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openly accept my new microscopic God.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2732

They were trying to evolve an oscillator, but some circuits "cheated" by evolving a receiver instead, and feeding them oscillations picked up from a nearby computer: It has always been the age of the parasite.

And it's been done before - at least once - http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2732 - there's another one too, but I can't find it right now. Crazy stuff though.

This is certainly promising; the step from here to fully-regrown teeth is not overwhelming.

Sure about that?

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7046

Yes coal can be burned more cleanly and the CO2 sequestered

Remember that in the process of storing away a unit of carbon an element, you also store away two units of oxygen another element. Since we are a carbon based life form dependant on oxygen, is oxidizing our carbon by combining it with oxygen and storing it away a good idea simply because we think a little CO2 leads to run away global warming? In the process of capturing and sequestering the CO2 you use even more of the carbon and oxygen.

Face the facts..
A bicycle on the beach leaves 2 tire tracks that tend to wander together just like temprature and CO2 levels track on earth. Careful analysis of both can show which track leads the other. The fact they track together is not proof the behind one leads the front one. CO2 and Temprature track closely like bycicle tire prints on the beach. Often ignored is Temprature leads CO2 levels, not follow it. We are trying to steer temprature by pushing the effect instead of the cause. For the cause look to the sky. Now track the histroy of the Mars Polar Ice cap. Can't blame their global warming on burning fossil fuels on Mars.

I'm sorry to break the news, but the Inconvienent Truth missed a few facts.
The Great Global Warming Swindle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU
Mars Polar Ice Caps http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1660

Do your research instead of follwing the latest pollitical stance on the subject.

I do presume the truth is inconvienent for Al Gore.
I don't believe burying our Oxygen is a good idea.

I am pointing out that just because cosmologists reject your favorite theory doesn't mean they don't think outside the box.

Well, let's review some interesting things that have happened since I took my leave of absence ...

Inventing a new particle every time an unexplained observation occurs is hardly thinking out of the box ...

From http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1122 1&feedId=astronomy_rss20:

A dense stellar corpse called a neutron star has been found spinning at an astonishing 1122 rotations per second - 1.5 times faster than any other star. If confirmed, the finding could bolster the possibility of exotic "soft" states of matter inside dense stars.

When you see a flashing object and conclude that it *must* be spinning, that's hardly out-of-the-box thinking.

And when you see a supernova explosion that lasts 125 days long without fading, one might question whether or not this can really be categorized as an explosion in the traditional sense ...

From http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070308_swift _gammas.html:

The explosive death of a massive star has broken the record for longest-lived light show. Observations from NASA's Swift satellite have revealed a so-called gamma-ray burst for which the afterglow remained visible for more than 125 days.

[...]

Unlike other afterglows, the long-lived one showed little drop in brightness over the 125 days of observation. The prolonged light output suggests an underlying engine that pumped energy continuously to the burst.

It's always interesting to me to see that as evidence mounts in support of EU Theory and Thornhill's Electric Sun Hypothesis, people continue on as if it's business as usual. It's oftentimes stated that the Electric Sun Hypothesis is absurd because we've never seen any flow of electricity into the Sun. It appears that that's not really a valid claim. From http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070220_sun_s pole.html:

Ulysses is also collecting data on the holes over the sun's poles, known as coronal holes. These are regions where the magnetic field of the Sun opens, allowing solar winds to escape and galactic cosmic rays to get in.

"Flying over the sun's poles, you get slapped in the face by a hot, million mph stream of protons and electrons," Posner said.

In any other science, a flow of protons and electrons is called "electricity". In astrophysics, that continues to be blasphemy.

The article continues on ...

"The interesting thing about the past flybys was that, especially the ones in the solar minimum, there were some asymmetries between the north and the south [poles], and we are now trying to learn whether these are still there or whether they have changed," Posner told SPACE.com. "That is what we are eagerly awaiting."

If anybody cares, Wallace Thornhill will tell you what they will find. All of these "surprises" are integral parts of his Electric Sun Hypothesis. But nobody seems to care and the mainstream astrophysicists continue to live in their self-imposed box.

