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It always struck me as a little weird that major competitors should have a seat on the board.

Here's some background on the Ebay stake in Craigslist.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/interviews/newmark.html
http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake

Interesting clip from 2nd link:
When he originally gave a stake in Craigslist to the executive that sold his shares to eBay, Mr. Newmark said, he never expected them to be worth anything. "I made a gift of some equity in craigslist to a guy who was working with me at the time," Mr. Newmark wrote on his Internet blog (www.cnewmark.com). "I figured it didn't matter, since everyone agreed that the equity had only symbolic value, not dollar value."

I am an electronic engineer

I am a radio amateur and have never been paid to design an electronic circuit in my life... I also like hiking, walks on the beach, and cats. Does this help or hinder my argument?

I also happen to know that resistance and conductance are equivalent terms

They are not "equivalent terms", they are dual notions. Regular conductance and resistance are related by G=1/R, sure. But we are talking about specific definitions of /transfer/ resistance and /transfer/ conductance, used in modelling transistor circuits, typical in textbooks (bottom of page 33, highlighted for you) and literature, following from the consideration of duality expressed by the originator of the name.

You can model vacuum tubes or transistors, both unipolar and bipolar, by either conductance or resistance.

You /can/ surely, but you don't, because it means you're undermining the mathematical notion of duality in favour of the base physical concern that the BJT happens to be built out of the same material as a FET.

Under non-saturated conditions the current in the output side of the circuit depends on the excitation in the input, this excitation being a current in the BJT and a voltage in a FET.

In a FET, or a valve. As discussed in the previous AC posts. This is precisely what is important.

However, if you want to be pedantic about the word "resistance", you should study the behavior of both bipolar transistors and FETs under saturation.

No. Your argument here is, "When I pound the BJT enough, it stops responding as it did along the main part of its characteristic, so we can ignore the main part of the characteristic entirely." That you combined with a misunderstanding of what /transfer/ resistance is. Read the textbook above.

Conclusion: for true gramer nazis, only FETs should be called "transfer resistors".

The true language Nazi would look at the person who came up with the word and consider his justification for it in context rather than substituting his own. Which is what I did :-).

(I am off to bed... do feel free to continue waxing, although I won't reappear for another 24 hours and that depends on me remembering to leave the tab open.)

Sagan said that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

Sagan was talking about claims that upend our understanding of the physical world based on the slimmest of evidence or even idle speculation. Alien Abductions, for instance. Hollow Earth theories. ESP. Does your theory necessarily involve a conspiracy?

On this Nova episode he discusses alien abduction.

NOVA: Could you please comment on the part of the quality of the evidence that is put forward by these so-called "abduction proponents."

SAGAN: Well, it's almost entirely anecdote. Someone says something happened to them...And, people can say anything. The fact that someone says something doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean they're lying, but it doesn't mean it's true.

To be taken seriously, you need physical evidence that can be examined at leisure by skeptical scientists: a scraping of the whole ship, and the discovery that it contains isotopic ratios that aren't present on earth, chemical elements form the so-called island of stability, very heavy elements that don't exist on earth. Or material of absolutely bizarre properties of many sorts—electrical conductivity or ductility. There are many things like that that would instantly give serious credence to an account.

But there's no scrapings, no interior photographs, no filched page from the captain's log book. All there are are stories. There are instances of disturbed soil, but I can disturb soil with a shovel. There are instances of people claiming to flash lights at UFOs and the UFOs flash back. But, pilots of airplanes can also flash back, especially if they think it would be a good joke to play on the UFO enthusiast. So, that does not constitute good evidence.

Then how would you call a Field Effect Transistor?

Nice try with the bolding of F,E,T. Perhaps, with your use of "how" instead of "what", you are not native English, and don't understand the use of "sic". This is often used to denote a particular term/phrase/whatever which the writer considers incorrect, but which is being quoted nevertheless as-is. The fact that a FET is called a FET doesn't mean it is a transistor, any more than the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic, for the people, or a republic. You thus still call the DPRK the DPRK, as you call a FET a FET, because those happen to be the best-known names, but you don't call the DPRK a "democracy" and you don't call the FET a "transistor".

Now, the evidence, from the horses's mouth. Read the quote in the left hand column by the guy who named the transistor. He named it so because it - "it" being the point contact transistor and devices descended from it, such as the modern BJT - had transfer resistance, the dual of the vacuum tube (or FET) which is defined in terms of its transfer conductance. Understand?

A semi-conducting solid is not as close as possible to a vacuum.

A substance comprising one atom is as close as possible to a substance comprising no atoms. My comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, designed to illustrate the danger of imprecision. In particular, the discovery is /not/ of a one-atom transistor, or even a one-atom FET, it's of a FET with a single atom channel. The other AC seemed to understand this.

There is absolutely no evidence that the election was rigged. Ahaminejad is very popular and has previously won election with big margins.

