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Billions of black, shrimp-size bugs with transparent wings and beady red eyes are beginning to carpet trees, buildings, poles, and just about anything else vertical in a wide region of the U.S. The invasion zone stretches from the eastern seaboard west through Indiana and south to Tennessee.

-FL

Assume you have a 3-mile diameter asteroid...
The 3-mile-long (4.8-kilometer-long) peanut-shaped asteroid...
Probably a three mile long cylinder with a 1 mile diameter would be more accurate.

On the other hand though, it is predicted in the article that in 2562, "...Toutatis will pass within 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) of Earth." What would happen if it hit the moon?

We can't stop people from having kids. We can try and conserve natural resources, but eventually the number of people will be more than the planet can support.

Over-population is not quite the problem you think it is. In the United States, pop growth has slowed to a crawl, and most of our growth is due to immigration.

Developed countries the world over have slow (and declining) birthrates. Heck, Italy is trying to encourage their population to reproduce - they are suffering from net population decrease!

World population, based on current trends, is due to stabilize around 2075 at around 9 million people.

There are a number of reasons for this. Affluent people tend to have fewer kids, merely because they are a hassle. In the more impoverished nations, existing infrastructure is failing to provide for current needs, let alone future growth. For example, one of the largest mass poisonings ever in human history is taking place in Asia because of arsenic-laced drinking water.

<RANT>

What truly amazes me is the sheer number of people who don't google whatever they're talking about before they say it. The volume of uninformed, stupid comments on the Internet that can be corrected with 10 minutes of googling and quick research is mind-boggling.

People with access to this kind of information should not be making the stupid comments they are. That they do, anyway, and don't get flogged on the streets is a mere testament to the fact that humanity does not yet value intelligence and critical thinking over stupidity.

I daresay we are entering a new era of humanity - the era of the informed but ignorant idiot. The information is there - cheap, easily available. Tools that our ancestors would have killed for - and we use it to pass along mundane drivel because "we feel" or "we think" rather than actually use that tool to anywhere near its true potential.

Sad. TV is used for network television and advertising, instead of mass education and information. News shows on TV are remarkably shallow and uninformative. The best bet are the "nature" shows, which are nice but curiously designed towards complacency.

We are in the middle of a mass extinction event brought about, no doubt, by people who chcose not to be informed, and make decisions based on ego and inadequate information.

We need to pay attention, people!

</RANT

start applauding

Also learn to read there is a heap of posts on other stuff he is done that is worth applauding.

I can't stand people who bash Bill and his foundation. Sure bash Microsoft if you must, but why the foundation?

Yes he is mega rich but he still doesn't have to give the money away does he?

I am sure he could find other ways to get rid of the money. Instead he is doing some good.

His foundation has practically wiped our Malaria in third world countries.

I suppose he did that for advertising as well??

No I am not a MS support, Linux is my vehicle of choice, but I am man enough to applaud someone doing good for the community.

Would be nice if some of the wallies posted here could do the same.

Yeah I know, fat chance of that.

Because of global warming, the polar ice caps melt causing the ocean temperatures to drop leading to an overall drop in temperature to where the next ice age begins. Duh.

Exactly. In United States history, I would say there has been more effort put into managing fires than actual prevention. How do you reduce widespread fires? Education of humans only goes so far, since nature likes to toss around lightning strikes. That means to stop fires you have to reduce the number of trees.

Of course, some reports say increased logging causes fires, but you have to read why. In rainforest areas, haphazard logging can dry out the vegetation, which makes them more susceptible to widespread fire. But the argument doesn't hold true for temperate climates like the US, where our forests are typically (dryer) evergreen. Some argue that controlled logging protects areas by thinning the tree population and reducing brush, something the current administration has been pushing for a while with little success from the opposing party in congess. (Funny that this was removed from the CNN's live site and search history, but the web never forgets).

...but there wasn't a USPTO back then.

The First Beer:
The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, analyzed an organic residue from inside a pottery vessel dated circa 3500-3100 B.C. from the site of Godin Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. Their findings provide the earliest known chemical evidence of beer in the world.

The First Wine:
source Combining archaeology with chemical and molecular analysis, McGovern has carved a niche for himself as an expert in ancient organics--particularly wine. He has already pushed our knowledge of vinicultural history back to Neolithic times (the late Stone Age). Now McGovern is searching in eastern Turkey for the origins of grape domestication.
The scientist lacks the physical evidence to prove his hypothesis that hunter-gatherers made what he calls "Stone Age beaujolais nouveau." But he has shown, through a combination of archaeological sleuthing and chemical analysis, that the history of wine extends to the Neolithic period (8,500-4,000 B.C.) and the first glimmerings of civilization.

