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Here's some of the problems you can have when the confidentiality of your medical records is compromised.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06362/749444-114.stm

WSJ, 26 Dec 2006, Medical dilemma: spread of records stirs patient fears of privacy erosion; Ms. Galvin's insurer studies psychotherapist's notes; a dispute over the rules; complaint tally hits 23,896, Theo Francis.

(My notes, for people who are too lazy to even click on the link:)

In 1996, after her fiance died suddenly, Patricia Galvin left New York for San Francisco and was hired by Heller Ehrman LLP.

In 2000, Galvin began psychotherapy sessions at Stanford Hospital & Clinics with clinical psychologist Rachel Manber, who discussed her problems at work, her fiance's death, and her relationships with family, friends and co-workers. Manber assured Galvin that her notes would be confidential.

"I would never have engaged in psychotherapy with her if she did not promise me these notes were under lock and key."

In 2001, Galvin was rear-ended at a red light and suffered 4 herniated disks, which worsened.

In 2003, she applied for long-term disability. Her employer's carrier, UnumProvident Corp., said it would deny her claim unless she signed a release.

Manber assured Galvin her therapy notes would not be turned over. 3 months later, Unum denied her claim, because of psychotherapy notes about "working on a case" and a job interview in New York, which, Unum said, showed she was able to work. Galvin says they misinterpreted the notes.

In 2004, Galvin sued Manber, Stanford and Unum for malpractice and invasion of privacy, under California law. Galvin said "my most private thoughts, my personal tragedies, secrets about other people" were exposed.

In 2005, Galvin learned that Stanford had scanned Manber's notes into its system, making them part of her basic medical record. Stanford sent this file to Unum and the other driver.

Stanford said that "psychotherapy notes that are kept together with the patient's other medical records are not defined as 'psychotherapy notes' under HIPAA." It would be "impracticable" to keep them separate.

The health-care industry is scanning documents into electronic record systems. HIPAA gives psychotherapy notes special protection, but not when mixed in with general medical records.

Peter Swire, law professor, Ohio State U., explains why they wrote the rule giving confidentiality only to separate psychotherapy notes.

Stanford refused to separate her psychotherapy notes from other medical records. "Any time anybody asks for my medical records, my psychotherapy notes are going to be turned over."

In 2006, DHHS rejected Galvan's HIPAA complaint. From Apr-Nov 2003, DHHS had 23,896 privacy complaints, but hasn't taken any action. HIPAA exceptions allow release in connection with "payment" or "health-care operations."

Galvan, 51, is representing herself, because she couldn't find a California attorney with privacy experience.

Deborah Peel, Austin TX, psychiatrist and head of Patient Privacy Rights, says, "How many women want somebody to know whether they are on birth control?"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116709136139859229.html

NYT, 26 Dec 2006, Costs of a crisis: Diabetics confront a tangle of workplace laws, N.R. Kleinfield.

Some companies fire diabetics for ostensible safety reasons, even though there's no evidence that they're unsafe. Courts nationwide have split on whether diabetes is a disability under the test that a "major life activity" is "substantially limited".

John Steigauf, 47, was a truck mechanic for United Parcel Service, but UPS put him on leave because of his diabetes. UPS claimed his blood sugar might plummet while he tested a truck, causing an accident, and he couldn't get an interstate commercial driver's license with insulin-dependent diabe

I suppose clarification would be helpful in this case. If we're talking about who uses transit the most, there are two distinct ways of looking at it: which group makes up the majority of the people using public transit, versus which group has the largest proportion of its members using public transit. Strictly speaking, yes, the able-bodied poor outnumber all other groups on transit. That's because they outnumber all other groups period. Nevertheless, the able-bodied poor are, for the most part, VASTLY better off financially than the elderly et al, and a much greater percentage of them own and drive cars than the elderly, the disabled, and children.

Oh really?
Only 12% of Americans are below the poverty line.
10.2% of the elderly are below the poverty line.
48% of the poor own a vehicle
8% of families on welfare own a vehicle
78% of the elderly own a vehicle

So no, you're just plain wrong.

The healthy adult who works for minimum wage, 30 hours a week, could manage to afford a car, although it would be extremely difficult.

