Slashdot Mirror

They aren't saying that 50% of *people* in the UK are sharing illegally, though.. they are saying that 50% of *traffic* is illegal, presumably counting by data volume. That 50% could be caused by a minority of people.

If the information in this recent image is correct, only 25% of net traffic is P2P. I guess the creatives are not that bothered about spam, and most web traffic is thoroughly mundane. All in all, there isn't much sunshine wherever that 50% came from...

For those uninformed here is Where is George wiki.

New Scientist has had numerous articles on this over the years, a quick search brings up 2 immediately.

A far more useful and more technically achievable propulsion technology is what New Scientist dubbed the relativity drive it is basically a super conducting hollowed tapered cylinder that bounces Microwaves within its confines. As they bounce around millions of times they hit the larger end at a more perpendicular angle then the narrow end, therefore producing a new propulsive force. The article is a good read.

New Scientist has had numerous articles on this over the years, a quick search brings up 2 immediately.

A far more useful and more technically achievable propulsion technology is what New Scientist dubbed the relativity drive it is basically a super conducting hollowed tapered cylinder that bounces Microwaves within its confines. As they bounce around millions of times they hit the larger end at a more perpendicular angle then the narrow end, therefore producing a new propulsive force. The article is a good read.

As far as I know, the electrical grid in most of EU have always been protected against that.

Sure about that?

From the above link:

Neither is Europe sufficiently prepared. Responsibility for dealing with space weather issues is "very fragmented" in Europe, says Hapgood.

Europe's electricity grids, on the other hand, are highly interconnected and extremely vulnerable to cascading failures. In 2006, the routine switch-off of a small part of Germany's grid - to let a ship pass safely under high-voltage cables - caused a cascade power failure across western Europe. In France alone, five million people were left without electricity for two hours. "These systems are so complicated we don't fully understand the effects of twiddling at one place," Hapgood says. "Most of the time it's alright, but occasionally it will get you."

No, it's not H5N1, it's an H1N1 strain.

New Scientist Magazine also has a good introductory article about it:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17025-deadly-new-flu-virus-in-us-and-mexico-may-go-pandemic.html

From the article:
Flu viruses are named after the two main proteins on their surfaces, abbreviated H and N. They are also differentiated by what animal they usually infect. The H in the new virus comes from pigs, but some of its other genes come from bird and human flu viruses, a mixture that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls "very unusual".
====

When people start making comments like this, I can't help wondering if this was someone's science project that got out into the open instead of a strain that occurred naturally.

Don't count on it, high end digital cameras have already hit the "good enough" barrier in terms of adding mega-pixels, so normal users will never hit "32MP" photos.

Personally, I think the future of high end computing is going to be mostly in medicine and genetics - not something your Aunt Tilly is likely to be doing in her garage.

Nothing too surprising here. The East Antarctic isn't expected to show dramatic melting due to Global Warming. It's the *West* Antarctic that's the worry and always has been.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227036.400-driller-thriller-antarcticas-tumultuous-past-revealed.html?full=true

Dig your head in the sand as much as you want. Yes, climate change happens anyway... but you really think pumping tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere doesn't have any affect at all? Especially when we're talking about almost a 25% increase?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638

I think Holden would agree with you on that. It's now being reported that he feels that the AP overstated his emphasis on technofixes, all of which he considers "problematic".

Problematic or not, it's probably going to happen. Once the symptoms of global warming become impossible to explain away (buy your arctic beachfront now, while the market is still depressed!) world leaders will be under tremendous pressure to Do Something. But people will still resist changing their polluting lifestyles, and even if they didn't, reducing greenhouse gasses would take decades to show any effect. So they'll sulfurize the stratosphere and hope nothing goes wrong.

It gets worse. Once we start deliberately fiddling with the planetary thermostat, you're going to have really nasty arguments over what the planet's average temperature should be. A given value might lengthen the growing seasons in one region and cause massive drought in another. People have gone to war over a lot less.

Gonna be a fun century.

I asked for a link. As in, one (possibly two if I've got a lot of spare time). I opened up several of the seven links you pasted into your message (with no context or explanation) and can't see anything that backs up your statements, which were (1) That the CO2 concentration has recently hit 400ppm, and (2) global cooling was a serious, widespread prediction of the scientific community. I've provided specific links to all the claims I've made so that you can follow up on those claims. If you can provide a specific, credible link to back up each of your claims, I'll look at them.

