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Researching stem cells is just not the same as taking the genes from a fish and splicing them into a tomato.

The women you named are all noteworthy scientists, but there are a lot more famous women scientists than that! What about Lise Meitner, the famous nuclear physicist? Marie Curie's daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Don't forget Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist. Laura Bassi was a well-known Italian scientist in the 1700s who became the first woman to teach at a European college. Maria Mitchell was America's first professional woman astronomer. There were even female philosophers and mathematicians in ancient times, like Hypatia of Alexandria.

To find information about noteworthy women scientists, just search on the Internet for WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Programs. Many WISE programs at large universities often have a resource libary of information on women scientists. Some WISE programs even maintain web sites with biographies of women scientists that include reference lists. I suggest that any teacher or librarian who is interested in developing a collection of materials on women scientists try contacting the director of a WISE program at a local college. She would probably be happy to help.

I have a book someplace that has short biographies of living women scientists and engineers who work for NASA, but I can't remember what it was called at the moment so I am having trouble finding it online at Barnes and Noble. There is also a web site related to this book called Women of NASA that has biographies of women who work for NASA (click on the Profiles link). This web site has a teacher guide on it as well.

The National Academies of Science also has a good web site about women in science called "I was wondering..." which is geared towards a young audience. The National Academies Press also has a Women's Adventures in Science book series related to this web site.

Women have made many important contributions to science throughout history, and there is a lot of information about women scientists out there. It just might take a little effort to find it.

A real lie-detector test (like the polygraph)...

The polygraph is not a real lie detector. It's an authoritarian psuedo-science gimmick, and this is just another incarnation of it.

Polygraphs are real lie detectors? If so, Winston Churchill was 27th Persident of the United States of America.

The National Academy of Sciences was asked to do a scientific review of the polygraph's effectiveness at detecting lies.
Their report http://www.nap.edu/books/0309084369/html/ thoroughly debunks polygraphy as a junk "science."

Let's assume for a moment that a polygraph magically does detect lies:
The most commonly used method is "control question" polygraphy.
In a nutshell, the examiner asks "control" questions among the other, "important" questions where the response
is expected, I say again: EXPECTED, to be a lie.
How can/will the examiner interpret results when the subject responds truthfully to the control questions?

I don't know why the city I live in is claimed to have horrible traffic. If I go outside my house and look up and down the street, I see maybe one or two cars pass by a minute. I don't know who these dummies are that claim we have a traffic problem.

My response to your ignorance is for you to go out and learn some basic physics and fluid dynamics. Despite your Jetsons/Futurama view of the world, flying vehicles cannot fly close behind each other without a lot of danger (you'll learn about that when you study the fluid dynamics). The Blue Angel pilots train for it, and they stagger their planes.

There are reasons that planes need to be from 3 to 6 miles apart when flying the same route. Start reading this for starters.

Look here:

http://newton.nap.edu/books/0309054478/html/1.html

and here

http://infoventures.com/emf/federal/gao/health/gao ch1.html

and read the following:

Ahlbom, E Cardis et al: Review of the epidemiologic literature on EMF and health. Environ Health Perspect 109:911-933, 2001.

KR Foster et al: Weak electromagnetic fields and cancer In the context of risk assessment. Proc IEEE 85:733-746, 1997.

JE Moulder: Power-frequency fields and cancer. Crit Rev Biomed Eng 26:1-116, 1998.

BE Butterworth et al: A strategy for establishing mode of action of chemical carcinogens as a guide for approaches to risk assessments. Cancer Letters 93:129-146, 1995.

GM Williams et al: Epigenetic carcinogens: evaluation and risk assessment. Exper Toxicol Pathol 48:189-195, 1996.

M Mevissen et al: Study on pineal function and DMBA-induced breast cancer formation in rats during exposure to a 100-mG, 50-HZ magnetic field. J Toxicol Environ Health 48:169-185, 1996.

LB Sasser et al: Exposure to 60 Hz magnetic fields does not alter clinical progression of LGL leukemia in Fischer rats. Carcinogenesis 17:2681-2687, 1996.

JE Morris, LB Sasser et al: Clinical progression of transplanted large granular lymphocytic leukemia in Fischer 344 rats exposed to 60 Hz magnetic fields. Bioelectromag 20:48-56, 1999.