Are you freaking kidding me? That's $10k/year. After taxes, perhaps $8k/year. Let's say that they get all of those taxes back in government benefits and then some -- say, $11k/year. Let's say no kids, which would slaughter their income. Even if you assume they're living in a hellhole that costs only $300/mo, and that they can miraculously keep their combined utilities down to $100/mo (lights off most of the time, low thermostat in the winter, high in the summer, showers every other day, etc -- making the hellhole even more of a hellhole). That's $6,200. Let's say they can keep food costs down to a mere dollar per meal, so $90/mo, meaning there's $5,120 left. Let's say that their healthcare (which almost no minimum wage jobs provide) costs a mere $200/mo *after* copays (try to find a policy that provides a relevant amount of coverage that cheap just *ignoring* copays). That's $2,720/year left. Let's say that they have no TV, no entertainment, no phone, no furniture, no nothing -- they just lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling all evening until they fall asleep. There's $226/mo left. Let's say to keep clothing on their backs and shoes on their feet, they can get by on $6/mo, so $220. Let's say they can somehow pick up a car at a price of only $60/mo -- some old junker that they somehow got a payment plan on -- so $160 left. Well, even if the car is cheap, you need liability coverage at a bare minimum in all 50 states, typically a few tens of thousands of dollars worth in each category. Let's assume that the driver is female, has had a license for several years and no accidents, and is in their thirties. Let's give them fair credit to boot. Perhaps $80/mo, so $80 left. Let's say that they can manage to keep such a junker held together and running for only $20/mo. Hey -- if you make a whole bunch of ridiculously harsh assumptions, they can afford, what, 15 miles per day in gas?

Let's get real. There are no tricks to being poor. A lot of people assume that there must be some sort of trick to get by, but there isn't. You have no choice but to sacrifice a significant amount some combination of mobility, health, and comfort -- cramming lots of people into tiny apartments in bad neighborhoods, going without even basic things like phone service, using the "pray nothing goes wrong" health plan, and so on.

Preteens DO take public transit, even assuming that you discount school buses.

Not proportionally often in the US. Now, Japan, that's a different story. I once shared a bus with an entire class full of school kids on Sado

We're getting improvements all the time - you don't just suddenly pop into being a new species. It's gradual.

Examples:

Autism. Most likely this is evolution trying out ideas for the next generation human brain. People with autism can occasionally do extraordinary things - but usually at a cost which makes the change non-beneficial, so evolution sorts them out. But eventually some selection will take place and we'll get a beneficial autism-like ability added to our species. Maybe someday soon we'll all be able to count cards ala Rain Man, or be able to tell you the square root of a six digit number without a calculator, or memorize the phone book.

It happens. Here's (most likely) a recent improvement to our species - extra cones in the eyes. Some women can see in more colors than the rest of us. They're called tetrachromats.

I've got one better than that... Police tase sleeping man in his own home. Yeah, the guy was black, showed his ID, only to be tased a third time. Then he was carted off in handcuffs in front of his child. Police were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing without a trial in less than 6 weeks.

I wonder what happens when you wear one of these to a protest rally... I'm guessing they'll throw you under a jail for the rest of your life for the attempted murder of a police officer.

I've got one better than that... Police tase sleeping man in his own home. Yeah, the guy was black, showed his ID, only to be tased a third time. Then he was carted off in handcuffs in front of his child. Police were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing without a trial in less than 6 weeks.

I wonder what happens when you wear one of these to a protest rally... I'm guessing they'll throw you under a jail for the rest of your life for the attempted murder of a police officer.

I've been reading the WSJ since 1972. When they went on line I bought a subscription.

Over the years, the news section of the WSJ has been the most reliable source of general news that I've been able to find (and I also read the NYT every day). They've resisted influence by advertisers, government intimidation, and the bullshit that other news sources fall for. I'm in a good position to judge health care, which is my specialty. Here's an example of the kind of coverage which you literally won't find anywhere else: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06339/743713-84.stm

As part of its own coverage of the Murdoch takeover attempt, the WSJ itself had a story summarizing how Murdoch has influenced and distorted the news, for his own selfish or partisan reasons, in his other holdings, and how he's made and broken promises of editorial integrity and independence. The worst example I remember was that he dropped the BBC news off a satellite feed to China, because he wanted to ingratiate the Chinese government to get access to the Chinese market. The BBC was running stories about China's human rights abuses. Oh, the hypocrisy -- a self-proclaimed Reagan conservative selling out his principles to the Communists. (Although you could argue that he has no principles to sell out.)

