructure and the other things required to build a First World society, but on building up the bank accounts of the kings and sheiks and princes whose countries have the oil and perhaps more important, on the security apparatuses and military organizations necessary to keep angry internal customers from putting them permanently out of business.

Their main tactic for keeping their citizens off their backs has historically been using religion as a tool to persuade their people that their troubles are not a result of their own government's inaction, but caused by EVIL WESTERN INFIDELS!!!

That's most of us.

In the course of this, they've worked with their religious institutions and religious leaders to create a generation of anti-Western fanatics ripe for exploitation by terrorists and are funding the spread of this ideology everywhere in the Muslim world.

The long-term solution to this is to reallocate much of the "War on Terror" funding to programs to replace oil from the Middle East with carbon-neutral biomass and solar energy solutions like the Solar Power Satellite program scrapped by the Bush Administration. Simply deleting the "snake oil" items like biometric ID from the anti-terror budget should by itself fund a good part of this. A rational analyis of the budget should find many places where we can cut funding without cutting security, and a few places where we should spend more money.

There is also an excellent chance that energy alternatives will also wind up much, much cheaper than $53 a barrel oil, whose price is escalating with no relief in sight, unless we make some. Stronger money, stronger nation, and this also will make it possible to spend more money on the military in the long run should we find that we have to.

Cutting off the funding the oil nations require to keep their governments in business against the will of their citizens and to export terror into the Western world means future terrorist efforts will have to be locally funded.

While this doesn't mean that terrorism will be eliminated, it will reduce its incidence and severity to something law enforcement can deal with as European governments have successfully dealt with terrorists for generations. The older Europeans around here will remember terrorist organizations like Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army, and that law enforcement working with intel agencies nailed them. The people responsible for the al-Queda bombing in Spain are already behind bars. Did the Europeans turn their societies into police states to make themselves safe from terror? Other than the Brit experiment with Orwellian surveillance they are engaged in, no.

This kind of bill does not need to be passed in the heat of an election. We are more secure with NO law rather than this one. Buying snake oil doesn't buy security, it's more likely to be a political payoff to the snake oul vendors using our money.

For more information on the technology side of energy replacement, click here for a summary with links to the DOE, University of New Hampshire, and NASA sites relevant to a program of this sort.

The point behind burning coal and oil is cheap energy. If we have to store every liter of CO2 produced by generators forever, this is no longer cheap energy.

It's time to grow our oil instead of drilling it in an increasing number of Third World nations hostile to the USA. Biomass oil is inherently carbon-neutral, the carbon dioxide released when it is burned came from the atmosphere to begin with.

We KNOW how to build orbiting solar cell arrays that work in space. We are on the edge of being able to put those arrays in space for under $1/pound, otherwise known as the SPS (Space Power Satellite) projects. Remember the blimp to orbit project? The engineering yet to be done to make this work is a hell of a lot less complex than these "'Zero' Emission Power Plants" (development of exotic new materials is unnecessary... and utterly necessary for the zero-emission powerplant program and the ridiculous "supergrid" and the cost numbers for develoing either are likely to be in proportion. We're better off funding whatever is left that's unfunded with respect to cheap orbital launch technology.

Biomass oil allows refining and distribution via existing refineries and distribution networks. Rectenna farms to receive energy from space power satellites can be built on the rooftops of existing generator facilities, and in addition, in places that have never had electricity before at minimal cost.

I like "big" thinking, but it only makes sense when it's pointed in the right direction. The article leaves out little details like "where is the methane coming from". Does he propose to capture cow farts? The leakage from city dumps? He makes no more sense than the hydrogen advocates do. People who like machines with lots of moving parts may find his concept k3w1 and l335, but I prefer systems where the moving parts are either electrons or E/M radiation which aren't prone to mechanical failure.

NASA's original plan for the Space Power Satellite was based on $200+ per pound, and the program made sense even then. It makes much more sense now.

You can get to the links to NASA and the DOE and an American univerity that substantiate what I've said from here.

The growth in energy demand from the industrializing Third World dwarfs anything we can do in this area.

Conservation is fun stuff, but if we are to survive the consequences of past and present energy policy, we need to get to work on the real problem.

