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"Google does not make available any of the visual material that might be in the books, unless the copyright holder has agreed to it," said Pamela Samuelson, a digital copyright expert at University of California at Berkeley. "I don't really think this lawsuit has as good a chance as the authors' lawsuit."

The original publisher of the book most likely obtained permission to use the visual material only in the actual printed book, so this all makes sense. If Google is, however, (as Samuelson claims) not displaying that material, then why are these people even bothering to sue? Is it really true that they are not displaying the visual material?

I searched my bookshelf for a book full of pictures that I could use to test this theory, and I found the likely candidate in "A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars" by Brig. Gen. Vincent J. Esposito and Col. John R. Elting. This is a book that is has massive ~11.5" x 9.5" images on half of its pages. Unfortunately it has no preview available (it is, after all, long out of print and had a tiny run to begin with). Too bad.

A preview was available, however, for "The Napoleonic Wars: the Peninsular War 1807-1814" by Gregory Fremont-Barnes, which is also chock full of pictures of various types. According to the copyright page: cartography, by The Map Studio; picture research by Image Select International; origination by Grasmere Digital Imaging, Leeds, UK. In addition to that, every individual image has an attribution such as (for a fantastical looking artillery painting on page 39) the "Ann Ronan Picture Library." Now, do you really believe that Google actually went out and got a new permission from a different copyright holder for nearly every page of this book, or that they at most got it from the publisher, which may or may not be able to grant general permission to Google. Since Prof. Samuelson does not work for Google, I don't see how she can assert quite that confidently that Google indeed has permission in every instance. Even if the publishers all gave general permission, they might have been wrong to do so themselves, which still leaves Google on the hook (on some hook, anyway).

These photograph owners may well have a case; the result could be that we will either see another settlement similar to the book/author settlement (with more royalties), or Google will just cut out everything they couldn't successfully OCR, on the assumption that it is an image of unknown providence. This is certainly an awkward situation, and I would like to second Palestrina's earlier recommendation that everyone read what Lessig had to say about the obstacles presented by this sort of compilation work.

The complexity is that a modern book can have a large number of owners, who may have come together and agreed to publish a given book, or even a given edition of the book. But republication, translation, adaption for the stage, movies, song lyrics, etc., all need to be negotiated separately. It gets even crazier with video, since then you have musician rights, composer rights, etc.

I think Lessig gave us one of the best reads on this problem a couple of months ago: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2010/02/05_lessig.html

Overall, the U.S. transportation sector accounts for 33 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and highway fuel consumption for 20 percent.13 Other greenhouse gases from the transportation sector such as methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons contribute an estimated 23 million metric tons of carbon equivalent,14 which is equal to about 5 percent of transportation carbon dioxide emissions.15 The remaining two thirds of U.S. emissions are attributable mainly to the industry and to industrial and commercial buildings and the energyusing devices they contain; this includes emissions from the generation of electricity, nearly all of which goes to the industrial and buildings sectors. The numbers show that U.S. greenhousegas emissions cannot be sufficiently reduced by focusing on motor vehicles alone, but neither can they be sufficiently reduced without a significant effort in the transport sector.

It's not about what Yale can afford, but whether maintaining their own email system is worth the cost. If Yale can get email service cheaper or better (or both) through GMail, then Yale should switch over (I don't know whether they can or not).

Veering OT here, but the nice thing about Yale and many, perhaps all of the other Ivies is that you can attend them even if you're poor since they guarantee financial aid for those who cannot afford the cost of tuition (though at some you have to be a US citizen, too). Of course, you have to get admitted first! Anyway, the cost of tuition is important only to those who can afford it.

Low carb diet is the best diet for losing weight because it works with the body's systems.

No research supports your statement. If there was some major difference between the various diets, it would long ago have been identified, and someone would be shouting from the rooftops about their peer-reviewed scientific paper proving their diet plan beats every other famous diet.

Does anyone wonder why scientists don't accept the amazing claims that low-carb diets are so much better for you? It's because they know WTF they are talking about, and there simply hasn't been any science which supports the far-fetched claim.