Past performance is the best predictor of futher performance. I'd rather pay $100 a year to get accurate, unbiased news from the WSJ than get the WSJ free after Murdoch does to it what he's done to all his other media holdings. You get what you pay for, and the WSJ used to be worth paying for.

Completely unsubstantiated BS on /.!?! What a surprise! If it's a slow news day, how about doing followups to a previous story like donttasemebro. Seems he has apologized. Or maybe, if you're going to be posting stories like donttasemebro that really have nothing to do with YRO anyway, you could cover other rights violations like the sleeping man who was tased in his own home and then tased again and arrested by police after he identified himself. Yeah, he was a black guy. There's even followup to that story. The police were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. I guess real stories from actual newspapers are less important that made up shit from cheetos eating bloggers... News for nerds indeed. Tall tales for gullible suckers is more like it.

Completely unsubstantiated BS on /.!?! What a surprise! If it's a slow news day, how about doing followups to a previous story like donttasemebro. Seems he has apologized. Or maybe, if you're going to be posting stories like donttasemebro that really have nothing to do with YRO anyway, you could cover other rights violations like the sleeping man who was tased in his own home and then tased again and arrested by police after he identified himself. Yeah, he was a black guy. There's even followup to that story. The police were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. I guess real stories from actual newspapers are less important that made up shit from cheetos eating bloggers... News for nerds indeed. Tall tales for gullible suckers is more like it.

Sorry, but yes, you can burn this bridge too!

Your wish is my command!

Wind protests for environmental reasons: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07261/818475-113.stm

Bird-strikes are common environment-hippie* fodder for protesting wind power.

*Environment-hippies are not environmentalists. Environmentalists try to act as stewards of the environment, doing as little damage as possible. They hear 'nuclear power' and think of how to properly dispose of the waste. Environment-hippies try to act like 'the man' and 'corporations' are evil and keeping good ideas down because they're evil, and nuclear is wrong, because that's like bombs and radiation and stuff!

Here is the good article describing the lecture, for those who cannot download the lecture itself.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07262/818671-85.stm

Its been shown that social mobility is higher in 'welfare state' European countries than it is in the US

Screw the American Dream, you've more chance with the Danish Dream

According to the AP (via the Pittsburgh Post Gazette), the DMCA specifically allows cell-phone unlocking.

The amazing thing is that the Post-Gazette somehow considered this important enough to put on the front page today! Maybe Apple's a bit annoyed that this happened, but I bet Jobs is thrilled with the publicity.

Hey, not so fast!

PA recently became the 50th state in the union to put their laws online.

I'll admit, I did not actually read the article and have no idea about the case but...
For all we know, maybe this was the exact method used and some innocent 15 year old is being charged for it.

Not quite computer related but in a suburb of Pittsburgh, someone called in a bomb threat and the investigators and school officials used caller ID and phone records to track it back to someone. Problem was the schools phone system had issues with daylight savings time and they tracked the caller from an hour prior. The kid was in custody for 12 days before anyone realized the mistake.

More about it here and here.

If something that simple can throw of investogators, imagine trying to a defense of an open access point, chained proxy servers, botnets, existing spyware, or mac cloning to a judge as the reason you are really innocent.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07133/785788-254.st m

Wikipedia's color article

Says "It has been estimated that humans can distinguish roughly 10 million different colors" which is more like what I recall about the average person's color perception. There are also (VERY rare) folks who have the ability to see even more colors than that... 100 million colors or so

Only a small subset of women would have this ability, and their male children will always be color blind, as noted here and here. The second article (from my hometown paper, so it must be infallible) quotes a researcher that there might be about 99 million women who can actually see the full tetrachromatic spectrum, or about 3 in a hundred women.

Having followed the show for the entire run, I can agree with all of these sentiments: that the show is one of the best on television, that the show hit a weak stretch in season 3, and that it may be best to keep the entire show strong to end it before it gets too long. The problem, however, in this case, is that Ronald D. Moore still has "two chapters" he wants to tell (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07085/770732-352.s tm). Passage of time has been crucial to the show (especially the season 2 finale) and while it wouldn't be as bad as seeing nothing of consequence happen for long stretches of episodes (Star Treks), the show now runs the risk of having all that RDM wanted to happen over two seasons occur in the short span of one. True, it may give us a filler-free season, but the show's success is largely due to its believability - and that comes into jeopardy, I think, if the show and the Galactica herself comes an unbelievably long way in such a short amount of time.

