Slashdot Mirror

Found the link

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070409164849.htm

Am I the only one who thinks that looks dead on like the eye of the dark lord?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2007/10/071001120430.jpg

comparison

This is not the first recent one.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Business&article=UPI-1-20070731-13273100-bc-us-nukeplant.xml

That's one example.

I'm pretty sure that's not the first either, even though that article says the same thing: "First application in 30 years."

I attended a lecture (by someone from Westinghouse, I believe) through my school's nuclear engineering department in early 2007. One of the things shown in the presentation was a timetable of quite a few new reactors plans being prepared/applied for. It might well be that the application was the penultimate step (approval is last) on this timetable. Regardless, there is a lot of expansion of nuclear energy in the near future.

It is kind of deceptive to compare a new solar plant (built today) with an old coal plant. The correct comparision is with new coal capacity which may come in closer to $0.04/kWh. With carbon capture and sequestration, $0.08/kWh might be expected. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070504151722.htm. Further, at present, solar competes with gas rather than coal because gas is used to meet peak demand. Gas costs less for construction than either coal or solar but it has volitile are rising fuel costs owing to declining production in North America. Over the long term, $0.15/kWh probably compares favorably with gas. Several recent studies have also noticed that coal energy (though not volume) production is declining in the US owing to substitution of lower grades of coal: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-cornered-ghost.html. This video on the coal resource is even more startling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTUcxYdMmj4. If, within the lifetime of the new solar power plant, coal becomes scarce as gas is already doing, then the cost of power from the solar plant will be quite competitive. It is not that we lack coal but rather that we have begun to exhaust the coal that is cheap to mine. This is why salvage operations like the one that led to the disaster in Utah are becoming more common. Higher coal prices make these marginal operations more economical.
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Rent solar power for your home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html

This is interesting that you do not research the scientific papers to determine that this is BS.
This is a variation on laser pushed sails. Geoffrey Landis believes that it can work, it is just a question of how well.

http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/02/photonic-laser-propulsion.html
Geoffrey said... Depends on how technologically optimistic you want to be-- I'm a little dubious about keeping beam quality up, and of course for a large number of reflections even a small deviation from perfect reflectivity destroys the concept. Robert Metzger [they wrote a paper on laser bounced sails], on the other hand, is a bit more of a technological optimist, and thinks it's reasonable, and he's a really smart guy.

I don't know if you've seen this one:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070213101025.htm

Source: University of California - Berkeley
Date: February 25, 2007
Researchers Create New Super-thin Laser Mirror But it might be a reasonable approach.

Somehow, we've so completely bought into the notion that embryonic stem cells are the only ones with promise, that when -- time and again -- we see that the breakthroughs are occurring with adult stem cells, we still want to ignore them and use embryonic stem cells nonetheless.

Here's another link for you: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/07090 4114446.htm Researchers at the Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh have found adult stem cells that can repair muscle.

That proves it! We need to open up federal funding for embryonic stem cell research!!!

Plus, there's the guys doing electricity by converting solar heat using sterling engines http://www.stirlingenergy.com/default.asp and the work converting heat into electricity using an intermediate sound conversion step http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/07060 3225026.htm.

TROY, N.Y., Aug. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. nanoscientists have developed an energy storage device that resembles a sheet of black paper and might power tomorrow's electronics.
[...]
Another key feature is the capability to use human blood or perspiration to help power the battery.

I told my kids about the upcoming eclipse, and I was excited to see them enthusiastic, until one said "What channel will it be on?"

The true test for whether you should believe something or not is the question, "Is it useful?"
Does belief in the God hypothesis have an effect? Yes, it does - many people believe that it does, and feel better because of it. You may not, but that does not change what others feel.

So, you say that if something is useful, you are free to belive it? Well, I believe that injecting Heroin makes me happy, and therefore it is useful. I should tell my kids...

And yes, it does have an effect to believe in a god, it makes you rude:
Religious Doctors No More Likely To Care For Underserved Patients
Divorce rates among conservative Christians significantly higher

Yes, you are correct. I took a look at the original article which actually had a scale bar for the image and it amounts to roughly 200 micron. The linked article is kind of scant on details, so here's a more detailed writeup: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/07081 2173253.htm

Are humans capable of producing more CO2 per decade than say, a single volcanic eruption?

