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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/trapped-elevator.html

Covered:

• The elevators where you choose your floor before you get in, that can use a much more effective routing algorithm
• The no-effect close-door buttons
• elevator phobias, the wtc bombings, super-high-rise buildings, and various other elevator arcana

BTW, the non-functionality of the "Close Door" button was mentioned on the most recent episode of Nova: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/trapped-elevator.html

"The business of higher education is booming. It's a $400 billion industry fueled by taxpayer money. But what are students getting out of the deal? Critics say a worthless degree and a mountain of debt. Investors insist they're innovators, widening access to education." Watch the video.

Has anyone had a chance to read this book? The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History-and How We Can Fight Back

The problem with that though is that the people who would suffer the most from these institutions going under would not be the people who directly caused the crisis. I'm not sure that the average citizen should be punished because they were not cognizant of institutions' banking practices that they had nothing to do with and no power to stop.

I saw a great broadcast by Frontline recently called Breaking The Bank. It details the reactions then Bush-appointed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had during the beginning of the meltdown. Paulson, who came in as a free-market person, was faced with the prospect of big banks dragging each other down in a domino effect which threatened to take the entire economy with it. To prevent this he was forced to change his tune and pump government money into the banks, with considerable strings attached. This was the beginning of unprecedented government involvement in the private sector.

I can't help but think that if some modest, reasonable and necessary regulations were put on the market, this situation could have been avoided. But without them, instead we end up with considerably MORE government interference in the market than ever before.

A situation where the collapse of one company can cause an entire national (actually, world) economy to have a conniption is a problem. At bare minimum, regulations should prevent this situation from ever being possible. That way when any company starts to go under because of stupid business practices they can be allowed to receive the punishment they deserve.

Pardon me... forgot to add the link to this: Frontline (PBS)

The 100 MPG X-Prize winner is in Lynchburg, VA. So no, not Silicon Valley.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/09/16/1811257/Meet-the-Virginia-Built-110MPG-X-Prize-Car
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/09/ultra-light-cars-reap-rewards-of-x-prize.html

"We've been on the verge of running out of oil, running out of fresh water, and killing our oceans how many times now?"

Well, oil had been forecast to peak some time in 2010-s. Which is about now and it looks like this prediction is on the money. American oil has peaked in 70-s and steadily declined ever since, as predicted.

We've already more than halfway through with killing our oceans ( http://www.pbs.org/emptyoceans/ ).

A an accidental detonation from a bomb twice the size dropped on Japan would not result in " immediate death toll" that " may have reached six figures".

In 1950, the population of Fairfield was around 3000. I don't know the size of the air force base, but I don't think it was close to the 6 figure range (today it has 15K military and civilian workers, it may have been higher during the cold war). Suisun City today has a fraction of the population of Fairfield.

Just 3km from the hypocenter of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, most structures withstood the blast and most people that were indoors survived the initial blast.

And that bomb detonated at an altitude of 500m to maximize destruction. An accidental surface detonation in an airplane crash is going to have a much smaller destructive zone, even though the bomb is twice as powerful. So even if that bomb had detonated in the crash, there would be survivors even on the airbase itself.

Even in a 1 megaton blast (50 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki) , there's a 75% survival rate just 7.5 miles from the blast.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/1mtblast.html

So even if a a 1 Megaton accidental detonation occurred in the NW corner of the base today, it wouldn't cause an immediate 6 figure death toll.

This, of course, this ignores the long term deaths and illness caused by radiation exposure.

NOVA (from PBS) had a three-part show called "The Human Spark" which was hosted by Alan Alda. In the shows, they examined what makes us human compared to the rest of the animal kingdom and how it relates to our brain.

During the show, they showed how babies (roughly 3 - 9 months old) could discern good from bad by watching colored blocks and how they behaved towards one another or how puppets played nice with one another.

One thing that came out during the show and made me say, "Hmmm" was the fact that if I were to point at something, without saying anything, you would look in the direction I was pointing.

Oddly enough, so do dogs. If you point at something, a dog will look. Here's the interesting part: wolves don't do this. Apparently, through the ages, as we've bred dogs to their current form, we have inadvertently bred this trait into them whereas wolves, ostensibly the originator of modern dogs, lack this trait.