  L Devevey, C Patinot et al: Absence of the effects of 50Hz magnetic fields on the progression of acute myeloid leukaemia in rats. Int J Radiat Biol 76:853-862, 2000

LE Anderson, JE Morris et al: Large granular lymphocytic (LGL) leukemia in rats exposed to intermittent 60 Hz magnetic fields. Bioelectromag 22:185-193, 2001.

YL Zhao, PG Johnson et al: Increased DNA synthesis in INIT/10T1/2 cells after exposure to a 60 Hz magnetic field: A magnetic-field or a thermal effect? Radiat Res 151:201-208, 1999.

I like that one the best. Both exposing to magnetic field and PRETENDING to expose to a field had the same result.

I found most of these studies at:
http://www.mcw.edu/gcrc/cop/powerlines-cancer-FAQ

There was a successful AHS demonstration I believe in the 1930's, and most recently a successful demonstration in 1998. (another report)

Congress thought the successful experiment was kind of neat, but shut it down, basically saying: "Nobody's really asking for this. People seem to be pretty excited about driving, actually." (paraphrasing.)

Businesses have wanted AHS for a very long time- for many decades, they've been working on the technology, and trying to get it sorted out. (Think: highway trucking.)

What's this have to do with Cell Phones?

People are starting to value their time more. In particular, they're starting to view that car trip as useable time. Whether people really do have access to that time or not, people are taking that time, by force, with their cell phone. And the result is: crashes, accidents.

So this may be a data point towards AHS.

No, actually, that is not true. If you look at the report, they say there is data of sufficient quality to say we are hotter than we've been in *at least* 400 years. Before that, there is less confidence in the measurable proxies of temperature, yet it still appears current temperatures are hotter than any time going back to 900 AD. The data for previous times are even less reliable, and thus being careful scientists, the NAS is not willing to make statements about those times.

I don't know of anyone that does not accept global warming (as in the warming of regions of the earth). I know a lot of people which can't agree on the causes.

So you know a lot of scientifically ignorant people. Let's say this again for those in the back of the class: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." (From the National Academy of Sciences). Or, if you prefer, "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" from the IPCC.

Cyclical Global warming != greenhouse effect.

True, that is why really smart scientists spend time examining the effect of anthropogenic climate change as a separate thing from cyclic climate change.

Greenhouse gases effect may play a part

Substitute do for may, and you are right.

For your edification, the report is available in full format, and a 4 page executive summary.

-Ted

http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309102251/html/23.htm l

1st paragraph, not the bulleted points.

Dear "The Voice of Fairness and Reason,"

Download this: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html

Flip to page 103 for Figure 10-6: Model-based estimates of global sufrface temperature compared to observational estimates with contributions of natural (volcanic and solar) and anthropogenic forcings for 25-year periods shown as color bars.

The anthropogenic bar in the last 25 years totally dominates all of the other bars. I haven't read the entire article, but it sounds to me like you haven't even bothered to read any of it and yet you feel totally comfortable spouting off about it.

Scientists will never clame to PROVE anything, so stop using political motivations to attack scientific findings.

Signed,
The Voice of Telling You To RTFA

The instrumentally measured warming of about 0.6C during the 20th century is also reflected in borehole temperature measurements, the retreat of glaciers, and other observational evidence, and can be simulated with climate models. Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the "Medieval Warm Period") and a relatively cold period (or "Little Ice Age") centered around 1700. The existence and extent of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents. Evidence for regional warmth during medieval times can be found in a diverse but more limited set of records including ice cores, tree rings, marine sediments, and historical sources from Europe and Asia, but the exact timing and duration of warm periods may have varied from region to region, and the magnitude and geographic extent of the warmth are uncertain.

The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that "the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium" because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.

Right, nobody else has any titanium ore.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook/POD140/html/23.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium#Occurrence
http://reference.allrefer.com/world/countries/sier ra-leone/geography.html
http://reference.allrefer.com/world/countries/indi a/geography.html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ in.html
http://www.mixcorp.com/stcharles.htm
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestprod ucts/582B60B066B26906CA2570DE00173BBD?opendocument

Annual causes of death in the US:
Tobacco 435,000
Alcohol 85,000
Sexual Behaviors 20,000
Marijuana 0

Well it may be debatable, but I think its a pointless debate. I know more people do these other things than smoke pot, but let's multiply the pot number by five trillion to make up for the difference. Oh look, pot is still safer than sex.

