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The parent possibly is a troll, but it expresses a common wrong belief. English speech continues changing. Do You Speak American? was an entertaining look at how it has changed. http://www.pbs.org/speak/ In particular, look here.

So you read this Cringely column too?

I apologize, you are right, that was a poor example. This article does a better job of covering the issues faced by civilly married homosexual couples.

If Apple reverse engineered the Windows API

They don't have to. Remember way back when Microsoft poured a lot of money into Apple and they came up with a technology cross-license? Apperantly, that included the Windows API. That makes it more of an effort of porting than it is reverse engineering.

Apple has a contract with Microsoft, signed way back in 1997, that gave them rights to use the Windows API through 2002 (see here about two-thirds of the way down). Windows XP came out just before that contract ended, so theoretically Apple has access to the XP API.

Despite that, you're probably right that it would be easier and safer to require a real Windows install underneath. Apple has always been about things Just Working, and using the real Windows code is the surest path to that.

So you still don't accept the facts that Ken Lay did not "build Enron from nothing"? Well I guess your ignorance wins. We should inform everyone else how wrong they are.

Oh look, reference.com thinks Northern Natural Gas, one of the two companies that merged to form Enron, was formed in the 1930's... well, maybe Ken Lay had that "time travel" thing down http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Enron_Corpora tion

They think he became CEO the year after Enron was formed http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/infrastructure/powe r/enron_time.html

Man, maybe I would expect it from some "reference.com" place and from the hippie PBS, but not from you USA Today... you've changed http://www.usatoday.com/money/energy/2001-11-28-en ron-chronology.htm

Answers.com has always been b.s. so it's no wonder they're in on the lies too http://www.answers.com/topic/kenneth-lay

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/miracle/stemcells.htm l

http://www.time.com/time/2001/stemcells/

http://www.law4u.com.au/lil/ls_stem.html

I watched the nova from the first link shortly after it first aired, below is the gist (IIRC)..

Basically, Bush decreed that scientists would recieve no federal funds for embrionic stem cell research based on new cell lines. He allowed the use of about 65 previously established lines. Unfortunately about half of those are ill-suited to study or contaminated.

It's the destruction of the fetus that he claims to object to. He's actually created a false dichotomy here: the new lines would be derived from aborted fetuses, which will be destroyed anyway.

Here's one with video: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/

Dude, I mean, like, really... Help me out here because I'm struggling...

Do you really believe that Bush / Clinton are fighting "evil"? Do you really believe that there are people out there who are "evil"? What kind of fairy land are you living in? Do you think the world is something out of Lord of the Rings? I mean seriously, dude, we're not fighting dark legions of hell-spawned, fire-breathing, brain-eating zombies. They're humans, who eat, sleep and crap just the same as you do. No, seriously, they don't eat brains.

"Evil" from your standpoint is "courage" from theirs. Ever heard the phrase "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"? As far as the public is concerned, the "good guys" are whoever you get told they are. Do you really, honestly, think CNN will say "Hey, we're stealing their land, money and resources, but meh, we've got bigger guns right now so fuck 'em". No, they word it in terms like "liberating the country's resources", "protecting the world from terrorism" and "allowing market forces to decide how wealth is distributed". You're kidding yourself if you really believe that the world had anything to fear from the half-starved badly equipped Iraqi army, or Saddam's rusty, decomposed chemical weapons that were about as dangerous as a bottle of Drain-O. And never mind that some societies like Chile don't want market forces, they actively choose socialist structures. But hey, according to guys like Kissinger, they are only allowed to elect governments that suit the agendas of US corporations.

Back to my point, consider the following people, who were considered "evil" or "terrorists" by authorities at some point in their lives:

* Nelson Mandela
* Marin Luther King
* George Washington

The list goes on. Remember this next time you see the label "terrorist" being applied to someone. Remember that anyone you put the label "terrorist" on, you put them in company with the people above. Ask yourself, "Are they really a terrorist, or do they just want to be able to drink water without having to pay Bechtel?". Also remember, America's founding fathers were all terrorists, according to Great Britain. I wonder who in today's world will be considered terrorists in 100 years.

The Darkside http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v iew/

Rumsfields War http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pent agon/view/

War Behind Closed Doors http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq /view/

Pretty much sums it up. These People saw Nixons spanking as a terrible stripping of presidential manhood, and set themselves about to "RESTORE" it. Complete with wiretaps and torture on demand. Dick and Don are in it for the long haul. I don't think they realize what lies at the end of the road they are building. (We would be lucky if it is another good ole fashioned presidential spanking. Can you impeach an entire cabinet?.)