To see the programs, visit http://video.pbs.org/program/1356407145/

or here:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/humanspark/tag/alan-alda/

In the second link, the second excerpt called Social Networks and the Spark, has the video of a baby choosing an inanimate toys who appears friendly/cooperative compared to one that isn't.

NOVA (from PBS) had a three-part show called "The Human Spark" which was hosted by Alan Alda. In the shows, they examined what makes us human compared to the rest of the animal kingdom and how it relates to our brain.

During the show, they showed how babies (roughly 3 - 9 months old) could discern good from bad by watching colored blocks and how they behaved towards one another or how puppets played nice with one another.

One thing that came out during the show and made me say, "Hmmm" was the fact that if I were to point at something, without saying anything, you would look in the direction I was pointing.

Oddly enough, so do dogs. If you point at something, a dog will look. Here's the interesting part: wolves don't do this. Apparently, through the ages, as we've bred dogs to their current form, we have inadvertently bred this trait into them whereas wolves, ostensibly the originator of modern dogs, lack this trait.

To see the programs, visit http://video.pbs.org/program/1356407145/

or here:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/humanspark/tag/alan-alda/

In the second link, the second excerpt called Social Networks and the Spark, has the video of a baby choosing an inanimate toys who appears friendly/cooperative compared to one that isn't.

History Detectives had an episode about people putting bombs in their coffins to prevent themselves from getting dug up and dissected in medical schools.

But whether it counts as self-defense when you're already dead is at best a complex question.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/about.html He seemed by no means to be the sort of founding fathers-esque square-head, as he is often depicted (eg. portrait in linked article). Not only did it describe his alchemical endeavors, but also that he was seeking physical proofs for things written in the bible. Interesting how true geniuses are frequently true eccentrics.

PBS did an episode of NOVA on this several years ago.

FTA: "Smarten up, folks. It's really not so hard to setup some solid password practices. Again, since most of our readers don't really fall in this category, at least try to open the eyes of those around you."

Are we talking 'A Clockwork Orange' style?
Otherwise, I don't think anything can help.

Actually, fifty year old heating systems distributed heat more evenly than modern systems. Back in the '30s-'40s they had "gravity furnaces". There was no blower; convection distributed the heat, which was controlled by an electrical thermostat that varied the furnace's flame. If the power went out because an ice storm took down the electrical wires, you still had heat, because the furnace wasn't connected to the house's electricity. Its thermostat's electricity was generated by a walnut-sized doohickey called a "power pile" that generated electricity from the flame of the pilot light.

I had one in the old house I raised my kids in in the '90s. I loved it, it was way better tech than we have today. Especially when the power went out.

Yes, I've seen diagrams of the old systems that were available in the USA.

I think only rich people in the UK would have had these systems in their homes in the 1930s and 40s though.

My parents' parents' houses were exactly like the house featured in the 1900 House. Central heating would have been a dream for them. Their hot water came from a "back boiler" which was a cast iron thing installed into the back of one of the fireplaces. They had to be careful to open the taps if it got too hot as there was the danger of a steam explosion.

Heck, my Mother's childhood room still had a gas light in it.

There is a PBS special called Absolute Zero that shows this. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/zero/atoms.html This is about the only way to create a Bose-Einstein condensate

Meshach wrote:

I do not think anyone 40 years ago dreamed that computers would ever be a prevalent in society as they are in the present. Most early computer scientists saw themselves as playing a game not developing the infrastructure that exists now.

Prevalent? The visionaries saw where it could go.
42 years ago, people were thinking about prevalent personal computing like laptops & tablets:

Excerpt from wikipedia about Alan Key's "Dynabook" concept:

This concept was created two years before the founding of Xerox PARC. Kay wanted to make "A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages." The ideas led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which was originally called "the interim Dynabook". It embodied all the elements of a graphical user interface, or GUI, as early as 1972.

...

The hardware on which the programming environment ran was relatively irrelevant.

To say it another way, this was like dreaming up the OLPC in 1968.
*shrug* They had to invent the tech behind today's "prevalent infrastructure" just to make things happen.

Here is Steve Jobs talking about his visit to Xerox Parc - not quite 40 years ago, but close enough:
Excerpt from the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds"

Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry. At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc.

Steve Jobs
And they showed me really three things. But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.

