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I can think of quite a few more problems — such as subjecting the newly-forming tissue to the high amounts of whatever energy is used in this particular kind of tomography. Getting close enough to the heart of a human embryo may also prove more problematic, than in the case of mice.

There is some evidence that ultrasound might disturb brain cells. Of course, they left the ultrasound on the pregnant mouse for half an hour, as I understand it a lot longer than a normal ultrasound session, and it wasn't a profound effect, the brain layers were largely undisturbed. No idea though how much of an effect on brain function that would cause.

I guess this technique uses light instead of sound though? Anyone know what the intensity of the light they're shining in would be? The heart initially forms before the retina does, but if they're using this to diagnose later developmental problems in the late term, and -if- this is a lot of light, I'd worry about frying photoreceptors.

The mechanisms for most CAM modalities (such as say, homeopathy) are usually highly implausible and often would require a complete reworking of the Standard Model.

Homeopathy would require something weird, but one can construct plausible theories about some effects of herbs, acupuncture and acupressure, chiropractic, massage, and osteopathy, as well as health cultivation practices such as yoga and qi gong, without stepping outside (or with only minor tweaks to) the "Standard Model". Even various "energy healing" modalities can be understood psychosomaticly. (And I guess homeopathy could be too, at that.)

Then throw in the fact that rarely is there even good scientific evidence that shows CAM modalities do anything at all and where are you left?

Rarely is there good scientific evidence that shows conventional modalities do anything. Very little medicine is evidence-based.

Moreover, there is a perfectly good reason why there is not nor will there be double-blind placebo controlled trials for vaccines.

Bullshit, as demonstrated by this controlled study of an HIV vaccine candidate: "The study had two (blinded) groups, one control group (receiving placebo injections) and one experimental group (receiving four 'prime' doses of ALVAC HIV and two boost doses of AIDSVAX gp120 B/E), with over 8,000 volunteers in each group, lasting from 2003 until now."

You are basically accusing most physicians of being corporate shills.

Have you been in a fscking doctor's office lately? Notice all the freebies with the names of drugs on them that pharmaceutical sales reps give out to doctors? Are you aware of the way that big pharma spends over $20 billion a year to essentially bribe doctors to use their products? Did you not hear about that recent fraud case against Pfizer?

Many doctors are corporate shills, yes. Many others have simply declined to engage their critical thinking skills, and believed whatever bullshit Big Pharma spoon-fed them as they were plied with gifts. (I dread the day my physician -- honest, hardworking, intelligent, compentent, and kind -- retires,

The fact that things like herbal supplements are more or less highly unregulated.

In point of fact, the FDA has basically the same regulatory power over supplements it has over food. It has the power to make supplement manufactures provide a complete list of ingredients, and to remove supplements from the marketplace if a danger is found. This is certainly a preferable state of affairs to the days of federal paramilitary law enforcement raids on people selling herbs and vitamins, don't you think?

I don't know anything about the internal NASA management bureaucracy, but I do know about bureaucracy in business and government agencies. It is by no means guaranteed that Mr. Cook is responsible for the failures of the projects that he managed. He might well be, but it certainly does not automatically follow. Bureaucracies excel at separating authority from responsibility (in fact, it can be argued that this is a core purpose of a bureaucracy, although personally I would disagree with that goal). Mr. Cook might well have known, for example, how to salvage on or more of those projects. Many of the failures to complete R&D on next-generation launch technologies were due to the budget over-run problems of the Space Shuttle program, which left the other programs continually starved for and competing for limited funding pools which were stretched too thin. NASA didn't have the budget flexibility to sustain an R&D program like X-33 through to completion.

The relatively well documented failure of the X-33 VentureStar project, for example, is known to be in part due to a project requirement (a cryogenic carbon fiber composite H2 tank) that the Lockheed Martin engineers identified as a risk (due to immature materials technology). Yes, it was NASA who insisted on taking the risk without proper scheduling and funding for risk reduction, and that is a failure of project management.