They haven't changed much in the last 20 years. I expect them to act with the same lack of integrity and political chickanery they always have. This is your fathers Nixon administration.

The only good thing to come from any of this is Jon Stewart's Dead-On single syllable impressions. Waaaaunnnggh! Waaaaunnnggh! Heh,Heh,Heh!

The Darkside http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v iew/

Rumsfields War http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pent agon/view/

War Behind Closed Doors http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq /view/

Pretty much sums it up. These People saw Nixons spanking as a terrible stripping of presidential manhood, and set themselves about to "RESTORE" it. Complete with wiretaps and torture on demand. Dick and Don are in it for the long haul. I don't think they realize what lies at the end of the road they are building. (We would be lucky if it is another good ole fashioned presidential spanking. Can you impeach an entire cabinet?.)

They haven't changed much in the last 20 years. I expect them to act with the same lack of integrity and political chickanery they always have. This is your fathers Nixon administration.

The only good thing to come from any of this is Jon Stewart's Dead-On single syllable impressions. Waaaaunnnggh! Waaaaunnnggh! Heh,Heh,Heh!

The Darkside http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v iew/

Rumsfields War http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pent agon/view/

War Behind Closed Doors http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq /view/

Pretty much sums it up. These People saw Nixons spanking as a terrible stripping of presidential manhood, and set themselves about to "RESTORE" it. Complete with wiretaps and torture on demand. Dick and Don are in it for the long haul. I don't think they realize what lies at the end of the road they are building. (We would be lucky if it is another good ole fashioned presidential spanking. Can you impeach an entire cabinet?.)

They haven't changed much in the last 20 years. I expect them to act with the same lack of integrity and political chickanery they always have. This is your fathers Nixon administration.

The only good thing to come from any of this is Jon Stewart's Dead-On single syllable impressions. Waaaaunnnggh! Waaaaunnnggh! Heh,Heh,Heh!

I've worked as a volunteer to help families of children awaiting transplants at the University Hospitals in Cleveland for the past 14 years since my daughter died while waiting on a heart. As our doctor said, my decision to marry a non-Chinese woman (I'm Chinese and my wife is British) doomed my little girl to death.

In light of recent techniques, I think your doctor was being rather liberal in his interpretation of the facts.

you are right on. diabetes has an incredibly behavioral component.

okay, we can parse words. some people are genetically prone to live a lifestyle that will make them fat. is their lifestyle or their genetics the cause of their fatness?

in any case, the zone diet is an incredible diet - given it is the definition of moderate.

if a person genetically prone to gain weight gets behaves according to the zone diet, the chances are great the weigh goes - and so the risk factors associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease will be greatly reduced.

don't believe me? read up on it. test it - it is a moderate diet - low fat meat, fruits, veggies, nuts, mfat oils. i'd always recommend making out a menu and running it by your doc first.

good luck - it will likely change your life.

it changed my life... it changed robbin's life..

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1401/features/robin.htm

after lsoing 45 lbs in 6 months... robin answere the following question:

What did you like and dislike about your particular method of weight loss

like this:

What I really like is how good you feel when you are "in the Zone". You are rarely hungry, and you just feel really, really good - it has a tremendous impact on your mood - unlike other diets I've been on.

i *know* how she feels - and it is AMAZING this response trumped "i can't believe i've lost 45 lbs in 6 month!"

1. Why does the same American government that sends soldiers to be permanently mutilated in Iraq refuse to allow the full range of stem cell research that could, one day, re-grow the limbs torn apart by pointless, wasteful war? Why should we condemn the mutilated soldiers to a life of crappy prosthetics?

Stem cell treatment would result in a one-off billable event which, while good for the soldier concerned, is not good for anyone else.
By contrast, prosthetics require continual maintenance and parts replacement. It's all very nice that the government supplies these latest and greatest prosthetics to their crippled soldiers, but without a commitment to lifetime support, they'll end up being an economic burden to their owners and an income stream for the manufacturer and maintainer.

2. More fundamentally, why does the American government send soldiers off to sacrifice their lives in Iraq when most Americans, including American politicians, refuse to make any sacrifice for the sake of that war? No one is sacrificing. Only the soldiers are sacrificing -- their lives.

