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Go to the source. Lee Smolin created LQG. I'd recommend Lee's "Three Roads To Quantum Gravity", which features LQG, ST and a hybrid approach. You could also check out this for a variation on LQG.

We live in a society defined by division of labor. The physicist figured that out, as have many video game addicts.

When P-man walks he gets to think about his theories more, he gets necessary exercise, and he gets his chore done in about the same amount of time. And he simply isn't interested in most of the stuff that we rush around doing. He doesn't particularly want or need a cell phone, and for sure not a tablet. TV is low bandwidth, high noise -- easily filtered out with the convenient OFF button. Shopping is a once-a-week thing that someone else does...no need to duplicate effort. Same with laundry, with those two large machines doing most of the work.

It is called the simple life. And it kind of rocks.

...says the part-time physics guy.

The Good -- "The Event Horizon (of a Black Hole) is the point at which escape velocity = c."

The Bad -- "light can most certainly escape from 1 G". We have no idea what the g forces are at the event horizon of a Black Hole are, until we calculate them. Gravity is proportional to the two masses involved, and inversely proportional to the distance between them. Saying that light can escape from 1 G is ignoring just about everything.

Scenario 1: On Earth, with gravity of 1 G, light can certainly escape.

Scenario 2: At some distance d from a Black Hole of mass M, a photon may or may not be able to escape. Irrespective of whether d is less than, equal to or greater than the event horizon. In short, it depends...

The Ugly -- "Gravity IS the curvature of space." This sentence is featured prominently in Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", with B.G. using it to proclaim how Einstein explained gravity so well. Unfortunately, the sentence explains absolutely nothing. It describes the *effect* of gravity, and otherwise leaves gravity as a black box...encouraging people to use "bowling ball on grid" explanations for the next 80 years...despite physicists (including B.G. in T.E.U.) admitting how wrong it is.

Shameless plug -- My own conjecture on gravity.

http://www.just-think-it.com/sal_08.htm

65% is fluoridated, so NO.

, hospitals and a high standard of medical care including those expensive machines that go 'bing'

Unaffordable for most of us, so NO.

, a communications network

Hmmm, Big Brother-like system, bandwith caps, fired if you use it, sued if you use it, so NO.

, a system for collecting garbage more elaborate than people just burning it in their yard

We lack such a system, unless you are talking about the private companies that haul away crap if we pay them (just as they would do in any other country), so NO.

, schools and universities that actually teach non-trivial subjects

Definite NO.

, and average wages more than, say, $50 a month.

Well, given that Internet + TV + telephone costs $150 a month, perhaps we should be making a NET income comparison, in which case we lose due to no one being able to save any money and all of us having record amounts of debt, so NO again.

Looks like the U.S. qualifies as a third world country now.

"Violet Blue" is the weirdness name you could think of? Try some of these

If you want some of what I subscribe to, you can find it here.

On the topic of chiropractic, here is an alternative treatment (the person who invented it, and those who administer it today are chiros, btw): SAM

I've taken this treatment and have proved it to myself. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of others have also. Still, I predict a thorough thrashing in this forum. By people who have not taken it. Who mainly will not even critique the treatment itself but rather myself, or some generalized person "like" me.

(1) it shrinks their spider's workload

(2) if they want to sell adwords, they can disappear sites who don't buy adwords. My site, for example, is the largest repository of baby names on the 'net, but when you type in "baby names" you won't find it. I put it down to my not buying adwords, where plenty of other baby name sites do (they typically have 300 to 500 times less names, yet rank higher).

No wonder the GH process is shrouded in secrecy...

Ah, come on, some good stuff will slip past the guards ;-)

A DVD like "The Corporation" is quite amazing for how much is jammed on it -- 6 hours of interviews plus a 2 hour movie, all on a "2 hour" DVD. And recently companies are putting out 2 movies on one DVD -- "48HRS / Another 48HRS" comes to mind. In an HD world this could be "Batman 1 2 3 4 5" on one HD disc. Sure it wouldn't be the special editions, but it would still be handy for a Batman marathon (even though I only really like the first and last ones. I'm more likely to have a Lethal Weapon, Robert De Niro, Mel Gibson or David Fincher marathon.)

I see the movie studios responding to the market better than the record companies. Yes DVDs started off ridiculously expensive, but now they are ridiculously cheap (unless you like the BBC). Also, the special editions have become the standard editions in many cases. Called double dipping when done too soon after the first release, this is a huge value add and I love it. Run a search on Amazon (I did 500 such searches recently when I was updating my favorite movies page) and you will be amazed at the value.

