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There are 6 billion on this planet, and thats looking to double every 25 years.

The several agencies that try to predict future population seem to be moving closer to a consensus that:

• the world population will continue to grow until after the middle of this century
• reaching a peak of some 9 billion (up from today's 6.4 billion) and then
• perhaps declining in the waning years of this century.

She then proceeded to ask me if Cablevision explained to me about not getting "911" or "0" service....

I suppose the landline providers fight providing 911 service on disconnected phones, since not having it will scare some people from disconnecting their landline.

As for "0" service, looking up a phone number is easy with Google or online phone directories. As for phone calls, who uses the operator to place a call today? Especially at $99.99 per minute (operator assisted rate (slightly) exaggerated).

Yeah, hateful little bastards like Miller turn my stomach. I've got to tell you though, I can think of one person that one-ups Miller. That would be Ann Coulter. How can I put it politely... Bitch? Political whore? I can think of a few worse things but frankly I think that gives you my general impression of the wench. Granted, she's not bad looking. Nice ass for sure. Slim like I like 'em. Still I'd rather sleep with Hillary or the bible-thumping holier-than-though Tipper than Coulter and that's not meant to compliment Coulter or the other women who I personally do not like. I've read he rants. I've heard her speak. I don't know what it is that makes people keep listening to her. Sexual attraction is the only thing I can think of. This site sums it up nicely. Biatch with a capital S.

• We will never consume all the oil in the ground; if we tried, we'd be dead from global warming before we managed to burn it all.
• Electricity and hydrogen are not energy sources, they are energy currencies (or carriers).
• Electricity and hydrogen are complementary:
  1. Electricity can be transmitted over distance efficiently, can be used by data processing equipment, can be converted to physical work (motors). Electricity can be converted into hydrogen (with a conversion cost).
  2. Hydrogen can be stored (eg: for use in airplanes). Hydrogen can be converted into electricity (with a conversion cost).
• Fuel cells don't require hydrogen; you can use any fuel in a fuel cell.
• What makes fuel cells great is they are not limited by the Carnot cycle. Internal combustion engines are heat engines. All heat engines have an efficiency upper bound converting energy into work. Fuel cells are not limited by the carnot cycle and therefore have higher theoretical maximum efficiency.
• Nuclear is an energy source - one of the only energy sources not involving the carbon cycle.
• Nuclear is expensive.
• Clean, non-nuclear energy sources (wind, solar, tidal, etc) collectively cannot provide enough energy to satisfy our needs, making nuclear an eventuality, not an option.

There have been quite a few cases of succesful Biological control, even in Australia. The introduced Prickly Pear cactus (Opuntia) used to cover quite a large range, but the Cactus moth (Cactoblastis cactorum) managed to almost wipe it out without harming endemic species.
In Tasmania I worked with a guy a few years back who was assesing mites for control of gorse, which is all over the state thanks to dodgey farming practices. It's been underway for a few years now with no negetives.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyP ages/B/Biocontrols.html has some good reading

I did find a cool article on it, though, which discusses mitochondria, chloroplasts, and the theory of engulfment...

But aren't you forgetting that with larger memory modules, you have more beebees and thus the Flux capacitor in the memory controller has an increased magnetic field in conjunction with an increased hierachical structure of "its" cosmos and thereby the timing is increased? My reference here ;-)

Hormesis is the name of the effect where, at low enough doses, something will have a beneficial effect.

There are quite a few references on the web, with this one being a decent overview. It also goes into possible mechanisms of action. Another site that discusses "safe doses" of cancer-causing agents has a nice graph on the page that helps explain the concept.

I first learned about it back when I was taking "Radioactive Chemistry." We had to use a literal 10-ft. pole to move the one cobalt-60 source. We bought our uranium from the art department. It turns out that the one black pigment had an incredibly high concentration of depleted uranium that was easy to purify.

The growth rate of the human population is currently declining and is expected to continue declining. In fact, there is increasing optimism that the worl population will stabilize at about 9 billion fifty years from now.

http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/Educ ators/Human_Population/Population_Growth/Populatio n_Growth.htm
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyP ages/P/Populations.html#Predicting_Future_Populati on_Size
http://www.enn.com/features/1999/05/052799/worldwa tch_3421.asp

Quite insightful, since the mantra of modern science appears to be Discovery without accounting for Morality. Human Embryonic Stem Cells comes to mind...