Does the amount of organisms capable of removing CO2 from the atmosphere increase as this new atmosphere provides an environment closer to the optimum for them?

Does the increase of CO2 (which is far denser than oxygen or nitrogen) at relatively LOW altitudes (because of this density) have ANY effect on the upper atmosphere? In fact, is heat really retained at ALL by a thin surface layer of CO2?

The "facts" are not as clear cut as you would like them to be. Of course it's easy if you only listen to what you WANT to hear.

Their conclusions are not valid for all of humanity anyway. How does Western Europe equal humanity? It is already known that there is less genetic diversity in two Europeans from different countries than there is in two Africans from the same village. What a Eurocentric point of view.

I was also disappointed to not have the package/link to the software mentioned. I'm pretty sure that this article, posted Aug 3,2007, can provide a bit more detail - there they use MediCAD:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/07073 0173404.htm
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~vislab/papers/Xin_ISMRM. pdf - paper from Thomas Jefferson University and Stony Brook University

Other posters here note the concept is not unique; but perhaps using it for surgical procedures regularly, rather than pure research, might be a 'first.' Thanks for the other link, I'll pass that along to our imaging folk as well. Still looking to see if either place has a page up for it.

Fewer cosmic rays mean fewer clouds will be formed, and so there will be a warmer Earth. If the sun and the solar wind are not so active, then more cosmic rays can come in. That means more clouds [reflecting away more sunlight] and a cooler Earth.

That's odd. The post-9/11 research into the effects of jet contrails suggested that they have two faint effects: mild warming and mild day/night temperature moderation. But the above quote seems to contradict that.

I am now even more suspicious of the conclusions of the contrail research, coming (as it did) in the middle of the global warming craze. Right now you can't even publish the simple observation that plants will grow usefully faster on a warmer Earth; no, you have to spin it as "OMG poison ivy will get worse!".

I'm ready to go nuclear/solar/wind, and drive an electric car, because I've always hated the power that petronomics gives to the backwards nations... but come on guys, can we at least give both sides a fair hearing?

Today I am an anthropologist and while my work is not on ergonomics (there are a number of anthropologist working in that area), something that I have been thinking about as I read the literature on tool making (flint knapping and other pre-industrial technologies) is that the main area of for precision activity (say something that your grandmother might have done like embroidery, or your grandfather as a cobbler... not all of us are decedents from royalty) takes place in a space in front of the thorax with the head slightly bent down and the hands are mostly facing each other on an angle. The main activity takes place in an arc of movement defined by elbow's movement. The wrist, while used for a number of repetitive tasks, is not typically held in a strained position for long, spending most of the activities time in a "natural" rest position (even while wielding a hammer or other percussive tool).

This is not to say that there were not problems with overworking the hands, fingers, etc. but the types of injuries were quite different than what was introduced with the industrialization of labor, where not only was the body governed to work in a repeating motion at high speeds, but it was molded, quite often orthopedically, to fit the design of the machine, to fit cartesian grids--right angles, etc. While we might think this way (like the modern city layout... e.g., Manhattan, which is in a regular grid) our bodies including our hands, wrists, etc. are not their most efficient and unstressed in these configurations. One of the things that I have tried to teach myself and suggested some students, is to type on the keyboard at angles where the wrist are not bent sideways. In contrast to how "secretaries" were taught (or molded) until the 1970s to use typewriters, as if they were holding lemons while typing and sitting at 90 angles with the feet flat on the ground, one slightly in front of the other. Today there are a number of studies showing that sitting in such a position is not at all good for you and that the slouch with elevated feet... there was something on this not long ago on Slashdot http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/2 8/1742222&from=rss and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/06112 7112844.htm.

Hope this confused the issue... try to keep the input device in the same horizontal plane as your keyboard, and don't wield a hammer to it (at least not repeatedly prior to a deadline). Be thankful I did not mention QWERTY.