Like buying a new machine in 2006 to forestall having Vista rammed down their throat, now is a great time to stock up on DVDs. And I think the same will be true with HD discs in a few years. No they probably won't be unencumbered, but they will bring value and I will probably get an HD player. Beethoven's 9 symphonies alone were enough to get me to buy a CD player.

I still like the idea that some portion of HD content is unencumbered. I think it is natural that the more time-consuming stuff to listen to (face it, you never need to watch the extras) like "Making ofs" and director commentaries be available in MP3 form. Make it 24kbps or something, I would be more than happy with that. While you are at it, ban the group commentaries -- those truly suck. If someone has something to say, use all that space to put it on a separate track, or at least manage it like the excellent Bond Double Oh 7 editions do.

MP3 files are more convenient than a CD -- they do a better job of delivering audio on a bus, bike, while jogging, at the copy machine at work, etc. Anyone pushing CDs has to realize and accept this.

OTOH, Outsourcers do a worse job. My problem with a Dell hard drive never should have gone on for a year, but it did thanks exclusively to Super Crappy(TM) tech "support" from India. [It was ultimately resolved to my satisfaction ONLY when a North American Dell techie contacted me on his own initiative and sent me a replacement hard drive. The whole sordid tale is here.] Outsourcers are interested in _their_ companies profitability. This translates to lying to customers who call, in order to decrease the number of replacement hard drives shipped, for example. Outsourcers are also removed from the problem. They can't just walk over to Jim in manufacturing and find out what makes the hard drives so flakey. On the Q.T. Jim might reveal that the case is a custom job with poor ventilation, or that a hard drive can be overworked (hence the utility of external USB drives), etc. In India the "techie" will say there is nothing wrong with the hard drive and thank you for calling Dell.

So it comes down to slashdotters being in favor of things that work (e.g. Win2000) and against things that don't (e.g. Vista).

The Dell diag cd doesn't diagnose "soft" hard disk failures, even though you can hear it retrying like mad. These indicate impending disk failure but Dell's far east techs totally deny the issue.

6 to 8 years ago I gave out code to people that allowed them to query my site's data. The code (with a bit of javascript) needed to be embedded on their existing (poorly coded) pages so I knew it would stop working at times -- so I put an "if this is not working" link with my email address and exposed it...on about 750 pages at last count. I used to average about 100 viruses per day. Oh well, no big deal and I've never been infected.

after their first scan error, drives are 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives with no such errors

This is easily the most important thing a sysadmin needs to know about hard drives. Much as I love Spinrite, when drives start to fail they continue to fail.

This story reminds me of the run around I got from Dell [India] when my one-and-only-Dell I'm-not-stupid-enough-to buy-their-crap-again started to have seek errors.

In 2003 (the when) Google realized that it and blogs were perfect for each other. But I don't think they are perfect for end users. I think a definitive site on, for example, baby names is more useful than the first ten (or even fifty) hits from Google combined. Compare: 1.5M names vs about 50K names in the first ten links that Google suggests.

What I am meaning when I say "Old school" is an engine that indexes content and lets the viewer decide what is important. Google no longer does this -- it gives preference to pages ordered in a way it wants, and especially if these (otherwise useless) pages contain links to other pages. The "especially" has become a problem with blogs, IMO.

It is a good point you make that Google has always taken linking into account. It is a bad point that it makes as much sense today as it did initially. DOS fitting in 640K made sense at the time but putting those video pages in the 640K to 1M range was a bad design choice that still haunts us today.

Quite simply, how does a new, useful _but_ not necessarily popular opinion make it to page one of Google today? I don't think it can, yet it must for the web to be a true information leveller. This is the horn of our dilemma. Discuss among yourselves.

In 2003 (the when) Google realized that it and blogs were perfect for each other. But I don't think they are perfect for end users. I think a definitive site on, for example, baby names is more useful than the first ten (or even fifty) hits from Google combined. Compare: 1.5M names vs about 50K names in the first ten links that Google suggests.

What I am meaning when I say "Old school" is an engine that indexes content and lets the viewer decide what is important. Google no longer does this -- it gives preference to pages ordered in a way it wants, and especially if these (otherwise useless) pages contain links to other pages. The "especially" has become a problem with blogs, IMO.

It is a good point you make that Google has always taken linking into account. It is a bad point that it makes as much sense today as it did initially. DOS fitting in 640K made sense at the time but putting those video pages in the 640K to 1M range was a bad design choice that still haunts us today.

Quite simply, how does a new, useful _but_ not necessarily popular opinion make it to page one of Google today? I don't think it can, yet it must for the web to be a true information leveller. This is the horn of our dilemma. Discuss among yourselves.

This just may be the finest way there is to start the day.

Would you be against a ban of mercury in food as a seasoning?