Cite: http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0904c.shtml

Either this physicist is full of shit, ...

or he's not the "Harvard University physicist" (implying a current association) that the Science blog post claims. Maybe he just received a some sort of degree from Harvard in 1991 and is now a self-appointed "thinker" blathering on about ocean bubbles and climatology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_low-carbohydrate_diets

From the top of your link to WP: "as yet, there is not a general consensus on their efficacy"

apologize and then shut up

I take no responsibility for your dogma...

the solid factual research, that you supposedly cite when in truth you are woefully out of touch, colors my experience as quite common.

The research is real, and easy to find. What you believe has no affect on the facts.

Here's just one source, citing two different studies:
    http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0904c.shtml

And no, Harvard and the relevant researchers won't apologize to you, either.

You mean, the Harvard Divnity School?

This was new to me, so I looked up this "systematic misappropriation" that was cited by the judge. Turns out that this has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. It is based on the The Doctrine of Misappropriation. It is wild, but this is in essence a law created entirely by the judiciary. It is not like other cases where the judiciary is accused of stretching the constitution to the extreme. In this case, the judiciary literally created the law out of nothing.

Being in the market (not literally) for a new one, I would be pleased to have a kidney printed.

I asked a doctor why they can't be transplanted like other organs and he said that it's because they're too fragile and would likely be damaged during the transplant process.

Where is this claim being made? They do do pancreas transplants right here at Massachusetts General Hospital

You are right, the correct quote was
"The time for debate is over".

http://chge.med.harvard.edu/media/letters/documents/01_08_07_nyt_chivian.pdf

“I say the debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat. And we know the time for action is now.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, 2008

So the science may not be settled, but all findings to the contrary of AGW are deniers, lobbyists and so on. Useful idiots if they are against AGW, level-headed scientists if they are in favor.

Talk about double standards.

Unfortunately, I don't remember when there ever WAS the allowed time for debate. I only remember opposing views being booed, ridiculed or at best ignored.

I gave you everything you needed to look up some on-point rulings elsewhere, but to make it more explicit, here's the print cartridge case, and . See also section 1201(f)(3) of the DMCA, which explicitly permits reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability. To make it even more clear, see Title 17, Circular 92, Chapter 1, Section 102, which lays it out explicitly:

(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

Clear enough?

Atm. mass is ~5E18 kg, and ~75% is below the tropopause: http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap2.html

I spent 3 years a God followed by 7 years in the omniscience industry followed next by 4 years understanding everything.
Given the level of general knowledge you've displayed this claim is about as credible as yours.

So anyway, would you like some sources since you seem too arrogant to simply type a few terms into google:

The internet has no central authority

http://www.isoc.org/briefings/020/
If you're too lazy to read they spend pages and pages saying this over and over in different ways:
"There is no central authority that controls the operation of all root name servers"

Email:
go nuts:
find anything in here about a king of email and I'll withdraw all slurs on your knowledge of the field.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2821.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2045.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2046.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2047.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2048.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2049.html

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/archived_content/people/reagle/regulation-19990326.html
This rambles on a bit but the general gist of it is that the Internet is based on decentralisation and consensus.

Any single central authority is also a single point of failure.
Far better is rough consensus and running code.

The closest is IP addresses and yet it's still only by consensus, you are utterly free to resolve any given IP address however you wish on your own network(assuming the intent is not to defraud).
we've seen this when certain carriers get into conflicts with each other.

There are certainly groups which have influence on protocols etc on the net but they offer suggestions, not commands.

"The IETF process is interesting in that it is descriptive, not prescriptive. An IETF Standard is not a statement that all must abide by the technical specification unlike much law and some of the standards of government sanctioned standards bodies. Rather, it is a descriptive statement to say that (1) the policies specified by the document are desirable and (2) that the quality is high enough to permit developers to create independent implementations."

I can send a mail to any given IP without the slightest need for any kind of DNS service.

Since you seem too inept to write a simple bash script heres a quick tutorial.