However, the internal NASA politics that led to this may be pretty complicated, and I haven't seen any discussion of that. Mr. Cook might well have fought on behalf of the engineers, but lost. It's also possible to look at the X-33 program and decide that it was on the verge of success. The project was under-funded, but the problems appeared to be reasonably clear engineering and materials science problems, which also appeared to have pretty clear solutions paths available (for a fee). The ramp for the aerospike engine was too heavy, and the carbon fiber tank technology was immature. Both of those are materials technology problems where the solutions could be had. In fact, it appears that the tank problem was solvable with current tech (aluminum-lithium alloy, like the modern version of the Space Shuttle external tank) and improved carbon fiber technology, which was apparently demonstrated after the cancellation of the X-33 program. The aerospike ramp weight also could be solved. Meanwhile, the heat shield technology developed was apparently impressive, and the aerospike engine work was also viewed in retrospect as pretty successful.

Another thing I've observed is that government agencies, at least under the Bush administration, were literally obsessed with talking about "lessons learned" from failed projects. Unfortunately, they tended to learn the wrong lessons, often because the real lessons were not politically or organizationally acceptable. Here's an article on the X-33 as an example: Lesson in Failed X-33 Bid, New Engine Promising. The real lessons: doing something useful (reducing the cost of payload to LEO) is hard work, the X-33 was close to achieving the difficult objectives the project was assigned, and yes, it would have been well worth an extra $1 Billion to complete the project and demonstrate the suite of useful technologies developed. Instead, NASA senior management internalized a false "lesson" because they don't need to admit management failure when they simply throw up their hands and blame the concept of a reusable LEO launcher.

Older than that. From September 1, 2001:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Seeing+Tongue-a078681631

Thousands of "Lloyd's names" were signed up for a reinsurance reverse lottery, and lost. They lost the game in the 90's, and there is still fallout thirty years later. The important point is that people signed up to play (even if the game turned out to be rigged).

I don't dispute that the government is perhaps larger than it should be, and that there's a lot of waste. However, I'd like people to use real facts in their arguments, not good-sounding stories they have no actual evidence for.

Speaking of which, I don't know what you're talking about with the $10,000 monkey wrench. The closest thing I could find was the $400 hammer, which as it turns out didn't actually cost $400.

Now, I didn't spend very long checking your facts, and maybe I missed something, and there really was such a monkey wrench, or the hammer really did cost $400. I apparently spent more time checking your facts than you did, though. We're supposed to be nerds here, and nerds care about facts, not half-remembered anecdotes. If you're going to assert something, please back it up.

Project HYDRA, look into it.

http://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/hardware/Ergonomics_and_Repetitive_Strain_Injury.pdf http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Repetitive+strain+injuries+stretch+higher-a018341055 http://www.rsi-therapy.com/statistics.htm I think the UK stats are probably the best stats to go by. Most of the RSI injury rate information in the United States is based on the last clean census of injuries which was roughly 1994-1995. Unfortunately, since that time states with a large chicken processing workforce, have either stopped counting RSI statistics or have merge them into some other heading making difficult if not impossible to track down what the actual injury rates are. It's amazing the kind of government service you can purchase if your name is Tyson or Perdue. I know this sounds kind of conspiratorial but, up here in New England, the same thing happened with glass cutters and textile workers. Remember, programmers are nothing more than a clean form of blue-collar labor that can be replaced by cheaper labor in a heartbeat. As for the near 100% comment, well as we age, we lose ability. Since everybody ages, is a good chance you will spend decades being unable to use the tools and toys you use today. There's a better chance that the twentysomethings 30 years from now will be inventing all of these cool things that you will be excluded from.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Repetitive+strain+injuries+stretch+higher-a018341055 when you work through the reports, the 300k number works out to about 100k for IT. while this report is old, nothing has changed to drop the rate. uk reports are more current http://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/hardwar/Ergonomics_and_Repetitive_Strain_Injury.pdf As for the near 100%, think arthritis, medication induced tremors, loss of flexibility as you age normally or via trauma. It all adds up to loss of hand function.

