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If you don't want to put up with listening to audio:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94118849
It's not as complete as the WP story though.

Good luck with that. Hate to break it to you, but Obama isn't going to win.

Well *duh*. The fix is in, I'm sure the dud is going to win, even with his painfully awful VP pick. The last two elections have already proven that the American people have a track record of picking the most painfully awful candidate.

Oh yeah, and another thing, Obama and McCain aren't all that different with respect to energy policy. The big difference is McCain doesn't want to impose a windfall tax on the oil companies in order to give "tax cuts" to the lowest earning third of US workers. I put "tax cuts" in quotes because of course, the lowest earning third of US workers are net recipients of Federal money and don't really have a net tax load.

Okay, I'll bite on that one. WaPo's analysis (available here seems to disagree with your assessment of the share of tax burden/tax cuts under their respective tax plans.

Obama's energy plan, though supporting some limited offshore drilling, does not emphasize it. And McCain's proposed suspension of the Federal gas tax would do more to destroy our existing highway infrastructure than help consumers. And a side by side comparison sure looks like Obama's plan is much more ambitious. Also, I don't think that the point of taxing oil company products is to give "tax cuts" to the poorest 1/3rd, but rather to subsidize heating and energy costs for them.

Lead is a carcinogen, in fairly massive doses. It'll generally lead to heavy metal poisoning long before you have to worry about it giving you cancer. As a bonus, when contained in a solder you really only have to worry about it if you're drinking water run over it, like in pipes. Sitting in your playstation or DVD player, it's not a concern to anybody but the workers soldering all day, and we have machines for that now.

Yet we spend billions on developing lead free solder techniques that create bonds that are worse than lead ones for these applications*, tending to break more often.

*You have a point if you're looking at drinking water pipes, but otherwise?

The major concern with lead is not cancer. Lead is a neurotoxin, shown in numerous studies to affect brain function and development; increasing the risk of cognitive and behavioral problems.

Check out the fascinating, and disturbing, study: "Research Links Childhood Lead Exposure to Changes in Violent Crime Rates Throughout the 20th Century"

PDF Report Summary

NPR Story

Lead is a carcinogen, in fairly massive doses. It'll generally lead to heavy metal poisoning long before you have to worry about it giving you cancer. As a bonus, when contained in a solder you really only have to worry about it if you're drinking water run over it, like in pipes. Sitting in your playstation or DVD player, it's not a concern to anybody but the workers soldering all day, and we have machines for that now.

Yet we spend billions on developing lead free solder techniques that create bonds that are worse than lead ones for these applications*, tending to break more often.

*You have a point if you're looking at drinking water pipes, but otherwise?

The major concern with lead is not cancer. Lead is a neurotoxin, shown in numerous studies to affect brain function and development; increasing the risk of cognitive and behavioral problems.

Check out the fascinating, and disturbing, study: "Research Links Childhood Lead Exposure to Changes in Violent Crime Rates Throughout the 20th Century"

PDF Report Summary

NPR Story

Julia Child Surveil-a-matic. Many tools in one convenient package. Comes with self-defense kitchen knives, navigational scarves, dog doo radio transmitters...First three thousand customers will also receive a month's supply of shark repellent. No more worries about those nasty lasers.

Thousand didn't even make a budge in the government.

The final total was about 11 MILLION people. And Bush called the protesters a "focus group"

How many more people is it going to take?

Environmentalism has become a dangerous, fearmongering religion.
The media feeds on fear, which "spreads the faith".
Makes for a nasty feedback loop.

Case and point:
"Environmental scientists" got DDT banned by waaaaaaaay overstating the risks to an all too willing media.

Over 30 million people die of mosquito borne Malaria in poor third world countries.

Whoops!!!!
Now the WHO again backs DDT to stop Malaria.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083944

How many will die (or more likely be impoverished) as an unintended consequences of (manmade) Global Warming regulations to stop an UNPROVEN phenomenon.

Boobs at least
http://www.npr.org/blogs/visibleman/2008/07/closing_the_books_on_janets_wa.html

"So, a Philly appeals court has tossed out the $550,000 indecency fine the FCC hit up CBS with after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl."

Don't worry, you'll be voting regularly after you've died...