The "box" is The Big Bang Theory and Stellar Evolution. And by interpreting all of our observations through these theories rather than attempting to fit them to other various cosmologies, mainstream astrophysicists and enthusiasts alike have placed themselves inside of it. But, much to the consternation of people who don't like EU Theory, our observations increasingly support the statements being made by the EU Theorists. By not being aware

I expect that the only "random" things in nature are the ones we don't understand, and much of what appears to be random anyways isn't - even discounting chaotic systems. Wolfram's "New kind of science" metions simple finite automata that generate output that passes all tests of randomess.

There's also a theory being developed by physicist Gerard 't Hooft of a deterministic layer below quantum physiscs:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/m g19025504.000

Anyway, given the success of quantum mechanics, I'm not too concerned about the apparent randomess that underlies it - whether or not that turns out to be due to lack of current knowledge, as I expect it will.

Cybersquatters will generally either offer to sell the name back to the trademark owner for an extortionate price, or make money from internet traffic accidentally landing on their page.

So if I couple the above article with this one then I can only assume that I am supposed to exercise and smoke a whole lot of pot while I do it.

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11239-rock et-explosion-creates-dangerous-space-junk.html

"And because the atmosphere is less dense at higher altitudes, the debris is likely to stay in space a long time because it will not be slowed down by friction with the atmosphere, which causes it to lose energy and burn up more quickly. Debris created during the Chinese test is thought to have reached lower altitudes - about 4000 km - but is expected to stay in space for hundreds of thousands of years."

The line is unsourced, but IME, New Scientist is good enough with the facts to be usable.

if you're trying to link me with creationism you're so far off base it's not even funny.

as for the wheel reference, there you go:

http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg18524 852.700

I'll make it simple:

I'm against patents.

of any kind.

But I'm *especially* against patents of anything that you find in nature and
I think that the general rule should be that if you can find a close analogy
of any structure, device, process, binary sequence (genes) or creature in
nature then you should not be able to patent it at all.

That doesn't mean we should not be looking at nature for ideas and useful
bits & pieces, it just means that when you do *discover* those that you are
not able to go out and stick your name on it and bar everybody else from
using the same without paying you, the original discoverer a royalty.

You, sir, are fucking lazy. Took me less than 5 seconds with Google to find exactly what you wanted. Wheelchairs moved by thoughts. Looks a lot like the system described in TFA.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3967

What's going to happen when we finally get a Star Trek type matter replicator? It will happen, maybe within a century. We already have affordable 3-d printers. It won't be long before nanorobots will be building stuff molecule by molecule, or even atom by atom. What then?

When that happens, the only things of monetary worth will land, labor, and creativity. The only property save land will be intelectual property.

Copyright has legitimate use, but the concept has been perverted past recognition. The DMCA is backwards; no work protected by technological means should be afforded copyright. And copyright shouldn't last longer than the the United States had existed when Steamboat Willie was made.

Repeal every copyright law written in the 20th century and you'll have reasonable copyrights. The whole purpose of copyright, in the US at least, was to get authors and artists to create, so their creations would be public domain after a limited time (like ten or twenty years).

There is no reason why I should not be able to legally share a Jimi Hendrix or John Lee Hooker song, or even a Metallica song from 1987. Copyright has become perverted to the point that folks like you think it's worthless.

Any other questions?

Yes. I have one. What makes you believe that Diebold ATMs are secure? In fact all evidence points to the contrary.

• Genes contribute to religious inclination
• Letters : The God gene
• Is the Capacity for Spirituality Determined by Brain Chemistry?
• The roles of religion, spirituality, and genetics in paranormal beliefs

• Genes contribute to religious inclination
• Letters : The God gene
• Is the Capacity for Spirituality Determined by Brain Chemistry?
• The roles of religion, spirituality, and genetics in paranormal beliefs

Okay, I'll bite. Fuck you. Fuck you seven ways to Sunday. Fuck you until the cows come home. The thing that really pisses me off about the Al Gore story isn't the fact that he's using 20x the average amount of juice. In and of itself, that's actually kind of newsworthy, even for a dyed-in wool liberal Gore fan like myself. It's that, lost amongst all this fair and balanced coverage of the issue, is the fact that every single last electron of that is offset by purchasing green power credits. That's right, neocon wankers! Gore is carbon neutral. Back to square fucking one!

Nothing confirms my feeling of being right on this issue more than seeing all you little asshats aiming for new lows in character assassination in lieu of actually debating the issue. Can't win it on the merits?

Although some of the astronauts have been known to play.