I still think that it is the ultimate arrogance that humans think they can alter the planets evolution. Think of continental drift and the accompanying earthquakes, volcanic activity etc. and you'll understand how insignificant humans are.

Continental drift and earthquakes are completely irrelevant to the climate. As for volcanic activity, eruptions only put about a hundredth of the CO2 into the atmosphere that humans do. Massive eruptions in the geologically distant past (such as the Siberian traps which are a suspected cause of the Permian extinction) have likely put more CO2 into the atmosphere, but none of the eruptions in the last 500,000 years pushed the CO2 level above 300 ppm.

The perverse incentives in the Kyoto Protocol were especially concerning.

What's even more perverting is that countries in Europe and elsewhere use biofuel to reduce their emmissions. A lot of that biofuel is made from palm oil which is imported from Indonesia. And how does Indonesia get it? The Bog Barons raze rainforest and drain the bogs to grow palm. This causes more CO2 to be released than if petroleum was used for fuel. That "New Scientist" article explains it pretty good.

Falcon

This story about spanking (and cortisol) was posted just the other day and today we have this one. Hmmmm...

According to the New Scientist:

An amendment to the Earth and space sciences curriculum requires the teaching of different theories of the origin, age and history of the universe. The board voted to remove from the standards the statement that the universe is roughly 14 billion years old.

"The goal here was to make science more tentative and vague so that teachers have room to tell students, 'This is only one explanation and the scientists are not even sure about it themselves' â" which is, of course, utter nonsense," says Quinn.

School textbooks are required to comply with a state's science standards, so all changes to the science standards translate into changes to textbooks. In two years, the board will meet to review the state's textbooks, so creationists have been eager to slip in changes to the standards ahead of time.

Lots of junk references do not make his post any more real than hand-waving.

If you want some facts:
http://www.realclimate.org/

Why the Hockey stick graph has been proved wrong:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html

Come on it's all just so old.

And why bother saying climate change is not man-made if you're denying the climate change in the first place. Silly.

Oh here's 10 myths about climate change debunked:
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html

I forgot to mention, since you brought it up as a parenthetical tangent, marriage has not been exclusive to one man and one woman. Many cultures have accepted polygamist marriage. The Bible itself records many arrangements, most notably the wives of one of the Patriarchs, Jacob.

Monogamy vs. polygamy in marriage is purely cultural, and anthropological studies suggest that in prehistory most/all societies were polygamist.

Only since crusading monotheism started destroying the de facto pluralities that existed in earlier times did monogamy start to become anything more than a matter of taste, means, or convenience.

Bacteria react to injury, they remember the past, and they even predict the future. If you buy into the theory that causing pain is immoral then every cow is a walking Auschwitz. (not even to mention the problem of brushing teeth)

By the way, there is no philosophical reason why "it feels pain" is a better standard for deciding whether injuring something is cruel than any other arbitrary standard, see Hume

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127001.300-space-storm-alert-90-seconds-from-catastrophe.html?full=true some excellent points there. We are about to loose civilization to a new form of "global Warm/toasting"

So how do you explain your dna at the crime site?

I don't have to explain my DNA being at the crime scene, I have to explain DNA that matched mine being at the lab.

You took a sample of my DNA. You took it to the lab. Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn't screw up and contaminate a sample somewhere with my DNA.

Furthermore, spurious DNA matches are not as improbable as cops and prosecutors like to suggest.

DNA is lousy forensic evidence, and should be used only for exoneration.

And the scary thing is that other forensic "science" is even worse.

Prove it.

Here you go.

Magnetic field lines are one of science's best guesses for this. Birds have been shown to be able to orient to magnetic north, so they know which direction they're flying at all times. What's more, they can identify their latitude by judging how long it takes to cross the Earth's field lines.

More information:
Newscientist article

Hey, you asked...

Martin Tajmar also posits an a-posteriori explanation for the anomalous data from Gravity Probe B based upon Cooper-pair mass in Niobium superconductors in: arxiv.org/abs/0707.3806
Heim Theory predicted such effects in 1950s already. Droscher & Hauser have suggested mechanism based on Heim Theory which was a-priori prediction as commented in the cover story of New Scientist Jan 2006, 3 months before Tajmar's announcement on the ESA homepage.

