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The *science* doesn't show any such thing. Theories and explanations are not the same thing as science. Really, the closest thing to *science* on this topic is empirical research done by sociologists and economists, most notably, IMHO, Professor Steven Levitt. Imprisonment has two effects: incapacitation and deterrence. In general, incapacitation is more significant, but deterrence is clearly a factor. That is, longer prison sentences do reduce crime rates. Sociologists have for a long time been saying that prisons teach people to be better criminals, but that's a tough idea to sell, and it's even harder to prove. It's just not enough to cite examples of people who say they made criminal contacts in prison. You don't know what they would have been doing during their time outside prison. Without good data, there is no proof. By the way, I believe Levitt would agree with your main point that prison sentences in the US need to be reduced, but not for any of the reasons you give. http://www.jstor.org/pss/725795

Did you seriously expect that you could link to random journal abstracts that don't support your point and get away with it?

1. This is the only one that supports you point. However, the results weren't reproducible: "The present study was done to confirm the reported observation that low-intensity acute exposure to 2450 MHz radiation causes DNA single-strand breaks (Lai and Singh, Bioelectromagnetics 16, 207-210, 1995). ... Furthermore, we did not confirm the observation that DNA damage is produced in cells of the rat cerebral cortex or the hippocampus after a 2-h exposure to 2450 MHz CW microwaves or at 4 h after the exposure." DNA Damage in Rat Brain Cells after In Vivo Exposure to 2450 MHz Electromagnetic Radiation and Various Methods of Euthanasia
2. "Radiation-induced conductivity measurements on hydrated DNA provide evidence for highly mobile charge carriers within the B-DNA superstructure. The lack of anisotropy in the conductivity for aligned fibre samples and the second-order nature of the decay argue against one-dimensional conduction via a 'pi-way' type mechanism involving electron transport confined to the base-pair core." -- it's not clear what that has to do with microwaves or DNA damage.
3. "The data shows that GSM MWs at 915 MHz did not induce PFGE-detectable DNA double stranded breaks or changes in chromatin conformation, but affected expression of genes in rat brain cells." Emphasis added. I.e., DNA was not altered, but there were changes in the amount of proteins made (or whatever the DNA was coding)
4. This says that microwave radiation had no effect on how quickly damaged DNA was repaired. Note that the DNA was damaged in the first place via UV radiation, not by microwaves--ionizing radiation that's long been known to damage DNA.
5. Again, this doesn't show any DNA changes, but does show some changes in production of some proteins. However, "No detectable differences were noted in the postexposure cell viability, plating efficiency, or proliferation rate. Also, there were no detectable differences in cell viability or plating efficiency between controls and cultures irradiated for 2 h when the temperature was simultaneously increased to above normal physiological limits (39 to 45 degree C)."
6. "Prognostic significance of oestrogen receptor beta in breast cancer"--nice completely irrelevant article there.
7. "Results:No statistically significant difference in the apoptosis rate was observed between sham and 24 h MW-exposed cells ..." "Furthermore, for CW-exposure, apoptosis rates were comparable between sham-, CW-, 37 degree C- and 39 degree C-exposed cells."

So no, microwaves have not been shown to alter DNA.

Microwaves don't alter DNA? You'd better tell a number of scientists and other researchers you know more than they do.

Quite frankly, if I was his neighbor, I'd sue the moron.

So if I lived next to you would it be alright if I opened a toxic waste dump next to you? Or would I have to sue you?

Falcon

Microwaves don't alter DNA? You'd better tell a number of scientists and other researchers you know more than they do.

Quite frankly, if I was his neighbor, I'd sue the moron.

So if I lived next to you would it be alright if I opened a toxic waste dump next to you? Or would I have to sue you?

Falcon

The papers I've read suggest that it was forest that was burnt to produce grassland which animals would graze on, in turn making it easier to hunt them. The aim was not to get rid of megafauna, since there is some evidence that humans ate the megafauna. Changing climate was primarily responsible for changes and erosion of soil, not humans, although they did have some localised effect (ref).

Actually, the GP's got a good point. Back in college, I took a number of humanities courses whenever I could squeeze them into my schedule.

I can say from firsthand experience that there are a lot of "scholarly" articles that are complete and total crap. When writing papers, I'd frequently peruse JStor for pertinent articles about my topic, keeping an eye out for particularly good articles, as well as the heinously bad ones. Picking apart and systematically disproving a bad paper published in a "good" journal was an easy ticket to an 'A' on the paper.