We need to be looking at energy replacement instead, and that energy should be a lot cleaner and a lot cheaper than we are buying today.

The author pointed out that the future "hydrogen economy" is a cruel hoax perpetrated by the ignorant and by people who find the technologies so l33t and k3w1 that they haven't noticed that hydrogen is an inefficient energy distribution medium that might be uneconomic even if the price of electricity were $0.000 per KWh.

We are best off growing our own crude oil and prcessing and distributing it using existing infrastructure.

Biodiesel even when grown using ridiculously energy and labor intensive food crops is at rough parity with diesel fuel drilled in the middle east. We can do better than this, turning our sewage treatment plants into energy farms for algae that transforms raw sewage into crude oil should be a lot cheaper.

Remember the article here about $250/ton transport to LEO?

The NASA proposal for the Space Power Satellite showed that the system would be profitable even at launch costs of $400/kg.

What does 25% a pound to orbit using an extension of a 200 year old technology suggest to you?

Hopefully, more than it suggests to our political and corporate leadership.

If we can sell electricity directly to the Third World cheaper than they can buy oil to make it with, that's a lot of carbon dioxide and general pollution that isn't going to be happening.

We can replace fossil fuel, both as oil and as coal with solar energy packaged as cheaper and cleaner replacements.

For more information, click here. This includes links to the relevant UNH / NASA / DOE / space transportation sites.

Note that there is no reason why a public school that chooses to comply with the new rules that can get parents to send kids there can not survive.

Here's a draft of a voucher initiative designed to do just that. Needless to say, nobody has tried to turn it into law, the people who want to start voucher schools have NO interest in money with accountability. any more than the public schools want to be held accountable.

Perhaps he hasn't heard about things like global warming and running out of oil and that the NASA Space Power Satellite can solve both of those problems. Or figured that the people who can solve these problems stand to make one hell of a lot of money out of it. Space-based solar power appears to be the logical replacement for coal.

Mankind traditionally has been willing to go to dangerous places in search of profit and there's no reason why space can't be one of them if the price to orbit is dropped radically. This goal is now within reach.

Perhaps we have a man who has made great scientific contributions a generation ago but is fundamentally irrelevant now. All he's interested in is making a bigger rice bowl for his friends who are interested in the kind of science that can be done with unmanned probes. That isn't what it's about anymore. Figuring out how to explore space is about human survival now, not getting tons of rocks from alien planets to study.

For more information about solutions to energy problems that include space, go to my page and follow the links. They make a hell of a lot more sense than Van Allen does.

If enough money is put into the project, we can start space industrialization in a year or three, we don't have to wait until we find out if the space elevator is actually possible, we don't have to build giant rail guns for cheap space launches if the Elevator is unworkable.

It's time to start work on actually building Space Power Satellites at the "proof of concept" level. For more info, click here

Check this page.

So we have fixed schools, the finest hospitals, and universal health care when the oil runs out. The numbers I've seen say we're 1-2 generations away from that. Will anybody care at that point?

I've addressed the point you think you're making at length here

Catch a clue, there's a reason why progressives have the reputation for being clueless about technology, and you're adding to it.

So I favor going to the moon and building a lunar mining and industrial complex, not a "moon base".

For more information, go here

Or, we can go to Mars first, get back a few hundred pounds of Mars rocks, a few gigabytes of video, and masters/PhD theses for a couple of generations of science grad students.

The other point is that with going to the Moon, we probably get even more science done. It'll be a lot easier for grad students in related discplines to do experiments in space or on the moon if universities can simply send them commercial and rent housing and lab space for them than if they have to arrange for their experiments to go to space via conventional launch facilities, and if they're around their experiments and something goes wrong, the fix will be a lot cheaper than a satellite payload.

When our oil needs conflict with theirs, we're going to be in one hell of a lot more trouble than terrorists can put us in.

What we need to put in space is infrastructure (orbital and lunar factory sites) and a powersat project which will allow us to replace Middle East fossil fuel, and eliminate our need to be in the Middle East.