It was a turning-point. Jobs decided that this was the way forward for Apple.

(As an aside, I'm reading Anathem again - Computer Science could really benefit from Lorites.)

Pay particular attention to the chart. Why such a high statistic in violence in the US? It shows the homicide rate for males 15-24 years of age in the U.S. We essentially blow the curve with nearly 5 times the homicide rate in this group as compared to the next closest nation:

http://www.netwellness.org/healthtopics/domesticv/graph.gif

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article542.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/july-dec99/violence_12-16.html

This last one is one that I find most troubling from the CDC:

omicide and suicide are responsible for approximately one fourth of deaths among persons aged 10--24 years in the United States.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5329a1.htm

This isn't new. There are youtube videos of the water coming out of people's kitchen faucet catching on fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRZ4LQSonXA

The process to remove natural gas and oil from shale is extremely complicated. Many companies won't even tell you what chemicals they use; they claim it's a "trade secret". They tell you that everything's okay, but you know for a fact that some of that cocktail they're pumping into the ground simply must be a carcinogen. And if they're drilling on your land, and you get your water from a well (and that's a lot of people in western PA), then you better believe that their fracking chemicals (hydraulic fracturing) are leeching into the local water table.

Naturally, there are also plenty of loopholes in the regulations to make sure that Corporate America can continue to rape and plunder low-life commoners like you and me.

For lots more information, go watch Gasland.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/613/index.html

Here you go:
The obligatory taxpayer rip-off broadband story.

I don't know why, but this "Family" thing in the name of the service makes me think of censorship.

Maybe this will remind you..

Now, I know this isn't the same deal, but it sure makes the concept proposed in the article a much more attractive idea for subdivisions and local neighborhoods. I know that my apartment management company would probably go for this as soon as it became available. It makes our building more attractive to renters, and with around 30 units, it means they can either tack on the extra $10-15/mo to rent or simply include it as a perk for living there. Granted, I would still prefer to have my own personal connection, but this could provide (at least for me) a reliable backup in case something happens to my connection.

technophobic crap along the lines of claims that cell phones cause bone/brain cancer

But this is (or at least was) a plausible theory, that had some preliminary research results in it's favor. Supposedly it's been shot down (I haven't looked closely enough to judge how well it was shot down), but that just makes it Wrong, it doesn't make it "technophobic crap".

What's actually interesting about that whole business is how little credence was given to the claims that it might actually be dangerous to hold a microwave transmitter right up against your head for long periods of time. The cell phone habit had already become entrenched, and no one wanted to hear about any problems with them. That in itself is kind of worrying: we're looking at an addictive technology here, with many actual problems (like, an estimate of thousands of traffic accidents a year from cellphone gabblers). But hey, The People Want It, our corporate masters are making money pushing them, you can't challenge it without being some weirdo luddite freak.

The possibility that, say, google searches are similarly addictive is an interesting thought... it's too bad this BBC article sucks as far as providing references to actual research. All you get is the fact that Nicolas Carr has a book out he wants you to buy.

This PBS interview makes it sound like he wrote a whole book about his private theory:

What we can I think theorize is that as we train our brains to take in information very, very quickly in a very interrupted, distracted way little bits of it come at us all the time, the way we experience it online that strengthens those parts of our brain that are good at multitasking and good at zipping up, shifting our focus very, very quickly. On the other hand we are not exercising those parts of our brain that are involved in deep concentration, deep attentiveness, things like contemplation and reflection.

Jonah Lehrer objects in a NY Times book review:

What Carr neglects to mention, however, is that the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that the Internet and related technologies are actually good for the mind.

Carr's 2008 article in the Atlantic has at least a few research links in it: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Frontline: Flying Cheap: "A hard look at the risks that may go with cheap flying."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/

When you start off flying commercial, almost every starts at a regional airline. You may be buying a United or Continental ticket, but it's a seperate airline that codeshares with the big boys. Those co-pilots on those aircraft are making between $18K-28K/year, are only paid from when the cabin door closes until it opens at the destination, and have their schedules dicked with by the airline's scheduling/routing department so that, while technically compliant with labor laws, they're extremely exhausting and some even nap in the cabin. Keep this in mind the next time you shop for your airline ticket based on price.

