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The 70s were far from anti-regulations. Regulations were passed as people demanded them with a booming consumption industry more and more companies were selling broken products with shrink-wrap contracts that removed all protections.

Here is a good history:
https://law.lclark.edu/live/fi...

Before you say that, you might want to read up on this--good coverage could be PDF of legal side and historical perspective.

I didn't actually know that "NASA/Arizona State University," had an online, high resolution "Digital Petrographic Slide Collection" ; not surprising. I'll dig into that more. Nice pictures. The fascinating corrosion textures on the surface of the glass grains really raise a lot of questions. Which Ethan doesn't notice. (OK - I'm biased - I was repairing a petrological microscope for the last couple of days. But the textures are obviously weird.) Perthite textures in what are described as glass grains also go completely unremarked, though that is probably the reason the photograph was taken in the first place.

But these rocks (soils if you prefer) are interpreted as the results of fire fountains playing in lava eruptions of the lunar past. Which is great - except ... what drives fire fountains? The exsolution of volatiles and their concentration into the upper parts of magma chambers. And the amount of this material that Schmitt and Cernan found indicates that it's a rare circumstance producing a rare deposit.

So, this tells us what about lunar igneous petrogenesis? That after considerable concentration, the low levels of volatiles (not just water) in lunar bulk material can be concentrated to levels similar to those in magmas on Earth.

Which doesn't actually tell us very much that is new. Which is probably why the paper he references is from 2011 (and paywalled, with everything in the article coming from the abstract. Implying a lack of institutional access to one of the premier science journals of the world.

What I'd like to know - and is completely unaddressed by the article, is just why these images are being re-processed and uploaded onto FLIKR or FACEBOOK !!! instead of there being a NASA image archive from which the originals (or their highest-available resolution scans) can be downloaded. That seems ... almost designed to fuel conspiracy theorists. But this appears to have escaped Mr BangsWhenItStops.

Who is Ethan Siegel? Here we know him as TooLowAnOctaneRating. On his Frobs column he asserts he is "professor at Lewis & Clark" (assumed present tense, as no indication there of a change in tense), but http://college.lclark.edu/depa... doesn't list him. Odd that. Though he was a visiting professor there in 2010 (their search engine is down at the moment). Which is very much in the past tense, according to my calendar. What about his "NASA columnist" claim ... Ah, it seems he wrote for a kid's site called "The Space Place" ; again, past tense.

So basically, he is, as his posting pattern already suggested, a jobbing blogger trying to earn a crust from clickbait adverts. Which is a profession, of sorts. But he certainly doesn't seem to be contributing to science any more.

http://law.lclark.edu/live/fil... a detailed paper on the matter if you'd prefer. Note to those who think this might be a "democrat vs republican" thing - Clinton enacted the deduction, Bush extended it, something they could all agree on.

http://www.skeptically.org/oil... for another summary of it, though horribly biased in its language.

I agree... Its called capitalism... If true capitalism existed, then large companies would be rare because competition would quickly reduce their profit margins to the point where very little money could be made.

In a true free market and capitalism there's another reason large corporations would be rare, because many would have their corporate charters revoked [pdf warning]. Such as Exxon, those people who had their lives wrecked because of Exxon Valdez, have not received a dime from Exxon. And Union Carbide, for it's Bhopal disaster. There are more than 1000 Superfund sites listed, many created by businesses, which taxpayers will pay to clean up if they are ever cleaned up.

Falcon

Theoretically a corporation serves the common good [alternet.org] or public good.

That hasn't even been theoretically true since the US was founded.

Ergo Thomas Jefferson's warning.

Many of those in the US who do not have medical coverage do not want it.

I don't believe this is a significant portion of the uninsured. Please provide a citation.

I don't have a citation, or the numbers, all I know is that some people don't want health insurance.

Whether you consider it good or evil, socialized healthcare in most places taxes the rich more and gives back to everyone equally, thus resulting in wealth being redistributed from the top to the bottom. This helps to stabilize a runaway, extreme capitalist economy by partially mitigating wealth condensation.

It's also bad for research. Though by no means all research is done in the US a lot is done here. And the US basically subsidizes the rest of the world. Whereas a drug may cost hundreds or thousands of dollars in the US, elsewhere the cost may be a lot lower. Bulk purchases can lower costs, like Walmart is doing. They're using their leverage to purchase drugs in hugh bulk volumes and selling them cheap, Walmart has pledged to sell a lot of drugs at or lower than $10. And many people complain about Walmart, including me.

Ahh, so you're arguing that socialized healthcare will increase your costs?