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
--Albert Einstein

Of course, most people reading a Reuters article probably don't even know what RNA is, much less RNA inhibition. But it seems odd that the article would make such a big deal about it, unless it's some new kind of interference that we haven't seen before.

Cable is regulated because it is a licensed monopoly (it least it used to be). With the advent of "overbuilders" such as RCN and satellite TV such as DirecTV and Dish Network, perhaps cable should be deregulated. You do make the very valid point that cable is far from a critical service, so let the free market work its magic.

I'm always frustrated that somehow these existing laws somehow don't apply to the cell phone companies as well.

The problem is that these are often considered to be national services, putting them out of reach in some ways for state PUC/PSC. This is a similar argument made in support of VOIP. The FCC, obviously, has jurisdiction. Let's say I live in one state, on the state line, so my mobile service is coming from another state. Who has jurisdiction?

With that said, the PUC is applying many things to mobile carriers. They have been required to support 911 (they didn't used to be). Mobile carriers are looking more and more like traditional carriers, and they can expect to get the same regulatory treatment in the future.

If I go to a regular store to purchase anything, the store is required to disclose fees up front

Thats not entirely accurate. As someone who travels alot, let me tell you, taxes and what they apply to are not clear until you check out. Take the example of a newspaper: in some places its taxed, others not; if it is, the tax rates are different. I can usually just pull out a dollar for a WSJ, but not always. Taxes, fees, and surcharges are generally not disclosed in any industry until time or sale or invoicing (also see: buying a car, closing a mortgage, buying a plane ticket).

The[y] (sic) seem ripe for an SEC investigation. How many shady share trades can they go through before someone looks at it?

True that.... have you seen this?

Quite interesting.

Such beers conform to so-called purity standard (whatever it's in german)

In "official" German it is called the "Reinheitsgebot".

A translation of the original is netted here.

CC.

Not to mention that I regularly get a fake check in the mail that looks very much like my real one.

Well, you COULD always try cashing it...

(Could be an urban legend - too lazy to check Snopes and similar.. it's a good yarn, at any rate, but the guy does seem rather eager to piggyback on the fame his story has brought him, true or not)

Unix WAS originally made for playing games (or more specifically, some kind of space game I think).

You're probably thinking of SpaceWar which was played on a PDP-1. I hate to break it to you, but that predated Unix (and most actual "OSes" as we think of them today) by about 8 years. To my knowledge, Unix was never used for games. (At least until *after* video games became common.)

Here's the story behind SpaceWar.

--------
Do you have Wireless-Enabled Hosting(tm)?

Well, capillary action allows water to flow upwards in small, herbaceous plants. But if you do some numbers you'll find that the capillaries would have to be of an unfeasibly small diameter to allow that water to go up a 30 meter tree for example.

The most important action that allows water to go up in those big trees is negative pressure at the leaves, created by the evaporation of water. Take a look here.

I strongly diagree with you that it is the only way to stop the war by transferring all Palestinians out. With no further options for peace, ALL Arabs will then support war. It will create hundreds of Bin Ladens. Do you think the Saudis can crack down on citizend funding terrorism if EVERYONE does it? If Israel does that, they will be destroyed. And perhaps they would deserve it for such an extreme and unfair deed.

If you think that Arab culture is all about showing force, then you and Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon should read more. Treating your opponent in such a disrespectful manner only increases hostility.

You telling me "I'm smart" won't make me roll over and believe your opinions. I think I can see more than many too, but I don't think you will trust me just by my allegation.

You think the US flexing its muscle will keep governments in line. Fine. But it will only encourage individuals and Non-governmental terrorist organizations. Al Qaeda recruiters are swamped with people eager to join now, after watching the carnage and blood on TV. Too bad American journalism is more sanitized. I think you should watch the BBC or Al Jazeera more and tell me if that doesn't shake your opinions.

Some Christians feel non-Christians are inferior, some Jews feel non Jews are inferior, some Hindus feel non-Hindus are inferior.

Your article from 1911 didn't help me understand Arabs any better. Go see my article above.