There is circumstantial evidence, and then there's the way the Ahaminejad and his supporters have acted. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This regime seems to be like the ZANU PF in Zimbabwe. Violent, mad, megalomaniacs.

PBS recently did a Frontline documentary on the same types of charges and fees used to trick credit and debit card users: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/creditcards/

- RG>

Two words extraordinary rendition"

How do you do it without flinching? I have a really hard time even putting in eye drops. If I were to ever get contact lenses, I'd need an apparatus like this to even get close to getting one in.

The thought that someone could voluntarily put a foreign object in their eye is as bizarre and disturbing to me as the activity depicted in hello.jpg. Actually, it's freaking me out just writing about it. yeeech.

Dude, how fucking lazy are you? You can't even fucking Google it? Well just to show I'm a nice guy is PBS good enough for you? This ain't some big secret, or even something debatable like whether or not AGW is caused by CO2 or something else, this is pretty well written about. In Bill Clinton's first term he championed nationwide broadband, he got "the Telecommunications Act of 1996" which btw, feel free to look up, that gave the telecos/cablecos 200 BILLION for providing nationwide broadband.

What did we get? "Hey thanks for the free money. Now excuse us while we raise rates and don't run any lines. Oh yeah, go fuck yourself too!". is what we got. But hey, don't take my word for it. I just gave you the bill to look up and everything. Feel free to see how you paid for nationwide and got the finger. Of course if you can't Google it here is the FCC page, all 300 plus text files with all the little details. Oh and here is a free eBook that gives you plenty of facts, page numbers for the bills, etc. It is all there in B&W.

Like I said, it ain't no secret, they just screwed you, me, and everyone else in the USA raw and kept the money.

This is the same fiasco that the Navy went through with EDS and NMCI. Does no one at the state IT level read trade mags? This crap was all over the IT news magazines when the EDS contract was blowing up.

Do you like Cringely's presentation better? If you're still unconvinced, which of the facts do you dispute?

So all that money made in Silicon Valley and Hollywood was fraudulent? I was talking about the last 20 years - that whole internet thing and tech boom that really started in the late 60s.

Well, if you're going back 20 years, I'm not sure if you mean a sustained boom or just growth. Since the late 60s we had national recessions in 1969-70, 1973-75, 1980, 1981-82, 1990/91, 2001, and 2007-2009. In California, we've had a shifting population and several bubbles, including the Silicon Valley one of the late 90s.. (and yes, much of that money made was subsequently lost...) I'm not sure what you mean by the Hollywood money-- VHS exploded as a revenue source, but in the last decade the number of films and shows shot in Hollywood has plummeted dramatically, partially because of a lack of tax incentives, partially because of a favorable exchange rate in Canada, partially because of changing technology making filmmaking possible for everyone, and in part because of growing competition from the video game (and other) industries.

Prop 13 would work if Californians didn't spend more than they took in. And yes, many of their spending is necessary.

I agree. But Prop 13 + the hurdles for passing a budget combined have made it much more likely that Californians would be spending more than they took in...

Absolutely. I agree, it is insane. But when does taxation become too high? For me, anything over 40% starts getting a little burdensome which is the reason why I left the Northeast. That's what Californians need to settle: what level of services do they want and, more importantly, are they willing to be taxed to pay for such things. And if they raise taxes to the point where business starts to leave, are they willing to accept those consequences.

Government needs to live within its means.

Sometimes government needs to borrow. Economic necessity might include spending to fill a temporary gap in demand (so that the economy doesn't collapse), for example. It might need to sell bonds to pay for a war (hopefully one that is necessary). I can think of lots of other scenarios...

In any event, if allowances are made for strategic growth, investment, and emergencies.. and it's still considered "within its means", then I agree.

But there comes a point when people, especially businesses will leave because the tax burden is too high. It's already starting to happen.

It depends on the industry. It's like this health care BS I keep hearing about how people should be able to shop across state lines for insurance. This is spun as a "free market" thing, where people will shop for the plan that's the best deal, and the result will be more competition. The truth is that this is about insurance companies being able to "shop around" for STATES that offer them the most lenient and favorable laws, so that they can screw over their customers more than they are already. States legislatures desperate for tax revenue will pass "hey insurance companies, come to my state and you can do whatever you want" statutes, and we'll see a mass-exodus of the insurance companies to those states. This is exactly what happened with credit card companies when South Dakota eliminated their usury laws.

My point is that there's some complexity to the "business will just move somewhere else" argument.

the trillions stolen with OTC Derivatives.

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?" (more )

Yours In Petrograd,
Kilgore T.

Protecting against virtual attacks is going to be the next growth industry; at least if defense contractors have anything to with it. The following from cryptome, which I'd link to if there were a way to do that.