Why do people keep bringing up this misleading survey? Actually the survey isn't misleading, Just NetGeo's doom and gloom donation-seeking summary. Let me do a tiny bit to set the record straight.

Yes, American school kids are largely ignorant of geography. But the survey also points out the gross ignorance of students in other nations. Reporters and pundits tend to forget this in their zeal to portray the US as a bunch of nincompoops. It is a good thing that this geographical ignorance in the US is highlighted, because it means that we can now move to correct the problem. But it does not imply that other nations are let off the hook!

This was a survey done by a US organization for a US audience. Then the US media reported about are dumb kids. Then the non-US media came along and quoted the US media, and suddenly the whole world is awed at the stupidity of US schoolchildren.

But if you look at the actual results, or merely read a bit further down in the summary, you'll find a slightly different story. That's what's not being reported: the US is not alone in its geographical ignorance!

Some choice quotes: "Others outside the U.S., most notably young adults in Mexico, also struggled with basic geography facts. Young people in Canada and Great Britain fared almost as poorly as those in the U.S.".

Or how about, "Young adults worldwide are not markedly more literate about geography than the Americans. On average, fewer than 25% of young people worldwide could locate Israel on the map. Only about 20% could identify hotspots like Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq", and "In France, 24% did not know that that their own country was a nuclear nation."

It doesn't bother me that the world is picking the US for getting a "D" in geography. What bothers me is that the world thinks getting a "C-" in the same class is a resounding success!

• The current population of the US,
• The base of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida,
• A question about the Euro (I can't believe ANY Europeans could've possibly got this wrong),
• A question about Kashmir,
• The location of the US on a world map (the Russians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, and Swedish all did better at locating their own countries),

I wouldn't expect the average person to know the answer to some of the questions (for example, the question on El Nino), but the ones above are real howlers. I think part of the problem is the 'tabloid culture' that exists (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). People need to stop reading toilet paper and start reading real newspapers.

And just for the record, I got 18 out of 20. I guessed the religion question wrong and incorrectly stated that China and Russia both have populations of over a billion.

• The current population of the US,
• The base of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida,
• A question about the Euro (I can't believe ANY Europeans could've possibly got this wrong),
• A question about Kashmir,
• The location of the US on a world map (the Russians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, and Swedish all did better at locating their own countries),

I wouldn't expect the average person to know the answer to some of the questions (for example, the question on El Nino), but the ones above are real howlers. I think part of the problem is the 'tabloid culture' that exists (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). People need to stop reading toilet paper and start reading real newspapers.

And just for the record, I got 18 out of 20. I guessed the religion question wrong and incorrectly stated that China and Russia both have populations of over a billion.

• The current population of the US,
• The base of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida,
• A question about the Euro (I can't believe ANY Europeans could've possibly got this wrong),
• A question about Kashmir,
• The location of the US on a world map (the Russians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, and Swedish all did better at locating their own countries),

I wouldn't expect the average person to know the answer to some of the questions (for example, the question on El Nino), but the ones above are real howlers. I think part of the problem is the 'tabloid culture' that exists (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). People need to stop reading toilet paper and start reading real newspapers.

And just for the record, I got 18 out of 20. I guessed the religion question wrong and incorrectly stated that China and Russia both have populations of over a billion.

• The current population of the US,
• The base of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida,
• A question about the Euro (I can't believe ANY Europeans could've possibly got this wrong),
• A question about Kashmir,
• The location of the US on a world map (the Russians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, and Swedish all did better at locating their own countries),

I wouldn't expect the average person to know the answer to some of the questions (for example, the question on El Nino), but the ones above are real howlers. I think part of the problem is the 'tabloid culture' that exists (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). People need to stop reading toilet paper and start reading real newspapers.

And just for the record, I got 18 out of 20. I guessed the religion question wrong and incorrectly stated that China and Russia both have populations of over a billion.

• The current population of the US,
• The base of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida,
• A question about the Euro (I can't believe ANY Europeans could've possibly got this wrong),
• A question about Kashmir,
• The location of the US on a world map (the Russians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, and Swedish all did better at locating their own countries),

I wouldn't expect the average person to know the answer to some of the questions (for example, the question on El Nino), but the ones above are real howlers. I think part of the problem is the 'tabloid culture' that exists (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). People need to stop reading toilet paper and start reading real newspapers.