This won't make the Islamics love us, but if our economy (and that of China and India) is growing to take advantage of space-based resources, who will it matter to? If we aren't buying oil from the Middle East, anyone who's been previously getting that oil money will be too busy either trying to keep the locals happy with dwindling resources or getting the hell out instead of supporting terrorism financially.

The other point is that if we find out that space does have to be militarized in order to use it safely, if we have an infrastructure up there, big enough launch vehicles to build it or a Space Elevator or railgun launch facility, we'll be able to do this cheaply and quickly.

For more information, click here

Check the links to info on peak oil here for information a bit more current than this guy's belief system is.

I'm perfectly willing to listen to what this guy has to say about plant breeding, but his perspective is a trifle limited to make listening to anything he's got to say about ending world hunger worth the time.

As has been pointed out all over the place here, the price of food is the least important factor with respect to feeding the people of the world.

If you really want to feed everybody in the world adequately, solve the energy problem and the rest will follow. The above URL points to information on how to do that.

Once we have experience in major works of industrial engineering built in space, this issue might be worth discussing.

This stuff is just a way to get SF writers to endorse Bush and the readers to hopefully, follow along. Greg Bear and Clarke really ought to know better than to lend their names to this.

At this point, this is a bad idea even if Robert Heinlein personally returns from the grave to endorse it. I say fund studies to the extent of a megabuck or two and don't bug us about it until the people who get the money know enough to discuss the subject intelligently. Our knowledge of how to move multimegaton payloads is theoretical. After experience with building space industrial facilities like powersats and factories, we'll have some practice to build on.

I think a permanent solution to the energy crisis that leaves the US with no need for a Middle East political presence that costs a few hundred billion and creates millions of jobs can be sold to the American people.

I do not think that the American people either can or should be sold on a program which will mainly bring back some cool video of people wandering around collecting Mars rocks and the rocks themselves.

If we build a space industrial infrastructure, we will know how to get to Mars cheaply, comfortably, and safely.

We need space as a place to put industry. If we get industry up there, doing science up there will be cheap... it's a lot cheaper to send science grad students up if there's lab and housing space up there for them.

Fascinating.

I had no idea that you were the voice for all professional technology journalists everywhere. I'll have to remind the technology journalists I know (and contact those that I don't, just so they know) that they should stop visiting and writing because a lone voice howling in the Internet wilderness has an axe to grind and went on a rabid rant that we lacked credibility with him. Sure thing. Gotcha.

Thanks for completely ignoring the half-dozen paragraphs of entirely relevant context preceding the line that you took as the kernel for your completely off-base and misguided (at best) rant. But context apparently doesn't mean a thing to a "pro tech journalist" -- I'll try not to laugh out loud at that -- like you claim to be.

As for your argument about being put "out of business" by vendors unhappy with critical reviews, it's not going to happen. The fact is that none of us need to rely on the site for personal income or revenue. With personal financial imperatives removed, we're entirely free to publish whatever content we see fit, free of editorial interference from manufacturers. Critical coverage has led to us being frozen out in the past. That's a decision that is entirely within vendors' rights to make, but it doesn't leave a good impression with the readership. It comes off as sour grapes or taking their toys and going home.

But being the ever-so-clever and infallible uber-technology-reviewer that you are, you would know that, wouldn't you? Unless you're not who or what you claim to be. Now there's a thought.

Good products get good reviews, bad products get bad reviews.

My naive friend, if only it were so, there wouldn't have been a need to start Geartest.com (or any of the other sites that people have mentioned here). The fact is that there are many so-called "pro tech journalists" and "professional reviewers" -- presumably you are the self-annointed leader -- who don't actually do reviews but are entirely motivated by other financial considerations. For example, say, people who want others to hire them as a "professional Web surfer" at $25 per search for using Google. Or, say, people who want companies to hire them as home appliance Internet security product development consultants of dubious credentials -- or none for that matter.

For someone that claims to be such a security expert, it's amazing to me that you would ask people to fill out a Web form and transmit detailed personal information (more than enough for identity theft) to you via the Internet in plaintext ("unencrypted" for those who aren't entirely familiar with the terminology).

How many not-so-good products get excellent reviews at Geartest.com? NONE. In fact not very many products at all get excellent reviews, or even good ones. That's because most products out there are just mediocre.