Here is the latest paper from Droscher & Hauser which gives explanation for outcome of both Tajmar and GP-B experiments.

Personally I like this part:
Numerous experiments by Tajmar et al. were carried out since 2003, and first published in 2006 report on the generation of gravitomagnetic (spacetime twisting) and gravity-like fields (acceleration) in the laboratory. The gravitational effects measured were about 18-20 orders of magnitude larger than predicted by the Lense-Thirring effect of GR. In other words, the rotating niobium ring, having a mass of some 100 grams as utilized by Tajmar et al., produces a gravitational effect similar to the mass of a a white dwarf.

/Joss

Perhaps there is no such thing as choice. What if you make your choice based on circumstances beyond your control? New Scientist ran a story yesterday Faster-than-light 'tachyons' might be impossible after all where some math guys came up with the possibility that we live in a deterministic universe:

...No tachyons have ever been detected, however, and now James Wheeler and Joseph Spencer of Utah State University think they know why.

Abstract space
Their line of reasoning is subtle. "We've been embroiled in this calculation for one-and-a-half years," says Wheeler. The pair wanted to understand how physical models are related to the measurements we make.

They started by imagining a universe that only has distances, with no time dimension. The simplest measurement in this universe is to compare two distances: and a one-metre stick should be half the length of a two-metre stick, no matter what your point of view, whether you look from a different angle or a different place.

<snip>

Why should their complicated space of symmetries have any relevance to the "real" space and time that we inhabit? The reason is that it links timeless space to something like our familiar space-time, meaning that these two descriptions are equivalent. Any events that can be described in the space-time picture can be modelled just as well by a structure in timeless space.

The consequences could be profound. The timeless space can't change, so that could mean that our universe is deterministic, with the future set in stone.

Wheeler suspects that our perceived "time" corresponds to the distance from a special point in the four-dimensional timeless space he modelled. If so, that point might mark the apparent beginning of time at the big bang.

Like any 3rd world dictator can tell you, sell out to of of the two big powers.
Be cool like Fulgencio Batista
General Carlos Castillo Armas
Augusto Pinochet
Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq

Or just get the "Patent Reform Bill" passed.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126994.400-us-patent-bill-a-chill-on-innovation.html

Society networks are prone to 'explosive' changes. They automagically form a network, with a backbone! At least that is what an article in NewScientist claim at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16752-societys-vital-networks-prone-to-explosive-changes.html

From the article: "US computer scientists have found that random networks â" the mathematical description for networks we experience everyday in forms such as the internet and global flight connections â" have the potential for extreme behaviour never seen before. Their findings might lead to improved understanding of how to control such networks â" for example, to halt the spread of epidemics or improve the efficiency of delivery networks."

I've read Slashdot for years. Where are the backbones?

Saith the anonymous poster:

why does the government have to waste time on stuff like this

Ron Paul, is that you?

spend time actually fixing the educational system

Oh, okay, it's not Ron Paul. Is your name Francis?

Let me say up front: I am not a creationist by any stretch of the imagination, however I do hold to a vague sense of religion. I've always wondered *why* some creationists take such offense at scientifically established facts (common origin of life, etc.), rather than accepting them in a non-confrontational way into their world view.

For example, look at the common origin of life (as seen in the fact that so many different animals have so many similar genetic markers). Life is very complicated; a biosphere even more so. The older religious (and still desperately held to) "theory" is that "sky daddy" hand crafted each bit of life to exactly suit the needs of the ever changing biosphere on Earth.

Recent trends in engineering have taught us that evolutionary design techniques (aka emergent algorithms) are a fantastic way to build things. You get better results faster through adaptive live/die iterations than if they were designed solely by hand. Given that, I would think it makes perfect sense that any deity would use evolutionary forces in order to populate the planet - it would simply be a better design. It's more resilient (self correcting, as the generations pass), simpler to set up and would yield better results than if all life were custom built.

Then again, incorporating such thoughts into their belief structure would require an ounce of free will, which seems to be a trait that is being selectively bred out of the deeply religious...

Unless you actually test a device for "tempest" emanations, you can never be sure what information it could actually leak.

Some slashdotters here seem to think that LCDs are unsniffable, but that is not true.