These papers, of course, were certainly the exception. Most scholarly papers I encounter are humbling in their brilliance. However, I've seen more than a few bad journal articles, as well as quite a few blog entries that would be worthy of scholarly publication. It's hard to make any generalizations about the validity of certain sources of information.

Unfortunately, Physics wasn't quite as easy to bullshit (Random aside: The physical sciences certainly have their fair share of bad journal articles, especially in light of the fact that printed media is a terrible means by which to communicate scientific results. It's a cruel irony that the www was invented to enable collaboration and information exchange between scientists, but is rarely (if ever) used for that purpose. Also, any use of the word 'trivial,' or its synonyms needs to be punishable by death.)

PS. Don't judge our writing abilities based upon out slashdot comments. I'm sure the GP had his own reasons for majoring in English, even though literary discourse is often trite and contrived.

Many Polish people may indeed be nationalist, they may be anti-semites, russophobes... but racists? There are just not so many black people in Poland. Microsoft was probably right thinking that having black people in the ads would not connect in a 99.9% white population.

Not identifying with people of other races is exactly what racism means. In fact I don't think I could make up a better definition.

Yes, Virginia, many or most (all?) people are at least a little racist at some level. Subtly altering a candidate to look more like a voter makes that candidate more likely to receive the vote. Most Americans find it easier to associate words with negative connotations with blacks and positive connotations with whites. Yes, racism is almost universal to some degree and probably natural. Does this make you think it's ok or unimportant? To me it makes it all the more problematic.

Here's the first hit on a scholar.google.com search for menarche father absent. If you want more, you now know how to find it.

You got the sixty million right, but are an order of magnitude out on the current population of cows. Here's my comment to Salon magazine 2 years ago on this subject:
Here are my calculations, with references, courtesy of google and an hour of my time. Thanks also to the USDA and PBS.
Size of national herd, all cows and calves: 106 million.
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/Catt/Catt-07-20-2007.txt
Number on feed (multiplying their GHG impact): 11 million.
(in short, they are only on feed near The End.)
http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/cofd0907.txt
Number of bison they ecologically replaced, bison that ALSO produced GHGs:
60 million.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/frontierlife/essay8.html
OK, so because of the 11 million on feed, the 106 million cows have the GHG impact of a good 120 million grass-fed, so they have double the "natural" level produced by the bison?
But wait! Or, rather, weight:
Bull bison (37% of herd): 1800-2500 lb.
Cow bison (45%): 900-1200 lb.
Calves (18%) :35 lb up to numbers above
sources:
Herd composition:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-541X(198907)53%3A3%3C593%3ACOBPEW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R
Weight:
http://www.gunpowderbison.com/Kids%20Corner
So the TONNAGE of natural ruminants on the North American plains can be calculated from the above numbers (giving calves half the average of cow and bull) to be an "average bison" weight of 1559 lb. Times 60M, is 46.8 megatons.
The US herd is lighter because it's mostly younger than a natural one; we slaughter cows at 2 years, bison live 20, so a higher proportion of the total is calves.
My first reference also notes that just 33M of that national herd is over 500 lbs. Conservatively giving them all the full adult weight (from wikipedia, "cattle") halfway between 1300 and 1900 lb, and the average of the other 74M that are under 500lb, conservatively, at 400 lb...we get a total tonnage of beef at 41.2 megtons.
Bottom line: there are fewer tons of beef now than there were of bison in the 19th century. Beef eater's disturbance of the natural methane balance is zero, indeed it may be NEGATIVE.
Maybe not; 41.2MT is only 12% less than 46.8MT and my whole-hour of research may have missed a few things. Also, the amplification of GHG output by the 10% of the herd that's on feed is a factor. I'm willing to call it even, although my weight numbers were quite conservative.
So, there's no GHG impact at ALL, compared to the original, natural state. At least not in North America -- but what was the former methane production everywhere that are now cattle ranches? Most ranching is done where there was an equivalent animal before. And even swamps and rainforests have quite a bit of decomposition that produces methane.
Until you do that part of the calc - the previous GHG load from the former "natural" environment, you don't have a calculation, you have HALF a calculation.

Your not adding anything to the conversation

"You're". Not: "your".

See, something has been added. Your grammar was frequently atrocious in your earlier screeds, but I decided to give you a free pass for those ones. You really should concentrate on getting the basics of English down, because using it poorly reflects badly on your message, no matter what you are saying. Or trying to say.