You don't need E-Voting machines for that. We use paper ballots here in Alabama, and every single election, there's always a scandal in some counties because according to the voting rolls, people showed up to vote who've long been dead. The dead seem to particularly love voting by absentee ballot in some of our counties.

Alabama county accused of voter fraud

Officials Investigate 3 Alabama Counties in Voter Fraud Accusations

VOTER FRAUD SPREADING IN ALABAMA, CRADLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

At least our officials are finally doing something about it. Of course, this wouldn't be a much of a problem if we made them purge the voter rolls more often. This seems to go on in a lot of states with an electronic database of voters, but with paper balloting for election day. Mississippi purged 100,000 dead voters from their rolls earlier this year to try and eliminate some of this zombie voting.

What happens when the work that makes the sound waves is interactive? In that case, the instructions to make the sound wave don't ever need to leave the player.

So, that would involve turning all movies, TV series, and songs into games? No doubt there will be some of that format in the future but can't see it being the preferred method of generating (or consuming) content.

Capturing the sound wave just captures one playing of the work, and replaying that over and over can get boring.

Boring? There are a lot of films, TV shows, and even more so music that people watch watch/listen to over and over again.
And there are enough people driving cars while interacting over their cell phones that I wouldn't want to see what would happen if they were also interacting with the music.

Could be wrong but I think "boring" non-interactive forms of entertainment will always be the the norm.

It's not just better technique and the new suit. The pool is also designed to reduce waves to help lower times. A lot of the wave dissipation features described in the article have been used in tow tanks (where we tow model ships to measure their drag) for decades.

Quoting from the NPR story which aired earlier today:

more than 40,000 Web sites -- including popular ones such as Ticketmaster, Facebook and Craigslist -- are using a new kind of security program called reCAPTCHA.

That's scary. The way ReCaptcha works allows the reCaptcha server to collect the IPs of reCaptcha users (along with the reCaptcha-enabled website they are using). If many websites are using reCaptcha, it allows to track users as they are moving through the web, from one reCaptcha-enabled website to the next.

The idea is cute, but the implementation is fundamentally broken and a huge breach of privacy.

Quoting from the NPR story which aired earlier today:

more than 40,000 Web sites -- including popular ones such as Ticketmaster, Facebook and Craigslist -- are using a new kind of security program called reCAPTCHA.

"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan

Reagan has all these great libertarian quotes.. but he shrunk the size of government NOT AT ALL. Even if he really believed what he was talking bout, he didn't really fix any problems.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93253890

Thomas Frank's Indictment Of Conservatism: Conservative politicians complain that big government does not work, writes Frank - then they get elected and prove it.

Apparently the pool in Beijing is designed to minimize wave turbulence, thus leading to faster times. I dunno how effective it is at reducing drag for swimmers vs. the Speedo suit, but a lot of the stuff mentioned in the NPR article is stuff we use in tow tanks (where we test model ships for water resistance) to dissipate waves and get more accurate results.

The Library of Congress has an archival project:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1216161

This is going the other way - from digital to 78's. Shellac 78's appear to be the best archival format.

Dude, you cited to an April Fool's joke!

The Library of Congress has an archival project:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1216161

This is going the other way - from digital to 78's. Shellac 78's appear to be the best archival format.

I was thinking this same thing: the wording seems odd. After reading several other posted stories (such as http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93381622) I think that the phrase "The Flask" seems to be casual lab term that was used to relay the information from the investigators on the ground to those that report the story to the news and courts etc. In the same way that a mechanic might casually refer to a window regulator that was replaced on a car. It's not common terminology, but specific to those who work on those systems, and despite our vocabularies, it's a very handy way to refer to the motor and stuff that makes your window go up and down.

These sites:
http://www.bellcoglass.com/searchcategoryresult.aspx?keyword=culture%20flask
and
http://iai.asm.org/cgi/reprint/58/2/303.pdf would support my statements to some extent. I can't yet find anything noteworthy about there being only a single flask of this culture. It seems like a single flask is identified because of the four markers found in all the attack samples and the flask Ivins had control of. There were probably many flasks of the spores but only this one matched to the spores used in the attacks. At least that is how I read all this, despite the questions that remain unanswered.