*Taken from drugwarfacts.com, original sources:
Source: Mokdad, Ali H., PhD, James S. Marks, MD, MPH, Donna F. Stroup, PhD, MSc, Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, "Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000," Journal of the American Medical Association, March 10, 2004, Vol. 291, No. 10, pp. 1238, 1241.
and
Source: Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), available on the web at http://www.samhsa.gov/; also see Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson, Jr., and John A. Benson, Jr., "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), available on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/marimed/; and US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition" (Docket #86-22), September 6, 1988, p. 57.

Climatology has been so thoroughly politicised that scientists and activists are not easily distinguished.

The reason is that fear and hysteria generate press, political pressure, and therefore funding urgency. Also green activists readily identify with the subject matter and hysteria, much moreso than with more esoteric fields.

Now there is a runaway feedback cycle!

In fact many tens of thousands of people already died or will die of some form of cancer as a consequence of the disaster.

By contrast the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards were estimated to have cost 1,300 to 2,600 lives in the United States just during 1993 according to a National Academy of Sciences study.

All the arguments for hardware patents can be made for software patents. All the arguments against hardware patents can be made against software patents.
To object to one but not the other is inconsistent

Or maybe the National Research Council, claiming that the software industry is quite different from traditional industry sectors for various reasons.

Or maybe the Max Planck and Fraunhofer Institutes? (the latter even own some patents on mp3 compression)

But, who CAN do it safely? Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Hanford... and now Rocky Flats. Fact is it will never be done safely, and it cant. So, as long as you are willing to live with known risk, even if considered to the smallest degree, of human endangerment, then i say go for it, build away.

• This JAMA study found over 27,000 errors due to hospital (not other medical care) negligence in one year, in New York state alone.
• This Institute of Medicine study found 44,000 to 98,000 deaths per year due to hospital errors alone. That makes it the 8th leading cause of death, ahead of car accidents, AIDS, and breast cancer.
• The more comprehensive HealthGrades study puts the number of deaths due to hospital error at 195,000. And the study's authors think that underestimates it. (Also reported here.)
• Just try a few Google searches and you'll easily find more information, like this study.

That's right, doctors' errors are at least the eighth leading cause of death in this country. And the problem is the lawyers?

The response of the medical industry is to continue their practices, blame lawyers, and lobby congress for protection from accountability. I remember when the IOM study came out, it was proposed that hospitals be legally required to report these errors -- think about that: There is no reporting mechanism for, and no regulation of, hospital errors!. The American Medical Assoc. (the doctors' lobby) resisted, saying the potential penalties would discourage doctors from complying. By that reasoning, I shouldn't have to report running that guy over the other day -- I might be held responsible!

It can be done better:

When anesthesiologists were facing high error rates and corresponding malpractice costs, they took a different approach: They systematically studied the problem and tried to reduce errors. As a result, deaths due to anesthesia dropped from 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 200,000-300,000. And insurance premiums dropped 37%. You can read about it here or pay for the full story here.

And most of the industrialized world countries manage to deliver better care for far less. According to a study reported here, Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world's median of $2,193; ... Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less

Here's a study on patent quality by John L. King of the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

http://www.nap.edu/books/0309086361/html/54.html

From the abstract:

This study examines a detailed panel data set of patent examination procedures that affect patent quality. A main conclusion is that the most important of these inputs (examiner hours and examiner actions) have remained largely consistent over time despite an increasing examination workload. Other measures of examination quality (pendency and interference hearings) have declined. Inputs to examination quality are inversely correlated with the rate at which patents are involved in legal complaints, and the expense of increasing examination inputs may be more than offset by the consequent reduction in litigation costs.

In the paper, there's a table of time spent by patent examiners on various categories of patents. What takes the longest to review? Technology for "Information processing, storage, and retrieval" with an average of 27.52 hours.

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Four dead polar bears in the open ocean. Therefore they died because they drowned. Therefore its because the Arctic has warmed recently. Therefore the warming is caused by "Global Warming" caused by human fossil fuel use

Classic straw man. Good try, but intellectually dishonest. New territory for conservatives I must admit.

Arguing that the current warming is a natural cycle, and therefor we should do nothing, is no different than suggesting that one should not turn off the heater in the summertime because it is natural processes are responsible for the increasing temperature.

