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Really? Where? Just because canned food is "processed" it does not make it bad for you.

There are countless studies out there regarding the health effects of processed foods. Twenty seconds on Google should answer your question.

And i have never seen a study to support this assertion in any way or form.

Then you haven't looked. You might want to actually study the issue before discussing.

After all bread is processed foods!

[facepalm]

except by the metric, where we actually measure people's ability to drive while talking on the phone?

http://psych.pomona.edu/SRC/Cell%20phone%20study%20summary.pdf

But we now live, we are told, in the Computer Age. What is the outlook for Luddite sensibility? Will mainframes attract the same hostile attention as knitting frames once did? I really doubt it. Writers of all descriptions are stampeding to buy word processors. Machines have already become so user-friendly that even the most unreconstructed of Luddites can be charmed into laying down the old sledgehammer and stroking a few keys instead. Beyond this seems to be a growing consensus that knowledge really is power, that there is a pretty straightforward conversion between money and information, and that somehow, if the logistics can be worked out, miracles may yet be possible.

History: I've been thinking about this and related concepts from some experiments of my own. One way to build a more realistic setting includes large-scale "evolution" of societies. Create models of tribes that move around and interact, semi-randomly developing different cultural traits, eg. cultures that spend time in Steppe terrain sometimes get horses (Chocobos?) as domestic animals and are more likely to invent chariots and compound bows. Run the simulation for a while and you have a virtual guidebook to the world's cultures. Then, use that data combined with something like "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" to design and place some random cities and other structures, with data on the kinds of people present there. Then you can randomly generate specific locations within an area, specific quests etc. A really crude old demo of the kind of thing I mean is here, wrapping a dinky game around the world-viewer program.

Dialogue: From talking with fellow Loebner Prize Contest entrants, I get the impression that dialogue is very important to people's impression of a game world. In most RPGs, dialogue is severaly limited ("Welcome to our town!"), and even in "Morrowind" (haven't yet played "Oblivion") it all has to be written by a human. What if, instead, dialogue were generated by the AI, based on its own desires and experiences? If you used the "History" system above, that could also affect dialogue. "Long ago, it's said our people lived to the east..."

In general, what I want to see are characters that have their own motivations and are capable of learning and reasoning. This is more likely to be noticable among ally characters whom the hero can get to know over time, rather than enemies whose function is to die after a minute's struggle. One approach would involve lots of specialized "codelets" as in Hofstadter's Metacat program.

It means something to someone.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/white_hole_0 30917.html
http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/Projects/moderncos mo/Sean's%20mutliverse.html

Additionally, a singularity is defined as a point in space that has such intense gravitation that spacetime is curved infinitely around it (a theory about gravity states that it does not "pull" things towards it, but rather warps space, and objects caught in gravitation are just following the curvature of said space) It seems to me that when this happens, nothing can enter or leave. That sounds like a spacetime bubble to me.

The use of the words "folded into this dimension" sounds a little cliche, I agree. But we can also agree that this universe has 3 dimensions, but has no detectable edge.

Consider what we thought about the earth a relatively short time ago...It was thought the earth was flat (2-D), because that's the way it looked from our perspective. Obviously we know better now and the earth is actually spherical (3-D). In this sense, does it defy logic that our universe exists in a 4-D or greater system?

http://pages.pomona.edu/~wsteinmetz/PChem.htm

www.hmc.edu But you should really check out my alma matter down the street, Pomona College

Except that, err, the web didn't exist then, let alone a useful search engine...

To be fair, my initial research did run across its "interesting" magnetic properties, and I spent at least fifteen seconds commenting upon them in my oral report. I think the next person went on to talk about iron, or sodium, or some other glamorous element.

Fortunately holmium has found another practical application in recent years. In the words of Pomona's online periodic table "few uses were known for holmium until recently, with the development of surgical lasers using holmium."

There you have it. Using Google.

I apologize profusely for my libelous comments thrown so recklessly upon the respected name of this most venerable and miraculous element.

So by God, if there's holmium on the moon, we should feel obligated to liberate it from its lunar prison irrespective of any cost! Away to the moon we go; we haven't a day to spare!

Mule was not only a tremendous multiplayer strategy game, it was also one of the first to simulate economies and market forces. Well, that and lemonade...