He once wrote that when people asked him which was his favorite camera, he answered "The largest one I can carry!"

Or, if he couldn't carry a large enough camera, he would use a pack mule or a converted limousine with purpose built photo platform.

Adams's photo gear

The "old business man discovering the internet" IT bubble culture is still alive and well in the defense industry. They have such a bad track record with networking technology it borders on scary. Transformation comes to mind quickly and they keep repeating the same mistakes.

I would also like to add that the current telco that provides us DSL and cable (with no internet access) is legally chartered in our city/county as the ONLY one who can so operate such services. So, not only is there no competition, there can be no competition!

This state of affairs is all-too-common across much of the US.

Also, the reason why I *know* the telcos are corrupt is that they continue corrupt practices for decades. Read Cringely's story about how our broadband future was ripped off by the telcos.

I hadn't realized the gravity of Newton's interest in Alchemy.

There's an excellent Nova (that's almost redundant) about this. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/
It's available on netflix.

Ah, I see. Characterize the people who are asking for reduced carbon dioxide emissions as hysterical alarmists. Good counter argument!

To get back to reality, Governor Schwarzenegger, President Obama and the U.S. Senate all have taken steps toward reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Even more has been done in Europe.

Except that nothing makes sense in biology except in light of evolution. Therefore all biologists are evolutionists. They're probably also all cell theoryists, germ theoryists, gravitationalists, atomists, plate techtonicists....and I note that your stance on radiocarbon dating is both a) wrong and b) an unsupported assertion. Why don't you read up on it before disparaging something that you are ignorant of?

Due to a freaky legal issue, PBS continues to provide a C-band ANALOG service, the "PBS Satellite Service" on SES Americom Satellite AMC 4, Transponder 16-C, horizontal polarity, at 101 degrees West longitude.

PBS has satellite distribution to stations in the clear (again, odd legal reason) on C-band Digital DVB-S QPSK on AMC 1 at 103W and Ku-band digital DVB-S QPSK on AMC 21 @ 125W.

"I think I was being productive, but looking back, I question that."

man, you are absolutely right -- whether you like or abhor pbs, they did a documentary about how connected kids are. They had college kids from MIT & Stanford take basic memory tests while "multitasking" then while not "multitasking". Before the memory tests, the kids just *knew* how awesomely smart they were and as such they *knew* that their memory functioned the same know matter distractions were present. After the test they were given their scores and guess what? They had shitty scores while multitasking. It was great seeing the look on their faces when presented with the shitty scores. Turns out, one has a false sense of being in control when juggling so many tasks, which leads to a false sense of productivity. Also, I agree with you that exercising is far better when done outdoors & without tunes, etc.

"Perhaps my abilities to 'multi-task' have diminished as I've aged, but I think that I've just become more adept at recognizing shoddy work."

recently I saw a documentary (don't have time to look it up now) -- the middle aged brain is plastic, it doesn't fade/diminish in terms of performance, due in large part to our ability to use experience to weed out the bullshit in front of us & focus on what's truly important (ahhh, I'm busted: as I typed those words I just realized that I'M ON /. , so at the age of 41, I must get back to what's truly important :-)

A great documentary on PBS called 'KEN BURNS'S “THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA"', detailing the early days of the park and those who tried to move in to privatize and setup monopoly's in there. Thankfully they stepped in before a thousand hotels could be built and started getting some common sense.
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/watch-video/#642
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/about/

Lincoln, John Muir and a collection of others wanted this to be a special place for Americans that no matter how poor or rich you were you could experience it, well as long as you reserve a place 8 months in advance( i know it sucks).
As an American I kind of felt like in the last 10 years we have been getting the shaft in priority to get access to these parks, no offense to the foreign travelers but they have been making the waiting period and getting access to it much harder. The problem in the last 2 years is you will have these Chinese tourist companies who have a thousand workers standing by as the date comes up to put in reservations for the National Parks, so opening day when the phone lines and internet reservations opened they flooded them. The greatest people of them all are the Germans and Dutch, those people know how to travel and not be a nuisance.

That's the least of my worries though as the parks are being overrun by giant RV's and generators galore, that was the one thing that pissed me off waking up in the morning to a generator although they are only allowed to run it for like 30 mins at most(yeah right...).