Commercial technology product releases are often shipped with flaws. The fact that Belkin released updated software for its UPS had nothing to do with your phantom review. Belkin was probably aware of any problems when it shipped and made a business decision to proceed based on the slim probablility that any individual user would be affected by the flaw. Anyone who has ever worked on modern technology products knows that this is a common occurrence, something that you seem to be completely unaware of.

I was going to write a gently-worded response that refuted every one of your personal issues, but you've earned a reply that matches the tone of your comment.

Curse and swear all you like (really professional conduct by the way). If you are a fraction of the accomplished and esteemed reviewer and technologist that you make yourself out to be, your efforts would be better put to being part of the solution instead of throwing around your petty denouncements, name

Fascinating.

I had no idea that you were the voice for all professional technology journalists everywhere. I'll have to remind the technology journalists I know (and contact those that I don't, just so they know) that they should stop visiting and writing because a lone voice howling in the Internet wilderness has an axe to grind and went on a rabid rant that we lacked credibility with him. Sure thing. Gotcha.

Thanks for completely ignoring the half-dozen paragraphs of entirely relevant context preceding the line that you took as the kernel for your completely off-base and misguided (at best) rant. But context apparently doesn't mean a thing to a "pro tech journalist" -- I'll try not to laugh out loud at that -- like you claim to be.

As for your argument about being put "out of business" by vendors unhappy with critical reviews, it's not going to happen. The fact is that none of us need to rely on the site for personal income or revenue. With personal financial imperatives removed, we're entirely free to publish whatever content we see fit, free of editorial interference from manufacturers. Critical coverage has led to us being frozen out in the past. That's a decision that is entirely within vendors' rights to make, but it doesn't leave a good impression with the readership. It comes off as sour grapes or taking their toys and going home.

But being the ever-so-clever and infallible uber-technology-reviewer that you are, you would know that, wouldn't you? Unless you're not who or what you claim to be. Now there's a thought.

Good products get good reviews, bad products get bad reviews.

My naive friend, if only it were so, there wouldn't have been a need to start Geartest.com (or any of the other sites that people have mentioned here). The fact is that there are many so-called "pro tech journalists" and "professional reviewers" -- presumably you are the self-annointed leader -- who don't actually do reviews but are entirely motivated by other financial considerations. For example, say, people who want others to hire them as a "professional Web surfer" at $25 per search for using Google. Or, say, people who want companies to hire them as home appliance Internet security product development consultants of dubious credentials -- or none for that matter.

For someone that claims to be such a security expert, it's amazing to me that you would ask people to fill out a Web form and transmit detailed personal information (more than enough for identity theft) to you via the Internet in plaintext ("unencrypted" for those who aren't entirely familiar with the terminology).

How many not-so-good products get excellent reviews at Geartest.com? NONE. In fact not very many products at all get excellent reviews, or even good ones. That's because most products out there are just mediocre.

Commercial technology product releases are often shipped with flaws. The fact that Belkin released updated software for its UPS had nothing to do with your phantom review. Belkin was probably aware of any problems when it shipped and made a business decision to proceed based on the slim probablility that any individual user would be affected by the flaw. Anyone who has ever worked on modern technology products knows that this is a common occurrence, something that you seem to be completely unaware of.

I was going to write a gently-worded response that refuted every one of your personal issues, but you've earned a reply that matches the tone of your comment.

Curse and swear all you like (really professional conduct by the way). If you are a fraction of the accomplished and esteemed reviewer and technologist that you make yourself out to be, your efforts would be better put to being part of the solution instead of throwing around your petty denouncements, name

Current Reality claims "Estimated murder rate in the "Wild West" of the US in the late 1800's: 6 per 100,000. Estimated murder rate in the western US in the 1990's: 9 per 100,000." but does not cite a source for this information. Gun Control, Censorship, and Littleton says that "in 19th Century cattle towns, homicide was confined to transient males who shot each other in saloon disturbances. The per capital robbery rate was 7% of modern New York City's. The burglary rate was 1%. Rape was unknown." and cites David Kopel quoted in the Wall Street Journal, February 28, 1994 in "Have Gun, Will Eat Out" (A pro-gun article, so I suppose it is suspect.) That's all I could find in a few minutes using google. I would assume the rate of rape was unknown, since presumably then (as now) most rapes went unreported. Also a cattle town is no bigger than half a flat cow pie, and they're comparing to modern day NYC, which is idiotic. It's not like we're going to all go back to cattle ranching and assorted support industries.