Yes, socialized medicine will increase my cost. I don't have medical insurance but if I'm forced to have some I will be forced to pay. Look at Massachusetts, the state passed a law requiring all residents to have medical insurance, and some can't afford it. The state helps some pay for it, however it doesn't help everyone who needs the help, and those who don't have coverage will be fined by the state. People will either have to pay for something they can't afford or they will pay a fine.

If you want everyone in the US, er those who want it, to be able to afford to have medical insurance then you have to change tax codes. During World War II the US passed Wage and Price Control Laws. Without the ability to pay employees more employers had trouble getting and keeping workers. After breaking free trade, to "correct" employers' problems, the government allowed them to offer employees fringe benefits such as health insurance, and neither employers nor employees had to then pay more in tax. However by allowing employers to pay employees more without raising tax for either, say letting an employer pay an employee $3600 a year more but not raising either one's taxes the employee could then take that $3600 and buy health insurance on their own. With so many more people able to get their own insurance insurance issuers will lower insurance premiums so more could afford it, it's called competition.

Hold on, I'm not finished. Change zoning laws to allow mixed use and let neighborhood clinics open up in them, without heavy and expensive regulations, as well as allowing people to start businesses in their homes. Allow alternative and complimentary medicine to be practiced. And encourage more home births. Most babies can be delivered safely at home, and such deliveries cost less. Delivery in a hospital can cost thousands of dollars whereas home births with a midwife may cost only a few hundred, if that. Also in hospitals many unnecessary Caesarean sections are done rai

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the best uses for Play-Doh, the game Claydonia from Dragon magazine. Details:
http://www.lclark.edu/~gamesoc/games/claydonia.htm l

In a recent episode of "How It's Made" on the Science channel they showed how they make a Play-Doh like product called Tutti-Frutti. This clay has various scents added to so it can smell like candy or fruit. It is made by:
http://www.bojeux.com/ANG/Products/section/tutti.h tml

They don't say what it tastes like though.

Research I've seen also seem to agree on that you don't just feel worse for no good when being a pessimist, but that there's effects beyond the psychological as well. It's often believed that optimists are both psychologically and physiologically healthier, although that link above indeed speaks of some possibly negative effects from optimism as well, and this science is probably still quite hotly debated.

Anyway, I can very well see the purely evolutionary reasons for negative effects from pessimism and unhappiness -- simply that happy and optimistic people should reasonably be those that are doing well (otherwise they wouldn't be happy), and hence those that should be able to spread their genes better. For such a reason alone, I can believe that e.g. something that at first sight feels completely unrelated, such as the immune system, can be hurt from an overly pessimistic mind.

Something else I've been observing is that pessimism is often prevalent among geeks, and I have to wonder why a little. :-) Sexual tensions? Haha. Pessimists often prefer calling themselves "realists" anyway, and I'm sure many geeks would defend themselves with that, especially because there's abundances of geeks who feel they're on top of things in all their geekdom, turning them into those "know it all" pessimistic doomsday types we see all over the web forums, often lurking in DRM discussions. :-) Heck, I'm fully aware of I'm having a streak of that too in some cases. ;-)

here at Lewis & Clark (http://www.lclark.edu/ they use a client for any windows based machine to authenticate. Any other OS is required to authentify using a webpage to which you are redirected automatically when opening any webpage.
The client ensures you have all mandatory updates installed to connect, otherwise the access is discontinued. Saves lots of trouble, and my friends on OSX and me on gentoo have no problems whatsoever.
Might want to suggest your IT department to take a look at it... And even contact our IT department, they're pretty open about helping other schools keep their networks clean.
Hope that tidbit of info helped.

Oh, before I forget, the client used to be called "SmartEnforcer", and now it's a Cisco client... don't remember the name since I don't use it.

I think we all agree that a lot of disturbing science fiction revolves around scientists who should have stepped back and wondered: "Should I really be doing this?"

Such disturbing things happen in real life too.

I'm way ahead of you, man. Bling-bling!

smallpox infected blankets
Little Boy
Agent Orange
"Depleted" Uranium

pot, meet kettle
kettle, meet pot

Careful what you wish for, maybe some day some other large faction will decide that the US needs "intervention".

I know it's more comforting to think that your leaders and by automagical transference your nation down to anyone "you" are always the good guys, but history has shown there are no "good" guys, just various regimes throughout history take turns back and forth being the more-wrong bad guys du juor.