  End of my rant but word is they are going to setup a 2 week grace period for American citizens and they eventually want to make the parks a 'no-car-zone' and bus people in on a tram.
You also have to get reservations on Fri, Sat, Sun for a lot of the trails that become overrun, but it never ceases to amaze me to see some woman 'HIKING WITH HIGH HEELS' to the top of Half Dome with little to no water. BRING EXTRA WATER!!!!

Sierra Club Forever!!!

A great documentary on PBS called 'KEN BURNS'S “THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA"', detailing the early days of the park and those who tried to move in to privatize and setup monopoly's in there. Thankfully they stepped in before a thousand hotels could be built and started getting some common sense.
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/watch-video/#642
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/about/

Lincoln, John Muir and a collection of others wanted this to be a special place for Americans that no matter how poor or rich you were you could experience it, well as long as you reserve a place 8 months in advance( i know it sucks).
As an American I kind of felt like in the last 10 years we have been getting the shaft in priority to get access to these parks, no offense to the foreign travelers but they have been making the waiting period and getting access to it much harder. The problem in the last 2 years is you will have these Chinese tourist companies who have a thousand workers standing by as the date comes up to put in reservations for the National Parks, so opening day when the phone lines and internet reservations opened they flooded them. The greatest people of them all are the Germans and Dutch, those people know how to travel and not be a nuisance.

That's the least of my worries though as the parks are being overrun by giant RV's and generators galore, that was the one thing that pissed me off waking up in the morning to a generator although they are only allowed to run it for like 30 mins at most(yeah right...).

  End of my rant but word is they are going to setup a 2 week grace period for American citizens and they eventually want to make the parks a 'no-car-zone' and bus people in on a tram.
You also have to get reservations on Fri, Sat, Sun for a lot of the trails that become overrun, but it never ceases to amaze me to see some woman 'HIKING WITH HIGH HEELS' to the top of Half Dome with little to no water. BRING EXTRA WATER!!!!

Sierra Club Forever!!!

For sure decoys were effective in Gulf I as much as they were in WWI till some post strike analysis and intel revealed their "presence."

Do you insinuate other capitalist/socialist/communist countries are actively selling iran decoys? If so why couldn't iran buy outright or at least the machinery to produce a non v1 cruse missle design.
The lack of an original design to me shows how well the west's embargos and political isolation is "working".

The US BQM-34 firebee could "easily" be copied its that old. Enough payments to someone inside the right contractors. I use the firebee as example as it was contemporary to the western cruise missile programs.

I see you point about SCUD decoys, this is a SCUD in a different form. And what is the mission profile of the SS-1?

What worries me is what I see BBC reporting shows a disposable launcher, who's launch crew is expendable.

The parent article should be iran reveals it has a nacent cruise missile not a UAV program.
I say again the Iranian weapon is not UAV but a precursor cruise missile.

Doing in house what could be bought or cloned shows iranian egoism or isolation from the mercenary pipeline.

Anyhow since 90's the USA has:
1) developed JDAM and still has enough ordinance to spread around even to hit decoys and real targets.*
2) shown it substantially wants to and will update their satelite intel capacity (x-37b)#

  A 15 min fueling operation is the worst case. the west would need serious cruise missile ordinance to reach inside iran before that kind of fast first strike or retaliatory strike launch of the good ship lollypop aka Karrar.

*assuming the launchers are not purposefully based in proximity to civilian assets and persons. The west is squimish about this while the middle-eastern are not.
#the fueling truck (as seen in the video) & human activity is a good way to tell between decoy and real threat. But I conceed that the USA airforce had a hard time finding launchers in the 90's

The Navy's rocket in development was called, Vanguard. You can read the teaser from NOVA which also documents the actual events rather than the widely known and incorrect version of history. Last time I looked, there was also some of this video on You Tube, but I'm not sure what all is included in those videos. There are also several books on the topic. IIRC, the documentary also has a couple of the authors/historians that wrote some of those books. So sources can likely be obtained.

If you do a little leg work for yourself, I'm sure you can find additional information.

And if my assertion sounds so odd that you feel compelled to say, "citation needed", it strongly suggests you know nothing of history from that era. If you had known anything from that era, learning the history of events would hardly be anything more than, "neat, I didn't know that." Is allowing Russia to set space precedence really surprisingly in the least given Russia's politics and growing nuclear escalation? Most historians agree, "no", not in the least.