The rest of the US _is_ making sacrifices, but you're defraying most of those sacrifices to the future. Since the war is being paid for by debt, it's more like a mortgage than a purchase agreement. The bright side of all this is that the money being spent is not vanishing. The bulk of that trillion dollars will go to to the contractors pbs opensecrets who are running the war for you.

It's probably best to visualise the Iraq war as a large siphon sucking wealth from you and your children's futures into the vaults of Bechtel, Fluor, Halliburton etc. The owners of those companies will then obviously ensure the money is spent wisely and fairly, to the benefit of all.

Does this apply to the CIA falsifying intelligence to secure a slice of the defence budget?

Cheney wanted information that linked Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein

But they weren't getting that information from the CIA. And so he put pressure, I think, on Rumsfeld and on the Pentagon to come up with their own estimates.

Inside the Pentagon bureaucracy, Rumsfeld could easily and quietly grow a nearly invisible operation.

They needed an office that would produce the intelligence that the CIA wouldn't produce. Rumsfeld said, "I can solve your problem," and he put Douglas Feith on that issue.

So they're going to do their own analysis. They're going to show what the CIA's been missing all along about the true relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda.

They needed people with experience in the world of intelligence, but they hired politically connected policy analysts.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/e tc/script.html

The sun is already being blocked by particulate pollution. This has actually been obscuring the full effect of global warming.

There was a good Nova on Global dimming, "Dimming the Sun":

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

Robert X. Cringely discussed something similar on 27 May 2004. His discussion was in the context of VoIP providers trying to get a wi-fi network rolled out, but without the VoIP provider needing to buy & operate thousands of APs.

... the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac's wireless ISP (WISP). Going further, if a bunch of your friends in town had similarly configured WRT54Gs, they could seamlessly work together ...

[...]

There is an obvious business opportunity here, especially for VoIP providers like Vonage, Packet8 and their growing number of competitors. If I was running a VoIP company, I'd find a way to sell my service through all these new Wireless ISPs. The typical neighborhood WISP doesn't really want to do anything beyond keeping the router plugged-in and the bills paid, so I as a VoIP vendor would offer a bundled phone-Internet service for, say, $30 per month. I handle the phone part, do all the billing and split the gross sales with the WISP based the traffic on his router or routers. If one of my users walks around with a WiFi cordless phone, roaming from router to router, it doesn't matter since my IP-based accounting system will simply adjust the payments as needed.

The result is a system with economics with which a traditional local phone company simply can't compete.

That's just one idea how these little routers might be used. The actual killer app will probably be something altogether different, but I am convinced this is the platform that will enable it. And that's because what we are talking about here isn't just what you can do with a WRT54G, but what you will soon be able to do with almost any wireless access point.

Instead of funding the development of in-country production facilities to make AIDS medicines for local distribution, they fund the purchase of western manufactured medicines.

A good place to start is Antony Thomas' film "Tank Man" about the famous film of the guy who blocked the tanks' advance into Tienanmen Square.

The American propaganda machine is confused by huge amounts of money to be made out of China's slave labour. That's good for capitalism, just as it was under the Nazi's when Hitler's Germany was the only European country where US investment increased (and at the incredible rate of 48% over just a few years) so a solution has to be found which allows China to be "most favoured trading nation" but official disapproval of communism still expressed.

The solution settled on seems to be to pretend that the Chinese government "has seen the light" and is introducing capitalism. This can be painted as a victory for western values while the reality that the vast majority of China is still available for work at what might as well be zero pay can be used to make massive profits for multi-nationals who are "in" with the Oligarchs who rule it.

The new middle classes in China are shiney and bright but they are a tiny minority in a vast sea of repressed people on the edge of starvation with a life expectancy which is actually decreasing. They look good in documentaries about the upcomming Chinese Olympics and suchlike but their real purpose is to make a west-friendly face for investment and political photo-ops.

Cross-reference both of those made-for-radio essays with Bob Cringely's latest article. It all leads me to believe that the best "solution" to apply to Net Neutrality at this point is more "benign neglect" -- and on top of that, my paranoia operates at such a hair-trigger that I wonder what other intrusive regulations are going to get slid in along with whatever legislation gets put forward and will certainly not be vetoed by the smirking chimp.

You can find the interview here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june06/ne tneutrality_06-22.html

I did not get to hear the NPR story but did watch the NewsHour on PBS last night. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june06/ne tneutrality_06-22.html is the link to the commentary between Paul Misener and Scott Cleland.