Mercury is extremely toxic when breathed -- perhaps mercury added to an incense stick would be a better analogy.

As for being against the forced-feeding of a poison, I am definitely against fluoridation and would be against the addition of fluorine to foods. Pass that law soon please.

A few days back someone announced that the web wasn't dominated by porn sites. Now we have a single porn site with 9,000,000 pages. I've run some big non-porn sites, and they were just a few thousand web pages. Maybe the porn tale does wag the iDog...

Greens contain healthy low molecular weight oils. More here.

I can't believe I tried everything but standard HTML

To each their own. I can't stand things like the LotR series, HP, or Bond movies. That still leaves me with about 350 movies I consider rewatching: http://www.just-think-it.com/movies.htm

Dell is on a "high end look" kick right now and by buying Alienware they can shut down a competitor and gain another look. It won't change the fact that I'll never buy or recommend a Dell because my Dell sucks http://www.just-think-it.com/mydell.htm

Apologies for the "me too" post. Just wanted to emphasize how great the 20th anniv. DVD is. The "making of" is almost 90 minutes long and one of the best I've seen (my favorite movies: http://www.just-think-it.com/), and there are about 40 minutes of other extras. Tron was a groundbreaking movie and perhaps 5 or 10 years ahead of its time, yet has many very cool scenes even when viewed by today's jaded viewers.

Wow, I guess scientists could learn from your methodology then.

Well to help future scientist: I am 30 and lots of fillings, ditto my sis, and we got fluorine all the way. Bro in law, same age, drinks lotsa coke (which we don't), raised in germany with no fluorine, perfect teeth.

Seriously, I'll just say (1) I'm a chemical engineer with 10 years of chemistry courses that all say the same thing -- briefly that Fluoride is more toxic than lead and almost as toxic as arsenic, (2) fluorine is the most reactive element known to man, (3) the average dental program has zero or one chemistry course in it, whereas I took about a dozen higher ed. chem. courses, (4) everyone can research the issue for themselves, (5) click this http://www.just-think-it.com/the-f-db.htm [just-think-it.com] to find out if your water supply is poisoned.

Gee...

I guess it is time for you to find out, beginning with the spelling.

People of my parents' generation (70+) have false teeth. People of my generation (50+) generally have most of their own teeth, but they're mostly bog with a thin external shell of enamel (or a crown). People of my childrens' generation (20-30) have perfect teeth - no fillings, no crowns, no problems. Guess which generation grew up with flouridated water.

Wow, I guess scientists could learn from your methodology then.

Seriously, I'll just say (1) I'm a chemical engineer with 10 years of chemistry courses that all say the same thing -- briefly that Fluoride is more toxic than lead and almost as toxic as arsenic, (2) fluorine is the most reactive element known to man, (3) the average dental program has zero or one chemistry course in it, whereas I took about a dozen higher ed. chem. courses, (4) everyone can research the issue for themselves, (5) click this http://www.just-think-it.com/the-f-db.htm to find out if your water supply is poisoned.

Worse than that, tea in general has high concentrations of fluoride. http://www.just-think-it.com/f-facts.htm

The nerve of those Indians. Several hundred years of British rule, English the official language, and they have the nerve to develop British accents.

My best friend is from northern India ...but my Dell still sucks http://www.just-think-it.com/mydell.htm

In Dell's case, outsourcing allows someone other than Dell to say "No, we are not going to send a techie, even though it is obvious we should be fixing this for you." Great way for Dell to try to keep their nose clean.

My Dell sucks, does your Dell suck too? http://www.just-think-it.com/mydell.htm

My experience exactly.

But since this is nothing new and Dell continues to sell it also means that either this does't happen to a lot of people or people just don't learn.

Or that there is a sucker born every minute.

I buy from local shops...Over a phone they can and will try to tell you that a brand new HD is supposes to show badblocks...

Exactly what happened to me with my Dell, even though I had screen caps of the hundreds of Event Viewer "red stop sign" events to show them.

All of which prompted me to post an article entitled "My Dell sucks, does your Dell suck too?" (http://www.just-think-it.com/mydell.htm)

Actually the content differs drastically. For example, trying searching Google for "baby names". You will find hit after hit to pages that contain the top baby name books on Amazon, with an affiliate link to each book -- but no baby names!. Whereas "Super Baby Names" (http://www.just-think-it.com/sbn/sbn.htm), that offers 1,500,000 baby names -- more baby names than anyone else -- is almost invisible to Google.

Dell support for XP is hopeless as well. When my hard drive started developing bad sectors, I should have had a Dell technician at my door in a matter of hours. Months later and I have officially given up on Dell but not before I published my tale of woe: http://www.just-think-it.com/mydell.htm