(oh yeah, my favorite off the shelf keyboard is the old Microsoft natural... I wish they made one without the side numeric pad--I suppose I could hack it. I also use an old Logitech stingray trackball... hacked to make the buttons smaller and feel more natural).

What bothers me (i've never heard about this software before) is the trend for western countries to move away from individual freedom. I live in Australia, it is happening here - the doctor that was held without charge for 3 weeks. I know it's happening in the US, but now it seems to be happening in other western countries too. Are there any western countries whose citizens aren't losing their individual freedoms?

At least we are having an inquiry into the matter. How is it in other countries?

Actually, I think the use of ethanol driving corn prices up is one of the best things that could happen. The replacement of sugar with corn syrup---high fructose corn syrup, specifically---is believed to be a major contributing factor in our nation's obesity problem. I would love to see corn prices increase by an order of magnitude or more so that the sugar tariffs and corn subsidies can't keep up and the processed food industry gets driven kicking and screaming back to a somewhat less unhealthy choice, cane sugar.

Corn is as bad for us as a food crop as it is as a source of energy. It uses far too much energy to produce relative to what you get out of it either way, and it harms the people who use it either through obesity or through making the air harder to breathe because ethanol-infused gas produces more ground-level ozone than gasoline. Could we all please just take a step back, acknowledge that corn is wrecking our planet and our population, and stop using it except in the on-the-cob form as its maker intended?

This article provides a more thorough and scientific explanation. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/07070 9171636.htm

Two more VERY good reasons not to use ethanol:

1. Already the price of corn has risen. The result? Millions of people are starving because they can't find food
Maize Deception

2. If all cars ran on ethanol in the US, most of the US would have to produce corn.

3.Getting ethanol does not create a net gain of usable energy
Loss of energy

I don't think George can write, apparently he can't even have sex. Famous Galápagos Tortoise, Lonesome George, May Not Be Alone

"One statistical analysis of the new and previous Utah studies showed cell phone users were 5.36 times more likely to get in an accident than undistracted drivers. Other studies have shown the risk is about the same as for drivers with a 0.08 blood-alcohol level."

There is not enough non-anecdotal evidence to warrant any type of action on our part; aside from cleaning up OUR environment in general. For example we have evidence that plastic and other chemicals (yes plastic is a chemical that leaches into YOUR food) are damaging our bodies yet they are still rolling out of the factory. No one is getting all hopped up about those! In America over 90% of our crops are Genetically Modified (GM Crops) meaning that they make their own pesticides! We still dump thousands of pounds per field of pesticides on top of GM crops that MAKE their OWN pesticides. No one plows anymore, the crops, seeds, are modified to grow without water or hospitable soil.

I have witnessed this with my own eyes thousands of times; I live in farm country.

Each year:

1st: Spray Roundup, yes Round Up (41% Glyphosate), every year on every field before planting and other chemical applications.

2nd: Spray more chemicals, whatever is thought to be needed

3rd: Jam the GM seeds into the ground (No plowing, no discing, nothing)

4th: watch them sprout with no applcation of water and otherwise completely inhospitable chemical laden soil

5th: spray more chemicals as needed (remember this is all done on old equiptment by un-educated people, spills go unreported since they would be in extreme trouble and bakrupt from fines and cleanup fees should the authorities find out. Insteaed it flows into th water )

Its called Chemical Farming. You are eating it everyday and you cannot help it or do anything about it. When you kill a Deer in the country to eat you are eating GM pesticide laden meat.

ALL that "healthy" Soy and Corn that is fed to animals including you are drenched in chmicals you would would not even be able to get around without a haz-mat suit.

Mercury is much bigger problem but it doesn't make anyone any money to deal with it. Just like our discusting agricultural practices.

If you think farmers know what is best or have a choice about this stuff you are living in a dream world. Most "farmers" just rent out the fields they inherited to Crop Production Services Inc. (CPS) the largest "farmer" in the US. When I was a kid I rememnber when the people used to farm, those men are dead now.