A sends:

I was watching PBS with with my daughter yesterday and a cartoon came on PBS Kids that I found a little bit disturbing. The name of the cartoon is "Cyberchase."

Here is a description of it from the PBS Website: "In the world of CYBERCHASE, the dastardly villain Hacker is on a mad mission to take over Cyberspace with the help of his blundering henchbots, Buzz and Delete. But heroes, Inez, Jackie, and Matt, are three curious kids determined to stop him with the help of their cyberpal, Digit. Their weapon: brain power."

http://www.pbs.org/parents/tvprograms/program-cyberchase.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS168619+17-Apr-2009+GNW20090417

Kind of strange a cartoon targeting the pre-school thru early grade school demographic about hackers using their minds as weapons in cyberspace. It was even stranger when it aired again today and I had a chance to see the lead corporate sponsor, Northrop Grumman. Yes, Northrop Grumman is sponsoring a cartoon for kids on Public Television. It adds new meaning to Northrop's Motto "Defining the Future" - defining the future, one young mind at a time, through children's education.

In all honesty I just never thought PBS would have the 4th largest defense contractor in the United States, the maker of B-2 Spirit strategic bomber who helps the U.S. to maintain a safe, secure and reliable strategic nuclear deterrent sponsoring kids' cartoons. Not cool.

Except you forgot one little charge where you are guilty until proven innocent-child molestation. With that charge you are guilty until proven innocent, and even if you do prove you are innocent the amount you have to spend saving your own ass will break you.

I know this is true because I watched a good friend from HS lose a house that had been in his family for generations over that kind of bullshit, thanks to his ex deciding to be a vicious cunt and have his step daughter say he touched her. The girl changed her story over a dozen times, hell you didn't have to be Colombo to tell that kid was being coached and coached badly, but it still cost over 60k in lawyers fees to keep from rotting in prison.

So yeah, nice in theory, but it don't really work IRL. Hell the FBI don't even bother logging referrers on their CP honeypots so today a Rickroll could get you put away. It is scary times we are a living in folks, probably even worse than the Red Scare for the number of innocents harmed. Just see McMartin and Little Rascals for justice gone insane.

An Army Of NONE

Yours In Baikonur,
K. Trout

PBS had a fairly (to my laymen eyes) informative and accessible NOVA episode concerning the megaflood.

Yeah, like those fundies at PBS!

Or those zealots at National Geographic!

Or all those bible thumpers at Columbia University! Buncha holy rollers!

I notice you didn't answer my question.

This took 1 minute to find. You know, there are academics who study these things.

Frankly, I'd like something other than just looking up studies to try to prove a point. I can cite too.

#1: from PBS.
#2. from kotaku
#3 from Harvard .

How many more do you want?

PTSD being treated by videogames is possible, but that has no correlation to violence.

Oh wait, I'm not done. Here's a summation by techdirt of both your studies and my studies linked .

A whole lot of questions are not precisely answered with all this as it's not only a new area of research but the answers are not straight up conclusive. There is a lack of causation between the correlation, if you will. Reading the last paragraph of the techdirt article shows exactly why I question this (blockquoted below).

Of course, nowhere does it explain why, if the study's findings are true, youth violence has decreased significantly over the same period of time that violent video games have become much more popular. If violent video games really made people consistently more violent, you'd expect to see that increase. And, if that number is not increasing, then you have to wonder if any reported increase in youth violence is even at a level that matters. If there's a marginal increase in aggressive behavior that doesn't lead to any increase in illegal behavior, is that really an issue? Also, when compared with another recent study that shows it's the small percentage of kids who don't play video games who are more likely to actually get in trouble, it makes you wonder if there are some completely independent factors at work here, rather than any direct correlation between violent video games and real world violence.

wal-mart spec'd them and their specs say "drive every possible penny out of the production cost." http://pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart Incandescent bulbs are a very mature and well-understood technology, and they are dirt cheap to start with, so there is less room/incentive to cut them to the bone.

There's not exactly a Mayan Rosetta Stone so even all that we know about the language is still premature.

My understanding is that much of the Maya glyphs have been decoded. Check out the rather fascinating PBS program Cracking the Maya Code for details.

People already proved they would put up with it. A lot of folks will do a lot of things if you just use the word "free". (as in beer)

There was a company ( here is a link to a story Cringley did on it at the time) that gave away a desktop system with a program that loaded a "frame" around the Windows desktop that streamed advertising. You basically filled out a questionnaire about your interests and if you fit their profile you got a PC. A coworker checked everything ( I ridiculously actually put the things I was interested in) and got one of the first PC's. I think that venture lasted about six months.

not like we did not warn them

and the bomb was no worse then Japans actions

Ah, the "our actions were no worse than their actions" argument. So what does that make us, and how does it justify it? I would say that it wasn't any better either. I don't see how one country's atrocity justifies another country's atrocity. Moral relativism, at its finest.