And just for the record, I got 18 out of 20. I guessed the religion question wrong and incorrectly stated that China and Russia both have populations of over a billion.

• The current population of the US,
• The base of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida,
• A question about the Euro (I can't believe ANY Europeans could've possibly got this wrong),
• A question about Kashmir,
• The location of the US on a world map (the Russians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, and Swedish all did better at locating their own countries),

I wouldn't expect the average person to know the answer to some of the questions (for example, the question on El Nino), but the ones above are real howlers. I think part of the problem is the 'tabloid culture' that exists (on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). People need to stop reading toilet paper and start reading real newspapers.

And just for the record, I got 18 out of 20. I guessed the religion question wrong and incorrectly stated that China and Russia both have populations of over a billion.

I do agree that most of the things mentioned in the article was politicial crap, though, but the people responsible for localisation should know well enough to check things like maps and language usage throughout products, as it gets extremely sensitive many places.

...the 56 people poll was actually bullshit, they took the two figures 23 and 56 from somewhere else - the National Geographic world wide poll that tested people from all around the world with 56 questions and americans got 23 right on average (56% couldnt find india but most could find the pacific)

Indeed. The text of the survey highlights is as follows:

Survey Results: U.S. Young Adults Are Lagging

Despite the daily bombardment of news from the Middle East, Central Asia, and other world trouble spots, roughly 85 percent of young Americans could not find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map, according to a new study.

Americans ages 18 to 24 came in next to last among nine countries in the National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey, which quizzed more than 3,000 young adults in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States. Top scorers were young adults in Sweden, Germany, and Italy.

Out of 56 questions that were asked across all countries surveyed, on average young Americans answered 23 questions correctly. Others outside the U.S., most notably young adults in Mexico, also struggled with basic geography facts. Young people in Canada and Great Britain fared almost as poorly as those in the U.S.

Among young Americans' startling knowledge gaps, the study found that

• nearly 30 percent of those surveyed could not find the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest body of water;
• more than half--56 percent--were unable to locate India, home to 17 percent of people on Earth; and
• only 19 percent could name four countries that officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons.

Several perhaps interrelated factors affected performance--educational experience (including taking a geography course), international travel and language skills, a varied diet of news sources, and Internet use. Americans who reported that they accessed the Internet within the last 30 days scored 65 percent higher than those who did not.

It wasn't just that the US youth scored badly, but in a group of 9 countries, only the Mexican youth scored worse. The test isn't particularly hard either - it's multiple choice.

Other interesting tidbits: Swedish youth were more than twice as likely to select the right choice for the size of the US population, where the options were "between 10 and 50 million", "between 150 and 350 million", "between 500 and 750 million", "between 1 billion and 2 billion" or "I don't know".... Hardly a difficult question. Even so, only 55% of the Swedish youth (who did best on this question) got it right.

11% of the US youth tested couldn't even pick out the US on a world map when the other choices available were Canada, China, Colombia and "I don't know"...

That said, the US and Mexico were not alone in answering shockingly badly on many questions. Canada and the UK also got pretty close...

Come on, it's not that hard. This took me less than five minutes to find, including loading up the 3MB pdf and searching for "pacific": National Geographic Survey

This is not at all the same thing. Gays have the same rights as straight people. Anyone, gay or straight, has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. Nobody, gay or straight, has the right to marry someone of the same sex. Gays are asking for "extra" rights. . .

Um, no. Straights have the right to marry the person they love. Gays do not. All gay folk want -- and deserve, and will finaly get -- is the same rights that straights have.

Gays are asking for "extra" rights that are an abomination to the natural order of things.

You think so? Check out this article from the National Geographic:

"But, actually, some same-sex birds do do it. So do beetles, sheep, fruit bats, dolphins, and orangutans. Zoologists are discovering that homosexual and bisexual activity is not unknown within the animal kingdom."

thx,
Eric

Yeah, but these are.

The July 2004 issue of National Geographic had a large article about the sun and how we've come to understand how it works.

It was a fascinating read in the print magazine. I'm not 100% sure that the online article is 100% of the printed article.

Did you know that the radiation that eventually becomes visible light takes 100,000 years to escape from the center of the sun to the corona, due to how dense matter is packed in the middle?
From there it's only 8 minutes to earth.