I addressed the merits of your case earlier, with regard to the physical location of the plant used to operate the gaming, versus the residence of the gamers. You argued that the WTO had no remit in this case. The WTO panel disagreed, and in accepting arbitration, the US *and* Antigua both accepted remit. You are, in effect, second guessing the legal and political teams from two countries as well as an international panel of jurists. As with idiosyncratic stock picking, there is a very, very small probability of you being correct in this instance, versus a very high probability of you not being correct in this case. I have read your bloggish/fisking-style arguments againt the WTO decision and they are unconvincing and merely reiterate or restate many of the initial arguments of the US deposition in the first round of hearings. These arguments were judged at the time to be of insufficient merit to prevent the arbitration from proceeding. Your stubborn refusal to recognise that a legally constituted body delegated to come to a resolution of this difficult problem bespeaks a cognitive difficulty in accepting wisdom.

Sometimes, you just have to admit that you are wrong. The problem is that when your intellectual capabilities constrain you from recognising the domain borders of your inexpertise, there is a high probability that you will overestimate your capabilities.

Someone asked me for a study on this point, so I'll post it here for inquiring minds. I only recall one study off the top of my head, though I know others are out there. You may know this already, but there are several economic journals dedicated to housing, labor, and poverty - they'd be a good start if you wanted to read more.

The article is a bit dated - from 2004 - my apologies on that, I haven't kept up with more current research, if any exists, on this topic. Without further ado, the article is entitled "Public Housing, Housing Vouchers, and Student Achievement: Evidence from Public Housing Demolitions in Chicago" and the primary author is Brian Jacob.

Basically, the city of Chicago demolished some slummy towers and the residents moved to "substantially better neighborhoods" with vouchers. The study follows the educational achievement of the children of those who stayed in public housing (non-demolished towers) as well as the children of those who moved. The study finds performance doesn't differ meaningfully between the two groups in educational attainment or poverty.

The study does have some flaws - for example, the study was big, but looked only at those forced to relocate, taking volunteers might produce better results - though that may just re-enforce the finding that whatever makes most of these kids perform poorly transfers with their family. Anyhow, I think the study is statistically meaningful and the methodology is reasonably sound.

Additionally, re-reading my comment here, I believe I overstated the results - the students here weren't moved to wealthy areas. I'm sure I read a study on that, and I recall that the transplants reduced their peers performance but did no better themselves, but I won't look that up, since it had smaller control & test groups, plus this study is pretty close. Anyhow, here residents were moved to significantly better areas, but not wealthy areas.

JSTOR Page & PDF.

That was not the issue I had. The issue is that you don't really know what you're talking about, and tried to use big words to compensate.

Alas. You've caught me. I'm a naÃve fool who wraps myself in complex verbiage to cover my deep lack of understanding. I will now withdraw in disgrace.
Have a cup of coffee. Calm down.

Theories aren't speculation. Theories are well tested, well vetted informational organizational systems that generate (typically) multiple hypotheses. This is speculation, in the same way that my looking at flying squirrels can inform me about bats (in that maybe it can, but it's not a perfect relationship and the relationship needs demonstrated). The legitimacy of their conclusions based on their data is questionable. The authors even disclaimed themselves based on that, so it can't just be me who thought that.

Niche is not just used in an ecological context. There's an "Ecological Niche," but I've heard people talk about "Behavioural Niches," "Morphological Niche," I've even seen people talk about "Genetic Niches," to name just a few examples. Sometimes, the person is linking ecology in to whatever else they're talking about. Other times, they're just talking about an organisms set of values in a field of possible values. It depends on context. You see it in journals, and I've yet to see someone write an angry rebuttal that `so-and-so et al. doesn't understand the term niche` over it. If the idea was communicated, well that is the goal, isn't it?.

That was not the issue I had. The issue is that you don't really know what you're talking about, and tried to use big words to compensate.

Alas. You've caught me. I'm a naÃve fool who wraps myself in complex verbiage to cover my deep lack of understanding. I will now withdraw in disgrace.
Have a cup of coffee. Calm down.

Theories aren't speculation. Theories are well tested, well vetted informational organizational systems that generate (typically) multiple hypotheses. This is speculation, in the same way that my looking at flying squirrels can inform me about bats (in that maybe it can, but it's not a perfect relationship and the relationship needs demonstrated). The legitimacy of their conclusions based on their data is questionable. The authors even disclaimed themselves based on that, so it can't just be me who thought that.