I heard this AM on Michael Krasny's "Forum" a highly-regarded guest say that there is speculation that former KGB and other intel officers are basically running gang outfits in the region, and that they created the pretext for Russia to go and attack Georgia.

Of course, as far as Russia is concerned, this is still its territory.

As for the oil, there's only about 1 million barrels a day flowing out of there (near Georgia?), not much to speak of.

Also, there is some merit (from one or more guests on the show), there could be a diabolical plan (between Bush & Putin? or McCain staff & Medvedev/Putin?) to actually instigate this sudden flare-up to boast McCain's "leadership" credentials. As long as Russia's interests and the current administration's duties don't turn into WW3, Russia wins, and maybe McCain wins by virtue of the fact that Obama is not a veteran, despite every president of the US (or of most nations) having well-heeled military advisers who know a HELL of a lot more than almost any president, despite what the CIA staff may tell the president in the morning/daily intelligence briefings.

Meanwhile, "petro confidence" might bounce and bound merrily along, since most of Europe gets its oil from Russia. That the US didn't HELP Georgia (other than flying back home from the M.E. some 2,000 troops to aid in the debacle/conflict) is quite telling. Georgia is a staunch supporter of the US, and vice versa. They named a road after the current Bush sitting in the White House. He claimed he had a soft spot for Georgia (I guess he had "Georgia on his mind" since his name has some of the same letters as that nation/FSR state...), and yet is letting Putin only hear mild words.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to see WW III. Likely, this will roll over and go quiet in under 2 weeks. It has to. The EU needs its fuel needs met, and the US for years exacerbated things and pissed off Putin and Putin's few allies by having meddled in Poland, and by having pushed those missile defense shield plans so close to Russia's borders.

Now, as for oil outside of Russia, if you want to see REAL fireworks, just consider that big nations now are vying to carve up the Arctic. Imagine if drilled oil there is spilled, in that frigid/icy water. It could be the most significant, lasting human-instigated environmental disaster ever.

For other/more relevant info, see:

http://www.kqed.org/radio/

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R808120900

And, for those of you interested the life of a soldier-for-hire writing about his experiences in Iraq ("Highway to Hell: Dispatches from a Mercenary in Iraq")

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93525811&ft=1&f=13

But, do keep in mind that while he and others see a usefulness in having "mercs" in Iraq and Afghanistan, don't forget that they took all the contracting moneys provided, and yet many don't want the risk associated. They KNEW the risks. So far, some 1,000 (or, is it 2,000) civilian guns for hire have been killed in action there. Also, keep in mind that many of them can "earn" $150,000 to $250,000 a year driving fuel trucks or being body guards for local officials and ministry officials...

I've listened to NPR yesterday about this, and the best experts have been able to say so far is that it is cyber VANDALISM. No major infrastructure has been crashed. Hospitals and such have not been imploded.

There is even speculation that Georgians themselves crashed/trashed their OWN systems to exploit the current bad image Putin (yes, PUTIN is calling the shots, not Medvedev. Moreover, and ironically, a US-based outfit in, guess where... GEORGIA (yes, the state) offered and took on the hosting for the Georgian President's web site. Guess what? It wasn't working out. It was still being crashed/taken down. So, another party (seems to be Estonia) is helping out.

I really fracking wish some of these sensationalistic headers on Slash would get slashed.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2008/08/august_12th_show.html

Now, given that Putin/Medvedev claim Russian advances are immediately ceasing (purportedly) there really isn't "cyber warfare" going on, isn't there? If things continue, or escalate, THEN it might truly eclipse the bounds into "warfare".

NPR seems to indicate that both sides have actually been fighting. Basically fighting broke out along the border and Russia sent in an air strike. I'm sure the cyber-war is just part of the battle.

For a good discussion of the risk magnitude of the re-entry of USA-193 read the comments on this blog:

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1797/usa-193-risk-calculation

The expected ("average") number of people who might be exposed to hydrazine was around 0.035, the probability of anyone being exposed was about 0.01 (that is to say 1%), the risk of a fatality from exposure is considerably less than that (hydrazine is toxic, but it is nothing like a lethal war gas). The cost of the shoot-down though was 60 million dollars. If we suppose a fatality risk of 0.1% (i.e. in the case that someone is exposed there is an average fatality risk of 10%), then the cost per avoided fatality was something like 60 billion dollars. Normally the economic value attached to a human life for planning purposes is several million dollars, the Bush Administration's EPA recently set its value at $6.9 million: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92470116) Thus the shootdown hazard reduction decision seems out of line with government priorities to a tune of about 10,000 fold.