Not having any prior knowledge or interest in this story I must say this is going to be a hard one to solve. On one hand I fear my government whenever they get involved in something that is working reasonably well already. On the other hand I know the big Telco's won't lobby for anything unless it is in their financial interest. Reading Slashdot comments above leads me to believe most web savvy people are on the side of net neutrality.

I think this is one of the sure-fire ways to start a flame-war on slashdot... and is ridiculous.

                        Your post may 'expose' the asinine grandparent post, but also doesn't answer the valid point it raises. The question you/ (science) needs to answer is if we (mankind) are to blame for the rise in temperature, or if we can even stop the warming trend. If we are not to blame, what evidence, (moral/ethical/scientific), is there that we should do anything to stop it, assuming we could?
                        When looking at temperature models, it is important to take TIME in to consideration. Yes, we are probably the warmest we have been in 400 years... possibly in over 100,000 years.
                        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/etc/graphs.html [pbs.org] (NOVA) - Note that the pictures don't overlay the correlation, (let me say that word again; CORRELATION), between the two. Take a look at these others;
                        http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/vost ok.co2.gif [ornl.gov]
                        http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400 000yrfig.htm [freeserve.co.uk] - (This is also a good read)
                        As you can see, we are on a warming trend, and are not yet as warm as it has reached in the non-industrialized past. Either way, there seems to be a strong force in the earth to bring this heating cycle back down, and though there is a correlation in carbon and temperature, though it is debatable that .0055% (ppm difernce taken from NOAA site, increase of 55ppm - if you count since the industrial revolution, it might be around .01%) change in the atmosphere is going to cause a huge warming trend. It is more possible that the carbon levels are an indication of another cause, which would be a good reason why they are correlated. (If that is the case, we have contaminated our "warning sign," or indicator with the industrial revolution.) If we act before we know if these two evidences are directly related and not just correlated, we could end-up damaging the cycle/environment even further. Regardless of which camp you reside in, these questions need to be answered. (In my mind, especially the part where less than a tenth of a percent increase could trap enough energy to raise the global temperature several degrees.)

How dare you?!!!!
How could you say this!!!!
Offending pigs like that!
Pigs are cute! http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/pigs/

Microsoft's main problem nowadays, imho, is that it totally lacks focus. They try get into almost everything that some other company has always been very successful at, and clone it badly, instead of innovating.
Microsoft's focus is not the end-user experience or even services, but Windows and Office, and the bonds between them. I'd hate to give advice to this dinosaur of a company, but they really ought to look beyond Windows and instead focus on the users' needs and not the needs of Windows.
Maybe it's time Ballmer goes too? Robert X. Cringely seems to think so: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060615. html

Gates stepping down and Ozzie taking over. You're going to see a lot of former Gates people stepping down as the new leadership cleans house, and Balmer will probably be one of them too.

Cringely has some nice comments on the whole process: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060615. html.

You are not the only one who thinks that lots of people are leaving.

"...look for several dozen of his closest and oldest associates to leave the company in the next four to six weeks, and look for Steve Ballmer to leave, too, within a year."

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060615. html

"So IF THEY DO IT THE RIGHT WAY, [...]look for several dozen of his closest and oldest associates to leave the company in the next four to six weeks, and look for Steve Ballmer to leave, too, within a year."

http://www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/estockmktcrash.htm

You didn't have to be there to know about it.

Now, I'm sure there are exceptions but I think that it would be an interesting survey to compare people who work in dirty grimy environments with people who work in corporate America.

This has been done -- I saw a show (on PBS, not sure which program) where researchers in Germany compared people who lived in the city vs. people who lived in the country (at closer proximity of farm animals, their fecal matter of such, etc. etc.). They were trying to understand why allergies (and other glitches with the human immune system) are primarily a 1st world disease, and are, for the most part, unheard of in the 3rd world.

It was interesting, and the conclusions were that the human immune system, much like every else about our bodies, needs to be "exercised" at an early age for healthy development. The relatively "clean" enviroment of living in sterile enviroments appears to hamper the normal development of our immune system, leading to these diseases.

Ah, some quick searching:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_1 04_07.html

It seems that the show I saw on the German researcher (Erika Von Mutius) is the author of "hygiene hypothesis" we're discussing here, and is being tested by the linked article ...

