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Here in the USA, I don't know of any road that moves more cars per day than about 1/3rd of its maximum daily capacity. This tells me our road system is massively overbuilt!

It's the same with parking. Infrastructure for cars have gutted our cities and harmed their economic productivity.

I've got some feedback to point you toward, NotDrWho.

It's a good thing you appear to like feedback. Hope you like receiving it as well...

The style of classroom you describe is used extensively by the University of Oklahoma School of Computer Science after a bunch of research. Several years worth of studies essentially found that the lower performing students in those groups would later take individual exams and score roughly half a letter grade higher than those who didn't work in those group projects... follow up studies attributed this gain mostly to being forced to be in proximity to the already-successful students. The already-successful students ALSO BENEFIT from the system, showing a notable jump in their own individual exam scores, but, more importantly, showing a significant jump in their individual *retention* of information a year later, attributed to not only having to learn the material but attempting to teach the material. The situation is pretty much loathed by the already-successful students, but the data has been repeated year after year that it is better for nearly all the students in the environment, both the top performers and the bottom performers. Moreover, over several years of exposure, a peer pressure effect builds up, and you get more and more students actively participating in the later years.

Right.... if it's so good why don't they do the same for the school sports teams? I propose that schools put this to the test: make sure that any given sports team is not made up of the best. Mix in the lowest and middling performers with the best athlete. Only one top athlete per team.

If you want to learn more, the term you should Google is "Readiness Assurance Tests"... these are tests that students take twice, once as a group and once as individuals, and your score is the average of the group and the individual. You can also take a look at these links: https://ccistudentcenterblog.w... http://slideplayer.com/slide/4... https://www.ou.edu/idp/teamlea...

Careful perusal of those studies display that the control used was not... well... stupidly "controlled". They measured the performance of students who were in mixed-ability groups, and students in solo assignments, but they did not measure the performance of top students who were *not* in mixed-ability groups; i.e. putting all the top students in one group. And that's just *one* problem with the studies you linked to.

Like every other social science study, it is obvious from reading just a few paragraphs of each study to see that they tailored the study to confirm the PC acceptable methods they want to use.

Can we say confirmation bias? I *knew* we could ;-)

I've got some feedback to point you toward, NotDrWho.
The style of classroom you describe is used extensively by the University of Oklahoma School of Computer Science after a bunch of research. Several years worth of studies essentially found that the lower performing students in those groups would later take individual exams and score roughly half a letter grade higher than those who didn't work in those group projects... follow up studies attributed this gain mostly to being forced to be in proximity to the already-successful students. The already-successful students ALSO BENEFIT from the system, showing a notable jump in their own individual exam scores, but, more importantly, showing a significant jump in their individual *retention* of information a year later, attributed to not only having to learn the material but attempting to teach the material. The situation is pretty much loathed by the already-successful students, but the data has been repeated year after year that it is better for nearly all the students in the environment, both the top performers and the bottom performers. Moreover, over several years of exposure, a peer pressure effect builds up, and you get more and more students actively participating in the later years.

If you want to learn more, the term you should Google is "Readiness Assurance Tests"... these are tests that students take twice, once as a group and once as individuals, and your score is the average of the group and the individual. You can also take a look at these links:
https://ccistudentcenterblog.w...
http://slideplayer.com/slide/4...
https://www.ou.edu/idp/teamlea...

The Authors did the majority of their initial political work under pseudonyms, because anonymity was the only way that they could protect themselves. Pretty sure they'd disagree with you.

http://www.law.ou.edu/ushistor...

The Freedom to speak without fear of persecution is the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights and was absolutely necessary for the Founding of our Nation.

This area was tested for nuclear waste disposal, Yucca Mountain won out.

Are you referring to the Oak Ridge complex? ISTR that that was only being considered as a nuclear waste storage/ disposal site because it already had a lot of material on site. And it's in Tennessee, several hundred miles away from the area under discussion.

This area is a basalt range, and no problem for future earthquakes (claimed), yes we have Mt.s St. Helen but that's the edge of two plates.