Why the shootdown? My guess is a combination of a live interceptor test, and destruction of highly classified technology.

Scary?

No.

This is stuff we have seen before.

If you're worried about that prospective bid to become a superpower, the story behind that little kid next to Yao is the one that should make you sit up and take notice.

We have always said character is a part of our success.

The character shown by that boy and elsewhere are either isolated incidents or the tip of the iceberg.

I'm keeping an eye open here to see which case it is.

the US provided no proof of the involvment of Bin Laden. Most countries do not extradict people without proof.

I guess you are right. I mean, unless we had a VIDEO TAPE of Osama Bin Laden admitting to planning 9-11, I guess we shouldn't have gone in.

Sigh.

What passes for proof these days...

BTW, you still think the Big Bad Osama also was rensposible for the Oklahoma city bombing? Because he was the first suspect for that too.

American Airlines Fares No Longer Displayed On Kayak Or Sidestep

Dear {name},

As a valued customer who has booked an American Airlines ticket through Kayak.com or Sidestep.com over the past year, we would like to inform you that American Airlines fares are no longer being displayed on these sites. You may still find our content through many other meta-search engines for purchase through our award-winning web site, AA.com. Tickets already purchased remain valid for customers traveling on American.

At American Airlines, we are committed to saving you time and money by making AA.com your one-stop shop for finding the best fares. In addition to our Lowest Fare Guarantee, you have the ability to search for the lowest available price for three days before and three days after your original departure and return dates. So, when booking your next trip, be sure to visit AA.com.

Thanks for choosing American Airlines. We look forward to seeing you on board soon.

I wrote them a complaint. (I think we all understand why even if you prefer one airline you'd still generally want to get information about fares from all carriers.)

this was the reply I received from a customer service rep:

August 6, 2008

Dear {my name}:

Thank you for your message to American Airlines and for expressing your opinion. Please know that we pay close attention to comments like yours so that we may better gauge trends in the industry and meet the needs of our customers.

You might be interested in the following that has been posted in several news articles concerning this decision: "... Kayak tends to show AA flights through its partnership with Orbitz instead of directly from American. That means American has to pay a double tax, once to Kayak and once to Orbitz." The discontinuance of paying double referral fees now especially with fuel prices going sky-high was difficult but necessary.

{myname} we appreciate hearing from you about this issue. Your viewpoint has been documented and will be used as we assess all our products and services.

Sincerely,

{name}

Customer Relations

American Airlines

Slight tangent: NPR did a story this morning about airlines' business models. For various reasons (e.g. oil prices) airlines are losing a lot of money right now. Industry wide, carriers are operating at a loss (except Southwest b/c of hedges it made against fuel prices -- but that's kind of a technicality, i.e. their prices are subsidized by an investment decision; ticket prices would not actually cover operations).

Carriers are all in the same boat: no one wants to be the first to raise prices. On the aggregator sites, if you are even a dollar more than your competitor, you quite possibly get pushed off the page of search results.

I work for A Really Big Search Engine Company, so we deal with this sort of issue all the time; we refer to the solution as "host crowding". The idea is that if you get a bunch of good results from one provider (website) that are all pretty similar, you bundle them up into one or two results with something to indicate to the user that there are more results from that provider.

Analogously, I wonder if the airlines wouldn't be so pissed at the multi-search sites if those sites were better at host crowding. True, as a customer you want to see the variations in schedule. I don't know how much people care about carrier when they search for flights; I'm sure it's different for different people at different times, so it's not clear that it's a dick-the-user move to group results by carrier in order of lowest fare per carrier.

First of all, the Taliban were not the official govenment of Afghanistan. They were not recognized by the US as a government and they did not have an extradiction treaty with the US. They were just the most powerful faction in a drawn out civil war. I'm not sure they would've been able to capture and deliver Osama Bin Laden.

Secondly, the US provided no proof of the involvment of Bin Laden. Most countries do not extradict people without proof.