"'Picture a conversation between Bach, Robert Johnson and John Lennon, in comic book form.' Now *that* would be 'Strange Fruit,' indeed."

I doubt that Bach and Lennon would lynch Johnson, though lynching Black Americans is what "Strange Fruit" is about.

A lot of people like to think things are related. That's why we have scientists and statistics. In this particular case, scientists sampling water supplies of the middle/upper classes actually discovered for a fact that polio was less prevalent in the cleaner water supplies of the middle/upper class, and that reduced exposure in early infanthood or through the mother's immune system led to more crippling cases (the greater severity of polio infection after infanthood was also well researched and understood).

Here are a couple of resources:
http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/n/nycpolio.x ml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/disea ses/polio.html

So now you don't just have to like to think they were related, you can just say the link was scientifically proven.

The seeds of ethnic and political conflict that would culminate in the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda were sown during the first half of the 20th century. After Germany was defeated in World War I, Belgium inherited the territory of "Ruanda-Urundi" as part of the spoils of war. The Belgian colonists divided Rwandan society along ethnic lines, favoring the cattle-owning Tutsi tribesman over the largely agricultural Hutu majority, and soon began to exercise their will through the Tutsi monarchy. Tutsis were given privileged access to colonial schools and placed in better jobs than their neighbors, and in 1935 the colonial administration issued identity cards to distinguish members of the two groups.

The seeds of ethnic and political conflict that would culminate in the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda were sown during the first half of the 20th century. After Germany was defeated in World War I, Belgium inherited the territory of "Ruanda-Urundi" as part of the spoils of war. The Belgian colonists divided Rwandan society along ethnic lines, favoring the cattle-owning Tutsi tribesman over the largely agricultural Hutu majority, and soon began to exercise their will through the Tutsi monarchy. Tutsis were given privileged access to colonial schools and placed in better jobs than their neighbors, and in 1935 the colonial administration issued identity cards to distinguish members of the two groups.

"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is—I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product, ehm, and you say, why is that important? Well, you know, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea. If it weren't for the Mac they would never have that in their products, and, ehm, so, I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success—I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success for the most part—I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products."
                                              — Steve Jobs

Of course even now the branding mindspace is getting filled. Check out "The Persuaders" episode of Frontline (PBS lets you watch it for free). The idea was that consumers got acclaimated to broad comparitive marketing and so the idea of Branding became the one true way. All products are functionally the same so you buy Nikes because they let you "Just do it" or Cheerios because it is what you ate as a child (even if that isn't true). Things are sold to you impicitly now: you see it on the street, everyone else has one, a trusted source advocates for it.

The best part about "The Persuaders" is how even that is starting to have a limited effect. The example they use is Song, Delta's regional service re-branded for the big world. The producers follow the whole branding process...

and how it doesn't work. No one knows what Song is. They remember the adverts but it doesn't link to a need (and thus no way to sell a product to satisfy it). The postscript of the episode is how Song has gone belly-up. Another dead body. Next song.

In an alternate train of thought, it's too bad Charles Robert Richet, the French physiologist mentioned in the article, couldn't have experimented on politicians instead of dogs.... Maybe a precident could have been set that

The population centers are very dense - so cars aren't too useful there

But at the same time, China is grappling with another problem, which may prove much more difficult to solve. In China's largest cities, the worst air pollution is no longer from smokestacks. It's from the tailpipes of cars. Just a few years ago, these crowded streets were nearly deserted. In 1995, the number of cars in all of China stood at a mere two million. Today, the number is 20 million and rising. Beijing has seen the most rapid growth of all, with 400,000 new cars rolling onto the city's roads in 2003 alone.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3109_worl dbal.html

You're not sticking to logic at all. I've explained a well-established philisophical concept with mathmatical underpinnings and you've simply gotten frustrated because you misunderstood it in exactly the way I expected.

Show me the logic in interpreting "something finite cannot completely comphrehend the infinite" as "we shouldn't teach math". If you're at all interested in honest, logical debate, you have to concede at least that that was a knee-jerk reaction on your part, and that it is similar to what I described. The merits of the concept itself is really a secondary issue, which you have not even begun to address- choosing rather to give examples of ways we understand certain aspects of infinite numbers, peppered with smug indirect jabs like "just because you say something is true..." and "I'll stick to logic".

You're not sticking to logic at all. I've explained a well-established philisophical concept with mathmatical underpinnings and you've simply gotten frustrated because you misunderstood it in exactly the way I expected.