We all agree that the Japanese did probably some of the most horrific shit any country could during WWII, but your argument implies that it was perfectly fine to nuke their civilians as well, most of whom had nothing to do with the atrocities in Nanking.

By the way, if you read the wikipedia article you linked to, it says that the Japanese asked the Chinese to surrender before the massacre, which they refused to do. That sounds similar to your "not like we did not warn them" argument.

And it's wrong. It was wrong for the soldiers in Nanking to commit rape and murder on civilians (or anyone, for that matter), even though they warned them in advance. The prior warning shouldn't give a green light to do whatever you want to do.

not like we did not warn them

and the bomb was no worse then Japans actions

........

All those companies don't pay taxes or their employees don't?

In WW2, the government nullified many radio patents to get the innovation going real fast. ............

my understanding was that Edwin Armstrong (Inventor of FM radio amongst many other things) handed the all of his patents to the US government during world war II.

You may be referring to world war I.

1942:With US in midst of World War II, Armstrong gives U.S. government all FM patents for free.

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/empire/timeline/

I call you "Baby Killers". There hasn't been an aerial dogfight component to "fighter" aircraft since Korea.

So stuff your "Top Gun", Nazi bullshit.

It would be an insult to men like Rudolph Galland to compare drone pilots to the Luftwaffe These aircraft - manned and otherwise - are built to reproduce the horror and WAR CRIMES of Guernica, on an order of magnitude undreamed of by Hitler or Goering.
http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/glevel_1/1_bombing.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/PicassoGuernica.jpg

Because female brains tend to focus on and remember details longer, and because the oxytocin girls produce has the effect of causing them to care more about connections and relationships than boys, this can lead to the terrible trio of social conflict for girls: they notice it more, they remember it more and they care more!

Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the women are feeling victimized, and reading a hell of a lot more into it than was actually intended, and that is at least partially their problem to deal with if they're going to work with a lot of men?

What you're asking is for all men in a given field to change the way they think and behave because some women feel uncomfortable. Excuse me, but fuck you. I, and every man I know, try by and large to be decent people. Unfortunately, there is culture clash. The only way through that is to have BOTH SIDES compromise a bit. Getting pissy about every perceived slight is NOT a good way to win friends. Being a frat-boy isn't, either. But I see a hell of a lot more victims feeling entitled to be "treated with respect" due to someone not living up to their expectations than I do 'Bluto' Blutarsky's just being misogynist assholes.

Well how about my own personal experience? My cableco/teleco duopoly hasn't moved a damned foot in ANY direction in a good 20 years. My mom had her house built 29 YEARS ago and was exactly two blocks from where the cable ended. Want to guess how far she is from the cable now? Can you say two blocks boys and girls? i think you can.

And that "free market" bullshit doesn't work when it comes to the cableco/teleco duopoly. case in point the above area where my mom lives. No less than 3 times have little independents tried to set up to service the area, and every. single. time. they were crushed by the duopoly. One of which was done by a good friend and former classmate who paid for a T1 to be run out there and was selling access. Basically what happens is this- someone provides access, local teleco starts to lose their $60 a month 33k dialup customers ( you read that right, $60 for 33k dialup) and then simply raise the rates on backbone access so damned high there is no way the customer can afford it and the independent goes under. My buddy talked to a lawyer and was told anywhere from 2-10 million would be required to sue, along with a decade or so to deal with all the bullshit tactics the teleco lawyers would pull. So naturally he just walked away.

As for more citations how many do you want? Because this isn't exactly some big secret here, we gave them 200 billion+ in tax breaks and other "bonuses" in return for nationwide broadband and all we got was the finger. So if you are a capitalist you should be ALL FOR seizing the last mile, after all we paid a huge amount for a service that we didn't get. We should give the teleco/cableco duopoly 90 days to pay back the money with interest, or we seize the whole damned thing. After all if a company rips off its customers you sue and seize the assets to pay the debt, yes? And I'd say robbing the public to the tune of 200 billion plus interest is more than enough to warrant seizing of their assets.

If the vaccination works, you won't get sick, no matter what the rest of the world does.

Incorrect. With a sufficient number of vaccinated individuals in a population, an effect call heard immunity comes into play. This protects people who cannot get the vaccine (people allergic to it, etc.) or who the vaccine does not work on.

There has been a 4 year study done in Ontario on this with respect to seasonal flu vaccines and found favorable results.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/science/july-dec08/fluvaccine_10-31.html

Both shows can be a little preachy, but the Twilight Zone can get a little overboard. But then again, Rod Serling intended that when he created the show. Speaking of Rod Serling, a great show about him and his creations at PBS

What took us so long?

I read your post. You basically think evolution is only a minor force. I think I pretty much falsified that claim. We are not the product of some Grand Tinkerer taking DNA sequences of a shelf so that species A grows long hair and species B has flagellum. Evolutionary isn't a minor force, it is THE force that shapes life. As one of the greatest of all evolutionary researchers, Theodosius Dobzhansky once wrote, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution."