And this article at www.reformk12.org has the following to say:

The study that these articles and others reference is published by The College Board. However, the links which I found in the reformk12.org article lead to a page and a PDF which have been removed or relocated. If someone wants to spend the time to hunt down the articles on The College Board's web site, I'd love to read the original study.

Having said that, I think they did investigate another student that had a 'kill list' with my dead classmate's name on it right after it all happened.

The effect has been idependently tested and confirmed:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06060/662669.stm

I think I'll trust real research from CMU over a vapid so-called journalist who probably just can't stand not yapping on his cell-phone.

BTW, it doesn't matter if some or even nearly all cell phones don't cause interference with flight controls. All it takes is one person using one that does and things get ugly. Likewise, most airplanes have a mix of avionic equipment. Some of it is new where the cost/benefit makes it worth it for the airline to upgrade and some of it is old. Rather than test each airplane independently, it makes more sense to just say "no" until someone comes up with a way that is known to be absolutely safe regardless of the equipment on the airplane.

Cheers,
Dave

These former record holders in the US achieved ~110 mpg in a Prius.
http://hybridcars.about.com/od/news/a/100mpgrecord .htm
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05220/550484.stm

One of them achieves 59 (US) mpg in a non-hybrid 2005 Honda Accord by adopting crazy hypermiling techniques. See http://hybridfest.com/MotherJones.htm.

"Stracher's research suggests coal wildfires in China burn 200 million tonnes a year, equivalent to about 20 per cent of the total used by the US for power generation." http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3390

"Carbon dioxide emissions from personal vehicles in the United States equaled 314 million metric tons in 2004. That much carbon could fill a coal train 55,000 miles long--long enough to circle the Earth twice." "Although SUVs currently trail small cars as sources of carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming (67 million metric tons or 21 percent of all U.S. auto emissions), they will soon be in first place and will remain a leading cause of global warming on U.S. roads for many years." http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/au toemissions.htm

So you can see...if we got rid of coal fires, we could get rid of 360 MILLION tons of CO2 per year...that's 5 times as much as every last hated SUV in the United States. Imagine the joy of countless Al Gore-types if we suddenly passed a law condeming every Hummer, every Suburban, every gas-guzzling pickup to a junkyard...and yet we ignore something 5 times as large. Like I said, all of the political work that's going on to encourage things like carbon trading and the banning of SUV's has one thing directly in its sites...MONEY. There are carbon trading floors already set up, and the government is ready to dole out trillions worth of these "credits" to politically-connected people. Make no mistake...there will be little environmental impact, because a huge amount of CO2 is coming from sources other than humans.

But if only one eye can see the object because of its colour? There are definitely cases where this would get confusing. Try walking around with red / blue 3d glasses on for a while.

On another note, if this concept could work for the colour blind, could you put more subtle filters into a pair of glasses so people with normal vision can see more shades of colour?

Airports that are wanting to welcome the A380 are doing renovations to handle the aeroplane. The USA is generally lagging behind in its readiness, but accommodating the A380 is in many airports interests. Currently the A380 is flying to various destinations, so airports can check that are capable of handling the aeroplane, as well a general marketing tour. Just last week the A380 made visit to JFK. A few links on airport readiness:

  - http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviat ion/read.main/1493607/
  - http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05333/614282.stm
  - http://www.airport-technology.com/features/feature 653/
  - http://www.atwonline.com/channels/aircraftEquipmen t/article.html?articleID=1187
  - http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CWU/is _2002_March_6/ai_83557785

The extra problem that the aeroplane poses, on top of the plane itself, is dealing with the number of people arriving in the airport at any one time. Think gate waiting lounges and customs clearance.

I remembered that from my youth and wanted one in the worst way. I think they were advertised either in Boys Life, or comic books.
BTW, this article from 2001 mentions the boots and the pogo stick.
http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20010528 bowgosidehealth9.asp

Remind me again what makes Canada so superior to the USA. I seem to have forgotten at the moment.

No problem; here you go: "It's not just the weather that's cooler in Canada", by Samantha Bennett.

Oh, and Canada is also superior to the United States because Budweiser 'beer' isn't made there.

http://news.findlaw.com/andrews/bt/ebl/20060213/20 060213lin.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05292/590807.stm

Am I crazy?