Show me the logic in interpreting "something finite cannot completely comphrehend the infinite" as "we shouldn't teach math". If you're at all interested in honest, logical debate, you have to concede at least that that was a knee-jerk reaction on your part, and that it is similar to what I described. The merits of the concept itself is really a secondary issue, which you have not even begun to address- choosing rather to give examples of ways we understand certain aspects of infinite numbers, peppered with smug indirect jabs like "just because you say something is true..." and "I'll stick to logic".

Comparing faith and religious belief to a neurosis or schizophrenic condition is a Freudian way to look at God (and therefore seems to be unquestionably sanctioned by the "scientific" community). But, it is only one way to look at it. The true objective of science is to study all things, whether we believe they are real or not and from multiple perspectives, to determine answers about them. So, if you actually want to understand where people of faith are coming from, you have to study what they believe and whether there is a true basis for believing it. Maybe not in the way a physics or genetic specialist would approach it, but maybe in the way a social scientist does.

Albert Einstein believed in God AND developed the theory of relativity with the belief firmly in his mind that God was the cause of it all. He was unapologetic about that and is on the record as stating so. Yet we do not discredit his work because of his beliefs. Newton, Galileo, Brahe, Copernicus, and others were of the same mind, yet it did not hinder their ability to do solid science. Their only beef about religion was the Vatican's ridiculous interpretation of the nature, composition, and physical workings of the universe. In the case of Copernicus, it's interesting to note that:

"If Copernicus had any genuine fear of publication, it was the reaction of _scientists_, not clerics, that worried him. Other churchmen before him -- Nicole Oresme (a French bishop) in the fourteenth century and Nicolaus Cusanus (a German cardinal) in the fifteenth -- had freely discussed the possible motion of the earth, and there was no reason to suppose that the reappearance of this idea in the sixteenth century would cause a religious stir." (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1987/PSCF9-87Lindber g.html, emphasis added)

The scientists, even then, thought they had all the answers. Boy, were they wrong.

Neither of us own a private library of primary research conducted by ourselves or our own teams of scientists, so we'll both have to rely on Google-driven quote mining. Here is a small cross section sample of articles found around the keywords "research prayer healing". I've deliberately left the titles off of the link list below so that anyone reading this will have less chance of being biased by the headline. Can't do much about the domain names, though, so I'll just have to trust that anyone really interested in knowing a faith-based perspective will actually click those links. I've also deliberately chosen articles from as many viewpoints as possible, including skepdic.com so that a) I won't be accused of cherry-picking and b) so that, as scientists, we can begin to appreciate that there are many ways of looking at things and at least two ways of "knowing" (faith and experimentation).

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/366162p-311 612c.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/23/AR2006032302177.html
http://realityshifters.com/pages/articles/research confirmsdh.html
http://www.csicop.org/sb/2001-12/reality-check.htm l
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/14/AR2005071401695.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.ht ml
http://www.stnews.org/News-1590.htm
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/healing_pr

According to Cringely, the last time WHGIII wrote production software was in 1983. Things were noticeably simpler then than they are now, if only because of the size of the machines.

It doesn't matter, perhaps he is a great programmer, but that's not how he will be remembered.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

The above show answers that dude's speculation. Research from the 90's is just now hitting the news. The comment is not "+5 insightful" it's ignorant. The earth has been dimming due to small particulates from pollution. Causing more clouds, which reflects solar radiation back into space. Particulate pollution has been protecting us from higher ground temperatures. It also causes weather to change. .making droughts in some areas while producing floods in others. Either way the earth *is* warming, albeit slower because of particulate pollution. Estimates based on *science* show that global warming would be over 1 degree C if not for the dimming effect. Ironically, the cleaner our emissions, the faster the Earth will warm.

Globally, solar radiation has dropped between 15 and 30%, this has been confirmed by different sources using different means. . . AND THE EARTH IS STILL GETTING WARMER.

pan evaporation rate has been falling globally. . .see this link
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

I have to wonder if this is part of Google's plan to avoid paying the ISP's extortion fees once the tiered internet ramps up. You know, put a containerized datacenter * at every peering point in the US, and then one of these babies in say 8 states in the US. In network terms, you'll then be so close to all netizens that the ISP's won't be able to slow you down, much.