Whether you choose to buy a new television set is pretty much a matter for you and your family alone. It might affect your neighbours if you turn the volume up too high, and of course the retailer and manufacturer benefit slightly, but other than that it has hardly any effect on those around you. So it's reasonably to leave that decision up to you.

However, whether or not you get immunised doesn't just affect you; it affects all those whom you go on to infect when you get infected (or become a carrier), because you chose against immunisation. It's a network effect.

Here in the UK, there's been quite a bit of (hysterical, unfounded, and irrational) public outcry against the combined MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine routinely given to young children. As a result, some parents are choosing instead to have their children given separate vaccines, or none at all. And so the rate of measles immunity in the population has fallen, causing health professionals to fear a measles epidemic, which would cause far far more harm than even the worst claims of the hysterics. Harm which wouldn't only apply to those who decided against the vaccine, or even their children; harm which would also come to a few of those who were vaccinated but caught the disease anyway.

So, given that the public as a whole are affected, isn't it reasonable for them to have some input to your decision?

Actually, the space shuttle is not a good example.

NASA do not fly the space shuttle during 31 Dec -> 1 Jan as
they are not confident of what would happen. Better just
to avoid the problem.

That was one of the pressures to getting the Dec 2k6 flight off the ground.

The "classic" 3d printers are cool for small models - no matter what you print they come out like unpainted minatures. They are really sweet for fabricating prototypes of shapes that are "hard" to make - 3d curves. They are useless for structural strength or the type of shapes that are "easy" to make.

This device looks like it can do the "easy" sructures, ie ones that fold out of a planar surface. It's another piece of the jigsaw, and I agree with you that the combination of the two technologies will become interesting. There is another vein of work; printing electronics. The idea these guys have been working towards is an open-source printer that can print itself. Essentially a weak form of a self assembling robot.

They've been covered on slashdot a few times before, and there is probably a more up to date news story somewhere. I remember that they were getting pretty close - they could print certain types of circuits and components, but were still working on the rest.

Thanks for the link.
I was amazed there wasn't any good picture of an actual pattern in TLA.

You read the wrong FA. Typical slashdot, using Reuters or the Wall Street Journal or Fox or some such nonsense for a science or mathmatecal FA. Here's a FA that actually answers your question and explains why they had to have had advanced math to construct these things.

The dome shape was explained in (of all places) an undergraduate art history class I took thirty years ago. Those domes are imposible to construct without advanced geometry (and other advanced disciplines as well).

The misunderstanding of Islam is just plain dangerous. Many old ladies proudly display pictures of their favourite grandchildren wearing Ayatollah kit - the black adab - because Moslem's started the European academic tradition. The quads and cloisters at Oxford and Cambridge recreate the Andalusian universities, where they made sense. Academic citation recreates Muslim chains of transmission - roughly the equivalent of the Christian apostolic succession. Mathematicians chase "x" because Europeans didn't recognise "shai", the Arabic for "that which is sought", but Greek "chi" sounded similar and they wrote that instead. Chi Anglicized is "x" of course. Europeans got the point of algebra and algorithms, but alchemy - the art of transforming the operator and seeing things differently - was just too epistomoligically advanced and got converted by Chinese Whispers into wrong chemistry. With the exception of rare cases like Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton, most Europeans are still unable to get the point of alchemy. Many stars have funny sounding names because they are Arabic. "Doctor Mirabilis" by James Blish is a very good intro to this stuff. All this because while the Hebrews say the material world was created as a wind-up, and the Christians say it is a trick, and the Buddhists say it doesn't exist at all, Islam says it is the work of God, and it is our spiritual duty to study it. These days some people look at the primitive state of many Moslems and imagine that they were all sitting around going "More tea Vicar?" before Mohammad came along, and then they all went mad. Nothing could be further from the truth. Apart from the Arabic language, the Arabs had absolutely nothing before Mohammad. Their entire society and culture comes from the genius of one man, who they believe was divinely inspired. That is in large part why they are so sensitive about his memory - they all know exactly what he did for them. Badmouthing Mohammad is like badmouthing Jesus, Washington, Lincon, Bacon and Thomas Crapper in one go. Interestingly, the so-called militant Islam is always strongest in populations where Western values have been or have become dominant - the Taleban were created and funded by the West, also look at Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Iran's still dealing with the backlash against the Shah. Turkey actually has more crazy Creationists than the USA: http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/25 65/25653701.jpg And anyone who thinks the Taleban's mockery of Islam has a monopoly on lunacy hasn't been following the news: http://www.kxxv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5785699 http://www.bi-valley.com/Articles/GovernmentTerroi smAgainstPhysicians.htm http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0345,owen,48381,1 .html

Anyone else remember this one? http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/q uantum-world/mg19125710.900-whats-done-is-done-or- is-it.html

I don't know the outcome of the retrocausality experiment, but if it was successful, you could possibly send your information 20 minutes back in time, transmit it at c, and get the appearance of real-time communications to/from Mars.