Most basic possible script for sending an email.
Tested on an SMTP server picked at random from one of my email headers and it works fine.

echo "HELO myhostname\nMAIL FROM:$2\nRCPT TO:$3\nDATA\n$4\n.\nQUIT\n" | netcat $1 25

usage:
ScriptName.sh [SMTP server name or IP address] [from] [to] [message body]

Note that from and to must have angle brackets around them.

A lot of servers don't accept these connections from random machines simply because of the spam problem but this is the basics.
Anyone can do this.
You don't need to go near your ISP's email servers unless they're blocking port 25.
You don't need to touch the DNS system if you feed and IP in instead of a host name.

So.
If you think my sources are wrong all you have to provide is some links to some decent sources yourself.
using ALL CAPS doesn't count as providing sources by the way.
It just makes you sound like a 12 year old AOLer.

I've always been under the impression that top-tier schools are very friendly to low-income students and particularly to certain minorities (blacks and more recently latinos). For instance, Harvard provides free education to students with a family income below $60k/year. Their 2009 admissions had "A record 10.9 percent ... from Latino backgrounds, 10.8 percent are African Americans". I'm sure I don't need to show you statistics that those percentages are way over-representative compared to black performance metrics on standardized tests, GPA, likelihood of being #1 in the high school graduating class, etc.

Maybe not all the top schools are as friendly as Harvard, but I know there are similar stats and programs for many of them regarding financial aid and the admissions process.

Possibly because some races are over-represented in the lower economic stratas, are unable to afford tertiary educations at top-tier institutions and thus, even though they may be competitively intelligent, aren't able to make the most of it.

Oh, come on. There is plenty of opportunities for intelligent minorities to finance their education in college.

• You don't need to go to an Ivy League school to get a decent job. Computer Science department in the state university I'm attending (rank 50-80) regularly publishes the average salary of graduating seniors majoring in CS who secured a job (almost everyone who doesn't go to grad school). Last year it was around $50k - and this is for an entry-level position straight out of college.
• If they're short on cash, a very good strategy is to get a 2-year degree from a community college first, and then transfer credits to the university. It is also easier to get into a CC, and prove your worth by getting good grades.
• Being US citizens, they qualify for dirt cheap in-state tuition, and various federal aid (e.g. FAFSA, work-study programs, etc).
• Being a minority, they qualify for a huge number of scholarships that are not available to white males (especially in CS and Engineering).
• There is a large number of other funding opportunities. Our CS department gives a nice lump sum (approx. 1/3 of in-state tuition) every year to top X students in the department. I don't see any reason for an intelligent person to not being able to get good grades and become the top performer.
• It is not a secret that colleges still prefer to admit minorities over equally qualified white males, even though racial quotas are supposed to be illegal.
• To some of you who might say that these people often live in bad neighborhoods that foster "gang culture", so even smart kids are sucked into it: Often freshmen have to live on campus, so they get immersed into a learning community and have to break connections to places they were raised at. A rather interesting article (pdf) on the "acting white" phenomenon that I recently read might be relevant to this discussion.

Yes, I'm bitter - perhaps that's because most of the benefits listed above didn't apply to me, and I still somehow managed to accomplish my goal of doing a good enough job as an undergrad to be accepted in a top 5 grad school. Upward mobility *does exist* if you're persistent (or desperate) enough.

Perhaps you could explain distinction for us but it sounds like splitting hairs to me. HBS is a part of Harvard University and Harvard College is for undergrad studies in any case. Are you implying that an MBA from HBS is trivial or somehow carries less distinction that a degree from Harvard Law? http://www.news.harvard.edu/guide/students/stu5.html

The researchers have programmed Shelley to handle like a racecar by using a set of computer calculations called algorithms

See what happens when you let Liberal Arts majors playing journalist direct the public's understanding of technical things?

Soon: "John's car rolled out of his driveway all by itself and hit a fire hydrant, honey! He should sue General Motors for faulty algorithms!"