For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery -- a procedure typically fraught with risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible catheters.

Getting beyond the "bends at the base of the skull" through the arteries is a surgical field called Neuroendovascular Surgery that has been in development since the 1960s and is used on everyone from babies to the old to people with cocaine habits and so forth. If I had an illiness that required it, I'd take a surgeon who performs several hundred of these operations a year over a remote controlled robot.

But, by your reasoning, it must suck to work at Rolls Royce. Or what about Boeing?

I can't speak for RR, but it does suck to work for Boeing. It's cube farms as far as the eye can see. Watch "Office Space" and mentally replace "Initech" with "Boeing" and you're pretty close.

If you want to be able to afford a Boeing product, go start a tech company.

1) As far as I can tell, Player/Stage/Gazebo is limited to flat earth. (MSRS is not, arbitrary terrain)

Yes it does. First two hits when you google "gazebo terrain".

2) Part of the .NET framework there is a wealth of functionality: mathematics functions, quaternions, etc.

2b) Loss of portability to other operating systems.
This is not something to be overlooked, given the prevalence of Linux for headless embedded devices (i.e. robots). If you like object-oriented development, Player has bindings for C++, Java, Ruby, and Python.

Especially when you are simulating discrete objects. The ability to have TableObject *table and Robot *robot, instead of a bunch of c-calls, is a blessing and speeds up your development time.

Well, if you want to argue the simulator sucks, then I won't necessarily disagree with you. That's not the interface a robot *user* would be dealing with however, only the creator of a custom robot. A C++ interface for the robot "driver" would be nice, but I can understand the portability reasons for choosing plain C. In my graduate-level course on physical simulation, I did use C++ for my simulator. I don't think it was a huge advantage however, since everything was implemented as a large system of ODEs anyway, and the object oriented view was just translating to and from that (following the Baraff/Witkin approach).

(I know, this is my day job)

Guess what my day job is?

This is also why a lot of people choose DirectX over OpenGL.

It seems to me that the only people who prefer DirectX are game programmers. Scientific/visualization/engineering apps are still largely OpenGL. This is partly due to inertia, of course, but I'm sure they appreciate the portability too, since important scientific and engineering apps tend to work on more than one OS.

For the record, I am 40 years old. I have a wife and a child. And, my next step in my career is middle manager. I still would never be caught dead in a Camry. I admit, it's a great vehicle. It always is rated high in almost every auto magazine for handling, ride and reliability. But still, East Coast Surfer said it best

To me a Camry is just reliable no frills transportation. It's not young or old, it just is

If that doesn't SCREAM old, I don't what does. You can find a few family sedans that have much more style than the Camry. I'll give you three examples: The Nissan Altima, The Mazda 6/Ford Fusion, and The Honda Accord. As family Sedans, none of these have the style of the Infiniti M series. But, hell, at least they have some sense of panache. And, if you are worried about reliability, then just buy the Accord.

On the comment about 20 years from now? Well, that is the reason Toyota created Scion. Toyota already sees the competition they are getting from Subaru, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, & VW for the younger crowd (Anecdote: While I frequently see Honda Civics and Mitsubishi Eclipses that are 'tricked out', I have NEVER seen a pimped out Toyota Corolla). So, they created Scion to try and become more hip. Unfortunately for Toyota, most of the people that buy the "Clown Car" are over 40 years old.

As for Buick? Well, they might be making some inroads into the younger crowd.

There are actually some women who have 4 color cones instead of three.

We haven't had single terrorist attack since 9/11. Not a single one.

It's been a while, but IIRC in Pennsylvania it's not that you can't buy beer in less than a case, it's just that you have to go to a different store. They have "Beer Stores," which sell beer by the case and only by the case, but then they also have "Six-pack Shops" which sell smaller quantities (and any bar can legally sell you up to two six-packs; bowling alleys that have bars were a favored place to get late-night booze IIRC). I think they have different hours for each. And then there are liquor stores which are actually run by the state, and where you can get your distilled alcohols, and I think wine just comes from the grocery store? (I was never clear on wine there.)

Anyway, just nitpicking. It does have some of the most bizarre liquor laws of anywhere I've ever been to. I can only pity the poor coddled European who might wind up in Pennsylvania, desiring a case of wine on a Sunday, or something similarly impossible.

But for South Korea, a more immediate danger may be North Korea's artillery.