This is Europe, which still elects socialist governments, despite the fact that socialism was responsible for the mass execution of tens of millions of Europeans in the 20th century.

and how about that other non-socialist party in 20th century, responsible for


At 11:02 a.m., August 9, 1945 an atomic bomb exploded 500 meters above this spot. The black stone monolith marks the hypocenter.
The fierce blast wind, heat rays reaching several thousand degrees, and deadly radiation generated by the explosion crushed, burned and killed everything in sight and reduced this entire area to a barren field of rubble.
About one-third of Nagasaki City was destroyed and 150,000 people killed or injured, and it was said at the time that this area would be devoid of vegetation for 75 years.

(Large numbers of people died in the following years from the effects of radioactive poisoning.)


and dont give me any excuse to get the hiroshima numbers ok?

Or ask Kengo Futagawa, or his family...oh, wait a minute.

• "Hmm, /usr/war/robotank/doc/COPYING. Seems like an interesting file, I'll take a look at it. Why, it says here, in section 3, that I can copy and distribute the Program! Hey, the kids would love to see a copy of this! I'll just email it over to them!"

• "3. You may copy and distribute the Program () in object code or executable form provided that you also do one of the following ... Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code"

"Bitten by a radioactive gecko, Peter Parker..." Nawww, just doesn't sound right.

But seriously, the original gecko research was done at my old alma mater, Lewis & Clark College. The story of their discovery was covered last summer on Slashdot and elsewhere , but the source articles have expired and Lewis & Clark is getting no credit today. Bummer.

Ken Thompson invented Unix so that he could continue playing spacewar.

Since you are trolling, don't forget that other countries use and threaten to use nasty weapons.

Maybe he read it on page 681 in issue 405 of Nature that appeared on 8 June 2000. If you read the Yahoo story you will find a link to the authors site at the bottom where they have nice pictures and give the reference.

The second picture on this page is actually a photo of a brand new super-toothbrush

This Mother of All Toothbrushes is made from Gecko Hairs. Forget 200 strokes up and down with sticky toothpaste. Now it takes just one swipe to clean your teeth in 1/8000th of a second! Cleans stains from coffee, cigarettes, permanent marker, super glue, napalm, and more!

Order yours today!

Scroll down for details on gecko climbing.

It's good to see someone at my old alma mater Lewis & Clark College making some headlines. Just to prolong the slashdotting, here are some cool microscopic photos and a QT movie of gecko foot hairs and microsensors.

It's good to see someone at my old alma mater Lewis & Clark College making some headlines. Just to prolong the slashdotting, here are some cool microscopic photos and a QT movie of gecko foot hairs and microsensors.

I found a link!

This warranty has nothing to do with compensation for "damage caused." (See the text here - section 403.)

As far as I can see, this is effectively an attack by Red Hat on shareware developers and companies. What I don't get is what consumers could demand under the warranty. IE crashes in the Ars Technica forums. Do I get my nothing back?

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

It seems to me that Ford shareholders have the grounds for a class-action suit, as this action, although of benefit to the employees (and therefore highly taxable in many countries), would seem to offer little or no benefit to the shareholders who own the business.

On the technology side, I applaud any initiative that helps to develop infrastructure in developing countries, but wonder if Ford will exercise a chilling effect over free speech if its Acceptable Usage Policy is mandated over the PCs it provides. Also, I wonder if Linux is an option? ;-)
--
Paul Gillingwater

Please note: I am not a lawyer.

If the action is really "utterly indefensible", then yes, there are grounds for a lawsuit: the stockholders with a 51% interest can't just decide to take all the money away from the folks with 49%, or run the company into the ground because there's a majority stockholder who's nuts. But according to some scholars (see below), such suits are almost impossible to win unless conflict of interest or improper motivation can be shown.

Anyway, choosing an open source model is defensible as a business practice, as ESR is fond of pointing out. And besides, while in theory I suppose some stockholder could try to sue Red Hat for not dumping the Open Source model, I don't think that suit would win.

If anyone wants to plow through a lot of legal stuff on the subject, try this article.

Another reader posted a link to the George Carlin 7 deadly words transcript which points out, in its fashion, that many words are not dirty unless taken in context. NSI may take it upon itself to disallow registration of domains with "indecent" language but if the courts find that they are allowed to filter out certain words, what is to stop them from selectively banning registration and registration renewal of phrases that they may consider to be indecent?

A friend of mine owns Jesus-Sucks-Dick.com which, if NSI continues on its current path, is almost certain to die off when it comes up for renewal.

Going a step further, though i doubt this will happen, what is to stop NSI from denying registration renewal to those sites which have objectionable content. I sincerely doubt that this will happen, but then it is only one more leap in logic