You're ridiculing the author for clearly and correctly defining the terminology? If the intended audience of the article is unlikely to know what "algorithm" means, don't you think a concise definition is in order? Now, I'm sure that writers assuming an Ivy League audience would reasonably expect people to know what the big words mean.

Not to mention the fact that there are many Computer Science and Engineering majors who are also capable of effective communication; this is not the sole domain of "liberal arts" majors. Journalism majors... well, make your own judgements.

the line between the 4 gas giants and the rest is a big one. that would work

the line between the 4 gas giants + the 4 (major) inner rocky planets and all the rest is another big obvious cut off point. that would work too

below that, it gets very murky very quickly in terms of valid, easily defined criteria

so your logical choices are:

1. 4 planets

or

2. 8 planets

or

3. 482,419 planets and counting

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/ArchiveStatistics.html

you choose. i'm going with 8

Now, I don't think planetary scientists, for the most part, make their decisions based on arbitrary terminology. But to take a concrete example, given how precarious its funding seemed from time to time, I suspect New Horizons would not have gotten funded if Pluto had never been considered a planet. And that would have been a shame.

what?!

it would be a shame to go to pluto JUST BECAUSE it is mistakenly considered a "planet." the shame would be making visitations based on historical nostalgia, rather than sound science. there's hundreds if not thousands of scientifically intriguing objects out there that are mostly anonymous but show something very intriguing to science, like a dozen gas giant moons that are much more interesting than pluto according to all sorts of avenues of discovery, or something having a ridiculously huge albedo for its size, whose composition therefore is very interesting,

or something like this freak, the giant metal dog bone asteroid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/216_Kleopatra

or the rubble pile asteroid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/253_Mathilde

or the potato asteroid with a moon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/243_Ida

the peanut asteroid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4179_Toutatis

binary contact asteroids:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_binary_(asteroid)

etc, etc.:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Iau_dozen.jpg

look, there are now 480,000 catalogued minor planets and nearly 69 MILLION observations (that could be double observations or new objects, not investigated fully yet). and its growing every year by hundreds of thousands

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/ArchiveStatistics.html

i would say at least 1,000 of those objects are more worthy, for scientific reasons, of exploration than pluto

howabout the centaurs (really out there)? howabout the trojans (locked in orbit with jupiter)? howabout the apohele (smaller than earth's orbit)?

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/MPLists.html

in short, fuck pluto: it gets WAY more attention than it deserves

Now, I don't think planetary scientists, for the most part, make their decisions based on arbitrary terminology. But to take a concrete example, given how precarious its funding seemed from time to time, I suspect New Horizons would not have gotten funded if Pluto had never been considered a planet. And that would have been a shame.

what?!

it would be a shame to go to pluto JUST BECAUSE it is mistakenly considered a "planet." the shame would be making visitations based on historical nostalgia, rather than sound science. there's hundreds if not thousands of scientifically intriguing objects out there that are mostly anonymous but show something very intriguing to science, like a dozen gas giant moons that are much more interesting than pluto according to all sorts of avenues of discovery, or something having a ridiculously huge albedo for its size, whose composition therefore is very interesting,

or something like this freak, the giant metal dog bone asteroid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/216_Kleopatra

or the rubble pile asteroid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/253_Mathilde

or the potato asteroid with a moon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/243_Ida

the peanut asteroid:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4179_Toutatis

binary contact asteroids:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_binary_(asteroid)

etc, etc.:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Iau_dozen.jpg

look, there are now 480,000 catalogued minor planets and nearly 69 MILLION observations (that could be double observations or new objects, not investigated fully yet). and its growing every year by hundreds of thousands

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/ArchiveStatistics.html

i would say at least 1,000 of those objects are more worthy, for scientific reasons, of exploration than pluto

howabout the centaurs (really out there)? howabout the trojans (locked in orbit with jupiter)? howabout the apohele (smaller than earth's orbit)?