I recommend you read it. It isn't terribly long, and pretty much shows why you're wrong:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/2/text_pop/l_102_01.html

That company was Enron, and the federal government, specifically the FERC, refused to investigate on a party line vote (GOP majority) at the time, because 1) it was making a hell of a lot of money for their corporate friends, and 2) it was damaging the political career of Democrat California governor Gray Davis, so much so it culminated with Davis's recall and election of Schwarnegger.

Hm, a California-based utility company with contracts from the State of California failing to live up to its obligations to provide power in the State of California.

Recall that the White House at the time repeatedly refereed to the blackouts in the most populous state in the union, and the 5th largest world economy as "California's problem.")

Yes, those silly Americans and their use of "Federalism" to preserve the rights of individuals, communities, and states. How savage and primitive of them.

I mean, if we were to actually admit that the burden of policing California's utilities contracts rested squarely on California that would be terrible! All those Democrat state senators, state representatives, and Governor Davis might actually be perceived to have failed in their basic duties of governing. On top of that the cost of the investigation would've been paid out of California's budget, rather than using resources paid for by all 50 states.That simply won't do!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/

Moral of the story: You can't trust deregulation

Yes, because you can obviously trust regulation to be above-board, effective, and fiscally responsible. It isn't like certain U.S. Senators used the regulatory powers of the National Government to promote corrupt Government Sponsored Enterprises to take over the mortgage market, poison it with bad loans, and back those bad loans with the promise of tax-payer funded bail-outs. They'd never have taken massive campaign contributions and sweetheart VIP mortgage deals as kickbacks. Nobody would ever be foolish enough to entrust people who committed such deed with leadership positions in the U.S. Senator, right?

Let's get real here. "Deregulation" is a red herring. Increasing regulation Volume rather than regulation Quality just leads to increased pay-days for lawyers, more patronage jobs for bureaucrats, and more cover for massive graft and corruption.

That said I have heard stories about corruption in the US over energy. I believe some company in California was producing rolling blackouts to increase the price or some such.[citation needed] But that doesn't have much to do with supply and demand.

That company was Enron, and the federal government, specifically the FERC, refused to investigate on a party line vote (GOP majority) at the time, because 1) it was making a hell of a lot of money for their corporate friends, and 2) it was damaging the political career of Democrat California governor Gray Davis, so much so it culminated with Davis's recall and election of Schwarnegger. Recall that the White House at the time repeatedly refereed to the blackouts in the most populous state in the union, and the 5th largest world economy as "California's problem.") The most important thing to remember about the California power crisis was that it was caused by the deregulation of the electrical production industry in California. Far from creating a market where power would be cheap, an electrical trading cartel was created where supply was manipulated for private profit, and public harm. (Also recall that in free market, both sides of a transaction benefit.)

You can read more at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/

Moral of the story: You can't trust deregulation

thanks to the Freedom of Information Act that was passed by Democrats over the objections of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Scalia.

What you are referring to are the amendments to the FOIA in 1974. The FOIA itself was passed in 1966 and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

President Ford vetoed the amendments to FOIA, but was overridden by congress. The House voted 371-31 to override the veto, and the Senate voted 65-27.

If you want to read the full story, I suggest looking here, as there are links to scans of the actual documents involved.

Weirdly enough, Johnson was against FOIA, and Rumsfeld was originally for it.

Do you really think the bullshit in Iraq or Afghanistan is a full showing of force for the American military?

Um, yes it is, considering that the USA isn't in a total-war economy. Now, how are you guys going to pay for all of this, and what about the soldiers on 2 or 3 consecutive tours of duty just to keep numbers up. Perhaps you think conscription should be enacted so that the USA can show just how big its manly parts are.

They're political occupations designed to stagnate and fail.

The people who enacted these wars were idiots. They worked out the immediate problem, and had no effective long-term strategy. For example, there was no plan for an Iraqi insurgency - Rumsfeld and co. actually believed that they could invade Iraq, remove Saddam, and then hand over the keys to the Iraqi people who would then kiss their feet. Crazy eh? (see here)

It won't be until the next real war, where American soil is under threat of attack or takeover, that the US military will unleash some of the new toys its been hiding.

The USA is continuously getting involved in wars, and experimenting with its new shiny technology. It's almost like it's part of the R&D process. For example, Iraq II used a completely different military doctrine than Iraq I, based on new communications technology.

The last war when American soil was under threat, was the war of 1812. The US invaded Canada, and then got it's ass kicked in a land war. Superior naval technology ensured that survival of the USA. The Webster book of facts lists the USA as the "victor".