Niche is not just used in an ecological context. There's an "Ecological Niche," but I've heard people talk about "Behavioural Niches," "Morphological Niche," I've even seen people talk about "Genetic Niches," to name just a few examples. Sometimes, the person is linking ecology in to whatever else they're talking about. Other times, they're just talking about an organisms set of values in a field of possible values. It depends on context. You see it in journals, and I've yet to see someone write an angry rebuttal that `so-and-so et al. doesn't understand the term niche` over it. If the idea was communicated, well that is the goal, isn't it?.

Compare these to the 'new age' time-out techniques and the like which are based on adult psychology and are probably completely inappropriate for immature minds. Probably far more damaging, but we won't know for another couple of decades or so...

What really pans out best is being consistent in whatever parenting style (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, etc.) so time-outs are fine as long as they're actually enforced.
Anecdotal:
My mother managed to put me and my sib in a corner when we were 15, but she almost never used a belt on us when were kids. When I worked at a pre-school, time outs worked brilliantly at getting the rowdy kids sorted out.

citation:
  Inconsistent parenting: Is there evidence for a link with children's conduct problems?

I actually found a study that kind of supports your and the gp's claim: (though timeouts are common in authoritative parenting)
The relation of parenting style to adolescent school performance, but the reason the study gives for why authoritative has the highest correlation is that it's the most internally consistent.
and another, 'cause I'm feeling bored

But I wonder about the culture correlation-do families that tend to practice consistent authoritative discipline come from cultures where education is highly valued?

Compare these to the 'new age' time-out techniques and the like which are based on adult psychology and are probably completely inappropriate for immature minds. Probably far more damaging, but we won't know for another couple of decades or so...

What really pans out best is being consistent in whatever parenting style (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, etc.) so time-outs are fine as long as they're actually enforced.
Anecdotal:
My mother managed to put me and my sib in a corner when we were 15, but she almost never used a belt on us when were kids. When I worked at a pre-school, time outs worked brilliantly at getting the rowdy kids sorted out.

citation:
  Inconsistent parenting: Is there evidence for a link with children's conduct problems?

I actually found a study that kind of supports your and the gp's claim: (though timeouts are common in authoritative parenting)
The relation of parenting style to adolescent school performance, but the reason the study gives for why authoritative has the highest correlation is that it's the most internally consistent.
and another, 'cause I'm feeling bored

But I wonder about the culture correlation-do families that tend to practice consistent authoritative discipline come from cultures where education is highly valued?

Well, you're certainly right about that, but maybe you should have explained what you meant? I just read the first four results and two observed no elevated risk, but these two report an increased risk for certain kinds. I only read the results and do not know how to interpret them properly, what do you think?

Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. [...] And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .

I did. Half of the results I got were of the "study finds no link between power lines, leukemia" type. The rest seemed to be written by internet nuts with no clue what they were talking about. Assuming then you meant to search without the quotes, I repeated the search. This time I found more that substantiate what you said, but realising that half of them didn't know what they were talking about I repeated it on google scholar (as should anyone interested in what actual scientific research on a subject says).

Results: "no relationship was found between leukemia and electric power line configurations", "Residence near high-voltage lines did not increase risk", [test subjects who lived] within 300 metres [of a power line showed a] relative risk [with] 95% confidence interval [of one kind of leukemia of] 0.8-3.5 [, or for another] 0.7-3.8 [, or if exposure was prolonged] 1.0-4.6 [or] 0.9-4.7" (i.e., for those who don't understand how to interpret that last one, no statistically significant effects -- note that this is the study that's usually cited _in favour_ of arguments about power lines causing leukemia). "the risk was not significantly associated with either residential magnetic-field levels ", "The study provides [...] no support for an association between leukemia and [magnetic field exposure]", "the results suggest that typical magnetic fields of high-voltage power lines are not an important cause of leukemia in adults", "These results provide little support for a relation between power-frequency EMF exposure and risk of childhood leukemia", "For residential exposure >= 0.2 uT, the relative risk for leukemia was estimated at .. 95% confidence interval 0.8-2.2" (i.e. not statistically significant). That's the first page of results finished with; I don't see any evidence fdor your assertion of a 70% increase in risk, and I would be cautious at claiming even that there's a link. Google scholar selects widely cited papers first, and papers with the most provocative results are likely to be the most widely cited. Given the number of studies that have been conducted on this subject, we'd expect at least some to come up with postive results based on random variation. That none of the ones I've looked at have even had statistically significant results suggests there's nothing to this, and it really is just random variation we're seeing.

Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. [...] And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .

I did. Half of the results I got were of the "study finds no link between power lines, leukemia" type. The rest seemed to be written by internet nuts with no clue what they were talking about. Assuming then you meant to search without the quotes, I repeated the search. This time I found more that substantiate what you said, but realising that half of them didn't know what they were talking about I repeated it on google scholar (as should anyone interested in what actual scientific research on a subject says).

Results: "no relationship was found between leukemia and electric power line configurations", "Residence near high-voltage lines did not increase risk", [test subjects who lived] within 300 metres [of a power line showed a] relative risk [with] 95% confidence interval [of one kind of leukemia of] 0.8-3.5 [, or for another] 0.7-3.8 [, or if exposure was prolonged] 1.0-4.6 [or] 0.9-4.7" (i.e., for those who don't understand how to interpret that last one, no statistically significant effects -- note that this is the study that's usually cited _in favour_ of arguments about power lines causing leukemia). "the risk was not significantly associated with either residential magnetic-field levels ", "The study provides [...] no support for an association between leukemia and [magnetic field exposure]", "the results suggest that typical magnetic fields of high-voltage power lines are not an important cause of leukemia in adults", "These results provide little support for a relation between power-frequency EMF exposure and risk of childhood leukemia", "For residential exposure >= 0.2 uT, the relative risk for leukemia was estimated at .. 95% confidence interval 0.8-2.2" (i.e. not statistically significant). That's the first page of results finished with; I don't see any evidence fdor your assertion of a 70% increase in risk, and I would be cautious at claiming even that there's a link. Google scholar selects widely cited papers first, and papers with the most provocative results are likely to be the most widely cited. Given the number of studies that have been conducted on this subject, we'd expect at least some to come up with postive results based on random variation. That none of the ones I've looked at have even had statistically significant results suggests there's nothing to this, and it really is just random variation we're seeing.

thanks for the snake oil links form outright ideologically skewed sources and outright propaganda from random cranks

how's this, an actual fucking scholarly article?:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2006862

"It should come as no surprise that accurate data on alcohol consumption during Prohibition do not exist."

so there's no data for you to depend on. no REAL data, as opposed to cranks and propaganda which you have linked me to so far

so how about using some reason and logic with me instead? is that within the realm of your abilities?

here, i'll try:

if something is harder to get, less people will get it

you'll forgive me, i'm really going way out on a limb with that assertion, i know

(snicker)

Ok, jerk. I said it was as single link out of many, here is some more reading for your hand-waving ass.

7th paragraph
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/troy/4399/

5th paragraph
http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=23254

1st paragraph
http://cocktails.about.com/od/history/a/prohibition_3.htm

4th paragraph
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2006862

7th paragraph (along with a chart)
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/miron.prohibition.alcohol

I can do this all day. There is that much proof that you are incorrect. If you would like to continue to look like an absolute fool, feel free.

The University of Oklahoma participates in JSTOR:

http://www.jstor.org/

They also appear to be EBSCO participants:

http://search.ebscohost.com/

I'm pretty sure "the 20th century" is right there already, if you can drag him to the library.

Note: This isn't going to work for people not affiliated with an institution. Both of these services make paper journal content available online for subscription fees paid by the institution (or business), so unless you are in the "bog boy clique", you're not going to have access to them, unless you pay through the nose.

-- Terry

I think he liked to say things like those, because I just found a page quoting him just like I said.

Years back, I and a few colleagues noticed you could take whatever the product does (or whatever you'd do with it) and add "-ex".

E.g. Kleenex, Earex, Sinex.

We jokingly proposed a new toilet paper: Wipex.
Of course, that name was already taken.

Funny thing is, someone actually wrote a paper on this very subject.

Kind of surprising actually.

I believe the convention has it that for a particular task, expert brains have less activity than novice brains.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003270

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1576979

Oops, you got it completely wrong. studies have shown that women want to marry supportive men to care for them and their babies but when they are fertile they want to go out and cheat with the non-supportive jock type.
Which I guess is good news for all the single geeks since they can get married and have some sex and raise (someone's) kids!