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/MPLists.html

in short, fuck pluto: it gets WAY more attention than it deserves

1. Nobody's talking about patent infringement.
2. McDonalds couldn't claim against McSomething, but that's not parallel. What's more similar here is McDonalds suing over MCDONALDS. Which I think is perfectly reasonable provided we all agree that it's okay to sue over McDonalds (which, maybe not, because that's a name so it's kind of weird in the first place -- I don't think iPad is a common human name, though I'm not aware of the common names of all countries).
3. Prepending a letter, particularly 'i', is common but that doesn't make it un-trademarkable. Apple is a trademark, and it's been an actual dictionary word for ages. See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm#3. The iPad is a suggestive mark under that categorization, as is the IPAD, but they are in very similar product lines -- a phone and a scaled-up-phone-without-a-phone-in-it :).

Evidence continues to surface about American and other Western firms cooperating with repressive governments in their efforts to censor and eavesdrop on their citizens. Why didn't Mrs. Clinton mention them in her speech?

We have, for instance, Cisco, Nokia/Siemens, Microsoft, and Yahoo, just to name a few.

What percentage of students back then got magna cum laude? What percentage got summa cum laude? One could argue that the fact that he got magna rather than summa is indicative that "top of his class" is a tad bit hyperbole. I really don't know.

Harvard says that starting in June 2005, no more than 20% of each year's potential graduates will receive either magna cum laude or summa cum laude. I don't know if this is more or less than was previously awarded.

Astronomers have measured transmission spectra of a planet circling the star HD 209458 and a planet circling the star HD 189733 (and probably others). The first successful measurements, which found sodium in the spectrum of HD 209458b, were published by Charbonneau et al. in 2002. See ApJ 568, 377 (2002).

It is possible. Mexico City does it with the Sistema de Alerta Sísmica.

Google can be your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_time_scale

Here is a classic paper on galaxy formation: http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1977MNRAS.179..541R you can get rough timescales from there. More modern treatments include early clustering of dark matter to speed the process along. Dark matter obviates the need to worry about cooling times to some extent though consideration of lithium hydride cooling may be important before the first prompt supernovae provide some metals (most likely pair-instability SNe). You can find out more in my paper linked above.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises' amicus curiae brief in Eldred v. Ashcroft (PDF) tells all.

I think terrorists that attack western countries are middle class or well off. I don't think you could say the same of the suicide bombers attacking Israel. No I don't have evidence of that, just anecdotes.

Some light reading for you:

In this paper we offer evidence based on a unique database constructed from
reports of the Israeli Security Agency (ISA). The data detail the biographies of
Palestinian suicide bombers between the years 2000 and 2005, including detailed
information about the targets they attacked, and number of people that they killed
and injured. We nd that the suicide bomber’s age and education and the impor-
tance of the target are strongly correlated; older and more-educated suicide
bombers are assigned to attack more important targets. Older and more-educated
suicide bombers kill more people when they attack more important targets. We also
nd that more-educated and older Palestinian suicide bombers are less likely to fail
or to be caught during their attacks, emphasizing the importance of human capital
in the production of killing and terror.
.....

Our paper also contributes to the debate on the relation between educa-
tion, poverty, and terrorism. While suicide bombers are on average more
educated than the general Palestinian population, our estimate of higher
education among suicide bombers is lower than the gures reported by Berrebi
(2003) and Krueger and Maleckova (2003). Berrebi (2003) nds that 55 percent
of the suicide bombers for whom he was able to nd information on education
had or were persuing higher education. Berrebi’s gure is more than three
times our estimate of 18 percent.7 We suspect that selection bias may drive these
differences in the estimates of education among suicide bombers. For example,
Berrebi’s (2003, footnote 36) data do not include suicide bombers who were
caught or failed in their mission, or suicide bombers that did not succeed in
killing others—who tend to be less educated than those who do not fail in their
missions.

The way laws in the UK are going, soon it will be a crime to have an internet-capable device. (We can't have those prisoners using it as a shank!)

Fortunately, it's not a crime if slashdot links to cnet who claims cbnsews has the scoop, where we find that CNN is the source.

Otherwise, where would we get "news for nerds, hyperlink puzzles that matter"?