But wait, the Arctic from 70-90 is still not as warm as the 1930s, as can be seen from long station records all across the high Arctic (for example Nuuk or Ostrov Dikson ) This was well before large increases in carbon dioxide.

Two problems with your reasoning: 1) Carbon dioxide has been increasing for about 150 years now. Last I checked, the 1930's was only 70 years ago. That's an 80-year margin of error there. Better check your math. 2) When the climate changes, it doesn't change everywhere in lockstep. Some places will get colder, and some will get warmer. Talk about wild extrapolation. You are asking us to believe that temperature data from two isoloated stations should contradict the overall trend from hundreds of thousands of stations across the entire planet over hundreds of years.

Since the poster child for linking climate change with carbon dioxide use has been shown to be a product of bad statistics

Hate to tell you buddy, but your pet theory was shot down about 5 years ago. Take a read at a real scientific paper here: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309068916/html/. Not only that, but do you know anything about Venus? Do you know why it's so hot there? You do know that carbon dioxide is fairly opaque to infrared, and that's how it insulates, right? I assume you are not trying to call into question basic laws of chemistry and physics while at the same time accusing others of wild extrapolations are you?

Therefore, hence, or in conclusion: I call bullshit.

What is wrong with you people? This isn't crazy hippies crying about killing the poor flowers somewhere. This is a near perfect consensus of scientists across dozens of different disciplines on a global scale. They are trying to sound every alarm at their disposal and we are ignoring them. Instead of taking their word about their fields of expertise, we have people with no trainng at all (most with no college at all) questioning the conclusions of people who have spent their entire lives studying this stuff. The sad thing is that, if they are right, in 50 years the Republican Party is going to be having hearings on why our scientific community failed us, and they will be telling us how they were trying to save us all these years and it was the evil liberals that stopped them.

Of course this message has been brought to you by Exxon Mobil, the Bush Administration, the Republican Party, the Freemasons, the Illuminati and all stations to Satan.

I don't think most of us imagine anything so grand. Just uneducated, dishonest conservatives who see global climate change as a threat to their monied way of life, and who are willing to risk making a world of Katrina-like events commonplace to protect that way of life. Simple as that.

If you don't want to do that, here's my own summary from what I read of the above materials: A) Evidence about its use for law enforcement/criminal investigation shows that it is better than chance but "far from perfect", B) There is nearly no scientific evidence about its efficacy for screening or pre-screening employees, and C) there are good reasons for thinking that it would be even less effective for (pre-)screening than it is for law enforcement.

For those unfamiliar with the NAS, there's a Wikipedia article.

If you don't want to do that, here's my own summary from what I read of the above materials: A) Evidence about its use for law enforcement/criminal investigation shows that it is better than chance but "far from perfect", B) There is nearly no scientific evidence about its efficacy for screening or pre-screening employees, and C) there are good reasons for thinking that it would be even less effective for (pre-)screening than it is for law enforcement.

For those unfamiliar with the NAS, there's a Wikipedia article.

There is NO consensus on whether or not man-made global warming is happening- anyone who claims to have "climatologist" friends who say it most definitely is or isn't real and that all the real scientists agree are just pulling stuff out of their ass (and it's pretty obvious, too, so don't even try to do it).

Well, here I go pulling stuff out of my ass (and by "my ass" I mean "the positions of the most influential bodies in the field") [my bold].

From the Position Statement of the American Geophysical Union:

Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth's history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.

From the Position Statement of the American Meteorological Society:

...Because human activities are contributing to climate change, we have a collective responsibility to develop and undertake carefully considered response actions...

...Human activities have become a major source of environmental change. Of great urgency are the climate consequences of the increasing atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents resulting primarily from energy use, agriculture, and land clearing. These radiatively active gases and trace constituents interact strongly with the Earth's energy balance, resulting in the prospect of significant global warming...

...An overwhelming majority of scientists agree on the following facts relating to the global warming issue.

* The theory of how greenhouse gases directly interact with atmospheric radiation is not controversial. If no other factors counter their influence, increases in their concentration will lead to global warming.