His games were deceptively simple to play, but amazingly rich in design. For instance, the world map creation feature in Seven Cities of Gold was a true marvel in design, and in many ways has never been rivaled. Compare it, for instance, to the creation of worlds in Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri, for instance. As amazing as Sid is, he has no doubt learned a few things from Dan.

Seven Cities of Gold created intricate worlds that took into account weather, geography, the flow of rivers, the mood of the native tribes, morale, and the awe and amazement of seeing Conquistadores for the first time. Absolutely amazing design for the time... it is frankly astonishing to me that games so detailed, elegant, and beautiful could be created on such computers.

As for me, I think I will go home now and play some Mule... beats yet another shoot-em-up any day.

I hate to break it to you, but the only BLO hack was a social engineering one. No actual Barbies/GI Joes were actually hacked -- the entire thing was a hoax aided and abetted by a willing media who accepted the BLO video press releases without verifying the story.

It's too bad you didn't include a link to something verifying this info. A lot of fairly reputible sites contain BLO info and don't say anything about it being a fraud. These include www.syntac.net, www.everything2.com, and ®(TM)ark which claims to have funded the operation. (A quick Google search will turn up many, many more.)

Besides a couple of USENET postings, the only info I could find regarding the BLO being a myth was this article which says that the only myth is the myth of the incident being a myth.

Of course this is neither authoritative nor exhaustive and I'm sure we would all be wiser if you would reveal the source of your wisdom.

a highly inflationary tax cut,

Now that is an interesting state of affairs. Letting citizens keep their own money is inflationary. He have to take it away via taxes to "save the economy" from the ravages of inflation. Has anyone stopped to think that inflation exists because of hte federal reserve? Inflation is actually devaluation of the currency, and is a consequence of there being "too much money" available. Of course, the reason there is too much money available is because the fractional-reserve banking system, lead and controlled by the Federal Reserve, has created too much money. The Fed buys government debt and gives the treasury credits in its Fed accounts. This acts as "reserves" for lending and as backing for the issusance of currency. It is money created from nothing. Commercial banks borrow money at the Discount Window at the Fed -- again, a debt-for-credit swap. This creates more money out of nothing. Banks make more loans based on deposits and Discount Window loans, making more money from nothing.

The sad thing is, because the U.S. has had a debt-based monetary system since 1933 (and earlier, but only partially), we can never get out of debt because it would destroy the money supply. Before the advent of debt-based money, there was usually little debt on national, corporate or personal scales (wars excepted; they simply printed money to finance early wars). 70% of all business growth was self-financed (financed without borrowing from banks) in the 20s. The Fed put a stop to that by offering loans at below market rates with money created out of thin air.

To pay off the national debt, we will first have to switch back to a commodity-based money system, such as the original silver-backed money system. Commodity money systems don't let the government inflate the money supply at will. The other thing we'd have to do is reform banking. Banks should protect your money, offer useful services, and charge fees for doing so. If you want to invest your money, then do that. Currently, a bank invests 97% or more of your money when you deposit it. This is what causes bank runs; if more than 3% of depositors want to withdraw their money, the bank runs out, because it's given it away to other people. Essentially, when you deposit money at a bank, the bank issues to several people the right to withdraw it. It does this by telling you that you can get it back out, and then loaning the very same money to someone else, who immediately withdraws it to pay for their house or whatever. If the bank runs low on "liquid funds," it borrows from another bank. It may also borrow from the Fed's Discount Window. All the loaning out of the money promised to depositors creates more money on the fly. This process gets recycled several times. I borrow $100k to buy a house. I deposit it at my bank to pay for the construction. The bank then loans it back out to someone else. I write checks; the builder deposits them; his bank loans the money out. Repeat. Because of reserve-fraction regulations made by the Fed, this process has a terminus; but it creates nine dollars for every dollar put into the system (approximately). This is the deposit multipler.

1. Go somewhere where it is not illegal.
2. Try to change the law.
3. Break the law.
4. 1. Living in the US, we have effectivly taken the first option. The protesters in DC are taking both the second and third. This Japaneese case seems to be mostly the third.
   2. 
      
      We may not like the laws that exist, but if we break them, it seems that we must be prepared to take the consequences.

I've heard it attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. This page (which coincidentally belongs to a class at a neighboring college) gives it as: Reporter: What do you think of Western Civilization? Gandhi: Why, I think it might be a very good idea.