The corona of the sun itself is hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun.

National Geographic sun article

I take your point, so essentially a learned trait might enable a new set of selection pressures.

sort of like suggesting the hot water bathing macaques of japan may develop webbed feet, as a flippant example.

Technology developed for space travel has been adapted for uses on Earth for a long time. But today, three articles report that some current customizations can save lives. For example, SPACE.com writes that space technology is entering hospitals. It says that a system originally intended to keep clean the space station Mir, and later the International Space Station (ISS), is now used in hospitals to build temporary 'clean rooms' -- virtually bacteria-free -- around patients. And a video infrared camera developed by NASA's JPL to study Earth is being modified into a brain scanning device searching for tumors. Elsewhere, National Geographic is saying that satellites are starting to aid earthquake predictions. And of course, these ESA satellites are identifying these 'rogue waves'. You need to read the articles mentioned above to realize how all these bleeding edge technologies can really help us on Earth, but if you have a limited time, please read this summary for selected excerpts and photos.

I had heard that the biggest problem with either sequencing the dog's DNA or cloning a dog (the Missyplicity project) was the comparatively large number of chromosomes. In fact, a National Geographic article titled "Wolf to Woof" (tiny excerpt available here) notes the dog's 78 chromosomes (compared with our measly 46) as one of the reasons you can group a Great Dane and a Pomeranian as part of the same species.

I'm a cat person, myself. Cats, being contrary by nature, allowed themselves to be cloned, but then came out looking completely different because coat color and pattern is determined after conception.

"Taliban," by Ahmed Rashid

I read this book after 9-11, and it talked a lot about the desire of foreign companies, American included, to build oil pipelines to get at new finds near the Caspian Sea, and pipe it to ports in Pakistan & India. As the Taliban expanded control over the region in the 90s, the U.S. originally supported their "stability," and oil companies courted them to ensure construction could proceed. Obviously, when Bin Laden began attacking U.S. installations, the desired stability evaporated. The book ends in late 2000, before 9-11 and the assassination of the Northern Alliance leader Massoud. If anyone wants a good followup, National Geographic had an article in late 2001.

Computer Graphics World
Advanced Imaging
National Geographic
The Stranger
Flagpole

MikroBitti, Suomen Kuvalehti, Dr Dobb's Journal, Software Development, Embedded Systems Programming, C/C++ Users Journal, National Geographic and Time

I read regularly:
National Geographic

World Wide Challenge

Hey, you asked me.

So if the first guy doesn't make it back the rest of us can give up, eh? Oh yeah? National Geographic reports that:

Of the first 100 recorded Everest fatalities, for example, 41 were Sherpas. In April 2001 Babu Chiri Sherpa fell to his death into a crevasse near Camp Two, a tragic end to an Everest legend.

1) Saudi-arabia is a dictatorship. Not even a very benevolent one. Torture and random assassination of political enemies is commonplace there.

The interesting thing about Saudi Arabia is that there is a constant battle between the House of Saud and the religious leaders. Saud rules, but they know that they'd get overthrown quick if they tell the Islamic leaders to back off.

Shouldn't that make you more critical of current US policies in Iraq and the middle east in general, given that they are creating a fresh generation of terrorists hellbent on attacking america?

Why? Just because the Liberal Left hates Bush with a passion doesn't mean that they are CORRECT. Actually, I find their bias completely laughable. The end result of their ranting gives us such things as an animatedAl Gore, a group of folk that take movies at face value (let's check our laws of Physics at the door, shall we?), and a religious fervor against war that hasn't been seen since the Viet Nam era. Here's a shock for you: I'm an IT Geek, and I actually support our purpose for being in Iraq! <gasp!>

So, no, before Gulf War II there was no credible indication of cooperation between Saddam and Bin Laden. If there was, they would have found it already.

Well, if Russia is to be believed....

I blame the bush administration for lack of planning and lack of insight into Iraq. They screwed it up, they should pay the price, not the people on the ground giving their lives trying to help people.

Hm. So Bush and Company didn't take into consideration that a loon like Saddam would have his army melt into the general population and resort to guerilla warfare and terrorism, and you want to blame him? Please.

Like the way Bush uses God to excuse his policies is an insult to christians the world over?