* A steady rise in the concentration of greenhouse gases began over 200 years ago and is continuing. Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, has increased from pre-industrial concentrations of 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) to over 367 ppmv in 2000, an increase of more than 30%; methane has increased from 0.7 to about 1.8 ppmv, an increase of more than 150%; nitrous oxide has increased from 0.27 to over 0.31 ppmv, an increase of 16%. Tropospheric ozone is estimated to have increased by 35% since the industrial revolution...

The first line of the National Academy of Sciences 2001 report titled "Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions", performed at the request of President Bush:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.

In short... there is no controversy. Yes, there are a handful of very loud people who are attempting to create one, who are assisted by the media's dedication to "balance," which consists of giving equal weight to totally unequal positions. Really, though, in the scientific community, anthropogenic warming is considered to be a fact.

Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that we should necessarily do anything about it. The existence of a phenomenon is not de facto support for any particular policy position. But let's not screw around-- the "controversy" over whether global warming is at least partially anthropogenic is manufactured and does not reflect the views of the scientific community.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Back in the mid eighties, NY State decided to site a low level nuclear dump (mostly medical radiological waste) in a low lying swamp on an active fault line in the southern tier of the state (Alleghany County). Why did they pick that site? Low population and low income. They figured they could do it quietly and that the local population did not have the money for a legal fight and that they could be bought with 'jobs'.

The siting commision was wrong, and they were received by armed locals. Luckily the state police running escort were all senior officers and kept a level head. It could have turned into a real fiasco but ended as a minor disturbance. There were a few legal battles after that, then the whole issue faded. The siting commission regrouped and did a fairly extensive analysis of the process. (The last link)

Speak not of that which you do not know.

http://www.piercelaw.edu/risk/vol7/spring/vari.htm
http://herrick.alfred.edu/special/collections/LLRW .asp
http://www.nap.edu/execsumm/0309055393.html

This Page links to the 8th page of the report where patent reform is discussed (closely followed by a bunch of tax incentives). The text specifically mentions IT patents hurting innovation. This is under the fourth major recommendation section, (D), and the first one listed (D-1) under that section. D-4 might also be of interest to the /. crowd: ubiquitious broad band internet access.

Just look at this: Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII - Phase 2)

Just check this out: Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII - Phase 2) (Summary, PDF Brief).

Description (from the National Academies of Science site):
BEIR VII develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. It is among the first reports of its kind to include detailed estimates for cancer incidence in addition to cancer mortality. In general, BEIR VII supports previously reported risk estimates for cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear-no-threshold" (LNT) risk model that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans. The report is from the Board on Radiation Research Effects that is now part of the newly formed Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

Just check this out: Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII - Phase 2) (Summary, PDF Brief).

Description (from the National Academies of Science site):
BEIR VII develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. It is among the first reports of its kind to include detailed estimates for cancer incidence in addition to cancer mortality. In general, BEIR VII supports previously reported risk estimates for cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear-no-threshold" (LNT) risk model that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans. The report is from the Board on Radiation Research Effects that is now part of the newly formed Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

Just check this out: Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII - Phase 2) (Summary, PDF Brief).

Description (from the National Academies of Science site):
BEIR VII develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. It is among the first reports of its kind to include detailed estimates for cancer incidence in addition to cancer mortality. In general, BEIR VII supports previously reported risk estimates for cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear-no-threshold" (LNT) risk model that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans. The report is from the Board on Radiation Research Effects that is now part of the newly formed Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

See Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism, Immunization Safety Review Committee, Institute of Medicine.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. is not a physician or a scientist.

I was curious, too, and had a look around the web. The only images I could find from Clementine were 1 pixel == 1 km, though some National Academy of Sciences site says they took the surface at 100m to 400m per pixel (still way too big to see anything left on the surface).

Even Hubble can only "resolve objects as small as 280 meters" across (not sure how that translates to pixels per unit). Which is amazing, considering the views of the universe it's given us. Then again, the universe is a bit bigger than 280 meters...

I suggest you read Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base, a report by the Natitional Institute of Health's Institute of Medicine, which found that smoked marijuana is very effective for many patients, and that there exists no alternative for some of them. The problem with drugs like Marinol, or others intended to trigger appetite is that often it is impossible for a someone with a wasting desease to keep a pill down. Smoked marijuana offers instant relief.