I don't know much about the geology of America, not being an American and having no intention of going to America to work as a geologist (I have worked as a geologist on 3 other continents though, as well as in Canada). But my first glance at the landscape around ORNL, Tennessee linked to above makes me think "not a flood basalt region". This link to the Oklahoma geological survey is a bit slow ... try this one ... but tells me that Oklahoma isn't a flood basalt province either (that's not ruled out by Oklahoma being popular for hydraulic fracturing enhanced oil and gas production (popularly "fracking", but being in the trade I'll give it it's proper name). So, I'm guessing that you're getting confused with the Hanford site in (IIRC) Washington State. Which is half a fucking continent away, but is on a flood basalt province. And close to a number of volcanoes. Which doesn't really sound good for long term storage.

but if Oklahoma is having earthquake warnings, not sure what to say actually

I'm not sure what you're trying to say either. Was Oklahoma ever on a long (or short) list for nuclear waste disposal? Not being an American, I don't know. However, since it's a fairly large place, then an increased probability of moderate earthquakes in the near future doesn't necessarily preclude there being parts of Oklahoma which may remain suitable for (nuclear) waste storage/ disposal. Then again, as a geologist and scientist, living in one of the two most radioactive cities in my country, I have a rather more robust (and frankly, realistic) attitude to radiation than the hysteria which the popular press treat the topic with.

You know, I really ought to get my Geiger counter working again. But it's not something that I consider particularly important.

This area was tested for nuclear waste disposal, Yucca Mountain won out.

Are you referring to the Oak Ridge complex? ISTR that that was only being considered as a nuclear waste storage/ disposal site because it already had a lot of material on site. And it's in Tennessee, several hundred miles away from the area under discussion.

This area is a basalt range, and no problem for future earthquakes (claimed), yes we have Mt.s St. Helen but that's the edge of two plates.

I don't know much about the geology of America, not being an American and having no intention of going to America to work as a geologist (I have worked as a geologist on 3 other continents though, as well as in Canada). But my first glance at the landscape around ORNL, Tennessee linked to above makes me think "not a flood basalt region". This link to the Oklahoma geological survey is a bit slow ... try this one ... but tells me that Oklahoma isn't a flood basalt province either (that's not ruled out by Oklahoma being popular for hydraulic fracturing enhanced oil and gas production (popularly "fracking", but being in the trade I'll give it it's proper name). So, I'm guessing that you're getting confused with the Hanford site in (IIRC) Washington State. Which is half a fucking continent away, but is on a flood basalt province. And close to a number of volcanoes. Which doesn't really sound good for long term storage.

but if Oklahoma is having earthquake warnings, not sure what to say actually

I'm not sure what you're trying to say either. Was Oklahoma ever on a long (or short) list for nuclear waste disposal? Not being an American, I don't know. However, since it's a fairly large place, then an increased probability of moderate earthquakes in the near future doesn't necessarily preclude there being parts of Oklahoma which may remain suitable for (nuclear) waste storage/ disposal. Then again, as a geologist and scientist, living in one of the two most radioactive cities in my country, I have a rather more robust (and frankly, realistic) attitude to radiation than the hysteria which the popular press treat the topic with.

You know, I really ought to get my Geiger counter working again. But it's not something that I consider particularly important.

Well, we upgraded to include a dynamic self-modifying portion, but there are some bugs; the basic self/non-self discrimination regularizer has a high tendency to cause wars over stupid things like who has the better facial hair. Unfortunately, the wide range of other regularizers—emotions, convictions, self-preservation, altruism, and the rest—aren't enough to completely repress this sort of thing. On the plus side they're now inventing new ones.

(In all seriousness, I think comparing the human species to an ensemble of classifiers is perhaps the most profound and interesting analogy ever made. The passing of genetic algorithms out of vogue in ML research reflects our own development of an advanced nervous system as an adaptable survival mechanism; culture, then, is the mass of concepts and rules we can integrate into our personal collections of weights to tune our nets to do specific things.)

Actually I used this calculator: http://www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm for my numbers. While probably not authoritative, it did appear to be a reputable source, and the answer (0.08) does match the chart below the calculator. And, yes, I'm male so I used the male numbers; males tend to spend more time driving when multiple people travel together, in my no-scientific-at-all observations.

Now, I'm a light drinker even though I'm 200 pounds, so if I have more than one drink in an hour you won't find me driving for a while.