No, like the Democrats claiming that they are looking out for the Little Guy, when they are making a complete ass of them. (look how things are happening in Boston, with respect to the Democratic National Convention. That's one complete fuck-up if i ever saw one. It's already $10M over budget. They can't get their heads out of their ass for a peaceful conference like this, and they want us to believe that they can run a war?!? Whoever writes their game plan should get into comedy. they'd make a killing.

By dehumanizing al qaeda you make it ok to treat whoever you believe to be a part of it as non-human or sub-human. We've seen the pictures of what that kind of attitude leads to. If you want the moral high ground, you've got to stick to the facts, and not let your emotions and hate get in the way.

That is exactly why I do not advocate a blanket "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" attitude. The majority of the local people there aren't looking for trouble; they are just living day-to-day. The general population should not be punished for the extreme actions of a (relative) few.

what a story... can't WAIT for the movie...

i was almost hit by lighting on a couple of occasions climbing telephone poles. Every other pole in residential areas is supposed to have thick guage ground wire bonded to the strand, but in most cases that wire is severed at the pole by residents or the bond is corroded enough to be innefective. We had a man die just a few years ago on the pole because of a lighting strike.

As cable and telephone installers we are required to work in the rain and have to wait for the go ahead to wait it out, regardless of how bad it seems out there. We do not get hazard pay, but we do stick together with our radios.

"Screw Them HaHaa, I ain't getting up there right now..."

Some customers are unreasonable about this, doing things like demanding cable TV during a hail storm. Take it easy on the cable/telephone guy, unless he REALLY deservers a hard time.

For various reasons, I happen to know a lot about beads -- the jewelry type. And over the years, I've gotten to know many of the "big" names in what is a fascinating, if admittedly somewhat small, subculture.

Whether you were talking about 90,000 year old beads from Africa or ancient Sumarian seal beads, one of the great resources available to us bead collectors was Dr. Peter Francis, Jr. and his website -- The Beadsite.

Now Peter was a somewhat odd character, even in a world populated by odd characters, and people argue all the time about many of his theories -- some of which, I much admit, seem a bit unlikely. But many years ago he was kind to a young kid interested in beads, so he's always had a special place in my heart. And so over the years we've kept in sporadic touch mostly via his web site and the occasional conference where we'd run into each other.

Long story short - he unexpectedly passed away (on a bead collecting trip of course!), and no one quite knew what to do with his site. Still, it is full of detailed information about beads that is available nowhere else in the world. Rather than take it down and allow that information to be lost, his website remains up - as he left it - to serve as an online repository of bead information, as well as a place to solicit donations for causes that he cared about.

I can only imagine that for someone who devoted his life to study and research, this is as fitting a tribute as anything. I would hope that when my time comes, people think my electronic "voice" is worth preserving....

On the contrary, I think the fact that the PCs run only Windows is directly relevant. Consider for a moment if it was Microsoft (the company) making these donations instead of Bill Gates' charitable trust. What would the reaction be? Would people be praising Microsoft's noble ambitions? Or would they think that it's a similar strategy to the one Apple employed in the 80's, and Microsoft still employs for college students: give your product away (free/cheap) to get people hooked on it. The answer is of course the latter option: this would make sense from a business perspective, and it would be reasonable for Microsoft to do it.

The bottom line is that this is an effective marketing strategy for Microsoft, whether or not that's Gates' intention. The fact that he gets richer as a buyproduct of his "charitable" donation makes it "tainted philanthropy" in my opinion.

Call him what you like (and I'm sure some of you will) he's doing a good thing here and I, for one, will take my hat of to the guy

I don't think he's doing a good thing here. I think he's doing a self-serving thing that makes him look cheap and greedy. On the other hand, he has donated to at least one worthy cause, and he deserves respect for that.

I'd like to take small exception to your assumptions about flooding in the area. Non-literialist biblical researchers had long thought that flooding in Mesopotamia led to the story of the Flood, as a major flood is recorded in the Summerian Epic Of Gilgamesh. More recently, a case has been made that the flooding of the Black Sea basin, which previously held a smaller fresh water lake, would have provided the seed for the story.

Compare this localized 1000 foot (300m) flood with the 17000 foot (5000m) global flood posited by the biblical story. Now, before someone lays into me for discounting the power of the Lord, consider how scientific research approaches this.

1. make observations of nature.

2. based on those observations, make an informed guess about why something came to be what was observed.

3. develop series of tests that might support your assertion, tests that other people can make independently.

4. collate data collected from many such tests, and see if the results support the theory.