Rant begins...yet again...and again...and again...
And for the record, this is not a research paper. This is slashdot. I have no idea how you can confuse the two. "Citation needed", makes you appear silly. It is the cry of the Internet's dumb and lazy. Ya, I know everyone is doing it... Doesn't make it right or intelligent. Given the context, you're declaring you're too lazy and ignorant of the current topic to be bothered to improve yourself. If its my job to educate you by providing references outside of reference material and researched material, as in do your research to improve your knowledge, I expect to paid. Otherwise I've done all the work to cure your ignorance and I receive nothing as a benefit. That makes me your teacher. So as your teacher, go research the topic so as to cure your ignorance. There might be a quiz later.

There are better ways to ask than to make lazy demands like, "citation needed", as if implying people owe you something while you hold steadfast to your laziness; while concurrently, impolitely, declaring, "Bullshit! Prove it!" Search engines exist for a reason. The fact this has not yet occurred to you, speaks poorly of you. I strongly suspect you can do better. /rant

Maybe, but those rural areas create the food that the cities need to house and feed their populations

And this is relevant how?

The roads needed to truck in supplies, heavily subsidized food programs, and greatly disproportionate distribution of state tax income as well as federal aid.

Well since the majority of the people live there, and the majority of the wealth is both generated and consumed there, then of course cities account for the most of government revenue and expenditures. It's pretty damn hard to say that cities are "greatly disproportionate" when according to the 2000 Census, 79 % of all Americans live in urban areas. If you really want to look at disproportionate spending look at the rural area. Mapping states according to federal contributors and beneficiaries (contributors receive less than $1 of federal spending for each dollar paid in taxes, beneficiaries receive more than $1 for each dollar paid in taxes), you find two curious facts. First. there's the irony of the political leanings of the states; but more importantly for this conversation, the more populous and urban states are net contributors and the less populous and rural states tend to be beneficiaries. We see this again and again by any metric and any population you choose. For instance, poverty rates for instance.

I grew up in the rural area. It sucked. I'm glad I got out, because there's simply no future there.

Oh, some things can be our problem. Search for the word bio-rhythm in that transcript and be prepared to be very amused. Apparently what amounts to astrology was an important consideration in the staffing of missile silos.

You're being conveniently trite here, though. That's not a good counter-argument. This particular biologist seems to have a pretty good grasp on the fundamental problem with Kurzweil's argument, and that problem is: Kurzweil confuses the purpose of the genome. It is not "the program"! Myers contends that, really, it's more like data. To me, this sounds like a classic Von Neumann architecture: it's bit of both, depending on your context. In any case, Kurzweil completely misses out on the fact (and he would know this if he had followed *anything* in genomics over the last 15 years) that the genome, as encoded in DNA, is only a small part of what makes a cell express and function in a particular way. A nice introduction to the epigenome was in this NOVA documentary.

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) (TV)

Triumph of the Nerds

Nerds 2.0.1

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) (TV)

Triumph of the Nerds

Nerds 2.0.1

We had no business whatever invading Iraq.

I'm still confused why people are so gung-ho that the war in Iraq was not justified.

For YEARS the UN had been attempting to perform weapons inspections that were sanctioned by the rest of the world. And for YEARS they would show up at suspected facilities, attempt to inspect them, and were forced to leave by men with guns.

Iraq was, with little doubt, producing weapons in violation of UN Resolution 687, yet there was nobody willing to back up that resolution other than members of UNSCOM.

And we said--'OK. Security Council, they're not letting us in.' Nothing. Day goes by--'Excuse me, gentlemen, we're parked out in front of the agriculture ministry. They're not letting us in. We want to do an inspection.' Silence. Nothing.

Source

Actually I think that you are displaying the fallacy of ambiguity. Specifically, you are changing the specific meaning of the word "rational" and "irrational" (or perhaps neither of us is being explicit enough in our arguments). In this case, I have being referring to the "efficient market hypothesis" and its implication that prices of goods reflects all available information. Rationality is then a concept of price setting. It is not referring to the inherent irrationality of many of our actual market decisions, which I acknowledge; who knows why people spend hundreds of dollars on designer jeans that cost very little to manufacture when they can buy jeans at Costco for $20.