* For the lazy, here's the solution: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jdevor/links/n_nfshost_com-solution.htm

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2008-releases/life-expectancy-worsening-or-stagnating-for-large-segment-of-the-us-population.html

This is the first time I've been marked troll. I fail to see how it's a troll. Seems to me like it's "-1 Disagree", but whatever. It's Slashdot.

Anyways, I want to respond to a few points. Yes, I know Europe is not a country! I was referring to Europe as each country has different policies, but many of the nations that make up the EU and Europe do have opt-out systems.

If you think I'm full of shit, have a look at this article and graph from Harvard and tell me it's a total coincidence:

Graph: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/donor_default.jpg

Article: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/2008/04/do_defaults_sav.shtml

This is the first time I've been marked troll. I fail to see how it's a troll. Seems to me like it's "-1 Disagree", but whatever. It's Slashdot.

Anyways, I want to respond to a few points. Yes, I know Europe is not a country! I was referring to Europe as each country has different policies, but many of the nations that make up the EU and Europe do have opt-out systems.

If you think I'm full of shit, have a look at this article and graph from Harvard and tell me it's a total coincidence:

Graph: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/donor_default.jpg

Article: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/2008/04/do_defaults_sav.shtml

Maybe.

There's correlation between deep solar minima and volcanic activity/earthquakes:

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003ESASP.535..393S

We're currently in the deepest solar minima for a century or two, maybe longer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/12/could-the-sun-cast-a-shadow-on.shtml

Luckily, I live very very far away from Yellowstone myself. You? ;)

Geological activity on Earth isn't a hindrance for organic life, it's crucial for it. Keeps the carbon cycle going, maintains strong magnetic field which protects the atmosphere.

As a matter of fact, some researchers speculate that Earth is a borderline small planet for life: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2008/pr200802.html

See Halton Arp's observations of the redshifts and angular correlations of quasars. Since he started this work, it has been corroborated by a vast body of additional observations. A good overview is given in his book [amazon.com] "Seeing Red".

And an even greater body of evidence against or possibly for? The point is that science which is contentious is at the limit of our understanding. To say that Dr Halton Arp's observations falsify the big bang is almost absurd. That is because there are many lines of evidence for the big bang. Yet despite this it is still not certain and maybe a better theory will come about.

In discussions like this, a considered opinion would present both sides, weigh the evidence and possibly come down on the side which seems most likely. In the debates on the Internet and in the media we get one side and then the other simply shouting the other is wrong.

Intellectual property is a bankrupt and indefensible notion.

In the US, it's unconstitutional. IP is property, all right, but constitutionally this "property" belongs to the people. The copyright holder merely has a "limited" time monopoly on its publication and distribution. Unfortunately, Professor Lessig lost his Eldred case, and the SCOTUS ruled that "limited" means whatever Congress says it means.

But Steamboat Willie, Star Trek, and all the other intellectual properties, all belong to us. It says so right in the Constitution.

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Yes, but in that 24 hours' worth of time, you can bet Google has extracted every last possible drop of information from your queries. And we all know that data aggregration has the scary property of synthesizing "expunged" information from supposedly anonymous data.

From an EFF report on the dangers of data aggregation:

Although the most dangerous use of data aggregation is that of the government, data aggregation by private companies is also cause for concern. This is because companies can sell to the government information that it could not legally obtain on its own. Even companies that refuse to do business with the government can be subpoenaed. For these reasons, data aggregation by private companies poses the same risks that data aggregation by the government poses.

No, 2007 was not the 'steepest drop' in arctic ice cover, it was the 'smallest minimum extent' recorded. The increase and decrease in arctic ice cover follows the seasonal cycle and the rate of the decrease and increase in the seasonal change is similar from year to year. It is the 'minimum' and 'maximum' extent of the ice cover during the year that are of interest as a monitor of climate warming or cooling.

Thanks for the lecture about seasons; it would've been informative if I were still in elementary school. If you'd clicked on the "steepest drop" link, you'd notice that the plot's title is "Sea ice area at summer minimum." A casual visual inspection will confirm the peer-reviewed conclusion that the summer minimum experienced its steepest drop from 2006-2007.