US soil was never under threat from the Japanese in WWII, whose territorial ambitions were regionally restricted. Japan did threaten and capture the Philippines, which was occupied by the USA since the turn of the century. (See here.)

Fact is, since 1812, USA soil has never been under threat, but the USA has also had a sobering pattern of hawkish military action and propaganda. WWI and WWII are exceptions, where the USA became involved in extant wars.

Turn off FOX news and read a book!

like a year ago on Nova.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/program.html

And from the documentary, it was obvious that the discovery had been made some time prior to the making of the show.

So this is old news. I guess dinosaur news travels slowly.

Show me the European country that has banned any of the activities you listed.

First off, it would be more fair to use either France or England as a comparison for a "socialized medicine" system than Germany, which retains essentially a private practice and hospital medical system; albeit with price controls (Germany was one of the health systems featured in Sick Around the World on Frontline). Take the English system, which is heavily socialized, as the example (not an unfair comparison since England and America enjoy the "special friendship" and are closer as two peoples than the French and other European systems). In Britain one sees high taxes on alcohol and tobacco use in addition to public advertising campaigns by the National Health Service against unhealthy activities and lifestyles, all promoted using public money (since the public is ultimately footing the bill for the NHS after all). The doctors also receive bonuses if their patients meet health statistic targets (BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc) AND if they quit smoking. As you might suppose, such campaigns and incentives create intense pressure on people to conform to the state messages concerning too many fast food cheeseburgers, smoking, drinking, etc in addition to the taxes. It may not be a ban in force of law, but it could be considered abusive or at least bothersome to have the government constantly saying that you are a baaaad person for not giving up smoking or eating too many cheeseburgers or being overweight etc. Frankly, I don't think most Americans want the government that much into their personal business, especially when it comes to their lifestyle choices and health care. For all the history that we share in common with the English, we Americans are different when it comes to appropriate amount of and intrusiveness of government into the lives of ordinary citizens.

So is it an outright ban? Not yet, but the first step to ultimately banning some substance or activity is to start beating it down in the public debate until one thing leads to another and the substance or activity in question really is banned (or effectively so through regulations and taxes). We see this here in the United States in the abortion debates where each side fights vehemently against any further restrictions on one side and any further expansions on the other (each side views the loss of an INCH to the other side as an absolute loss and a move towards outright permission or a complete ban). Personally, I would prefer not to get started down that road myself with health choices here in America.

That has nothing to do with philanthropy. If you want to use a anonymity proxy, you're free to do so. And that would give you better protection than Scroogle, which only hides your IP from Google. If you're not bothered by other web servers logging your IP, then why would you be concerned with Google? Of all the online megacorporations out there to fear having your privacy invaded by, you're worried about Google?

If you don't want to be tracked by your credit card purchases, then pay for your purchases with cash. It would be unreasonable (and unwise) to ask that banks and credit firms store no digital records of your financial activities. Likewise, in age of information and with the ubiquity of the world wide web, you can't expect there to be no trace of your online activities anywhere (unless you live completely off the grid). You can't go frolicking through the snow and then get mad at the snow for preserving your footprints. Now, you can take care to conceal your tracks, or even create misleading tracks to fool anyone who might be following you. But the only way to ensure there's no trace of your presence is to not tread on the snowy ground.

So, instead of expecting search providers to keep no server logs, store no cookies, and store no session data (things that all modern websites do), perhaps it'd make more sense to focus on other areas of privacy protection that actually matter. For instance:

• Use secure connections when sending & receiving sensitive and/or confidential data.
• Take care to keep your computer free of spyware, trojans, keyloggers, and other types of malware, and just being security conscious in general.
• When you see a luxury car sitting in the lobby of a movie theater with a kiosk next to it asking you to fill out your personal info to be entered into the sweepstakes, DO NOT ENTER INTO THE SWEEPSTAKES. This also applies to online freebies, like free magazine subscriptions, iPods, thumbdrives, etc., that require you to submit your personal info. That's how you end up on the "prospects" lists used by spammers and telemarketers.
• Make sure your ISP, cellphone provider and any other businesses you may have a contract with, are respecting your privacy and not selling your info to 3rd parties as many of them do.
• Lastly, choose your online services (e.g. e-mail, personal blog, search engine, photo sharing service, etc.) carefully. Read the privacy policy of websites you give your personal info to. Don't sign up for an account at or give your email address to shady websites that don't have a reasonable privacy policy available for reading.

IMO, it's much more important to choose a search provider you can trust than to try to obtain perfect anonymity (which is simply unrealistic). The reason people like Google is because they provide the best search results as well as many innovative/useful auxiliary services. Now, if they couldn't collect search data, then they wouldn't be able to analyze them to identify search trends, usage patterns, etc. that have helped them to optimize their search algorithm over the years. Likewise, it's only by collecting this type of anonymized search data that they're able to offer many of their useful derivative services or user-friendly features incorporated into Google search or Gmail.