I wonder if there are more of these sorts of papers out there than people realize. Maybe a lot of them just don't get much attention outside the field of the writer. On that note, here's a meteorology one: Case Analysis Of A Historic Killer Tornado Event In Kansas On 10 June 1938

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The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.

.

And militia is defined as all able-bodied men of and over the age of 17 at that time, I believe.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3210135&cid=41786487

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_(United_States)#Twentieth_century_and_current

His point is that there is no evidences that any of t is getting into the water table

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers of Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report (PDF) that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

And what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground? Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

I appreciate your honest approach to the issue. And you're probably right, done with proper regulations and safety precautions fracking can be safe...in theory. You only saw one piece of the puzzle, so here are some more pieces.

In practice, one thing you need to consider is what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground. Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

There are heavy elements that the Sun doesn't contain.

Not really, except for the short-lived heavy radionuclides. Even Uranium has been seen in solar spectra.

You can't use just the 5-digit zip code, the full Zip+4 has to be used. For example, the Oklahoma tax calculator needs the Zip+4. http://oktax.csa.ou.edu/Rate_Locator/index.jsf

For example, the zip code I live in, 80234, covers more than one county (Adams, and Broomfield), and about 7 different cities.

http://www.zipareacode.net/zip-code-80234.htm

Examination of Possibly Induced Seismicity from Hydraulic Fracturing in the Eola Field, Garvin County, Oklahoma by the aforementioned Austin Holland of the Oklahoma Geological Survey.

I know, right!!! Those nutters at the Oklahoma Geological Survey really need to get a grip:

http://www.ogs.ou.edu/pubsscanned/openfile/OF1_2011.pdf

The gubment has too much undue influence in our great nation of the US OF A. Clearly, Obamacare is the cause of these quakes.

Actually, it can. Certainly not at all temperatures and pressures, but it is usable for a range of them. Which we had learned in the physics classes.

Or here, if you need a link (not from my school, but still valid):

https://ecourses.ou.edu/cgi-bin/view_anime.cgi?file=th020403f.swf&course=th&chap_sec=02.4

We were, as I recall, in the area where the percentage of error was in the .1% range.

Breaking out a tiny window and throwing a bunch of heavy clothes 30 feet crosswind when the plane's doing 500mph? Good luck with that. Even if the plane were stopped and you had PCP strength, you wouldn't be able to find a window to get a good enough shot. And to think that your fellow passengers would let you get away with this?

For reference as to what an airliner looks like, click here.

BAC calculators aren't that hard to find.

http://www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm
http://www.drunkdrivingdefense.com/general/bac.htm
http://www.bestduidefense.com/BACCHART.htm

Those are three of the first responses on google. And according to those, 3 drinks in an hour will put you at about a .05, if you're 200 lbs. As opposed to 4 for a .08. Also, look at the effects at even .06. On the first of those links, if you scroll down you see that at .04 driving skills are "significantly affected". Come off it. If you've been drinking more than a beer or two with dinner, let the wife drive home. Or if you want to let her have wine with dinner, then stay off the booze yourself. It's not a complex proposition.

the surface of the earth would be this many meters above the ideal surface (gravity is weaker here than expected). Conversely, negative meters means gravity is stronger here than expected, and so correlates to a "low" (low elevation being closer to the center of mass of the earth, meaning stronger gravity)

That was also my original intuition. Unfortunately, most explanations do not make it explicitly clear (including the article and Wikipedia), but a higher geoid means stronger gravity and a lower geoid means weaker gravity.

http://geophysics.ou.edu/solid_earth/notes/geoid/earths_geoid.htm/

This kind of behavior was first demonstrated/modeled (AFAIK/IIRC) as part of the Tierra simulations almost twenty years ago. Though I don't have a reference to hand, I know it's been done in neural networks before too.
 
So other than the 'sizzle' (as opposed to 'steak') of doing it with robots, can anyone explain what is new here?

I think Benoit Mandelbrot (amongst a few thousand other chaos and fractal specialists) would beg to differ on the ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology

That's because they're mathematicians, not biologists. Stuart Kaufmann thought he was replacing natural selection with self-organization back in the 80's, but he's calmed down now, after arguing with actual biologists for a while. Tom Ray is a guy with a foot in both camps, or at least he used to (I guess now he's doing cog. sci. work?), and even though his Artificial Life projects pretty much inaugurated the field, he doesn't seem to really think of his research as revealing anything fundamentally new.