For a localized Black Sea flood, there is previously collected evidence that due to the end of the last ice age, ice sheet melt flooded the eastern Med area, and what is now the Bosporus strait was breached about 7000 years ago. Salt water added 300m to the level of the Black Sea within a matter of months, drowning hundreds of square miles of land. Recent archeological dives along this now submerged land seem to show paleolithic human settlements. Further research is needed before strong conclusions can be drawn.

For a global 5000m+ flood, the very first thing we need to account for is the lack of suitable debris that would have washed ashore at high elevations as the waters subsided. If the Ark survived, some of the other wood left floating around might be expected to. The next thing would be to account for the volume of the ocean being doubled, and then halved, all in the course of a few months. Where did it come from, and where did it go?

As a biblical literalist, if your answer is basically that the Lord gave, and the Lord took away, then you've provided faith as evidence. While one's faith can be tested, it can't be independently checked and verified. The scientific method of investigating the works of the Lord assumes - baring evidence to the contrary - that the Lord maintains His creation in a consistent state: hot air rises, the sun sets, gravity sucks. If He doesn't, then the method will need to adjust.

So far, however, the method has proved useful at measuring the nature of Nature, such that we can reliably do things based on many of the conclusions we've drawn so far.

We run out of turkey parts? But since the technology looks like it will work with many types of waste, even sewage, we might never run out at all.

[S]ome human languages (Navaho is one IIRC) involve phonemes that must be learned in infancy - if one doesn't hear these sounds while the brain is plastic, one never can learn these sounds.

Actually, all human languages use some phonemes that don't have precise correspondents in other languages. basically, if your language doesn't use a particular phoneme, you cease (after about the age of three or four months) to "gear" it -- instead you categorize it as the phoneme in your language it is "closest" too. Indeed, studies show that the brain does less work when heard sounds are closest to the learned stereotype, and more work for ambiguous sounds that "straddle" two or more known phonemes. So bigger "gaps" between "adjacent" phonemes are preferred.

This makes all kinds of sense by the way: diff'rint pee-pulp sow-nd diff-or-int, and their voices differ based on mood, emotion, wakefulness. By having broad categories for phonemes (and by using contextual clues, which is outside the scope of this discussion), you're able to understand a tired, gum-chewing tourist who doesn't share your dialect. Having to understand indistinct and potentially ambiguous utterances in your language happens much more often than attempting to learn a wholly foreign language. The human brain is adapted to "latch onto" the language it hears in infancy, and specialize in that -- and most times -- in the six million years of human evolution --, that's been the best utilization of resources.

But while adults might not be able to distinguish non-native phonemes sounds by ear, they can by oscilloscope.

The more parsimonious conclusion is that chimps don't have language -- at least not like humans do.

Do they have vocalizations? Sure. Can those vocalizations mean things? Sure -- it's not news that various species of monkeys use different vocalizations to warn of different predators. And it's known that, like human babies differentiating phonemes, juvenile monkeys must learn the meanings of those vocalizations. We even have recent evidence that some birds can understand those monkey vocalizations -- and ignore those warning of predators that don't threaten the birds.

But language is not just the vocalization of unconnected nouns: "eagle!" or "leopard!"; language, as we understand it in humans, allows far more nuanced and precise explanation than anything we se in animals. At the most mundane level, as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom point out "It makes a big difference whether a far-off region is reached by taking the trail that is in front of the large tree or the trail that the large tree is in front of." At a more sublime level, a series of unconnected nouns hasn't the power that Dante Alighieri's verse has, to make alive again in our minds his love Beatrice.

Don't misunderstand me: I agree that chimps have a social life -- a complex social life, and I accept the more controversial opinion that they have a culture, and that they transmit that culture.

But language is something else, a special "trick", and it goes beyond, and indeed doesn't require vocalization at all -- as a deaf person or for that matter, any post written on Slashdot will demonstrate.

If we aren't "hearing" language from chimps -- and we've been hoping and listening for years -- it's most likely because chimps don't have language -- at least in the sense we mean language when we describe what any normal human three-year old can do.

Strads have traced the wood back to some wooden beams used n Italian Monasteries. The beams cam from ttrees that grew during the o called little Ice Age. This was a period of Long Winters in Europe and thereby a shortened gowing season. (The longer a growing season, the thicker a years rings are. The shorter the growing period, the thinner the rings and denser the wood.) When modern violins are made from similiar wood, they produce a sound very similiar. Go check out National Geographic.