I guess you are right. I mean, unless we had a VIDEO TAPE of Osama Bin Laden admitting to planning 9-11, I guess we shouldn't have gone in.

(Source is NPR, so take with salt):

According to a translated transcript issued by the Pentagon, bin Laden says the attacks on the World Trade Center did more damage than expected. "...we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower," he says, according to the transcript. "We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for."

This was on NPR last night. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93218205&ft=1&f=7

You seem smart, though. Even if we disagree on the utility of markets in making systems more efficient. There's not really a way to send a personal message on Slashdot, is there?

My point was precisely that the free market does provide a built-in cost for the depletion of finite resources. As they become more scarce, they become more expensive. Renewables should never become more scarce, thus should be fully immune to the curve that will eventually hit every non-renewable, finite resource.

The market will produce sugar can at the cost of the rain forest (though cattle ranching causes far more deforestation). Sad but true fact. You can attempt to change the market by buying only shade-grown free trade sugar/ethanol, but there will always be a market for cheap sugar. This is the root of a naturally occurring conflict between those who value the rain forest and those who value efficiently produced commodity goods. On this, we agree, though I'm guessing we're on opposite sides of which is more important to the human race.

On the self-censorship of media, I think you and I have a very different view of the media. I see conservative bias in the underserved conservative news outlets such as with Rush and Fox News. I see some liberal bias in mainstream "objective" news such as Walter Cronkite, and Dan Rather, and NPR. I see clear and persuasive liberal bias on CNN, CNBC, and the vast majority of the remainder of the print media. I understand it has become the meme of the day to say that the American media is "Corporate-biased" but I see more human interest stories than those that decry the possible increase in capital gains taxes and high marginal tax rates. The Wall Street Journal and Economist excepted.

The US government has been able to seize (basically steal) your cash and car, etc. for a long time, thanks to the war on drugs, even if you are not charged with a crime. NPR had a story on it about a month ago, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91555835

Now we can just add laptops and expensive electronics to the list, that's all. The US government is truly corrupt and rotten to the core. My advice would be to just vote anti-incumbent this election. Kick the bums out.

Naked Short Selling (while we are off topic) is doing the same thing, but borrowing the same "stock" several times (since you have a short time before you actually have to hand over the paper) and creating "virtual" stocks that you then sell short. Absolutely destructive and devaluing of stocks. For a little audio discussion, I think it's this link

It's a bit late in the thread to be relevant to other people, but this link may shed some light on dealing with your younger players: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7406521 I've been tutoring a few students for the past year and noticed that several of them had this "You either got it or you don't" mentality. For some, it can be difficult to convince them otherwise. But I find that the best way to get them to be willing to challenge themselves is EXACTLY what you've been doing: lead them into it gradually. It makes sense when you realize that there are two issues here: their concept of intelligence and the lowered self-esteem that comes naturally from years of thinking "I don't got it."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92768042

Maybe he'll grow long white hair, don a robe, and sell new-age esscential scentual products (plus spam)? He won't be caught until Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes go after him....

Ah, a segue into things Postal...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92751655

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/21/mailman_seeks_comfort_in_kilt/

As some 10,000 mail carriers gather in Boston this week for the 66th biennial convention of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Peterson is on a one-man mission to persuade his colleagues to approve a change in their strictly regulated uniforms. He has proposed a resolution to allow mailmen to wear kilts, which he calls a Male Unbifurcated Garment, or MUG.

Over the past few weeks, he says he has spent the $1,800 he received as part of the federal government's stimulus package to send about 1,000 letters and photographs of a mockup of the new uniform to postal union branches in every state, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico.

"MUGs are worn all over the world, and have been for thousands of years because they are comfortable," he wrote to fellow mailmen. "Unbifurcated Garments are far more comfortable and suitable to male anatomy than trousers or shorts, because they don't confine the legs or cramp the male genitals the way that trousers or shorts do."

He argued that pants can cause sweat rashes and added, "Please open your hearts - and inseams - for an option in mail carrier comfort!"

Peterson's efforts have already attracted support. During the spring, similar resolutions calling for mailmen to be allowed to don kilts passed at letter carrier conventions in Washington and Oregon. Women can wear skirts.