Just put my Nobel in the mail.

if memory serves correctly, natural gas = CH4
so the chem reaction:
CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O

Seems like a lot of CO2 for being such a clean energy source.... but what the hell do i know?

Ah but methane is much more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 is Methane is 30 tymes more effective according to this webpage as a greenhouse gas. However according to New Scientist methane is 21 tymes more effective. One tonne of methane has the same warming effect as 21 tonnes of CO2. So it's better to burn methane and emit the CO2 than it is to allow methane to enter the atmostphere.

if memory serves correctly, natural gas = CH4
so the chem reaction:
CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O

Seems like a lot of CO2 for being such a clean energy source.... but what the hell do i know?

Ah but methane is much more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 is Methane is 30 tymes more effective according to this webpage as a greenhouse gas. However according to New Scientist methane is 21 tymes more effective. One tonne of methane has the same warming effect as 21 tonnes of CO2. So it's better to burn methane and emit the CO2 than it is to allow methane to enter the atmostphere.

You know, like the increase in ocean ice in the south Increases? Are you talking about the increase in free floating ice?

Another article for the hysteria bin. Also in the news today was a warning that the UN needs to "act now!" to be ready for an asteroid strike:

"Beginning in the next few months, Schweickart's group will host a series of meetings to provide the UN with a 'decision process' for assessing and acting on the hazard posed by Apophis and other near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). A draft document ready for consideration by the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is expected by 2009."

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11207-aste roid-threat-demands-response-experts-warn.html

When do people see through this racket?

if every US home replaced just one light bulb with an "energy-star rated" CFL, this would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars, according to the US Environment Protection Agency

From the EPA website :

Remember, saving energy prevents pollution. When you use less energy at home, you lessen greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere. Every CFL can prevent more than 450 pounds of emissions from a power plant over its lifetime.

Even so, 1 in 45,000 sounds a bit high. I can't claim to know anything about orbital mechanics, but there are other ways to approach the problem. One of them is to look at history- written history, archaeology, and geology. There are no written accounts, as far as I know, of a meteorite causing significant numbers of human casualties, either through an impact or through a tsunami induced by impact. To put this in perspective, earthquakes have killed many hundreds of thousands of people in the past century in Mexico, China, Iran, Peru, San Francisco, Japan, Pakistan and so on; older earthquakes have killed massive numbers of people- often hundreds of thousands- in China, Iran, Portugal, Syria, Sicily, etc. Tsunamis have killed hundreds of thousands, recently in the Indian Ocean; Krakatoa killed a huge number of people when it blew up and created a tsunami. Explosive eruption in Crete seems to have wiped the Minoan civilization off the map. Floods kill people so routinely that it's hard to even keep all the flooding events around the world straight.

What this says is that throughout human history, in terms of natural disasters, the earthquakes, tsunamis (induced by earthquake or eruption), volcanic eruptions and floods have been far more deadly than asteroids and comets. The geological record suggests that at points, asteroid impacts have been devastating enough to destroy most of the existing ecosystem for periods of time (as indicated by the extinction of plankton, plants, and herbivores at the end of the Cretaceous) but that events of this magntitude are vanishingly rare- once every hundred million years or so. Smaller events are a more realistic worry, but even then they aren't that common. I've been to Meteor Crater, in Arizona and I'm sure it was a doozy, and it would have sucked to be within a few miles of it, but Meteor Crater is notable precisely because things like it are so rare. If meteors were that common, we would expect to see a lot more of them dotting the deserts than we do.