Mike Hawash is a can of worms, I don't think we should open that. Perhaps the fact that the US was unfairly aggressive got to him. I warned you, starting wars leads to more people joining terrorists. (IF he did, and I didn't follow the case)

If only they could find out how did the strength increase and wether we can do the same to the human body
we can find a cure for most of the nervous system degradation diseases.

I think they mean the that the cells gets more sensetive to input from other cells,
not that the cells themselves grow "stronger" This is call Long-term potentiation and is believed to be
how our brain forms memories.

On mars!

When the Soviet Union wad ruled by Leonid Brezhnev, an extremely elderly person not capable of any mental activity furing his late years, there was a joke about Lunokhod and Brezhnev.

Airport in Germany. Soviet and German leaders meet. As the Germans come to the Soviet airplane, Brezhnev comes out, sniffs everyone from the German delegation, picks up some dirt off the ground, puts it in his pocket and returns to the airplane.

Few minutes later a Russian scientist apologizes: "We messed up and instead of Presidential visit program loaded up Lunokhod program".

I find it amusing that the Boston Globe is covering this when they didn't seem to care when one of their columnists implied attending a conference, but clearly had not.

There was also something like brown or red plastic girders and green plastic sheets which could be used to make buildings, houses, etc. which were really cool, but I can't remember the name of. I'd buy them if they were still for sale.

And, very long ago, I stumbled upon nsdap but didn't quite know what to think of it. Liked Lennongrad, though.

Maybe checkout net-art.org, it claims to be a portal to net-art...

> both reference the same article

But dupes are a Slashdot tradition!

So do I, but your preference about the openness of information is totally irrelevant here. Both links are accessible without registration.

> to return urea to normal levels additional fluid is needed

Wrong! The level of urea is restored by elimination (urea is organic waste). Elimination reduces the level of water.

The mere presence of a diuretic substance in a fluid does not remove all of its effect on restoring fluid balance. There is perhaps some concentration of diuretic substance in otherwise pure water that would yield a drink whose consumption would be a losing battle in restoring this equilibrium, but coffee is definitely not one of them. Otherwise a lot of people I know would be dead right now.

> From "ndmnutrition.com" link "Valtin thinks the notion may have started... er... so he doesn't have any justification other than quoting one line of a report which didn't advocate what he suggested it did.

So you quote 1/2 line! That's a laugh. Let's see what he really said:

"Valtin thinks the notion may have started when the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately "1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food," which would amount to roughly two to two-and-a-half quarts per day (64 to 80 ounces). Although in its next sentence, the Board stated "most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods," that last sentence may have been missed, so that the recommendation was erroneously interpreted as how much water one should drink each day. " (my emphasis)

Valtin wasn't out to prove this. He offered it as a possible source for the idea of 8x8 because there appeared to be no other plausible source in the scientific literature. And he's not critiquing what the board advocated or intended to advocate but how it would be misinterpreted by people like you and me.

> do you know ehat diseases youe are susceptable to?... Better safe than sorry

If it makes you feel healthy go on and drink 'til your groin hurts. Whatever. Just don't do it because it's proven to be healthy like the earth is proven to go around the sun.

> Those that are seriously dehydrated lose their thirst.

Now what was it they thinking about just before they lost their thirst?

> this is the belief of one lone doctor, vs the entire medical world

Eh? Of which planet? Certainly not this one. Against the world of popular opinion, sure.

I doubt it very much. They don't give full specs, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if it has a 100MHz bus, 24X CD-ROM, and generally low-end components for everything not listed. You can get a comparable system from microtel for $330. (I'm figuring that a 1.6GHz Athlon is at least as good as a 1.7GHz Celeron.) Admittedly, that's without moniter or printer, but that still doesn't cover the difference. Of course, one year of dial-up internet counts for something too. It costs about $150.

So, no, this isn't a particularly great deal. It's not a massive rip-off, either, though (assuming you want a year of dial-up, and don't already have a moniter), so it might make sense for people who don't know how to put things together (even on a very simple scale).

but if anyone was a visionary in the 50's imho it was Dick.for all the bright utopia's we were promised both in sci-fi and reality philip k. dick's visions of the future are chillingly close.