Another thing about Round Up, they say it is safe becasue it breaks down and doesn't enter the ground water (where YOU get your water) as Glyphosate. But then you look out to see a state vehical filled with Mexicans (low wage, uneducated) stop by the bridge at the foot of MY hill over MY stream and they spray Glyphosate (Round Up) from a wand while sitting in the truck, right at the guardrail and into the stream! This is happening in thousands of locations every single day. They are spraying so weeds don't grow on the bridge.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

A few things for consideration:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/07041 8134159.htm

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

Google Video: The Great Global Warming Swindle
Google Video: Scam of the Great Global Warming Swindle

Global Warming Increases Wind Shear, Reduces Hurricanes, Climate Model Shows

Some of us are at least willing to accept that the ancient word translated "day" in Genesis has more possible translations than "a 24 hour period"

Exodus 20: 8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates;for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

Since the genesis account is interpreted to mean six 24 hour periods in the ten commandments ...

Exodus 31: 16,17 Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.'

... and in other parts of OT law ...

Mark 10: 6-9 But from the beginning of the creation, 'God made them male and female. For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will join to his wife, and the two will become one flesh,' so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."

... and Jesus teaching on marriage and divorce seems based on a literal interpretation of Genesis, specifically that "from the beginning of the creation, 'God made them male and female'" which directly contradicts evolution, it would seem that some one who wants to interpret the creation account in any other way is effectively claiming that Jesus was mistaken about creation. For such a person to claim to be a follower of Jesus as the Messiah is problematic to say the least, as they are effectively judging some of his teaching to be false.

As for the possibility of dinosaurs walking with humans, I encourage you to consider two things:
1. The historical artifacts depicting dinosaurs pictured on this site: http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/ancient/ancient .htm
2. The fact that when soft tissue was found in dinosaur bones there has been no questioning of the age of the bones, it has been widely and automatically accepted that soft tissue can last for 65 million years, even though it was previously "known" that this couldn't happen. This seems to bring into serious question the objectivity of mainstream scientists. Why has the age of the bones not been questioned?

It is not too suprising to find pretty good adaptation to a radiation environment among bacteria. They started earlier when natural radiation levels were higher. Some http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/06101 9192814.htm are adapted to using remaining radioactivity as an energy source. The ruggedness of bacteria was one of the motivations of the panspermia theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia.
--
Rent solar power at 2005 electric rates: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

One must remember the shorter length of reproductive generations that many wild animals have.

For those who have yearly reproduction cycles, we are looking at 21 years, twenty generations for evolution to take place. Those with shorter cycles, such as mice and rats, etc. They probably have evolved enough protection through 50 or more generations that life for them is not so much of an issue.

Creatures with longer cycles, such as humans, would probably have a hard time adapting via evolution. The positive note hear is the relative short half life, but it is still a problem for future generations.

There is a study that indicates that low levels of radiation can have positive effects on health. Not that I would recommend moving to Chernobyl any time soon.

At the moment we're burning lots of fossil fuels, that are in effect millions of years worth of stored Solar energy.

If we get to a point where that is all burnt then we are left with renewable resources:

• solar
• wind
• geothermal
• 
  

  
  Wind is actually driven by solar energy (heating/cooling of air masses.) There is a very finite amount of Solar energy that falls on the earth and understanding this will require determining what Earth's Energy Budget is.
  

  
  And at some point we need to go back to nuclear fuels and develop better processes for extracting energy from it so that the waste that we now have becomes fuel rather than a problem.
  

You can screw it up just as badly in the opposite direction. When the successful can expect to be expropriated, expect a lot less innovation. There are lots of examples of stagnant societies where anyone who produces more than others can expect to either "share" most of it (an effective ~80% marginal tax rate) or be expelled.

You've got a good point there. Power producers have a special place in the green market IMHO. Not just because of their responsibility, but also a bit because of their 'chicken and the egg' situation.

Will consumers buy green energy if it's noticeably more expensive than normal/grey energy? No.
Will green energy become cheaper if it's not produced on a massive scale? Not very much.
Will power producers invest heavily in mass producing green energy if the alternative is much cheaper. Not likely.

Bit of a circle thing going on in that field. There are however some nice developments going on in the field of energy research. For example, take a look at the news items here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/matter_energy/sol ar_energy/

So I'll try to be and stay hopefull! (Very nice site in general as well!)