The increase in the 'minimum' extent in 2008 and 2009 indicate a cooling trend that cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases since the concentration of those has increased during that time period.

Well, first of all it's not that simple. Ice extent at the summer minimum is just one observable, others include duration of the melt season, and thickness of the ice.

More importantly, please recognize that climate models don't predict monotonic warming. This strawman you're attacking simply doesn't exist. Short-term variability is expected; long-term averages are what's important.

If you want to claim that cooling somehow validates the models (which it obviously does not)...

The models predicted drops in sea ice extent, but nothing like the drop observed in 2007. If the drop in 2007 had continued for (at least) several years, that would've been a genuine climatic signal rather than short-term variability due to weather. But since the models never predicted such an extreme drop, that would've indicated that the models were flawed.

... you need to explain where a significant amount of planetary heat is being stored since the 'greenhouse gas' theory of planetary warming requires that the amount of heat being radiated from the earth must continuously decrease.

Contrary to popular belief, climatologists aren't denying the fact that natural variations such as changes in the Sun's brightness affect the climate. Climatologists aren't saying that our emissions are completely responsible for everything that's happening to the climate. It's just that once we account for all known natural variations, an artificial signal remains which is best explained by accounting for greenhouse gas emissions.

For example, modern dynamical climate models can't account for the physics of El Nino and La Nina events. Usually, circulation in the Pacific ocean sends cold water to the surface which serves to cool the atmosphere by warming the ocean. El Nino pauses that upwelling of cold water, thus warming the atmosphere by reducing the rate at which heat from the atmosphere is dumped into the ocean. La Nina does the opposite; it intensifies the upwelling of cold water, which draws more heat than usual from the atmosphere. The large dip in atmospheric temperatures in 2008 occurred because of a significant La Nina. These short-lived events have no effect on the long-term climate because they merely swap heat between the oceans and atmosphere. But they do make it difficult to use either ocean or atmosphere temperatures alone to st

Selective absorption is a well known effect that takes place whenever a wave propagates in a medium where two boundary conditions have to be fulfilled at once. We observe it regularly in our lab while sending acoustic/elastic waves into a pack of slabs of material. The same thing happens with electromagnetic waves, just like Isaac Newton observed a few centuries ago. Sending the light in a direction parallel to the lenght rather than perpendicular does not discover anything new. Next post, please...

ISS videos of the visible aurora have been doing the rounds internally at Cassini for a few months now, and they really are spectacular, but a height of 1200km is hardly a surprise new value, given that it falls in the exact range expected when compared with observations of the UV aurora made by the Hubble Space Telescope:

Altitude of Saturn's aurora and its implications for the characteristic energy of precipitated electrons

CO2 concentration measured in PPM is very consistent throughout the atmosphere.

Some would disagree, and unlike the GW Alarmists these people used real hard science to do it and described their methodology well enough that anyone with the resources can repeat the observations and either confirm or refute their results.

The observed CO2 concentration is generally high in low altitude and low in high altitude. High CO2 concentration relative to the average CO2 distribution is sometimes observed during the flights. Its difference is about 8 ppmv at most. Trajectory analysis suggests that the observed air with high CO2 concentration is often affected by continental outflow. The averaged CO2 vertical distribution shows seasonal difference. The CO2 concentration decreases with altitude in winter at all latitude, however the CO2 concentration observed over 2.0 km at north of 25 north latitude in spring is almost constant. These differences are considered to be principally induced by phase delay of atmospheric CO2 change from the boundary layer to upper troposphere. Spatial Distributions of Tropospheric Carbon Dioxide Over the Western North Pacific During Winter and Spring.

We have one of those already; I imagine a lot of schools do. Ours is only an 18-node cluster so the numbers are much smaller, but the story here is that this is relatively big, not that it's some new thing.

A comment on the blog post discussing the feature (to which TFS links) says:

They haven’t tried to patent sparklines, but the use of sparklines in Excel. I.e. the automatic updating of a sparkline embedded in a spreadsheet.