See: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04/seeing-through-walls.html

I believe other people have successfully attacked LCDs years before that guy did. I can't remember the details :).

I don't hate America, I love it. I wish only the best things for this country.

But I hate articles like this, and I hate the truly American values it reveals.

Why is it that when Americans think of powered exoskeletons, the first thing they think of is soldiers? It's really sad that militaristic thinking has pervaded almost every facet of our society.

Compare that to Japan's take on exoskeletons. Over there, they think of how these things can be used in day-to-day activities to help people. It's a far cry from a fat-ass soldier lugging around a giant backpack and a gun.

I can only hope that the wisdom of the American people that was so on display when Obama was elected will bring an end to our fascination and worship of our military.

I think to say that Science Daily does any reporting is stretching the definition of reporting a bit much. I think "rewritten from a press release" is more like it.

If you want a real news piece, with real reporting, check out the article on the same paper over at New Scientist. They actually talked with the scientist involved in the study (and one that wasn't).

Okay....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/health/21canc.html
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12202589
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080409130711.htm
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/02/18/embryonic-stem-cell-therapy-causes-cancer-in-teenage-boy/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4465717.stm

However, new information was released this week. There are scientists who think they've found a way around the cancer problem with stem cells:

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/virusfreeips.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13384-stem-cell-breakthrough-may-reduce-cancer-risk.html

Lately there have been examples of Lamarck-like 'evolution'. It's clear now the base-pair order is not the whole picture. To some extend acquired features (in particular, methylation of DNA) can be passed on to offspring.

see http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.000-memories-may-be-stored-on-your-dna.html

This might explain that apparent conundrum. Namely that the maximum speed of propagation is a fundamental property of geometric fabric of the universe. However that article is pretty light on the details; I'm going to have to hunt down some more info sometime. This new approach in the long run might also help provide some new insight on how to reconcile QM and relativity.

The lander did have heaters...

A post below gave this link: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/11/why-dont-the-mars-rovers-have.html

Next up is the Mars Science Laboratory. Bigger, better, and nuclear powered with radioisotope thermoelectric generators.

P.S. cleaning a solar panel is hard. Did you really think the designers overlooked it?

Maybe next time, NASA should include some type of cleaning devices,

This comes up every time the rovers are mentioned. Here is a detailed explanation why there are no wipers, or any other cleaning device, on the rovers.

Here we go, try this article from New Scientist, which has the same story.

Hazardous comets and asteroids are monitored by various space agencies under an umbrella effort known as Spaceguard. The vast majority of objects found so far are rocky asteroids. Yet UK-based astronomers Bill Napier at Cardiff University and David Asher at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland claim that many comets could be going undetected. "There is a case to be made that dark, dormant comets are a significant but largely unseen hazard," says Napier.

The article goes on to say that "dark comets are not unheard of. They occur when an 'active' comet's reflective water ice has evaporated away, leaving behind an organic crust that only reflects a small fraction of light."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826533.600-early-life-could-have-relied-on-arsenic-dna.html tried looking up some examples of non carbon based life on earth that I'd heard of but couldn't find any however the ecology of undersea volcanic vents pretty much threw most ideas about heat tolerance and toxins being a problem out of the window.

This is slightly different than simple polarization, see here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18224515.000 -- full article requires log-in. Or here: http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/Optics/play/photonOAM/ The point here is that a "pulse" can now encode more than just an "on/off" state. Instead, a pulse now encodes a "twistiness" level of states (can be 1, 2, 3, or up to 250 as in the NS article.) So, a 2GHz signal can now carries, let's say, 2x8 = 16 Gb/s. The trouble, it seems, is to construct a receiver capable of correctly identifying the pulses.

Didn't you get the memo, our world is a hologram, making a holodeck inside it would be like googleing google.

the idea - that if there is a natural explanation, then there cannot be any room for God.

In several years on here participating in almost every evolution article that comes up here on Slashdot I only ever recall a single person on the evolution side directly asserting such a thing, and I personally smacked them down for it. They replied within a matter of hours profusely apologizing for for their careless misstatement. Chuckle.

Maybe it's what Christians hear, in any case.

I'd like to try to explain what I think the actual situation is, and why the way things sound may lead people to certain impressions.

I think most of the reality of this debate can be covered by listing the cast of players.