For now, I try to consume less grey energy by supporting the more energy efficient and eco-friendly products. Trying to steer at least that side of the market in the right direction. ;)

"There's not at all a problem with this," Chapman said. "We have total confidence in the integrity of the repairs but I'm telling you right now that your mind will have a hard time convincing your eyes."

I would assume it wouldn't have antigens, as well (basically, it would be type O).

But you may be interested in some new research that looks to be able to remove the antigens from regular blood, thus converting all blood types to type O.

On the Greenland ice sheet, the IPCC report is being mischaracterized by Spiegel's reporter. There are also a handful of quotes from scientists about the imperfections and difficulties in climate models, which imply that those researchers share the reporter's skepticism about whether what the models say should be taken at all seriously. But do they? Or are they just being honest scientists describing their awareness of the limitations of their tools, who yet take seriously the likely threat that the best of those tools describe? At best, they are quoted out of context.

As for fewer deaths from the cold, surely we should remember the tens of thousands of deaths from the European heat wave a few summers ago. Then consider the NASA report just published estimating that by 2080 East Coast American cities which currently have summer temperatures in the the 80s with occasional spikes into the 90s will instead have typical temperatures in the 90s with occasional spikes into the 100s. What effect will that have on health? Have you tried breathing New York City ozone on a 95 degree day? What will that be like when it's 105 instead? How will it burn your lungs?

After all, obscenely noisey, light emitting shrimp bubbles have been jamming their sonar.. Someone finally went hmmmm...

Oh yeah, something similar proposed to kick off supernovae and detected in solar reactions

Anyhow, seems like sound waves might make a plasma confinement field and also pump energy into it, rather than using magnets and lasers etc. Some other thread Definition of Sonoluminescence
PS If the universe is electrical and acoustic, it must be a giant stereo!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/07050 2143733.htm

All sugars promote tooth decay.

Also http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?ne wsid=65470, http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/89/6 /2963, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/05050 3152956.htm

Fructose depresses leptin and insulin levels. Leptin is normally produced when you eat, and this triggers the "ok, I'm no longer hungry" signal in your brain so you stop eating. Lowering the leptin level causes you to still feel hungry, even after you've eaten. Switching from fructose to sucrose will allow your body to regulate itself better.

Its probably going to take some major lawsuits (and bankruptcies) to fix this problem ...

1) Train Yourself in Pakour. Become proficient.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbYtOEftc0

2) Get a hold of artificial spider silk + convenient dispenser
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/01 14_050114_tv_spider.html

3) Fashion a pair of Gecko setae gloves, boots and other convenient body areas
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3726

4) Fabricate a Kevlar Spidey suit
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=Quirks&artic le=UPI-1-20070416-18110300-bc-britain-hoodie.xml

5) Obtain DARPA Spidey sense

6) Profit! ...err save humanity!

Building a solar-panel power station is "cool", "neat", and "oh, so hip". However, it makes no economic sense. Solar power is about 3x the cost of the most expensive nuclear power.

Nuclear power is the way to go.

I'm not remotely an expert, but I'm guessing that oxygen isn't valuable enough to go to the effort of putting energy into it to split the oxygen off. If you do everything but the splitting, then it sounds like you're describing the mineral storage method of capture [1] [2].

I guess it comes down to whether the current method (fractional distillation of air) of producing oxygen uses less energy and requires less extra carbon dioxide to be produced as a side-effect. Without knowing more, I'd guess that just because fractional distillation is what's currently used, and because it doesn't involve splitting chemical bonds, that it uses less energy than splitting CO2, but that's just a guess.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/07041 8091932.htm

There's some work going on at UC San Diego to use solar power to convert CO2 into CO (carbon monoxide) and O. Apparently, CO is useful in industrial chemical processes like making plastic. There's also some talk of using it as a fuel.