The capital Seoul, only 60 km (37 miles) south of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953, has long been within range of one of the world's most powerful artillery batteries.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said the North had amassed more than 13,000 pieces of artillery and multiple rocket launchers, much of it aimed at Seoul.

Jane's International Defense Review estimates that if North Korea launched an all-out barrage, it could achieve an initial fire rate of 300,000 to 500,000 shells per hour into the Seoul area -- home to about half the country's 48.5 million people.

The biggest are 170-mm self-propelled artillery guns and 240-mm multiple rocket launchers. It also has hundreds of Scud missiles that could hit any part of South Korea.

"We have reason to believe that the chemical weapons are with the forward artillery units that are targeting Seoul. If we don't get those early, we end up with chemicals on Seoul." North Korea: The War Game

When negotiators were hammering out the 1994 accord - over similar concerns about North Korea's nuclear intentions - Pyongyang also warned that it would turn the South Korean capital of Seoul into a "sea of fire".

SEOUL, South Korea -- In an unusually explicit threat to its neighbor yesterday, North Korea warned that Japan would be immersed in a "nuclear sea of fire" if the United States were to attack the North.

Speaking to the BBC's Mike Thompson in Pyongyang, Mr Ri said his government was becoming increasingly alarmed at signs that Washington planned to send more aircraft carriers, bombers and troops to the region.

He said such actions would mean that the US was either planning to invade the North or launch attacks against it.

In response, he insisted, Pyongyang would not just sit and wait, and might decide to strike first if necessary.

The country currently has a standing army of more than one million soldiers. The US has about 37,000 troops based in South Korea.

a quick look at other sites will show you a growing interest in video ads. YouTube has a lot of visitors, and if Google plays this correctly they can make more advertisement dollars.

Except that I've heard they've ruled out using video ads... or was that only YouTube (before the Google takeover)? this article certainly seems to say that they've ruled out video ads; "YouTube, by contrast, has ruled out using traditional ads that precede or follow a video. A Viacom executive said the company is open to other ways of placing advertising with its partners and is using the Google deal to test different methods."

I did find this rather curious as video ads would probably be accepted by users (especially if there were a 'skip ad' button), and make way more money than text ads that most people will probably ignore. In addition, freeloaders couldn't use ad-blockers to block these video ads (apologies to AdBlock users, but I politely disagree with your freeloader stance).

While one cannot be certain what exactly will happen, history has shown us that people usually react fairly strongly to anything that gets in the way of their freedom. And Americans have certainly proven this point.

When exactly in the last years?

There is a difference between rumours of elections being rigged versus actual evidence.

I'd say the evidence is there just nobody seems interested in picking it up. Might be because some KGB^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Federal institutions are actively persecuting people who have differing opinions?

Remember: Elections are not a sign of democracy. Hitler was democratically elected (besides, he won most of his wars and took personal responsibility after obviously loosing the last one). They are necessary, but they are not enough.

I call shenanigans all over that. It's not some vast conspiracy of SUV-loving, gas guzzling eco-terrorists that keeps things as they are

That short term memory theory? Definately not true. It's a false theory used as justification for keeping goldfish in a bowl, which is in reality cruel. Goldfish raised in a stimulating environment can be quite intelligent, being able to be trained such things as playing basketball (can not find source right now) soccer, and sometimes even synchronized swimming (Goldfish are not naturally schooling fish per say, so this behavior is definately trained.) And... umm... Texas Holdem. I'm not quite sure about the validity of that last one, though. Actually, I've got a pretty good idea about exactly how valid that one is, but I'm leaving it in anyways.

I'd have to see a lot more evidence to actually believe that goldfish are as smart as dolphins. Although in designing intelligence tests, we do have to be extremely careful to not confuse "behaviors and thought patterns that are closer to ours" with more intelligent. Researchers already have a difficult time establishing IQ tests that don't show significant bias for particular races or cultures of people, much moreso across different species.

Also, just saying that because the dolphin nervous system has a higher percentage of glial cells they are by necessity less intelligent really shows a misunderstanding of the nervous system. Nerurons are quicker and better at actually processing information, but glial cells can also pass nervous impulses, and in fact are better at passing impulses over a long distance than neurons, and as such are better for coordinating information from multiple regions of the brain than neurons are. The larger proportion of glial cells could simply be a result of needing to work with more pieces of information related to movement as a result of living in a 3d world rather than a primarilly 2d world as humans do (Both due to dolphin's ability to move in 3d, and their reliance on echolocation for ranging which gives much finer distance measurements and allows for the creation of a much more accurate mental map of the environment, as opposed to human vision which in in reality formed by a roughly 2d image projected on our retinas which we strive to pull some 3d information out of.)