In Robert X Cringely's speech at the WebmasterWorld PubCon last November, he said that with Google buying a power plant, dark fiber, and putting together a massive network of insane-powerful datacenters ... well, in the future, he thinks Google will become *the* internet. There'll be a power-play of course - a big, probably defiant, act showing the world who's really running things - and then, there'll be the Google internet, running on top of the original internet. In his mind, it'll be faster, simpler, and safer, and (unlike M$), it'll just work.

Most of this is heavy on rumor & speculation, and light on facts ... and I'm certain Googlers watching us talk about it are laughing (and if they're *not* doing what we think they are, perhaps they're also taking note of where they might go from here).

See Robert X Cringely's story from last November: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051117. html

All the same ... Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, NSA having giant datacenters in a small region?

Can you say "giant freaking target"? Think nuke ... or simply EMP (a.k.a. e-bomb) ... and with that in mind, I wonder how well these datacenters are hardened against *these* kinds of threats.

As Gore pointed out in a recent interview with Terry Gross on NPR, during the 2000 campaign there wasn't much obvious difference between the policies advocated by him and Bush. Bush, after he took office, just happened to reneg on many of his campaign promises -- or perhaps they were just insinuations:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=5439305

A notable example of Bush's political disingenuousness was his reversal on a campaign pledge to curtail power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-ju ne01/co2_3-14.html) It's easy to forget now, but Bush ran as a centrist in the 2000 campaign.

Most of the times in America, we wait for disasters to happen before we spend enormous amounts off money and time to fix them.

Most of the times in America, we wait for disasters to happen before we spend enormous amounts off money and time to fix them.

" and that's where the big ad money is"

Well its also extremely badly targeted as in most people don't want to see most of the ads they are bombarded with. Google's ad model is better because it targets the interests of the person looking at them. Internet video could likewise target their audience much better than broadcast can. I for example never buy prescription drugs unless a doctor makes me. I have ZERO desire to be bombarded with drug company ads and in fact find it offensive to sell serious prescription drugs with serious side effect potential like soap, to create demand for them where there is often not need.

Not sure ads are really the only revenue model for Internet video. Google and others are charging a dollar or two to get video on demand, in many cases without ads. I've switched over to watching the Charlie Rose show exclusively through Google video, though granted when its free the day following its first airing on PBS. Charlie Rose is the best show around for intelligent talk. RocketBoom is also doing pretty well though I haven't watched it long enough to be sure its any good. Its kind of an exercise in an attractive blond talking head offering an alternative to conventional news broadcasts.

Relatively affluent people will in fact probably pay small amounts to get shows they like, easily, that they can watch when they want, where they want(on handhelds on a subway or in a carpool) and free of the curse of ads, or at least get targeted ads.

If you can reach a point where a large number of viewers can pay a small amount of money to support content that is interesting to them you could break down the horrors of network programming and TV being dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. TechTV is the best example I can think of programming most geeks loved but wasn't commercially viable in the broadcast model. It might be viable if a half million geeks were willing to pay a buck or two a week to support some of its better shows like Leo Laporte's.

"Good luck paying for all your high-speed bandwidth and priority handling"

Cringely had kind of interesting take on some of this last Friday. He was giving a talk to all the PBS affiliates and he proposed they each put a video server in their local telephone and cable office and target their local markets with video on demand that is cached closer to the viewer. His contention is there is a lot more bandwidth available between the phone and cable company office and homes, than there is between the phone and cable office and the Internet. In this caching model you would only go out over the Internet once to cache the video someone wants. Subsequent viewers would get it faster and without creating the bandwidth crunch on the wider Internet. Its kind of an Akamai caching scheme but geared towards video and much more local.

The biggest flaw in Cringely's pitch was his naivete that the PBS affiliates could just go talk to some guy in the local phone or cable office and drop a non profit video server there. Needless to say the big telephone and cable companies aren't going to just adopt non profit PBS video server, they are going to want their cut, but the idea is still a good one if you could work out a business model the broadband providers would like. It would be a lot better solution than tiering the internet, since the video bandwidth crunch is the rationale companies like BellSouth are proposing for destroying net neutrality.

I recall another Cringely article a while back about a guy who was making a business out of video servers for big apartment complexes I think where he would for example cache every copy of Star Trek on a local server so it was always available to the tenants. I think there is some way to do this which is or at least was legal. At the rate disk capacity is growing you really can cache a lot of video in a local server, maybe we will reach a point you cache more and faster than quality new content is being created that is worth caching.