Google has shown that they can be trusted with user data (at least with regards to Google Search. Orkut and YouTube may be a different matter.) by being the only major search provider to outright refuse to hand over search records to the DoJ. They have also expended considerable resources lobbying for intellectual property reform, green technology, net neutrality, open w

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bioterror/vacc_nf.html is the best description I found of how vaccines are made.

As a side note, all the new biology books that I've seen (2) don't consider viruses to be alive. So instead of alive/dead, they are active/inactive.

While I disagree with your aggressively hostile attitude towards the Galileoscope project, an Internet-connected scope sounds like a really good idea. I took a quick Google & found a couple already, such as The Internet Telescope but what they seem to lack is real-time control. Sending off an email to request an image of something that a backyard astronomer cannot see is cool, but lacks the visceral thrill of twiddling the knobs.

I remember seeing a robot arm on the Internet in the early days - you could move it, stack blocks, etc. Maybe something like that would be interesting - mount a scope on a tripod with servos (a ham radio satellite tracking mount, maybe?) with a camera (what type?) mounted to the end.

I'm going to need a good think about this, and I sadly lack a place to *put* it. Thanks for the idea, though. I wish you'd signed a name to your post so I could credit you if I manage to go somewhere with this.

Tablizer wrote: " It's hard to say what factors weigh in leaders' heads. We cannot rip out their neurons and study them in a lab[1], so we must use available clues to guess"

The Public Broadcasting System show "The American Experience" has a documentary about Ronald Reagan, entitled "Reagan" (released in 1998) that demonstrates the factors that weighed in the leader's heads to end the Cold War.

Tablizer wrote: "We should thank our lucky stars (or the Anthropic Principle) that we are still here......so far. The Cold War played with fire many times."

Actually, we should thank our lucky Star Wars.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, better known as "Star Wars") was a proposed missile defense shield that was championed by Reagan, and according to the documentary I mentioned above, it had a profound effect on the outcome of the Cold War, particularly because it was such a powerful negotiating point in 1986 at a summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, between President Reagan and Gorbachev. In the transcript excerpt from the "Reagan" documentary below, Gorbachev says that the reason the Cold War ended was due to that meeting (I've highlighted the quotes in bold for easier locating). I've included a long excerpt to show how important a role SDI played.

Narr: Reagan presented SDI as a benign shield. The soothing rhetoric may have disguised another motive.

James Baker III, Chief of Staff : I think President Reagan saw SDI as being yet another pressure on the Soviets, as something that they could not withstand and I think he was right. Whether it would work or not, it was a heck of a challenge to the Soviet ah empire, which was having a very difficult time competing ah economically and ah otherwise.

Alexander Bessmertnykh, Foreign Ministry, USSR: The first reaction was really frightening. I mean people were just enormously frightened by that, by that program.

Pavel Palazchenko, Foreign Ministry, USSR: In part, I think, because it probably revealed in their minds the impossibility for the Soviet Union to really compete in that area because of our, uh, technological inferiority at that time.
[...]
Narr: As they walked back to rejoin their delegations, Reagan invited Gorbachev to Washington. Gorbachev reciprocated with an invitation to Moscow. On the second day Reagan found Gorbachev ready to talk about "building down" their arsenals. But determined to kill SDI. Reagan resisted.

Tarasenko: Gorbachev was visibly irritated. He said, why you are repeating the same and the same thing to me. I've heard that many times. Stop this rubbish. Tell me something more. It was literally so, it was a harsh discussion.

Narr: But at the end, the mood was warm. Reagan left Geneva with SDI intact. And an agreement: a "nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."

[....]

Narr: In October 1986 Reagan met Gorbachev for the second time in a hastily called summit at Reykjavik, Iceland. Once again, his conservative backers, now largely out of government, were worried he would seek an arms agreement just for the sake of an agreement.

Nofziger: I said, well Mr. President, I'm here because there's a lot of people worried that you're going to go to Reykjavik and give away the store, and he said Lin, he said Linwood cause he always called me Linwood which is not my name. He said Linwood, I don't want you ever to worry about that. He said I still have the scars on my back from when I fought the communists in Hollywood. He said don't ever worry about it.