Several incumbent Congress folks were voted out of office yesterday. The three that I know of are Joe Lieberman (over 18 years in the Senate), Cynthia McKinney and Joe Schwarz (1-term Republican from Michigan).

It also appears that Rick Santorum, Senator from my state, will be unseated this fall unless the new electronic voting machines can be surrepticiously rigged after testing (which seems to be very thorough thanks to Carnegie Mellon University professor Michael Shamos). See this article which gives a brief background of him.

The key is that those fat, lazy, apathetic people who, like you apparently, don't feel their vote count, get up and vote out the incumbents. Once the incumbents are removed, if things don't improve, vote out the ones you just put in. Keep doing that until the message sinks in.

Of course being that we only have a ~30% voter turnout this will never happen and people will continue to whine that their vote doesn't matter. Which it won't if you don't get off your fat, lazy ass and cast a vote.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06171/699727-100.st m

I wonder if this means the CMU robotics institute will have to start using something other than Linux?

As I said, I include sewer charges. Water comprises more than half of the bill and it still costs more than DSL.

Given that you can't separate water from the sewer charges (at least in Pittsburgh), reasoning about them separately makes little sense from a consumer's point of view. Even if your water predominantly goes in beer, you still pay for the sewer service.

Frankly after the Vioxx debacle any science from Merck must be viewed with suspicion. The New England Journal of Medicine recently expressed, then re-expressed, well grounded serious concerns about ethics and veracity at Merck, concerns which continue to this day.

It is now clear that the NEJM's "expression of concern" was designed by a public relations consultant to distract the public from the NEJM's own role. For example, it turns out that the NEJM had known for years about the later cases that Merck reported to the FDA, and even rejected a letter that wanted to raise this issue. What's more, the NEJM's implication that the authors of the VIGOR report deleted critical data from the manuscript turned out to be false.

In retrospect, Merck was clearly over optimistic in thinking that the lower incidence of cardiac effects in the naproxen group (in the VIGOR study that compared Vioxx to naproxen) could be entirely attributed to the protective effect of naproxen. Naproxen was known to be protective, but the protective effect would have had to be toward the upper end of plausibility. Nevertheless, it is clear that people at Merck sincerely believed in the safety of Vioxx, and in some cases were taking it themselves and giving it to their families.

I think that some ethical questions may be raised with respect to the way Vioxx was marketed, even if Merck sincerely believed it to be safe. On the other hand, it is abundantly clear that the NEJM has behaved unethically in the affair.

The question remains as to whether Vioxx is really more dangerous than other similar drugs (COX-2 inhibitors), or more dangerous than the older anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin, naproxen, and ibuprofen, which can cause dangerous bleeding.

care to name specific gripes about Wal-Mart?

You're joking, right?

• They keep wages way too low, straining state welfare systems who have to pick up the slack so that Wal Mart employees can, oh, eat and pay rent, and not die from preventable diseases.
• They force their development plans on unwilling towns and counties, increasing sprawl and erosion.
• The illegally disrupt organization attempts by their employees.
• They lobbied relentlessly to weaken the definition of "organic" food, and then started selling food that can now be called "organic" but isn't by any sane definition of the word.

You've really never heard any of these, or other, complaints about Wal-Mart?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06095/679599-185.st m

GM's Chinese partner is now competing against them. QED

Maybe this dumb cunt should go google her subject material first. It doesn't seem to jive with reality, *or* my personal experience.

"The exodus of jobs from our shores and the race to the bottom for workers around the world is an obvious result of NAFTA "
    http://www.kucinich.us/issues/outsourcing.php?prin t=y

"AT&T Wireless outsourcing jobs overseas
Consultants from two Indian companies sent to Bothell"
    http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/149035_outs ource20.html

"Bush economic report praises 'outsourcing' jobs"
    http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04041/271362.stm

"Global Outsourcing and the Disappearing Middle Class"
    http://www.newwork.com/Pages/Opinion/Raynor/Middle %20Class.html

"JOBS MOVING OVERSEAS"
    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/jan-june04/ jobs_3-11.html