It's hardly the mathematics fault that biologists are lousy mathematicians.

Well, that's true, but neither is it biology's fault that most of what mathematicians produce has no application. It's not like biologists are stupid; they don't learn knot theory because it doesn't improve their work, not because they are unable.

Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Norman (OU Campus)

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

The Oklahoma City National Memorial and museum about bombing

45th Infantry Division Museum - lots of good WWII stuff

Oklahoma Railway Museum if you like old trains, and

The Red Earth Museum with Native American traditional and contemporary culture and arts

There's more, just use google maps!

Come on by! Bring money and spend it!

Let's see, we're supposed to spend literally trillions of dollars to fix global warming, yet we can't see the raw data the hysteria is based on?

WTF!?!?!

This is a big problem, and in the science community in general (not just climate scientists!). The data is safeguarded for some length of time while the researcher(s) publish their findings, personal gain, or simply because the research itself was a very expensive process and the institution wants to "get its money's worth". I work at a climate research center and we've actually had to take hard copies of data and run them through an OCR program like ABBYY because the original scientist wouldn't send us digital versions of the data or even processed maps.

Along the same lines, when is the source code used for the climate models going to be published and thoroughly reviewed?

If AGW is in fact true, it can withstand the scrutiny.

But it is:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/get_source2.html
http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/code4x3.html
http://www.caps.ou.edu/ARPS/
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/PolarMet/pwrf.html

and someone made a nice list of models used in the recent IPCC report and if source code is available here:
http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=667

It's available, but strangely, no one takes them up on it ...

The John Templeton Foundation, of West Conshohocken, spends millions each year to explore and encourage a link between science and religion. But, except for a contribution to fund a debate forum in 1999, the foundation has declined to give money to the Discovery Institute.

Charles Harper Jr., senior vice president of the Templeton Foundation, said Discovery's involvement in "political issues" was troublesome.

"We want to advance real scientific research," Harper said. "Discovery Institute has never done - has never moved forward - any scientific research. On these deep issues, they've done absolutely nothing."

Intelligent Design's Big Ambitions"

Forgot the best part. http://www.ou.edu/asia/images/ASAssin.jpg
Server was built out of old components, stripped down into a headless machine, packed into boxes with ventilation slots, and parked over in a corner pirating bandwidth in a room it wasn't supposed to be in. But it looked like just some boxes, so nobody cared. Top box had the APC/surge protector in it.

Here's the calculator I was using: http://www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm
There may be better ones, but it seemed fine. I was 'drinking' 12oz Imported Beer. 6 in 2 hours hit the 0.08% for me (~180 lbs). 6 in 3 hours only landed me at 0.06%.

I got the 50 lbs mark by 'drinking' 1 beer in 0 hours, noticing that the theoretical BAC scales linearly with weight (0.02% @ 200 lbs, 0.04% @ 100 lbs), and extrapolating.

...TFA gives it as http://weather.ou.edu/~apw/projects/kittyhawk/kittyhawk.pdf

Kinda off-topic, and whilst the saying is a good one, if you put frogs in cold water and slowly heat, they will jump out before they boil.

Frog boiling according to Victor H. Hutchison the George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emeritus of Zoology.

I'm sorry, but even given this is all theoretical, you're completely off-base. Common knowledge says your body processes about 1 drink per hour; I was taught that in health class. Want more evidence? Anecdotal of course, but I once had 4 beers in under 2 hours and i got a .07 on a breathalizer. I weigh about 150.

More evidence? Try this website: http://www.ou.edu/oupd/bac.htm
I entered 3 drinks, 3 hours, and weight of 160 (I'd say thats on the low side of average for a man). It says BAC should be at about a .02 - how would that be anywhere near a .089?

And to add my two cents as far as getting pulled over for DUIs - IANAL, but I did ask a criminal defense attorney in a college town who has plenty of experience to give me his advice. He said the following: comply with the officer's request if you think you probably are close to the legal limit. If you do this, even if you end up over, you'll probably get leniency in court. If you know you're way over, and shouldn't have been driving at all, keep the window partly rolled up - maintain that you haven't been drinking - and if the officer asks you to step out of the vehicle or take any tests, say you don't think thats necessary. The main thing to remember is ANYTHING you do, including a sobriety test of any kind, is going to provide the officer evidence against you which will come out in court. If you simply refuse to comply, you may lose your license for 6 months or whatever depending on state law, but you have a good chance of beating the DUI charge.