Also, I just don't see why we shouldn't allow people to get high before they die. Your incest example is a false analogy, because there is no equivolent to the birth of a child in the case of a terminally ill patient smoking marijuana. We let dying people have morphine all the time. What is the difference? As for your crack example, that is really a consequence of prohibition. If crack was cheaper, and more easily available, crack addicts wouldn't be forced to rob people to feed their addictions. Marijuana, for all practical purposes, is not addictive in the way crack or heroin are, and therefore this isn't even an issue now.

But then, I suppose I should reveal that I support an end to all drug prohibition. It is a failed policy. This is pericularly the case with marijuana prohbition, but even with heroin, the costs outweight the benifits.

Robert Park and the American Physical Society have long been foes of both the Shuttle and the ISS.

First off, the American Physical Society has no stance for or against the Shuttle and the ISS. They are a professional society for physicists. They occasionally perform studies or issue statements based on areas of their expertise. The only statement about the ISS that I am aware is Statement 91.2 and was released in 1991. Basically it said that the APS feels there is no current credible scientific justification for the proposed ISS and that the scientific value of the ISS has been greatly overstated and can be done better and cheaper on Earth and/or in the shuttle. I think 14 years later it is hard to argue that statement has not proven accurate.

Bob Park writes a weekly one-page commentary work What's News pertaining to physics and general science folly. He is rather opinionated on many subjects and is not shy to state them (it is, after all, an opinion column). He does not speak for the APS any more than a political commentator speaks for any newspaper on the Sunday editorial page. Park's disclaimer at the bottom (at the time the link in question was posted) was:

THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY and THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the American Physical Society or the University, but they should be.

The "unique result" statement you criticize is taken from a report by the National Research Council (at NASA's request), which basically states (and Park reiterates) that nothing on protein crystal research has been done that has not been done on Earth. In fact, the exact statement taken from the Executive Summary is:

The task group heard a great deal about experiments to date in NASA 's macromolecular crystallography program. The results so far are inconclusive, and the impact of microgravity crystallization on structural biology as a whole has been extremely limited. At this time, one cannot point to a single case where a space-based crystallization effort was the crucial step in achieving a landmark scientific result. In many of the cases that have so far been listed as successful, the improvements obtained have been incremental rather than fundamental. In addition, the difficulty of mounting simultaneous efforts to produce the best possible crystals both on the ground and in space has limited the ability of researchers to make the comparisons between microgravity and Earth crystals that would be necessary to demonstrate that the microgravity environment can produce superior crystals.

Finding: The results from the collection of experiments performed on microgravity's effect on protein crystal growth are inconclusive. The improvements in crystal quality that have been observed are often only incremental, and the difficulty of producing the appropriate controls limits investigators ' ability to definitively assess if improvements can be reliably credited to the microgravity environment. To date, the impact of microgravity crystallization on structural biology as a whole has been extremely limited.

A more descriptive statement Park made was in a link in the link. They aren't comments to be taken with salt but rather a listing of damning facts regarding selling the ISS for growing protein crystals. There isn't any way to put a good spin on that.

That NRC report statement about protein crystals can be made for just about most of the research attempted on the ISS. You can argue all you want about the political and/or societial reasons for having or not having the ISS, but you cannot just

To quote from an article in Chronicle of Higher Education, reprinted in Prime Palaver #10, Michael Jensen (their director of publishing technologies) said:

Our site is very busy -- from January through mid-August [ed note: 2001] of this year, more than 3.2 million people had viewed more than 28 million Web pages, including 15 million book pages. While those are great numbers in terms of wide dissemination, the more remarkable thing is that, over the same period, we have sold more than 40,000 books through the same site -- something approximating 25 percent of our overall book sales, and already surpassing the number we sold during all of last year. Moreover, our other sales -- via bookstores, an 800 number, fax, and mail -- have apparently not been cannibalized, staying pretty much in line with industry sales.

The only problem I see with Nuclear power is what to do with the waste.

This problem has been solved. The waste is processed into what amount to vitrified glass blocks which have stable storage lifetimes in the thousands of years. There is no way short of intentional refinement for waste stored in this manner to re-enter the environment in the relatively short term, unlike liquid or cannister based storage mechanisms. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that in a thousand years or so, we'll have a lot better idea of what to do with the blocks themselves, if indeed anything need be done. We've only had nuclear power for half a century or so, after all.