I didn't advocate not investing your money in whatever unit of economic value that you wish. If you want to own gold, go for it. Yes, you will have to pay taxes on your gains (or claim your losses), just as if you invested in foreign currency or stock.

This pre-supposes people are forced to trade in US Dollars. If alternate currencies were allowed, it would be much easier for people to only declare gains and losses when converting to dollars, but that's currently illegal.

I also didn't say that having money controlled by the Fed and the US Government is the best possible scenario. But but it is better than having speculative and mining interests determine the value of your money.

Do you mean that if mining operations extract more gold they can inflate the value of the currency? Can you explain how speculators would affect the value? Assuming you mean gold speculation, how can you speculate on the value of the currency in the resource that is pegged to the currency? That is, if a dollar is defined as some fraction of an ounce, then the only room for speculation is how much new inventory will be added by additional extraction. But the rate of such extraction is much lower than the rate at which a fiat currency can be inflated. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding your point.

the only mortgages available in 1920 were 5 year loans with 20% down and a 40% default rate

Yeah?

Between 1890 and 1930, the number of housing units in the United States grew from about 10 million to about 30 million; the pace of homebuilding was particularly brisk during the economic boom of the 1920s.

Remarkably, this rapid expansion of the housing stock took place despite limited sources of mortgage financing and typical lending terms that were far less attractive than those to which we are accustomed today. Required down payments, usually about half of the home's purchase price, excluded many households from the market. Also, by comparison with today's standards, the duration of mortgage loans was short, usually ten years or less. A "balloon" payment at the end of the loan often created problems for borrowers.

High interest rates on loans reflected the illiquidity and the essentially unhedgeable interest rate risk and default risk associated with mortgages. Nationwide, the average spread between mortgage rates and high-grade corporate bond yields during the 1920s was about 200 basis points, compared with about 50 basis points on average since the mid-1980s.

I haven't looked into bond rates, but assuming they were paying something on the order of 7%, that would put a mortgage within spitting distance of 10%, or less than late-80's rates.

What facts do you have to support your opinion that "very, very few people will pay new-car prices for a car that will go 150 miles then require a 3-hour recharge."?

Because I would buy a car like that in a heartbeat.

The average US commute is only 32 miles per day. People don't need a 500 mile range to commute to work everyday.

Here is an online petition with 1755 signatures wanting Mitsubishi to bring the i-MiEV to America, which gets 100 miles per charge and will sell for approximately $24,000.

Here is an article from NPR in which the president of Nissan says "Today, there is latent consumer demand, but no offer."

As gas prices continue to increase, there is plenty of demand for an affordable electric car. Just no one supplying them.

In the vein of financial fraud and law enforcement, this reminds me of stock-lending:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92751649

"All Things Considered, July 21, 2008 There aren't many parts of Wall Street that aren't automated. But one backroom operation, stock lending, still depends on personal relationships and family connections. The FBI says fraud in stock lending industry may be the next big Wall Street scandal."

I took my two kids, aged 4 and 1 (well, 22 months old) on the opening Saturday at 9:30. They both were entranced. Visually speaking, it was enough constant motion and humor and bouncing around for the 1 year old to love it. The 4 year old immediately bonded with the main character, Wall-E, and his interest, Eve.

Sure, it might be a bit heavy for kids, but they're just going to miss all the heavy stuff anyway. Pixar wasn't shooting for social commentary, they've come out and said they were working on these concepts since 1993. If you put on your rose colored glasses and pretend Clinton was president, a lot of the issues we read into a modern movie aren't present. "Using up the planet" today implies fossil fuels, but then, it was just about recycling so we had smaller landfills. The whole "obesity" thing wasn't an issue -- but we were talking about building a space station and the impact of prolonged exposure to low-Gs and space travel.

If you're interested, Terri Gross interviewed Andrew Stanton a few weeks ago and they touched on this kind of misinterpretation / reinterpretation. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92400669

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I heard an interview with Andrew Stanton.

It was interesting where he got a lot of the ideas for the movie. He also talks about traditional animation versus CG and how CG really helped his career because
his drawing skills were ok but not great.

I hadn't really read up on it before viewing it and had no idea it was going to be an entire social commentary-esque movie.