Given the growing energy consumption of the Third World, it is exceedingly unlikely that earth-based renewable energy will replace the need for oil. So we need a new source of power to permanently replace the old.

This is why I've been calling for a Space Power Satellite program instead of a Mars program. In 20 years, we might be able to get a 20 TW power satellite system up capable of replacing Middle East oil if we start now. This will require infrastructure items like a lunar mining and processing facility and a railgun to get processed silicon to an orbital factory capable of cheaply turning silicon into solar cells and other semiconductors.

It will be expensive, it will require pushing some technologies to the limit. It will not relieve us of the necessity of conserving energy in the meantime. The incandescent light bulb needs to become a thing of the past. We should already have started looking for low-hanging fruit type items, i.e. easy to do that would save substantial energy.

Bush should defund the Mars project in favor of reviving the Space Power Satellite.

It beats the hell out of the alternatives.

For the amount of money a new major space initiative is going to cost, we need more than a few hundred pounds of Mars rocks and a thousand research publications which is all we're likely to get from the alleged Mars project.

NASA has already worked on a Space Power Satellite project, it estimates the costs for a 250MW demo for $10 B and discusses a 10,000 gigawatt system capable of replacing all other earth energy sources.

Throwing in a moon mining and processing facility and a space crew shack and either a Space Elevator or earth-to-orbit railgun might add tens or hundreds of billions to the cost but would make building the powersat system capable of rendering oil a non-issue a believable investment for the private sector.

We can get cost numbers down by buying

If the major oil companies want to continue selling energy, they can pay for the space power satellite systems which will make it possible to stop buying oil out of the Middle East.

As in the days of the railroads in the American West, a government/private sector initiative is needed to make a new place for industry and habitation and research available to the rest of us.

The best news about this is that the space infrastructure we need to build will make a trip to Mars a lot cheaper and safer and probably happen sooner than in the original Bush "plan". Fueling a Mars probe is a lot cheaper if one can simply order propellant shipped from a Moon facility to L-5.

For more discussion of this and other initiatives proposed to get America's brainpower working for the profit of everyone instead of sitting wasted and idle as current outsourcing promises to do, click here. The links on which this post and my further discussion are based can be found there.

There are things we can do with manned space projects that would mean a hell of a lot more to the taxpayers than a small handful of people bringing back a few pounds of Mars rocks and a ton of observations that'll be of use to generations of science grad students, and we need to get on with them.

Whether you believe the peak oil projections that say:

• already happened
• 2010
• 2030

We're better off starting with the quick-fix measures for energy conservation now and starting work on a the demo Space Power Satellite (SPS) satellite project already designed by NASA while development is done on an SPS network, a cheap orbital skyhook for at least freight, (elevator or railgun), a moon mining and processing facility.

The timeframes and the cost to do the above are about the same as Bush is calling for in order to send a handful of people to the moon and Mars, with these resources in place, a trip to Mars and to the asteroids to scout locations for the next phase of expanding our industrial base into the Solar System as a whole will be far less expensive, a lot safer, a lot faster, and will probably be done by the private sector. Looking for profit, not just scientific research.

If you want to read about alternatives to current technology policies of the Bush Adminstration and of all the Democratic candidates, check this page out. The information links that would ordinarily substantiate my post here are on that page and mostly work. If you don't like what I've got in mind, come up with something better and start working on turning it into public policy.

The best way to celebrate the lives of the astronauts who died in space is the way we celebrated the pioneers who died in the American West. By turning the lonely, isolated places where they died into places for human industry and human habitation.

We've mourned our astronauts for long enough. It's time to get on with the real goals they were working for.