The correct choice at this time seems to be a combination of pebble bed reactors, which are highly resistant to serious problems such as meltdown or explosive failure, and vitrified glass waste storage insofar as waste storage turns out to be required. Pebble bed reactors are somewhat different from the reactors we're used to thinking about, particularly in that they repeatedly re-process their own fuel, continually converting "waste" from the previous stage into still more energy.

The primary problem is political and environmentalist fearmongering (to the extent that it is not just ignorance, which I am perfectly will to credit both politicians and environmentalists with.) People will believe anything, especially if it comes with a nice, high energy dose of hysteria.

The secondary problem is that building nuclear power plants -- any kind -- is a long, drawn out proceedure. If we started today, money no object, the public all about supporting it, it'd still be quite a few years before the putative new plants began to benefit the infrastructure. Compound this with the fact that we're not going to start today, or at any time in the foreseeable future, and the fact that money is a severe problem, the public is in no way supportive, and the future for reasonable nuclear energy generation appears mighty bleak.

• The first edition of the classic Cheswick and Bellovin book Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker is available in its entirety for free online.
• Black Box Voting - Chapter 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Chapter 07 Chapter 08 Chapter 09 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 d - Appendix Footnotes Index
• http://www.physicsforfree.com/
• http://www.dctech.com/physics/textbooks.php
• http://www.nap.edu/books/NX005722/html/related.htm l
• High Energy Physics - Fields
• Also, the National Academies Press says it has over 2,500 books on many different academic topics online for free.
• Open Source Development with CVS

• The first edition of the classic Cheswick and Bellovin book Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker is available in its entirety for free online.
• Black Box Voting - Chapter 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 Chapter 04 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Chapter 07 Chapter 08 Chapter 09 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 d - Appendix Footnotes Index
• http://www.physicsforfree.com/
• http://www.dctech.com/physics/textbooks.php
• http://www.nap.edu/books/NX005722/html/related.htm l
• High Energy Physics - Fields
• Also, the National Academies Press says it has over 2,500 books on many different academic topics online for free.
• Open Source Development with CVS

Read the only version at Signposts in Cyberspace. There's an interesting section on Verisign's Site Finder service.

According to the National Academies press release announcing the report, they won't be making it available on the Web. Printed copies will be available for sale for $40. So not only will it be out of date at the time it is released, it will also be inaccessible to most of the peopele who might be interested!

The problem with this bill is that it poorly defines what an ISP is. I am internet security engineer for an ISP that is, more or less, mere conduit. That is, we provide no content services whatsoever, unlike AOL... you get a pipe, and a gateway for authenticated TCP/IP traffic... from there, you're on your own.

The Pennsylvania law presents considerable problems for us because we do not monitor content. One cannot filter content fairly without monitoring it. No content filtering system can be expected to not cause collateral damage, and considerable collateral damage will occur where content filtering is "blind" (preprogrammed) and not facilitated by active, intelligent monitoring. These conclusions are supported by the findings of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board in a 2002 publication, titled, "Youth, Pornography and the Internet."

If we move past the boundary of being mere conduit, we may establish a number of false expectations that are not aligned with the scope of services we can reasonably provide. We have thousands of users who are customers of a customer of a customer of ours... As a Tier 1 ISP, this is a reality that Utah has, apparently, ignored.

What's the result? For example... Some enduser of an ISP which leases lines from another ISP which leases lines from us... is surfing the internet. Both the DMCA (17 USC 12) and the Utah statute (HB 260) do not clearly delineate between upstream ISPs and enduser ISPs... so where does the responsibility for providing content filtering begin and end?

It should be only a matter of time before this one gets overturned, because it's incredibly difficult to enforce and, more importantly, it ignores one of the most fundamental aspects of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. As a parent, you have the ultimate responsibility to police what your child does and doesn't see/read/hear.

In principle, and upheld largely by case law, the Establishment Clause prohibits government from becoming a censor in place of a parent's lack of involvement or judgment. Utah H.B. 260 violates this standard, by way of the exclusion in the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

The thing is, just how complex is the shuttle flight control system, really? Is it really comparable in complexity to the kind of apps TFA was talking about? I'm skeptical. Besides, if you read this, you'll find that "exhaustive" testing of the shuttle software to achieve the levels of reliability NASA desires simply isn't feasible, so they end up using a statistical process to track and predict faults. Not quite the same process that TFA was advocating, but similar in principle.