The reason people attempt to file perpetual copyright is that the things being copyrighted, in most cases, still have value. If others are uncomfortable with that, they are perfectly free to create something different/better. People should stop arguing for the removal of other's rights because it's inconvenient for them.

You're looking at this through the European perspective -- as if the creator's monopoly on their work is a natural right.

Look at it again, as if the natural order of things in for information to be usable without restriction, and copyright is an artificial monopoly created for the sole purpose of benefiting the greater good of the public as a whole.

To be sure, things which are copyrighted may have value to the eventual rightsholder 90 years later -- but if you calculate present value at the time of creation (if you've never taken an accounting class, this determines the amount which would need to be invested, at current interest rates, to yield the same eventual income as the extended monopoly period would grant; this sum effectively represents the amount of economic motivation granted to an author to create their work), the amount of value which the creator receives at the time of creation based on this extended grant of exclusive rights is absolutely minimal. On the other hand, the costs levied on the rest of the economy -- even excluding the unknowns of derivative works which aren't created, public-benefit performances which don't occur, and enhanced breadth of society's culture as a whole based on expanded exposure to knowledge -- are considerable indeed.

See this amicus brief to the Supreme Court challenge of the DMCA, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law (Landes and Posner), Forever Minus A Day? Some Theory And Empirics of Optimal Copyright (Rufus Pollock), and (for lighter reading) this analysis in the Financial Times.

I agree that shorter terms with an option to renew are desirable, but also hold that the length of renewal should be limited either explicitly or via economic incentives (ie. attaching significant cost for renewal after a reasonable period).

Speak for yourself. I, for one, am trying to wipe out humanity in a flood of maniacal, laser-wielding, sentient kill-bots.

We'll see who has the last laugh! You've turned me down for a date for the last time, women of earth! Muahah ah ah ah HA!

Speaking of the last laugh, we've known for quite a while that true AI will probably replace humans completely (that article is totally hilarious apart from a couple of valid concepts, BTW. "Hyborgs" WTF ROFL).

But note that there is no impediment in order to publish just-online peer reviewed journals... maybe that's the future or arXiv. Paper must die, it just creates silly troubles... we end needing, for example, sites like JSTOR in order to access out of print numbers or foreign non imported titles.

Your grandparents had a lot less.

Interesting topic you brought up, according to this data our current ratio of physicians per 100,000 population is about 300, and according to this data for most of my grandparents childhood it would have been about half that. The really interesting trend in that historical data is that the ratio basically declined from 1850-1953, I wonder what the trend looked like from 1958-2008?

No one has a right to be anonymous.

So, you have more knowledge than the US Supreme Court does?

Jefferson and the Founders never had this in mind.

Why didn't they sign their names on the Federalist Papers then?

Falcon

Not only should school attendance be required

Ugh. It's my hypothesis that one of the most effective way of killing a persons motivation to do something is to compel, force or coerce them to do it. I think the reason why this is so is that being stripped of freedom, of agency, is highly depressing; a feeling which contaminates the activity you're compelled to. ISTR there being a wikipedia page on the loss of agency being depressing, but I can't find it right now.

That seems to ring true with my own experiences; I didn't like school very much through high school, where attendance was mandatory (or at least coupled with not being punished by way of a much more difficult exam). Compare that with university where only one course had mandatory attendance and which I didn't like even though the subject matter was (for the most part) enjoyable and interesting. In every other course, attendance at every part (mostly those are lectures and TA exercise sessions) is voluntary yet I (try to) show up.

Also, science shows that if you make someone do two enjoyable tasks, they like it, but if you make one the reward of doing the other, they will enjoy the non-reward task less. Compare this to the story about a bunch of kids who harass an old man; he offers to pay them money to do it but reduces the payment over time (but never to zero) to the point at which the kids say it isn't worth it anymore.

(You may want to look at http://www.jstor.org/pss/1129350, although it doesn't say exactly the same as me).

My point isn't to say that the statement "people should get a good education" is wrong; I would love living in a world of critically thinking well-educated fellow human beings. All I'm saying is that if you force a good education upon people, you're likely to be fighting an uphill battle.

Ahh that would be President Johnson who (as a senator) said: [...]

If you are using this quote as an argument, you are either stupid or incredibly dishonest. Johnson changed his views quite a bit as time went on. Read this, for example.

A review of Miles' "A Different Kind of War" in The Journal of Asian Studies discounts some of his credibility. Furthermore, it was published posthumously in 1967. I find it more likely to believe he was a little braggadocious in his notes and the text just made it worse...