Narr: Gorbachev had his own problems. He needed an arms agreement. He could not manage both economic reform and the arms race, especially SDI. He would try his best to make Reagan give away the store.

while i do not know if slashdot posts are monitored, NOVA (PBS) had an interesting documentary called -> 'The Spy Factory'.
for the truly lazy -> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/program.html
here is a short synopsis -> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/about.html
the most telling part is:
"NOVA follows the trail of just one typical e-mail sent from Asia to the U.S. Streaming as pulses of light into a fiber-optic cable, it travels across the Pacific Ocean, coming ashore in California, and finally reaching an AT&T facility in San Francisco, where the cable is split and the data sent to a secret NSA monitoring room on the floor below. This enables the NSA to intercept not only most Asian e-mail messages but also the entire U.S. internal Internet traffic."

while i do not know if slashdot posts are monitored, NOVA (PBS) had an interesting documentary called -> 'The Spy Factory'.
for the truly lazy -> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/program.html
here is a short synopsis -> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/about.html
the most telling part is:
"NOVA follows the trail of just one typical e-mail sent from Asia to the U.S. Streaming as pulses of light into a fiber-optic cable, it travels across the Pacific Ocean, coming ashore in California, and finally reaching an AT&T facility in San Francisco, where the cable is split and the data sent to a secret NSA monitoring room on the floor below. This enables the NSA to intercept not only most Asian e-mail messages but also the entire U.S. internal Internet traffic."

Um... no. That didn't happen. How the hell did you get modded up?

But don't take my word for it - take PBS's word for it: Media Recount: Bush Won the 2000 Election

Given that PBS in general and News Hour in particular are notoriously liberal, if they say Bush won, Bush won.

By "most of us" you mean the few people who run and work for insurance companies; thus making big profits from the current system, right? The rest of us want health care without some company making a profit by denying us health care.

Currently, health insurance profit-seeking executives make decisions on whether a device is medically necessary or not, and their bias is worse than you are aware. Far worse than any decisions I've seen made by Medicare. In my personal anecdotal sampling, Medicare has provided excellent care for friends and family. Private insurance? When available, it was always a battle, from waivers, to initial denials, to actually getting doctors and hospitals their checks; and friends going bankrupt when they couldn't afford insurance or were denied for pre-existing conditions (diabetes).

Want to talk about naive? Watch this interview with an (ex) health insurance executive.

Become Neil Degrasse Tyson's facebook friend. He's making science interesting again, especially with Nova Science Nows profiles on science. If science oriented kids knew there a lot of people like them, they'd be more likely to pursue it as a career.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/cosmic/

Although I like the gist of your comment I have a nitpick:

The risk of being injured by a nuclear meltdown today is on par with being injured by lightning.

Your risk of injury from nuclear meltdown is orders of magnitude less than getting hit by lightning. Think about it, people get hit by lightning all the time in comparison the number of nuclear meltdowns in the nation. And no one was "injured" at our last nuclear meltdown (Three Mile Island) so even given an incredibly rare meltdown you have a incredibly minute chance of injury unless you happened to be working in the containment building.

Now, Three Mile Island did release radioactive contamination to the atmosphere, but the affect on the surrounding population was slight. Of course, not everyone agrees. I can't speak to the findings of the various researchers but I can say that several of Mr. Wasserman's claims are either misleading or flat-out wrong:

The public was told there was no danger of an explosion. But there was, as there had been at Michigan's Fermi reactor in 1966. In 1986, Chernobyl Unit Four did explode.

Even the Chernobyl explosion was non-nuclear, caused by the water in the coolant tubes being instantly converted to steam during the accident and literally blowing the lid off of Chernobyl. A hydrogen bubble was present in the reactor core after the meltdown but could not have exploded without the presence of oxygen to combust with, but oxygen is kept out of the coolant due to corrosion concerns.

there is no safe dose of radiation, and none will ever be found.

Well there is no set level under which you can say that a person will be just fine, but at the same time each and every single one of us live in a field of ionizing radiation from natural/cosmic sources all the time. Life has been adapted to low-level ionizing radiation due to this. If it were not the case then therapies such as medical radioimaging would not be performed, not to mention procedures like X-raying. For the same reason, people are allowed to fly on airplanes even though the radiation you receive in flight is much higher than on the ground due to less atmospheric shielding while in flight. Mr. Wasserman is correct that radiation damage is more harmful to fetuses, unborn babies, and children due to the reduced amount of time available to repair the damage before cell division. However we let pregnant women fly so apparently there must be some level of ionizing radiation that we believe unborn children can withstand.

Much of the rest of his assertions is a they-said/I-said where he discounts studies and government reports that disprove his claim by invoking the ever-popular conspiracy theory and then he submits his claims based on experts who agree with his claim. I can say people in Harrisburg didn't suffer symptoms, as I've certainly never walked door to door there. I can say that the trial court in Pennsylvania where the TMI cases were adjudicated ended up throwing out the lawsuits due to lack of evidence.

In addition Mr. Wasserman talks about "anecdotal" evidence of "Many [central Pennsylvanians] quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by some of the men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima." This is nice and all except that the metallic taste is due to gamma radiation, which was produced in copious amounts during the Hiroshima bombing, but not so much in the radioactive release from TMI (otherwise there would have been more than "anecdotal" evidence for its existence). I'm not sure if Mr. Wasserman was leading the questions or simply allowing peoples fears to guide what they thought they were feeling but this kind of effect is very far-fetched.

Speaking of