Let us imagine a person wants to buy an apple. There are two neighboring fruit stands. They are identical in every way, and they are selling identical apples. According to the customer, there are no differences at all between the two fruit stands, and between the fruit they sell. However, stand A sells apples for 25 cents each, while stand B sells identical apples for $5 each. Under the efficient market hypothesis, the customer would always buy apples from stand A; this would be the rational decision. If the customer pays $5 for the apple from stand B, this would be considered irrational under the EMH. Thus, the EMH would imply that stand B would sell no apples at all, if there is an unlimited supply, and that stand B would have to lower its price to compete.

The above seems quite reasonable and obvious. But under much of modern economics, the EMH is taken as an axiom, and is applied to all free market behavior. What I am arguing is that, as you assert, free markets are not rational. I am arguing that since much of modern economic study takes the EMH and builds on it as an axiom, that the theories derived from the EMH are not axiomatic, as has been asserted by economists such as Milton Friedman. The EMH implies a certain type of rationality that I believe is not always displayed in free markets.

If you do not believe me that the EMH implies rationality or that it is the fundamental basis for much of economics, I suggest you do some reading first before responding. To start with, watch the Nova documentary "Mind Over Money". Read the works of different economists, such as Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman. I suggest you read more about the basis of the Chicago School of Economics, and about the basis for Behavioral Economics.

Many of the economic theories that our governments have been adhering to over the past few decades have as a core premise that overall, markets behave rationally. Specifically, the "Efficient Market Hypothesis", in which it is proposed that the price for a good or service ALWAYS reflects ALL available information, implicitly assumes that market actors are acting rationally. And the "Efficient Market Hypothesis" is at the core of most of the mind-blowing mathematical economic models that many of our society's decision makers use to make economic decisions. The question is: If humans naturally make irrational decisions because we are biologically predisposed to do so, then how can markets be assumed to behave rationally? There have been striking experiments done on seemingly rational MBA students in which they make staggeringly irrational economic decisions. The monkey experiments seem to reinforce our predisposition to act irrationally.

In other words, the above research points towards falsifying the primary economic ideology that has been used to govern America since Reagan. This is no small matter. It affects all of our lives. And yet, if you listen to Republicans lately, they are still calling for policies derived from these economic models, policies such as tax cuts for the rich, working towards a reduction in governmental economic power, so as to let the power of the private sector and the magical invisible hand of the market place work their economic miracles. Myself, I am more of a Keynsian. I think the market is useful, but it can run amok if not attended to by a government powerful enough to guide it towards the public good.

Here is an excellent episode of the TV series Nova called "Mind over Money", which lays out many of my arguments clearly. The video only streams to the US.

In the United States, California has lead the effort in energy efficiency. Their economy doesn't look gutted to me.

less costly, due to physics but it may become a 'its our network, our packets get a bump "welcome to our walled garden of speed and content"
Want in, ask google for local space and a deal.
Will the rest of the internet feel like a p2p app on a cost cutting isp?
The second you host on "their" servers, its all fine again.
Cringley had some thoughts on this from 2007
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070412_001931.html

He did talk about his work over the years eg
"As longtime readers know, the routine here is that I first review my predictions from a year ago and either revel in my brilliance (good luck, actually) or admit my failure (all failures are real, nothing is simulated and no special or computer effects are used)."
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080104_003787.html

I have several guns, and they are all traceable because I bought them legally.

Sure, they're traceable... to you. Not to the guys who stole them from you, or to the guys the thief sold them to. So when they get used in a crime, and either the shell casings or the weapon itself are recovered... it's your door the police will be knocking on.

Large gangs breaking into a home to get guns is almost unheard of. They might hit a pawnshop or gun store, but not an individual's house.

The biggest source of weapons used in crimes is various sorts of illegal sales, but still, around 10% of them are no kidding stolen weapons. It's hardly unheard of.

akamai is a separate business. the topic of discussion is whether the owner of a public utility can portion and dole out according to their whims and wishes.

and yes, it's a damned public utility. they claim so everytime - that's how they get out of copyright infringement cases, by being the "phone company".

and yes, we fucking paid for those pipes.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

Sorry - here's link