Citation from jstor:
H. L. Boatner
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Feb., 1969), pp. 400-401

-l

Maybe you should do a cursory search before accusing someone of being a kook. Well you can look up the academic papers yourself. Here is Price's first major paper on the topic. It's published in Mind, which is quite the respectable journal. And yes, it's philosophy, not pure physics. Price also has plenty of other works indexed by Google Scholar.

Anyway, I don't understand your argument against my characterization that free will is a moral property. What's "forcing" you to do anything? Is it your physical system of particles typically referred to as the "brain"? If so, wouldn't you want this "determining" what you do rather than something else that is external to yourself?

I say it's a moral property because that is the only valid reason to care about whether an action was "free" or not. "Free will" as a theoretical construct has no place in neurology, psychology, sociology, or anything that studies how, in fact, the world actually is. The only reason we care if some action is "free" is to properly assign blame. We do not blame the man who performed an immoral act with a gun to his back, because he was not free to act as he chose.

One might be inclined to say that we can easily determine the behavior of invalids and the like, thus they lack free will. And then one can wonder whether in the presence of an intelligence much greater than our own we will be seen as just as determinable. But this is all silly. We "determine" other people's motives and actions all the time. It is a rare day that a close friend or coworker does something unpredictable.

And has been said many times, unpredictability is no solace. Why should I derive any comfort from the idea that there's some true randomness inherent in my decision making, whether this is brought about by quantum mechanics or just a random number generator in my head? I may as well be a piece on a monopoly board who's next move is determined by a die roll, if you want to look at it that way.

Usually there is no hint of the original colour preserved in fossils, but colour patterns have been found in plenty of fossils of a variety of ages and types and have been known since at least the 1930s (check this book chapter). Unfortunately there are no pictures in these web sources. You'll have to look up the sources on paper, sorry.

What sort of things preserve colour patterns? There are cone-shaped nautiloids from the Devonian of Germany with zig-zag and linear stripe patterns, snail and other shells with stripes or spots, insects from Brazil (Cretaceous) and Utah (Eocene) whose wings have preserved colour patterns, and, as the article hints, bird feathers with colour patterns have been known for decades. Because they are only patterns, it isn't known what the original colours were (for all we know it could have been a boring brown versus grey or something exotic like green and purple), but it's better than nothing, and even finding the patterns is quite rare.

What's news in the posted article is only the part about the possibility of melanin or something derived from it being preserved. So, it's a bit of progress on what, exactly, is being preserved in these colour patterns.

There's one instance I know of where the actual colour of the ancient creature is preserved as a fossil: a beetle from a famous locality in Germany called Messel. Here's a picture, and here's a news article. As seen in quite a few modern beetles, the colour isn't caused by pigment but by irridescence (i.e. light interference) due to the microscopic structure of the insect's wing covers. It's analogous in some ways to the rainbow of colours you see on the bottom of a CD due to the pits on the surface. In animals this is sometimes called "structural colour". The preservation at Messel is so good that this fine detail was preserved, and the beetle therefore still has it's colour visible!

Usually there is no hint of the original colour preserved in fossils, but colour patterns have been found in plenty of fossils of a variety of ages and types and have been known since at least the 1930s (check this book chapter). Unfortunately there are no pictures in these web sources. You'll have to look up the sources on paper, sorry.

What sort of things preserve colour patterns? There are cone-shaped nautiloids from the Devonian of Germany with zig-zag and linear stripe patterns, snail and other shells with stripes or spots, insects from Brazil (Cretaceous) and Utah (Eocene) whose wings have preserved colour patterns, and, as the article hints, bird feathers with colour patterns have been known for decades. Because they are only patterns, it isn't known what the original colours were (for all we know it could have been a boring brown versus grey or something exotic like green and purple), but it's better than nothing, and even finding the patterns is quite rare.

What's news in the posted article is only the part about the possibility of melanin or something derived from it being preserved. So, it's a bit of progress on what, exactly, is being preserved in these colour patterns.

There's one instance I know of where the actual colour of the ancient creature is preserved as a fossil: a beetle from a famous locality in Germany called Messel. Here's a picture, and here's a news article. As seen in quite a few modern beetles, the colour isn't caused by pigment but by irridescence (i.e. light interference) due to the microscopic structure of the insect's wing covers. It's analogous in some ways to the rainbow of colours you see on the bottom of a CD due to the pits on the surface. In animals this is sometimes called "structural colour". The preservation at Messel is so good that this fine detail was preserved, and the beetle therefore still has it's colour visible!