The Founding Fathers were openly religious. The practice of praying to God, and not just any God, the Christian God embraced by the Christian religions, in government has continued even today

• Thomas Jefferson : Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
• Ben Franklin: "I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
• Thomas Paine : The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a parody on the sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of the eastern world, is the least hurtful part."
• James Madison: "Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
• John Adams: As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

• http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/founding-fathers-xtia nity.html
• http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/extra/foundin g-fathers.html
• http://www.barefootsworld.net/founding.html

By your definition, every other country in the industrialized world is "socialist".

He's also the closest thing to an anti-gun control candidate the Democratic Party has produced at the national level since JFK and Hubert Humphrey.

I suggest taking a closer look at his positions. His Website contains several of them.

As for hate-mongering, the left (of which I actually am not a member, speaking as a supporter of vouchers) isn't the group that automatically equates any criticism of Bush to treason. Note that my politics is based on pragmatism, NOT ideology... I pull from right, left, center, or Libertarian based on what makes sense. But I consider the right a fuck of a lot more dangerous, Ashcroft is NOT a Democrat.

I do have a suggestion to you, since you may be one of the few on either side of the political debate that is actually interested in finding out what the hell is really going on.

Check out the Open Sources Intelligence mailing list (OSINT-L). Subscribe in digest format.

It's more oriented towards small businesses and ISPs without the resources to build complete backup sites a few thousand miles away.

You may not feel the pain/strain as your mind is inundated by other, more important datum. Here is a url with simple pictures and descriptions of some integral stretches to prevent RSI and prolong comfort; http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/rsi/RSIMIT/exercise.ht ml.

This is from my own home page:

People who do not have carpal tunnel can get an incredible amount of help out of work with a physical therapist with experience dealing with RSI/CTS supervised by a doctor. Get a medical diagnosis first, preferably involving an electromyogram which can determine definitively whether or not the median nerve is really compressed or not. I had tendinitis a few years ago which was originally diagnosed as CTS, I considered this a wakeup call.

And if you've really screwed the pooch and the doctor is recommending carpal tunnel release surgery, be warned, I've met more than one person who's tried carpal tunnel release... and is not happy with the results, anyone contemplating that procedure should probably check into the balloon release described below first.

"Sunday February 25, 1996 Balloon catheter relieves pressure on median nerve in carpal tunnel"

"A new procedure to alleviate carpal tunnel syndrome uses a balloon catheter to stretch and expand the ligament and relieve pressure on the median nerve in the carpal tunnel of the wrist. This avoids cutting the ligament when conventional therapy is not effective."

"According to a study of 120 patients treated with the new procedure during the past four years, 85 percent had marked clinical improvement in relief of wrist pain and numbness, and 95 percent reported overall satisfaction with the outcome."

American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons web site carpal balloon release info.

You might enjoy what I have to say about the entertainment potential inherent in Libertarian-style deregulation of food at http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/index1.html#cooking , use Libertarian as a search term within your browser from there. Or just read down until you find it, depending on your sense of humor.

While I support the portion of the Libertarian agenda demanding elimination of "victimless crimes" from law like prostitution, drug laws, etc., I support Libertarian beliefs with respect to freedom of speech, and I even agree with the formulation that taxes are essentially a taking of money from citizens at gunpoint in exchange for certain services, I regard many but not all of these services as necessary for the maintenance of a community one can either live in or do business in, and I don't think purist Libertarian have a clue as to what 'necessary' services are, or that their faith that citizens will fund these services of their own free well is justifiable.

But I fully support the right of these people to try this experiment. At a safe distance.

While I wholly agree with the "no censorship" and "eliminate victimless crime laws" part of their political agenda... and I think that their definition of taxes is useful... I don't regard what they've got as a substitute for either a religion or ideology.

With respect to victimless crimes... marijuana has been decriminalized and enforcement of other drug laws is minimal and uses a medical model, not an enforcement model. Instead of an increase in other kinds of crimes, the Dutch get safe streets. Prostitution is legal in defined areas in large parts of Europe... and in Nevada. Where are the problems? I can speak about Holland directly because I've been there and seen this work in person.

Speaking as someone whose Net experience started in 1991, the place worked better before idiots tried censoring it.