I also know quite a few people who passed field sobriety tests only to get nailed by the breathalizer... If I ever pass the field sobriety test, I'm refusing the breathalizer. Those things are horribly inaccurate per the article and everything else I've ever heard/read.

http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/M/William.L.Megginson- 1/prvsvpapJLE.pdf Basically unless there is a natural monopoly like with water and electricity systems are run more efficiently because there is competition and incentive to acheive better service at lower prices. Look at what privatization has done to the price of broadband in europe.

Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

The President may approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill.

Like I said, I've never lived there, so I don't know it. However, regarding the U.S., I still share Pat Henry's sentiment, 9/11 or no.

"Give me liberty or give me death".

Death would be a far better freedom for me than having GW rule my life by martial law.

Maybe others share my view.

Finding anomalies and taking advantage of them happens not only in GA research but in other areas of machine learning as well. How do I know? I wrote a paper about it that was peer reviewed and published, so it MUST be TRUE(tm)!

This ability to find solutions that no sane person would dream up is both a strength of machine learning methods and, as your simulation example points out, a serious potential problem.

Dean

HP Dishonors Warranty If You Load Linux

I think what our intrepid article sponsor (and editors?) meant is HP "Refuses to Honor" Warranty if.....

Otherwise, workplaces with HP laptops might start looking a lot like this....

• "Traces of Catastrophe: A Handbook of Shock-Metamorphic Effects in Terrestrial Meteorite Impact Structures", Bevan M. French (Smithsonian Institution), http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/CB-954/ CB-954.intro.html
• "Stalking the Wily Shatter Cone: A Critical Guide for Impact Crater Hunters", Bevan M. French (Smithsonian Institution), Impact Field Studies Group newsletter, Winter 2005, online at http://web.eps.utk.edu/ifsg_files/newsletter/Winte r_2005.pdf
• "Shatter cones: Branched, rapid fractures formed by shock impact", Amir Sagy, Jay Fineberg, Zeev Reches, JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 109 2004, online at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2004JB003016 .shtml (for a fee), http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/geodynamics/2005/im ages2005/sagy04_JGR.pdf, http://earthquakes.ou.edu/reches/Publications/Sagy _JGR.pdf, and others

The average heat flux from the earth is less than 0.1W/m2. Compare that to ~ 1000 W/m2 for the sun. Sure, it varies all over the place (see: volcanoes, etc.), but it's not a no-brainer where any heat anomalies the glider detected came from. In general, the deep ocean is quite cold because of that whole thermal expansion thing (also note that seawater is densest a few degrees above freezing (~4 deg C, if I recall). So heating from the bottom tends to cause convection.

You'll note that the scientists quoted don't mention global warming; they are excited to see stuff that they didn't expect. That's good enough to satisfy their intellectual curiosity & need to come up with new and interesting grant proposals.

You'll also notice that scientists in general don't sell newspapers or magazines. It's the journalists whose job it is to butcher the science to sell newspapers and magazines.

Finally, the oceans are very much tied up in our little carbon experiment. A good bit of any extra heat that is trapped in the atmosphere will go into the oceans. Also, a lot of the CO2 that we've emitted is already going into the oceans, which leads to ocean acidification. This is the rate of carbonic acid input (that's CO2 + H2O H2CO3 H+ + HCO3-) is much higher than the ocean can buffer it with CaCO3 (which buffers effectively, but only on very long time scales). In the meantime, hope you don't like coral.

* Launch into a rant

I know you were joking, but ranting is a pretty good bonding strategy. Disliking the same things is a much better ground for friendship than liking the same things. NYT, PDF paper, Wikipedia

I will not accept less. Not for me, not for you the anonymous cowards, not for my fellow countrymen, not for the children alive and waiting to be born, and not for the other people of this world who dream of Freedom _because_ we, the United States of America, are Free.

All of these are necessary for the functioning of our society in some way or another, but are illegal.