It's already possible to do really low quality artificial sight.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Seeing+Tongue-a078681631

As I see it, the main hurdle is just getting a eye hooked up with a decent amount of bandwidth (there are issues with power supply, nonrejection, et cetera, but those seem less difficult). The human brain is really good at creating interpreters for new inputs.

Should malls be allowed to exclude people due to the color of their skin?

In my mind it should depend. A sole propriatership should be able to do what it wants.

As the parent noted, there is a significant difference between property opened to the public, and property open only to private parties. The facts of ownership are irrelevant.

There are private "members only" "clubs" that make use of this distinction. See this article on private golf clubs.

Property intended for public use (eg a store) is subject to issues such as anti-discrimination law. As far as I know (IANAL), even the policy some stores have of "checking of bags on exit is a condition of entry" is iffy. (You aren't trespassing until you refuse to have your bag checked... at which point you were exiting anyway. You might not be welcome back, but that's later.)

Correcting myself now, lol:

Right @ the line where I stated this (pretty much):

"(1.3 workplace shell isn't there either, so it's most likely character-mode/tty types))"... ugh!

Older GUI sub version 2.1, for Os/2, used "PRESENTATION MANAGER"...

(Lack of sleep - it just gets me, everytime! However, now that I'm typing, might as well let it rip!)

I.E./E.G.-> 2.x & beyond-above versions of Os/2 had the object-oriented "WorkPlace Shell" (long time user of this, 2.1 into Warp 3.0 too, circa 1994-1997 iirc, in fact, & I can't believe I slipped like that (old age, lol)))

APK

P.S.=> Os/2 also did Windows 16-bit Windows & DOS apps... AND, quite possibly BETTER than that combination itself (Os/2 was GREAT for multitasking DOS apps, & not too shabby @ many Windows ones either, especially vs. Microsoft Windows 3.x itself (because it ran all the apps in cooperatively multitasked processes w/ shared memory spaces for Windows 16 bit apps, although it too, could also pre-emptively task & separate DOS instances though)...

Os/2 was better for Windows GUI 16-bit apps, mainly because they COULD be put into their OWN 'virtual machines' & separate memory spaces, whereas Windows 3.x + DOS itself couldn't do that...

(Yes, albeit naturally @ the cost of more memory used of course (& I had 16-32mb of RAM systems back then) but it wasn't 110% compatible in many things also, & you had to keep that in mind (even then? Virtuslization on ALL levels, was far from 'perfect'))...

It's (Os/2) an OS that I thought was awesome, but didn't make it, vs. Windows NT-based Microsoft products!

(What saved Windows imo, was the sheer MASS of softwares it had built up around itself, & good tools to build them with pretty guickly, especially for GUI applications development & RAD tools between MS &/or Borland - but, it did have a boatload of DECENT tools like GammaTech Utlities -> http://martigny.ai.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/1998-08/0091.html (defraggers + undelete, & other system type Norton-like tools), BackMaster -> http://www.thefreelibrary.com/BackMaster+for+OS%2F2+now+supports+QIC+drives+up+to+850MB.-a016673907, & a good word processor called "DeScribe" -> I actually liked + ALL of them worked perfectly w/ FAT or HPFS (decent filesystem for its time, partial ancestor of NTFS iirc))...

Man - too bad it's (Os/2) gone the way it has, & IBM sold it off iirc, or something like that! apk

Well, using your query as an example I only had to go down a few results to find my answer. Iron

Likewise, trying to determine when to request my vacation this summer gets me the answer on the first try.

See you on opening day bitches!

