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The more complete source article

As someone posted below, here is the forum post with some data, and here is the raw data with more plots. This is really awesome, but you have to temper your enthusiasm when you realize he knew exactly when to look and how much the brightness should drop, and he chose a relatively bright star (apparent magnitude +7.676, which is just barely too faint to see with the naked eye) with a relatively large exoplanet to image. There is some wiggle room there, but the data is pretty noisy, so it will be pretty tough to spot new exoplanets like this.

In comparison, Kepler-67b is a confirmed exoplanet 3610 light years away, orbiting a star with an apparent magnitude of +16. That is, take the light received from the star this guy imaged, divide it by 2000 (less than 0.05% the brightness), and Kepler can still detect exoplanets passing in front of it. The Hubble and Keck Telescopes have imaged stars with magnitudes of +30 or higher. So to answer the headline (in case it wasn't already obvious), we still kinda need NASA.

The crucifixion was right in the middle of the passover, and vice versa: they were integral together.

http://webpages.marshall.edu/~trimbol3/4thcup4.htm

The men were ignorant of some things -- that is what puts a stamp of authenticity when the angel asks esdras to measure for me a bushel of wind or show me a day gone by: they couldn't, and esdras couldn't, but its easy today.

But other things -- we are more ignorant of the diseases that they experienced. Nor were they ignorant about the things they dealt with every day -- fishing, for example.

A lot of your rage seems to come out of guilt that can't be dealt with. God has a purpose for that guilt. Read Isaiah 28: he sets it up, no differently than a farmer plows a field, so that you'll be ready to trust the plummet, not yourself. He does it because He wants a harvest of righteousness and kindness (cf Isaiah 5).

When we measure off our own judgements, it's like trying to get a straight measurement from a crumpled metal ruler. We can't succeed. That ends up being destructive to ourselves and others. If He loves us, then he isn't going to want that for us.

Marshall doesn't seem to have a law school

Uh, I think you meant "mussel"?

Who do you think you are anyway, Kip Adotta

Oh, ye of little comprehension!

Your conjecture is precisely as valid as this conjecture. That will not change, no matter how much of snit you work yourself into.

As long as you change your mind from Bush to Badnarik, or even this creep, we won't face Skeletor heading the Department of Justice. If you're changing your mind from Kerry to someone else, change it back again, or you'll be counting on the power of Greyskull for the next 4 years.

The health benefits of beer has been known for the past few years. Some have even mentioned that it's healthier than wine all together as it has a high concentration of the vitamin Bs, something the body doesn't usually get enough of. But that's usually only in the dark beers (porters and stouts). All you Bud, Coors, Miller and Michelob drinkers are losing out on the health benefits.

Anyways, about the beer belly...

What Really Causes Beer Bellies

And I want to add, a Guinness has the same amount of calories as a light beer.

In fact they already have devices that do this, but they are not (yet) implanted. They are called ankle transponders and have been used as an alternative to prison. Have a look at this or this article.

Worse, in the near future, you probably won't even be able to hide your cash transactions. RFID tags embedded in bank notes are on their way. The EE Times reports that in Europe it's planned for 2005.

Oh, but how will they know who I am when I spend tagged cash? It's pretty simple, by one of the following methods:

• You took the money out of an ATM and the ID numbers were logged with your name during the withdrawl.
• You had your mobile phone with you, which pings the local cell.
• Got the money from someone else, but it's detected because (the currently faulty) facial recognition software attatched to the video camera in the shop (or streetcorner) where you made the purchase.
• The passivly track cash moving through the city, just like they track the people.

Technology is amazing, and the current convergence of computing power, large databases and tiny radio transponders even more amazing. I don't know about you, but I also find it pretty scary.

Most fatalities from coal are not from power-plant accidents but from mining. Mining accidents mostly kill miners (who cares about them?), but also can kill many people who live near the mine. The 1972 flood at the Buffalo Creek Coal Mine in West Virginia killed 125 people living nearby, injured over 1000, and completely destroyed 500 homes.