Education isn't, or doesn't have to be, competitive. Your analogy isn't really about eating cake, it's about competition. Also I suggest you both look into cake-cutting algorithms. The short version of a cake-cutting algorithm is that not everyone likes icing. I first read about this in Freakonomics.

I cannot say that your other experiences agree with mine.

p.s. Martin boundary is a reference.

You're well behind - for at least 3 or 4 years now, the vast majority of journals these days ARE online.

They're either distributed electronically on a paper by paper basis (usually through the gigantic databases like jstor or Ingenta, and many of them do not have print versions at all anymore.

Of course they aren't. I'm a graduate student and I use journal repositories such as JSTOR all the time (which is a lifesaver), as well as the other databases my library offers. I'm a Classics major (not English classics, I mean Latin and Greek), and many of the sources I utilise can be quite old; we also use a lot of journal articles. Indeed, as someone said above, quality control is a good use for journals. In any case, for a paper I just wrote, I actually had to dig up a journal article from microfiche, and got a few interesting points out of it. So no, they are not obsolete in the slightest. The field in which I study, well, that's a different matter, heh...

Amtrak, from its inception, has been dealt a terrible hand. It'd likely help travel times if they owned the lines--this is what they've been saying themselves.
As it stands, an Amtrak train waits for any freight train that happens to need that specific line at a given point.

Note: Yes, I do prefer rail over car. Rail vs. Air is a tossup, depending on distance and how much I want to get there as soon as possible.

Read the original Baum and Welch paper. Ever wonder why "Baum, Gaines, Petrie and Simons "Probabilistic models for stock market behavior. To appear." never appeared. Check out James Simons.

It should be made clear that 1) it wasn't the J.S. Bach most folks know and love, but his kid, C.P.E. ... maybe. We know Mozart and some other guys did it. And 2) they invented musical dice games, not used them in their serious compositions. But yes, it's an interesting precedent to 20th-century people who did, like John Cage. See http://www.carousel-music.com/shooters.html, and a page at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4224(197804)59%3A2%3C180%3ADMITEC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

We can have some idea, by looking the gender differences in the degree of religousness and acceptance of evolution etc.

For example:

http://www.jstor.org/view/00113204/dm991472/99p0199h/1?frame=noframe&userID=8bb81e86@sussex.ac.uk/01c0a8487200509d190&dpi=3&config=jstor

This report finds somewhat of a gender difference. Females are more likely to believe in creationism etc. Although region also has more of an impact that sex.

"Their government does not wiretap their citizens' phone calls or endorse torture, and their taxes do not go to supporting a massive military industrial complex or a set of oil cartels."

I beg to differ on wiretapping here.

As for torture its more a domestic thing.

Military industrial complex here? I think petrolium cartels are equally obvious.

Child and teen suicide rates rose for the first time in more than a decade in 2004 - and many psychological experts said the stronger warning labels that led to a drop in the number of prescriptions for antidepressant drugs may be to blame. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Annual Summary of Vital Statistics released Monday, the suicide rate rose more than 18 percent in those 1 to 19 years old, from 2.2 per 100,000 in 2003 to 2.6 per 100,000 in 2004. In those 15 to 19 years old, the figures reflected a more than 12 percent rise in suicide, from 7.3 per 100,000 in 2003 to 8.2 per 100,000 in 2004. Story continues below Advertisement The rise occurred at the same time that the Food and Drug Administration mandated heightened warnings on the labels of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a particular class of antidepressant medications that includes Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft.

Indeed. See this 1956 paper: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9947(195605)82%3A1%3C128%3AOTCMOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P (warning: links to only an abstract on JSTOR).

      Conformal mapping is pretty easy to explain to a lay audience (no, not necessarily hookers); the original article did a horrible job.

It *would* have become a free, democratic nation if we hadn't originally spruned Castro's overtures of friendship.

But as to your assertion of Castro's non-communist beginnings, check this out. It's the first one I could find. Google suggests this might contain a counterpoint, but I can't access it.

If you have anything to back up your assertion, let us know.

I remember reading something about this in Skousen's The Naked Communist, but as I don't own that one I can't tell you what exactly it says.

People say the same thing about Ho Chi Minh, that he was just out to unite the country, and if we'd just been nice to him we'd all be friends and float around like angels, but I don't buy it.