The largest group are the people in the middle. The bulk of the general public. People who haven't particularly looked into the argument and don't really care that strongly about it. They may have an opinion one way or the other, but it's often mostly based on who they listen to and choose to trust. The mostly silent majority. These people have little to do with how the debate sounds. It's the motivated activists on the ends who do the arguing. The breakdown here is nearly all Christian, plus the few percent of the population who are atheist. The atheists are pretty well all on the evolution side. Christians in the US are split almost equally pro-evolution and anti-evolution, see this article with this chart. (The population is such a high percentage Christian that the non-Christians in the sample can't budge it more than a few percent in either direction.) And looking over that chart and considering the overwhelmingly Christian populations in other western nations, it is mathematically required that the Majority of Christians globally are evolutionists.

Then there are the professional biologists. They also aren't often the ones directly engaging in the debates on Slashdot and similar places. Scientists have an abnormally high atheist percentage, but they are still split in the ballpark of 50%-50% between Christian and atheist. Professional biologists are split roughly 700-to-1 in favor of evolution. About 99.85% accept evolution and about 0.15% reject it. Even if you assume all the atheists are on the evolution side and throw out their half of the votes, mathematically that means 0.3% of Christian biologists reject evolution and 99.7% of Christian biologists being on the evolution side. Rounded to the nearest full percentage point, thats 100% of Christians biologists accept evolution.

Now lets get to the two sides actually doing almost all of the loud arguing. The two sides framing the debate, and responsible for what people "hear".

On one side are religious fundamentalists. Mostly strict six day Genesis literalists. And in standard fundamentalist style they take the one-true-religion and one-true-God thing to mind bending extremes. The literal six day Genesis god is the One True God and is the Only Possible God. Anyone or anything that denies literal six day Genesisism denies the Only Possible God, and therefore equals atheism. They have the One True religion, they have the One True Christianity. They are Christians following Christianity, and if you don't follow their flavor of fundamentalism then you aren't following Christianity and you're not truly Christian.

Evolution conflicts with literal six day Genesisism, anyone or anything saying (their) God doesn't exist equals atheism. In their view the One And Only God is being attacked. In their view the One And Only Christianity is being attacked. The way they speak they make it sound like they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians. As far as they are concerned they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians - because in their mind their fundamentalist brand of Christianity *is* all of Christianity and in their mind *they* *are* all o

the idea - that if there is a natural explanation, then there cannot be any room for God.

In several years on here participating in almost every evolution article that comes up here on Slashdot I only ever recall a single person on the evolution side directly asserting such a thing, and I personally smacked them down for it. They replied within a matter of hours profusely apologizing for for their careless misstatement. Chuckle.

Maybe it's what Christians hear, in any case.

I'd like to try to explain what I think the actual situation is, and why the way things sound may lead people to certain impressions.

I think most of the reality of this debate can be covered by listing the cast of players.

The largest group are the people in the middle. The bulk of the general public. People who haven't particularly looked into the argument and don't really care that strongly about it. They may have an opinion one way or the other, but it's often mostly based on who they listen to and choose to trust. The mostly silent majority. These people have little to do with how the debate sounds. It's the motivated activists on the ends who do the arguing. The breakdown here is nearly all Christian, plus the few percent of the population who are atheist. The atheists are pretty well all on the evolution side. Christians in the US are split almost equally pro-evolution and anti-evolution, see this article with this chart. (The population is such a high percentage Christian that the non-Christians in the sample can't budge it more than a few percent in either direction.) And looking over that chart and considering the overwhelmingly Christian populations in other western nations, it is mathematically required that the Majority of Christians globally are evolutionists.

Then there are the professional biologists. They also aren't often the ones directly engaging in the debates on Slashdot and similar places. Scientists have an abnormally high atheist percentage, but they are still split in the ballpark of 50%-50% between Christian and atheist. Professional biologists are split roughly 700-to-1 in favor of evolution. About 99.85% accept evolution and about 0.15% reject it. Even if you assume all the atheists are on the evolution side and throw out their half of the votes, mathematically that means 0.3% of Christian biologists reject evolution and 99.7% of Christian biologists being on the evolution side. Rounded to the nearest full percentage point, thats 100% of Christians biologists accept evolution.

Now lets get to the two sides actually doing almost all of the loud arguing. The two sides framing the debate, and responsible for what people "hear".