I don't mean to put down people who are (for a refreshing change) taking a long-term, big picture view, but I think that there are more commonplace disasters we need to worry about, like earthquakes and tsunamis, which involve more boring, mundane solutions, like good building codes, tsunami warning networks, tsunami evacuation sirens, and flood control.

dichloroacetate (DCA) was the drug. See link:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19325 874.700-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html

Nearer 14% apparently..
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7481

Not for long, it isn't! http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg187251 24.500
Ever heard of the term "autocatalytic process"?

The main guy behind Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales) was asked about finances a coupla weeks back in an interview: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg1932 5896.300-interview-knowledge-to-the-people.html

Q:How does Wikipedia manage financially?
A: It doesn't cost that much to run. Last year we spent around $1.5 million, and the year before that $750,000. The vast majority comes from public donations of between $50 to $100. Most costs go on expanding expensive physical hardware, the servers that host the site.

Q: You don't carry advertising. Can you keep it out?
A: I would be opposed to introducing advertising, but we have never said we'll absolutely never run it. The WikiMedia Foundation is a not-for-profit charity and we have goals which we don't have the money for, but I think there are better ways to get revenue.

Q: Will Wikipedia ever be sold to big media?
A: Two years after founding Wikipedia, I donated it to the WikiMedia foundation. I think this is both the dumbest and the smartest thing I ever did. The dumbest because it's probably worth $3 billion - and I don't have $3 billion! It's also the smartest thing I did because it wouldn't have been anywhere near so successful had I not built it this way. So the chances of it being bought are quite low.

So "quite low" chance of a sale to someone...but not impossible. Maybe that bunch who run the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine (archive.org) could run wikipedia...where do they get their dough from?

Consider the Findings of Fact in the case, and see in particular Section H, Paragraphs 62 through 67.

The point concerning Intel is a red herring Courts typically don't recognize the "Sure I'm guilty but look over there! He's even more guilty than me!" defense.

I do agree that courts seem to be poorly equipped to deal with complicated technical issues and other elements of this case were absurd. That really doesn't undermine the relevant point, which wooshed past again. The acceptance by courts of suspect science like bite-mark analysis and their over-reliance on eyewitness testimony support your assertion that it's best if one minimizes interaction with courts.

They've reversed (something like) Rett Syndrome in mice, showing that the nerve malfunctioning is reversable. In humans, however, missing vital developmental milestones is not reversable. E.g. normally we acquire grammar by age three, but if for some reason we don't acquire it before the age of about 10, we never will (or only very poorly.) So even if this treatment transfers to humans, it is unlikely to be a complete miracle cure for adult Rett Syndrome (or autistic) people.

Here's another article about it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325890.200 -no-wonder-drug.html

-McDave

The problem, says Davies, is the limited accuracy of biometric systems combined with the sheer number of people to be identified. The most optimistic claims for iris recognition systems are around 99 per cent accuracy - so for every 100 scans, there will be at least one false match.

This is acceptable for relatively small databases, but the one being proposed will have some 60 million records. This will mean that each person's scan will match 600,000 records in the database, making it impossible to stop someone claiming multiple identities. - new scientist

How can DRM be a bad thing?

Isn't there a carbon nanotube type molecule that's tougher than diamond? I've read about it but I forget the name of it.

  Then again it's all just carbon anyway.

  Ah ha! Found it... http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7926

It's one of the best inventions of mankind and it was actually patented.

If you eat your cake, do you still have it?

While working in the California desert in the 1960's, I was told that the Navaho Indians had "peyote cookies" that they could carry with them on the job site, away from the reservation. I never saw the cookies, my friend just pointed to the Indian workers, and said that they had them. The Indians looked normal to me, none of them were doing anything strange at the time. Perhaps some of them had the peyote cookies, but not all of them, I don't know.
Here is a link with some info on what peyote has, and does for people.

I hit the link and got a /. URL, a 404. I looked at the links; one was a mailto and one was a bad /. URL (explaining the 404).

So if any of you want to actually RARFA (Read A Real Fucking Article), I suggest you try here. I saw this yesterday, I was very interested.

From TFA: "In an article appearing in the journal New Scientist..." which was linked; at least, the New Scientist site is.

here is the article that the article linked from slashdot is reporting on.

Duh.

I'm thinking the submitter works for or owns the site /. linked to, and is now grinning from ear to ear as the advertising revinue rolls in.

From what I've read (subscription required), we don't yet have the computing power to confirm predictions.

I don't know, but it's ironic that they want to "purify the internet environment", while their actual environment goes to complete shit.