Actually, I listened to a really good interview NPR did with Andrew Stanton (director and co-author of Wall-E) and at one point he discusses that the story never was intended to be a social commentary on environmentalism. The story was written about a decade ago and while it certainly has the universal theme of protecting nature, he primarily used the concept of a polluted planet to avoid having to give some other explanation for humans leaving the planet that would have been to heavy for a children's movie (ie: global war).

Flip-Flopping is saying that you strongly support public campaign financing during the primaries to get votes and then changing to say you want private financing after you receive those votes

Yeah, I hate the way McCain flip-flopped on public financing - first he was for it and agreed to it, then decided to unilaterally withdraw (a move that the Republican appointed head of the FEC said was against the rules and is probably illegal) from it when it became convenient.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/21/mccain.fec.ap/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022103141.html?hpid=topnews

That was terrible.

Or were you referring to Obama, who said that he'd work to come to an agreement with the McCain campaign on them both taking public financing, and that they subsequently didn't come to an agreement? Oh, wait - that's not a flip flop, that's just something not working out.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91703936

Ooh, here's a good quote from that one:

"It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Obama said in a video message e-mailed to supporters. "But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system."

Earlier, Obama had said he would participate in public financing if his Republican rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, did the same.

Huh. So, he said that he supports for public financing, but that it's broken as is, and that he'd participate in public financing if McCain did the same. Which McCain did at first, till he decided to withdraw, which the FEC chairman says he's not allowed to do.

I'm not going to continue because I trust in your ability to decipher several other flip-flops.

I have no trust in your ability to do so, particularly given your fondness for bold assertions given no evidence.

Maybe he's a victim of penis theivery: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92510159

So, instead of trying to help the 3rd world countries with tech, we might just try not to harm them with our business practices and subsidies.

Here's an NPR story from April 23, 2008 on this topic.

Nope, but apparently some people think it will lower gas prices....

...that immunity would be granted only after they showed district court documents proving they were instructed by the government to take part in a program that went around the congressionally mandated FISA court.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92383786%5Bnpr.org%5D

Thankfully, I can rely on /. for most of my news and rely on TV broadcasts for the rest of it.

Then you sir, must have one incredibly twisted world view.

I would, at the very least, suggest replacing TV Broadcast news with NPR and PBS

There are other services provided such as email, etc that one must account for. Now you can't say, but there are free services, although that is true, but those come at a cost of ads, etc; Also, $600 and $50 are far cries from each other. VZ, and the gang are selling the service of partitioning off these services. Are they gouging? Without a doubt. But is a 1-to-1 ratio of bytes to dollars fair, no? In a sane market, you would probably see a ratio 10-to-1 or even higher for this service. Buying in bulk will always be better. And the only way to make these markets sane is to have truly open access to pipes to competitors. What the cable cos do and VZ does with DSL (not fiber remember is a travesty). And to suggest the market will work this out without line sharing, is to suggest this is what our neighborhoods should look like... http://media.npr.org/programs/day/features/2006/aug/xeni_himalayas/3/main4_lg.jpg and http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e210/kapson/1106/07/1.jpg

I've heard if your old keyboard gets too crusty you can throw it in the dishwasher. Anybody try it?

I've killed two Mac keyboards with a can of Dustoff so I wouldn't recommend doing it with a Mac. I like Mac computers but their keyboards and mice are legendary in how fragile and poorly designed they are. I use after market mice but I've yet to find a good after market keyboard. With PC keyboards I always end up wearing off the letters. I've got a rather nice Logitech but after six months the "A" and "S" keys are already half gone. By the time I replace one, every six to twelve months, the "A" and "S" are always completely gone and half the other keys show wear.

I've heard if your old keyboard gets too crusty you can throw it in the dishwasher. Anybody try it?

A statistical anomaly in what sense?

A statistical anomaly in the sense that it was the hottest year ever recorded, and if you take out 1998 every year after 1998 was hotter than every year before 1998.

The global warming alarmists keep saying the Earths' temperature rises every year.

The average temperature doesn't have to be higher every year to show a long term upward trend.

Around 2012, things are going to get a bit nippy.

All oceans are doing so far is slowing down the long term warming term, and scientists readily admit that we don't fully understand the dynamics of what's happening with the oceans.