It's not always a problem that they blunt. Using glass blades to make slides for electron microscopy makes *seriously* sharp knives but they're so fragile you use them as disposables. http://bomi.ou.edu/bmz5364/making-knives.html

Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Click the link and read the entire speech that ends thusly and ask yourselves this, if the monitoring framework we are moving towards had been in place when Patrick Henry made that speech, would he have ever gotten to complete the speech?

Wrong-o, dipshit troll. The calculator says if you pound 3 decent 5% beers you're at .08%, as long as your weight is under 240. Which mine is.

Nice try though. Now back under your bridge.

The Resasco group at University of Oklahoma is getting pretty close to selectively producing semiconducting nanotubes of a fixed size. http://www.ou.edu/engineering/nanotube/

You stated: "AFAIK, Galileo had had a pretty civilized talk with the Pope, and while the Pope wasn't convinced by Galileo's argumentation, he let Galileo go."

You are painting a picture that didn't exist. The Pope did not like the idea of people questioning or interpreting the bible. So any debate were the earth might seriously be considered to be orbiting the sun was to be forbidden. When he heard of Galileo proposing Copernicism in a serious tone he sent a cardinal to meet with Galileo with specific orders.

From here:

On February 25th, the Congregation of the Index instructed Cardinal Bellarmine to meet with Galileo and warn him in advance of the impending decree. In 1616, the Pope outlined three steps for Bellarmine to take in his meeting with Galileo, depending on Galileo's response. The three steps are outlined in this table: (Figure 1) . These three steps may be explained as follows:

1. Bellarmine would admonish Galileo to abandon Copernicanism as true, and only discuss it hypothetically. Galileo would be expected to acquiesce, and if so, the matter would be dropped.

2. Should Galileo object, Bellarmine would issue an injunction, signed by a notary and proper witnesses, commanding Galileo to abjure Copernicanism and not even to discuss it hypothetically.

3. In the unlikely event that Galileo persisted in obstinacy, he should be imprisoned.

The Pope himself granted a friendly audience with Galileo only one week after the decree of the Index.

Only after Galileo agreed to the Popes mandate that he only discuss Copernicanism in a hypothetical sense was he granted the audience. There was no polite discussion about Copernicism were the Pope listened and was unconvinced. The audience was merely a reward for obeying the Popes demands without a fight.

Yeah, you're popular with the ladies. Although a pimp might normally dress like the man in the yellow hat. Don't blame me, you set yourself up for that one. No offense intended.

Yeah, you're popular with the ladies. Although a pimp might normally dress like the man in the yellow hat. Don't blame me, you set yourself up for that one. No offense intended.

Most college towns have a third-party bookstore, that in general, buys higher and sells lower. That's usually where to go.

I used to think the same, but in my college town (Norman, Oklahoma, home to the University of Oklahoma), it's not entirely true. I was trying to sell some of my books back to one of the independent stores, and noticed that they were offering me the exact same pittance as the campus bookstore (a Follett store, though they don't advertise that). The girl behind the counter was unusually candid with me about the situation: the bookstores don't set the prices. Rather, all of the bookstores go through the distributor, and take their prices from same. And we only have the one distributor. The distributor sets quantities to be bought back (typically a tiny percentage of the expected use, sets prices (buyback around here is generally half of the used sale price, unless they've already bought back as many as they intend to, in which case it's approximately the recycling value of the paper), the works.

If I didn't know better, I'd say it smells of price fixing.

The carbon generated by burning biofuels was sequestered by the plants that made the biofuels. And will be resequestered by the same plants. The idea here is that, since we have to grow enough crops to produce enough fuel, that it becomes a carbon cycle rather than dumping carbon that's been sequestered for centuries back into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, iron fertilization seems to be a good solution to the problem of the excess carbon we've produced in the past century.

> I know that we should have freedoms, but in a post 9-11 age, there is certain information that should not be released for the public to have. This is why we elect government officials. I love freedom, but I am willing to give some up if it means my wife and daughter are safer as a result.

This position is tenable only if you believe that freedom isn't worth dying for.

On the other hand, if freedom is worth dying for, then sometimes the life given isn't a soldier's, or your grand-dad's, or long dead patriots', it's yours, and your wife's and your daughter's.

If Americans and Iraqis aren't more free today then every death since September-11 was in vain.

"Give me liberty or give me death."