You are correct that fallout would spread fairly far in and Iran-Israel exchange. But what may be of greater concern is the floatup. The carbon content of cities can be lifted quite high when the Sun heats the soot aeorsols. This means prolonged global cooling with substantial effects on growing seasons http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/06121 1090729.htm. An India-Pakistan-size exchange could lead to famine around the world. Presumably at least one side has that kind of fire power in the Iran-Israel situation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/05101 0085411.htm

From the article:
The researchers also examinedevidence from five independent, agreeing studies involving structuraland genetic analyses related to the "tridactyl," or three-fingered,hand, which is composed of digits 1, 2 and 3 in dinosaurs, Feducciasaid. That is the most critical characteristic linking birds todinosaurs. They found that embryos of developing birds differedsignificantly in that bird wings arose from digits 2, 3 and 4, theequivalent of index, middle and ring fingers of humans. To change soradically during evolution would be highly unlikely.

"If birds descended from dinosaurs, we would expect the same 1, 2 and 3 pattern," he said.

Currentdinosaurian dogma requires that all the intricate adaptations of birds'wings and feathers for flight evolved in a flightless dinosaur and thensomehow became useful for flight only much later, Feduccia said. Thatis "close to being non-Darwinian."

TFA says they increase the surface area without increasing the dimensions of the panel. But that's not enough.
Let's say that the 3D panel has 10 times the surface area of a flat panel, with the same dimensions. It still receives the same 1400 W/sq m as a flat solar panel, so the amount of solar power going into each sq cm of the panel has to drop to 1/10. It seems to me that the 3D panel wouldn't produce any more power than the flat design.
So there has to be a second effect at work. Let's see if we can find a better article than the information-starved FA? this article claims that the efficiency is increased due to reflections, i.e. each photon has more than one chance of being caught by a PN junction. Ah.

I wonder if this would work on macro scale, by placing two panels at a 45 degree angle to the sun, and 90 degrees to each other, like this \ /. That would double the efficiency of both panels, without the drawback of using nanoscale structures. The panels would have to track the sun for this to work, though.

including pretty pictures so we can see what TFA is talking about: Science Daily

As a Canadian, I cycle through most of the same sites. Add "Not Even Wrong", SciTechDaily, aldaily, edge.opg, and until quite recently Wired. I tried to read Lubos once or twice, I just can't do it. Something bad happened to Wired after the ownership changed. aldaily and edge.org are not what they used to be, either. Hate the new three-column format at the NYTimes. I read half as much content there since that style change. If I'm super bored and listless, I click on the lower left link on CNN and read about the ten tightest buns in college sports. Somehow I think CNN would know.

For a moment there I thought "The Register" was listed under the heading "For actually thinking". Good thing I wasn't drinking milk at the time. Mostly I read the Inquirer instead, despite their green-eyed malice toward the Wikipedia, 500 stories a year about stock photography, and another 300 stories a year about Wikipedia repeatedly declaring stock photography "non-notable", and an unrelated 200 stories a year about Sony's incompetence, if Shannon hasn't died recently, or Pamela hasn't been outed. Stories about the incompetence of HPaq, however, receive my undivided attention.

Scratch CTV. Never visit there. I prefer to get my water-insoluable fiber content from the hockey coverage at slam.canoe.ca. For a couple of seasons, I'd kill time when I was out of sorts watching Rick Mercer video from his site at CBC.

If the link is still there, this was one of the truly good ones. Right now I'm on a codec-impaired Fedora Core system so I can't check it myself. On my Feisty Fawn beta crash-box, X refused to start. No soup for me.

http://www.cbc.ca/mercerreport/backissues.php?seas on=2

I believe in a traditional family. Week of Feb 14, 2005.

If you're American, don't take offense. There's usually a whole segment of a Mercer episode devoted to offending Americans. This segment is not that one. I think the difference between Canadian humour and American humor is that Americans mock failure, while Canadians mock failure rebranded as success. If it hadn't been for Hurricane W. half of New Orleans might still be there, but then I digress.

In any case, Mercer has a few sharp words to direct towards "Tradition, Mark II". That's what I like. Speaking of chimps, I'll trawl edge.org or sciencedaily for six months for one good Sapolsky.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/sapolsky.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/07021 8134333.htm

I don't have to. Linux user's have had access to $650, 8 core machines for about 5 months now, and people have already started building clusters out of them. Too bad Apple dropped the PowerPC cpu, it really does kick some mighty ass. Welcome to late 2006, Apple!