On one side are religious fundamentalists. Mostly strict six day Genesis literalists. And in standard fundamentalist style they take the one-true-religion and one-true-God thing to mind bending extremes. The literal six day Genesis god is the One True God and is the Only Possible God. Anyone or anything that denies literal six day Genesisism denies the Only Possible God, and therefore equals atheism. They have the One True religion, they have the One True Christianity. They are Christians following Christianity, and if you don't follow their flavor of fundamentalism then you aren't following Christianity and you're not truly Christian.

Evolution conflicts with literal six day Genesisism, anyone or anything saying (their) God doesn't exist equals atheism. In their view the One And Only God is being attacked. In their view the One And Only Christianity is being attacked. The way they speak they make it sound like they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians. As far as they are concerned they are speaking on behalf of all Christianity and all Christians - because in their mind their fundamentalist brand of Christianity *is* all of Christianity and in their mind *they* *are* all o

unfortunately i can't muster enough stamina to read all the statement form this AC, but if he whant an example of evolution he should read this

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

an article about an evolution of a new genetic trait in bacteria, and it is a reproducible experiment!

that perhaps prove evolution?

Especially since they probably didn't screw up the mirror this time.

Of course, it was a sensationalist headline, but that's not quite the same as being disreputable.

Quite so...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.600-why-darwin-was-wrong-about-the-tree-of-life.html

Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life

* 21 January 2009 by Graham Lawton
* Magazine issue 2692. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

Read our related editorial: Uprooting Darwin's tree

IN JULY 1837, Charles Darwin had a flash of inspiration. In his study at his house in London, he turned to a new page in his red leather notebook and wrote, "I think". Then he drew a spindly sketch of a tree.

As far as we know, this was the first time Darwin toyed with the concept of a "tree of life" to explain the evolutionary relationships between different species. It was to prove a fruitful idea: by the time he published On The Origin of Species 22 years later, Darwin's spindly tree had grown into a mighty oak. The book contains numerous references to the tree and its only diagram is of a branching structure showing how one species can evolve into many.
The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth...

The tree-of-life concept was absolutely central to Darwin's thinking, equal in importance to natural selection, according to biologist W. Ford Doolittle of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Without it the theory of evolution would never have happened. The tree also helped carry the day for evolution. Darwin argued successfully that the tree of life was a fact of nature, plain for all to see though in need of explanation. The explanation he came up with was evolution by natural selection.

Ever since Darwin the tree has been the unifying principle for understanding the history of life on Earth. At its base is LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living things, and out of LUCA grows a trunk, which splits again and again to create a vast, bifurcating tree. Each branch represents a single species; branching points are where one species becomes two. Most branches eventually come to a dead end as species go extinct, but some reach right to the top - these are living species. The tree is thus a record of how every species that ever lived is related to all others right back to the origin of life. ...The green and budding twigs may represent existing species, and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species

For much of the past 150 years, biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree. "For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life," says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. "We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality," says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change.

So what happened? In a nutshell, DNA. The discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 opened up new vistas for evolutionary biology. Here, at last, was the very stuff of inheritance into which was surely written the history of life, if only we knew how to decode it. Thus was born the field of molecular evolution, and as techniques became available to read DNA sequences and those of other biomolecules such as RNA and proteins, its pioneers came to believe that it would provide proof positive of Darwin's tree of life. The basic idea was simple: the more closely related two species

Yes, and one of the reasons for those predictions was in fact the natural cycle of hurricanes, mentioned here, and explained away here (note that Christopher Landsea actually thought there was no evidence for linking hurricanes with global warming when he withdrew from the IPCC in 2005).

Lethal injection is considered humane because no pain is felt.

There's a fair bit of debate in this point, leading to a Supreme Court case. Lethal Injection Potentially Not Painless

30 years ago we cared a little bit about boot up times.

30 years ago computers booted up a lot faster than the new ones do, even though CPU speeds are a thousand times faster. However, back then an OS fit on one floppy and you only had dozens of kilobytes of data to load, too.

I care a lot more about boot times now than I did then. I shut off my computer every night unless I have a bunch of huge downloads going, and turn it back on when I get home from work. Haven't you ever heard of Global Warming? (If you live on the US east coast DON'T click that link!)