Worldwide, tens of thousands of deaths per year occur from coal-mining accidents, and that doesn't count slow deaths from black-lung and other chronic conditions that afflict miners. In India, the death rate is equivalent to one Bhopal per month. In China, around 5000 people per year are killed in coal mining accidents.

Compare all this to the estimated 2500 deaths due to Chernobyl.

Anyway, my point isn't to worship Microsoft. Just to point out that their business is exceptionally well run and well positioned for the future. Those are facts you would normally miss reading Slashdot.

If a nucleus is unstable (radioactive) it will eventually decay, shooting off particles with lots of energy. Individual nuclei are unpredictable, but for a group of atoms, the half-life tells how long it will take for half of them to go off. But if you concentrate a bunch of atoms close together, the particles shot of by one can trigger another atom to fission. This "chain reaction" can result in many or most of the nuclei all decaying very quickly. To keep it from going too fast, a fission reactor has control rods to insert in between the rods that contain the radioactive material--this keeps the chain reaction from working. If the control rods are not inserted, the chain reaction will produce energy. If some malfunction or error were to result in the energy not being removed fast enough, the reactor could overheat and things can actually "melt down".

A fusion reactor would be very different. Fusion does not take place spontaneously the way fission does. Since the protons in one nucleus repel the protons in another nucleus you have to supply a lot of force to get them close enough together to get the nuclear attraction to takeover and fuse the 2 smaller nuclei together to make a bigger one. Energy is then produced. So, if there is some malfunction in a fusion reactor, it can't take off like in a chain reaction. In a malfunction the fusion would just stop.
- http://users.marshall.edu/~bady/ps110/content/expl 1a.html

I would recommend you start with a large bucket of Duplos. They're extra-large Legos made for younger kids with less fine-motor skills, but they are quite sturdy, they hold together better than tiny Legos, and they interconnect with the standard-size Legos. Then you could have fun like these kids.

Moms like Duplos because they are less likely to step on them in the dark and say bad words.

In the upper-level classes where using the technology would be usefull, they usually forbid the calculators so students won't cheat.

sighGetting ass-raped by the man yet again.

Well hopefully he ain't spending his nights with coonhounds. And he is probably not spending his evenings with some murderous English irregulars, who were known by their black hats and tan coats and fought on the side of the crown against the Irish Republicans.

What he is talking about is beer. Originally Black & Tans were a British pub concoction of Stout and IPA mixed in a pint pot(glass). So it is two beers mixed together - one is a dark(pretty much black) porter the other is a light lager(tan). Real Black and Tans are mixed on the spot, poured from two different taps. Depending on the bar's selection and the bartender's talent, every pint is a bit different.

Cheers!

p.s. don't be ordering no Black and Tans in the company of Irish Catholics.

The above is a great idea...except for one thing. Private, "charter," for-profit schools are certainly not going to help educate the disenfranchised, especially not online. Contrary to popular belief (and you can see a little evidence for it in the C-Net article where they mention the number of people with whom the child is interacting online), online education is often more capital-intensive, and expensive than classroom education.

Online education is definitely more labour-intensive for the teachers and the institutions, and has much higher maintenance costs than many people suspect. That's why, in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education Live Colloquy, Dr. David Noble suggested that most online education is really only for the rich, at least at this point.

For more information, see Hara & Kling on student frustration with technology
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/wp00-01.html
and LaRose, Gregg, & Eastin on "low-tech high-tech"
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue2/larose.html ;
Mason on online education at http://www-iet.open.ac.uk/pp/r.d.mason/GlobalEdu.h tml ;
Morgan on online learning economics at http://multimedia.marshall.edu/onlinecosts/distanc elearning.pdf (you will need a PDF reader for this one!);
and Noble's famous and justifiably critical "Digital Diploma Mills" series -- One--The Automation of Higher Education, Two--The Coming Battle Over Online Instruction, Three--The Bloom Is Off The Rose, and Four--Rehearsal For the Revolution.

In any case, charter schools are just a bad idea whose time has come. They take money and authority away from the state, whose job it is to provide education and some sort of societal standard...which is why Canadian universities don't have entrance exams. Canadian schools are strictly enforced by a centralized, federal government, so school in one place is much like school in any other. Don't you wish you could say the same thing about US schools?