Cue the posts on how obvious and stupid the patent is regardless of this below. Point is, it's not an attempt on something already claimed by someone.

And you can't use them to make nuclear weapons.

That last part is why. :'|

And also ridiculously misinformed. From wikipedia:

The thorium fuel cycle creates mainly Uranium-233 which can be used for making nuclear weapons, and since there are no neutrons from spontaneous fission of U-233, U-233 can be used easily in a gun-type nuclear bomb. Thorium can and has been used to power nuclear energy plants using both the modified traditional Generation III reactor design and prototype Generation IV reactor designs.

Citation here.

By introducing female and male sex hormones into the animals, it is possible to increase the amount of meat that they produce without increasing the amount that they are fed.By adding the female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone to cattle, scientists can stimulate the animals to produce extra muscle and fat. Adding the male sex hormone testosterone increases muscle growth, and decreases production of fat. Oestrogen has been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer and to reproductive disorders in men. Progesterone has been shown to increase the development of ovarian, breast and uterine tumours in laboratory animals.

From here

Cows pumped up with hormones to produce milk all year round is seemingly also doing damage. Men receive a lot of oestrogen via milk produced in this fashion, nothing the dairy industry wants anyone to know about, of course.

Where the heck do you live, Alaska? The temperature inside a parked car in many locales can soar well over 120 F in direct sunlight with the windows raised. In fact, 150-200 F has been recorded. And cracking the windows open 1.5 inches does essentially NO GOOD AT ALL.

Summer Temperatures Make a Car a Potential Oven
American Physical Society: Temperature Rise And Heat Buildup Inside A Parked Car
Direct measurements documented
Pediatrics: Heat Stress From Enclosed Vehicles: Moderate Ambient Temperatures Cause Significant Temperature Rise In Enclosed Vehicles

Why not indeed ?

This sounds reasonable to me :

The lightning associated gamma rays can be inferred as due to bremsstrahlung associated with electrons released moments after the return stroke and the likely radiation associated with radioactive decay products in the interactions of protons generated in the lightning with the atmospheric constituents

(from Jayanthi et al., 2006).

Although the previous reports of lightning induced fusion from Slashdot are intriguing.

It’s a surprise to have found the signature of positrons during a lightning storm, Briggs said.

No, it's not.

There is a long history of observations and theorizing about gamma ray flashes from lightning strikes and ball lightning, starting in the early 1970's :

Is Ball Lightning caused by Antimatter Meteorites?
D. E. T. F. ASHBY, C. WHITEHEAD, Nature 230, 180-182 (19 March 1971).

This has also been observed in connection with "sprites".

And from thunderclouds without lightning.

Oh, and it's also been observed from space before :

RHESSI Observations of Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes

Now, not all of these reports include a positron annihilation signature at 511 KeV. But, 511 KeV emissions were explicitly reported from lightning in the 1970's. And, considering that lightning / thunderstorm related gamma rays are routinely observed with energies up to 10 MeV, there is plenty of energy to create positrons, and so I wouldn't be surprised if all of these reports included the positron annihilation line (or, at least the ones with sensitivity in that energy range).
 

It’s a surprise to have found the signature of positrons during a lightning storm, Briggs said.

No, it's not.

There is a long history of observations and theorizing about gamma ray flashes from lightning strikes and ball lightning, starting in the early 1970's :

Is Ball Lightning caused by Antimatter Meteorites?
D. E. T. F. ASHBY, C. WHITEHEAD, Nature 230, 180-182 (19 March 1971).

This has also been observed in connection with "sprites".

And from thunderclouds without lightning.

Oh, and it's also been observed from space before :

RHESSI Observations of Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes

Now, not all of these reports include a positron annihilation signature at 511 KeV. But, 511 KeV emissions were explicitly reported from lightning in the 1970's. And, considering that lightning / thunderstorm related gamma rays are routinely observed with energies up to 10 MeV, there is plenty of energy to create positrons, and so I wouldn't be surprised if all of these reports included the positron annihilation line (or, at least the ones with sensitivity in that energy range).