Dick enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, as a philosophy major. However, although fascinated by his encounter with Plato's theory that, as he later put it, "the empirical world [is] not truly real, at least not as real as the archetypal realm beyond it," he dropped out almost immediately, and never went back. (--from this bio )

the magazine Hermenaut published a long, informative bio of Philip K. Dick that covers in more depth some of the aspects of his life touched on in this article (drug use, paranoia/schizophrenia, his place in writing and pop culture, etc.).

Sugar is only one nitrogen molecule short of being cocaine. Addictive? You bet.

JELL-O = gelatin = rendered animals. So really, all JELL-O is meat JELL-O.

Now, meat flavored JELL-O, that would be gross.

Personally, I prefer electrophoresis grade agarose; it's very tasty.

Another article which describes this better.

Thanks... this is what I was actually looking for, but kept running into those damn chocolate mice. parent's link. Too bad it's only one "stripe", but still neat.

Reading the post but refusing to listen to the audio clip got me interested in searching Google for all of this. I came across one link in particular, which is very interesting:

Genetic Mosaics

The writer discusesses a tetraparental mouse and a tetragametic human.

Laboratory tests confirmed that she was unable to generate T cells able to react against the cells of either brother or her mother.

Try this explanation.

Since NPR only provides an audio link, here are some text sites with info on chimeric twins (genetic mosaics).
[Genetic Mosaics] http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyP ages/M/Mosaics.html
Google search for Genetic Mosaics
And for the non-biologists

for the past couple years, i've been using rcn rather than sbc/pacbell for my local dialtone (650 area code). during that time, i've been paying a "local number portability fee" to -er- somebody. i recently moved about seven blocks. rcn doesn't provide service at my new location so i switched to att. could i move my phone number? ha!

to continue my subject line: unfortunately, the incumbent phone company (sbc/pacbell) is even worse and will never get me back as a directly-paying customer...

VeriSign claims ... it'll be "the end of the Internet"

Oh my god! They were right!

-

Paying $10 for twice the bandwidth is nothing new. RCN, a cable company, sells an upgrade (from 1.5mbits/s to 3mbits/s) for only $10. They call it the MEGAMODEM...like changing the policy makes it mega..but whatever. RCN covers NYC, Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, San Fran and more. Trust me when I say that 400kbps dl is worth $10 more than 200kbps. I mean why should i (gasp!) have to leave the computer for a while? Well i could do work or something...but blah...id rather watch the dl rate..

Paying $10 for twice the bandwidth is nothing new. RCN, a cable company, sells an upgrade (from 1.5mbits/s to 3mbits/s) for only $10. They call it the MEGAMODEM...like changing the policy makes it mega..but whatever. RCN covers NYC, Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, San Fran and more. Trust me when I say that 400kbps dl is worth $10 more than 200kbps. I mean why should i (gasp!) have to leave the computer for a while? Well i could do work or something...but blah...id rather watch the dl rate..

More interesting Panopticon stuff here and here

More interesting Panopticon stuff here and here

It depends on the author.

RCN Impulse ON-DEMAND is a new video-on-demand service that gives you hundreds of titles to choose from. And you can order your selection with just a click of your remote -- 24 hours a day/7 days a week. You can even use your remote to rewind, fast forward, pause, or stop your movie -- just like a VCR!

I think you'd better do a quick review of genetic research. The coding for most animals' number
of pairs of legs is only controlled by a few genes. I think a genetic mod that gave people legs instead of arms, etc., would count as a significant change, and even if we could still interbreed, the results of mixed gene expression could be 'interesting.'

My mom's ISP, RCN, does control the content that flows over "their" wires... I quote from the Internet Access Agreement:

(m) Scrolling. You agree not to cause the screen to "scroll" faster than other subscribers or users are able to type to it, or any action to a similar disruptive effect on or through the Access Service.

Usually I just skim through the TOS to find my unlimited download and upload limits and find crazy lines like the one above.

-dk

Hey, give me a billion and I'll make a couple for you and we can get off of this fusion chase, and start generating useful energy. From the sun. Like the rest of the Earth.

I don't have a billion, but I can give two pointers to neat ideas of how to harness the power of the sun most efficiently.

The first I read about many years ago: Dyson spheres.

The second I was pointed to by someone replying to a post of mine about Dyson spheres: Matrioshka Brains.

Enjoy!