Crime drops in US areas where concealed weapons permits are easy for non-criminals to get. somewhere on my personal site

The burden of proof for the idea that if personal freedom is legalized, other kinds of crime will increase drastically, has necessarily to be on the head of the person who asserts it. Extraordinary statements require extraordinary proof.

So far the evidence is... freedom works, d00d.

Misinformation or even disinformation via mass media is NOT the problem.

While this isn't true with respect to every issue or group, thanks to the Web, we have more access to all sides of every issue than we have ever had before. All we have to do to find out what any group has to say about itself is to go to their website and look. No need to be concerned about media agendas or "editorial judgement".

If you don't like "misinformation" or "disinformation" about a group or country or company, go to their Websites and get their side of it. Many newspapers in foriegn lands have English-language versions. In some cases, this is government-controlled media, in which case you at least know what the government has to say. Other countries have presses with varying degrees of freedom.

Don't whine about misinformation, make or find better information and tell people about it yourself.

If you care to take the time, you can become a better informed citizen than has ever been possible in the history of the world.

The problem isn't the media, it's that most people can't find the time or more often, the interest to find out for themselves what their media is deliberately not telling them.

The US is hardly immune to this, the best 2000 election coverage came from The Guardian in England.

With a bit of digging around, you can find out why the rest of the world believes that the 2000 US Presidential Election was stolen and that the democratic process in the US is a joke. And not 1 American citizen in 10 knows why, most have accepted the mass media version as spin-controlled by both political parties as TRUTH.

While "The Truth" isn't necessarily out there, you can go out and find very large chunks of it by simply knowing what to point and click at.

Here are some of the URLs I use when I want to find things the mass media isn't discussing:
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/index1.html#news1, warning, the page is 250K of text, it'll take a while to load even in lyns for dialup users.

ECAD is electronic computer aided design. There are low cost packages, some are even freeware. Get a package as soon as you can.

You will get schematics that are automatically legible, plus you will get automatically generated net lists telling you exactly which pins of which chips are supposed to be connected to each other. If you're wiring up a circuit by hand, this is amazingly good information to have, especially if it's accurate.

Here's a freeware package, I think it's good for 16 IC equivalents. Check McCAD . Perfectly adequate for hobbyist or student. Their shrinkwrap unlimited version is thousands of dollars and has more power than you have any idea how to use at this point.

Get a good basic set of hand tools, there are plenty of hobbyist kits.

In addition, include a decent wire-wrap gun if you plan to work in digital. Your technique of choice if you aren't buying a kit with a PCB is going to be wirewrap on perforated boards into which you've plugged lots of 8-64 pin wirewrap sockets into. Get the socket ID labels. These items, except for the (I said decent) wrap gun, you can get at Radio Shack. You might check ebay for a deal on a pro wire-wrap gun.

You need a DMM (Digital mulitmeter), an analog VOM (volt-ohmmmetter, this will generally have a current measurement range large enough to be of us, look for several amps measurement capability, and an oscilloscope, at least 100 MHz, look for a used Tektronix.

Look hard for a decent electronics surplus store in your area, you might get some spectacular deals on test gear and the more expensive tools.

Find out where the electronics "pro shop" in your area is, for the stuff that Radio Shack never did and never will sell. You'll pay a premium, but it beats waiting for shipping if you need it NOW.

The ARRL Handbook from the ARRL ham radio organization is a good starting point, as their other tutorial guides are.

For where/how to get electronics info that's actually useful, try the electronics section on my site http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/index1.html#electroni cs

As a result, I've had to walk just about everybody I've persuaded to use PGP through it, even the reasonably competent users.

The solution is my PGP Quick Start Guide. It's based on the v6.5.8 (ADK-fix) release, I'm in no particular hurry to do anything about getting V7. It's a step-by-step guide for the new user for using PGP, from telling them NOT to install the PGP-net VPN to creating key pairs, and especially use of the PGPtray icon.

It's only a few pages long, it presents a bare minimum (how but not why) of information required to communicate securely with PGP. Users can find out why from the manual later.

1) I am not a gun expert.
2) Here is more information about FUD about purely plastic weapons
3) I had both of these in mind when I wrote my response -- my main point was the proposal that (hardware/etc.) hackers start thinking about drafting better proposals for airlines.