So, considering the Caste system still exploits nearly 200 Million people - called Untouchables -- treated as virtual slaves by their caste superiors, its nice to see American Capitalists praising India for its Capialist Victories.

The trouble is simple, there are many many poor in India. They are many educated intellectuals, and a growing upper class. YET they still have teaming masses of poor. I can gaurantee you that India's poor will not tolerate the this -- India is a Secular Democracy -- and its people can see the "promise" of Capialism for what it is: Extending the domination of the Upper Class.

In a global context, the USA is the Upper Class. The rest of the world is being (via propaganda like this, WTO treaties and open Warfare(justified time and again by self-serving lies, but still never comes close to excusing the Imperial Warmongering Aggressors to anyone with perspective, a lack of jingoism, a bit of history and a mote of objectiveness) taught a lesson (and sold a noble lie) either continue to serve our economy or face conequences. The DOMESTIC US middle and lower classes had better wake the heck up -- only you will prevent the US plutocrats from extending their Empire over the world. If you dont, these (cluefull) foreign masses *will* eventually kick off their yokes. Inspite of all this flower-y "India as proof of Capitalism" propaganda. The only thing it is proof of, is that YET AGAIN, USA's Plutocrats will make league with ANY CORRUPT system that will butress their status... Saddam, Shah of Iran, Gen. Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan in the 1980's (who helped nurture what later became Al Qaeda), Gen. Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Ferdinand Marcos, and and and. Obviously the American people DO NOT CARE about justice and democracy in the world as long as they Can Get Rich.

So when you middle and lower classes in the USA finally realize that "Free Trade" really means "Tolerate sinking living conditions at home, so we can finance the extension of our empire and underclass-serfs, so we may get stinking rich or else be hungry today." than we can discuss what the implications of Free Trade with India's wonderfull New Capitalists.

It also rather neatly explains the interesting distribution of salt and fresh water in the Black Sea.

National Geographic has an article about the hypothesis on their website. I heard about it on NPR, originally.

ah, it was thought so, but then they discovered that the poles was water based under a layer of dry ice, IIRC.
a quick google gave this:

I agree that if the service was available for $300 to other Indian companies, but the government then subsidized that service to be 'sold' cheaper to other countries, that might be price dumping. So technically it's not price dumping, you are right.

However...I'm not sure I would agree that India has a fair wage policy. In fact, there is a very interesting (and related) article about the caste system, and how many Indians live Found Here

At what point does it not become morally wrong to accept such services? IF (and I'm not saying they do) their government restricts wages or otherwise keeps goods and services unnaturally low-priced, does that make it okay for US companies to accept the services of someone who has no other choice, even if they are making more? What if our services come from some IT sweatshop in a country where the workers are forced to work unreasonably cheap? Is it still okay to accept such services? I'm not asking you personally, obviously; I'm just curious as to those who keep screaming, "free trade! Global economy!"

If US companies/liberal economists are so keen on making the world a better place and bringing up the standards in other countries, then pay them comparable salaries to what they would get if they were in the United States.

This is just one example of the increased power of automated pattern recognition. Once computers reach a level of vision close to humans, we will se an explosion in automated tasks. Other examples include Sony Aibos vision, lip-reading software that helps in speech recognition, 'robot scientists' and the next generation of speech recognition with the potential to revolutionize human computer interaction. HAL, is that you?

I attended a lecture by Dr. Robert Zubrin, widely known for his Mars Direct plan, this past Friday at the National Geographic Society HQ in Washington, DC, where he made the good point that we need research on artificial gravity for missions to Mars much more than we do research on zero-gravity. Basically, the reasoning is that on a 2.5 year Mars mission, 1.5 years would be in Mars gravity, and the transit time would likely be spent in a 1-G artificial environment, since zero-G deconditioning for a 6-month trip would leave astronauts in poor shape to do their research on Mars once they got there. Since acheiving an artificial 1-G environment is easy through the use of centripital force, I'm glad to see at least the first steps in this sort of research are being done.

Yes, but the speech recognition program would have to be modded to take into account the thing attached to your lip. Of course, this woman could probably fit a beowulf cluster of them in place of what she's got and still have room.

National Geographic just did an article about the Carbon Cycle in their February issue. They stated that this has been tried, but it's been found that most phytoplakton die and decay on the surface without falling to the ocean bottom.

Psst...Mexico is in North America.

Because if we keep at it, one day you might even be able to find Europe on a map...