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Expandable+keyboard+puts+new+IBM+ThinkPad+in+a+class+of+its+own-a016694636

So we shouldn't make kids go to school at all? Should we fling the doors open on the mental institutions too? The residents' movements are restricted and not many employers get away with treating their employees like that. Children and mental patients aren't that different. There are plenty of studies that show the teenage brain isn't fully developed, and the last thing that develops is decision making . Insane people don't know they're insane, and teen age kids think they know everything. So when do we allow kids to make all their own decisions? At what point should we let them start their careers? 15? 10? 5? Then Martha Stewart won't have to use foreigners in her sweat shops. She can use good 'ol American child labor. The whole point of school is to TRY and teach them some kind of skills so they're qualified to do something besides menial labor or pole dancing. I'm not saying the current curriculum does a great job of that, not by a long shot. But I do believe that most teachers do their best and what is taught needs to be generic enough to give the students a fundamental base.

The real thing they're learning in school is how to work in a group and follow rules. Yes, a lot of the rules are stupid, but that's just part of living in a society. Everyone follows some stupid rules at some time. Sitting at a red light when no one is coming is stupid, but I do it. If some kid is already totally equipped for life and school has nothing to offer him, then he always has the option to file for emancipation. That's really what you're talking about. Except you want to emancipate every kid, even though they haven't demonstrated any kind of ability to deal with the responsibility that would be thrust upon them. And them with their silly putty decision making brains. Tsk tsk.

While perhaps it was more of a parlor trick than a scientific hoax, The Turk was still peddled as a thinking machine that could play chess. Not only did its creator succeed, but subsequent owners did, as well.

The Turk or Automaton Chess Player was a chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century, and exhibited from 1770 for over 84 years, by various owners, as an automaton but later explained in January 1857 as an elaborate hoax.

...playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.

Really interesting stuff, well before any modern computer (even beating Charles Babbage's work by almost half a decade). In fact, Babbage was another opponent of the turk, and was reportedly inspired by it.

(If you're a CS major and don't know who Babbage is, you really should read up.)

AFAIK sceptical is _a_ correct spelling. Where's your evidence that it is wrong?

The dictionaries I checked list sceptical as a correct spelling.

As for popular usage more are listed as using sceptical than skeptical here:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?By=0&SearchBy=4&Word=sceptical

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?By=0&SearchBy=4&Word=skeptical

I hope you recognize the names. Compare by number of authors (and note that one Burroughs work had "sceptical" maybe someone else changed it - the rest had "skeptical").

I am not an American and I hope my standard of English never "improves" to the US standards, or to Firefox's dismal standards.

AFAIK sceptical is _a_ correct spelling. Where's your evidence that it is wrong?

The dictionaries I checked list sceptical as a correct spelling.

As for popular usage more are listed as using sceptical than skeptical here:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?By=0&SearchBy=4&Word=sceptical

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?By=0&SearchBy=4&Word=skeptical

I hope you recognize the names. Compare by number of authors (and note that one Burroughs work had "sceptical" maybe someone else changed it - the rest had "skeptical").

I am not an American and I hope my standard of English never "improves" to the US standards, or to Firefox's dismal standards.

They're calling you a "foreigner" while they're abroad in your country.

"Well, the guide goes with the barbershop, with the billiard-table, with the gasless room, and may be with many another pretty romance of Paris. I expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de la Chartreuse, or something that would sound grand in letters to the villagers at home, but to think of a Frenchman by the name of Billfinger! Oh! This is absurd, you know. This will never do. We can't say Billfinger; it is nauseating. Name him over again; what had we better call him? Alexis du Caulaincourt?"

"Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville," I suggested.

"Call him Ferguson," said Dan.

That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without debate, we expunged Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Ferguson.

Dragon had a Mac product once before - Dragon Power Secretary. It was tied to specific apps. Didn't get much updating or new versions after the initial release and died an agonizing death.

Uranium Miner Cancer (5x Greater than non-miners)

Lung Cancer in Non-Smoking Uranium Miner

Cancer Kills 14 Aboriginal Uranium Workers

Google can find you lots more, just search for uranium miner cancer.

Remember the radon scare? Now just imagine going to work every day where there is a lot of radon present and your boss doesn't give you an air-tank to avoid it.

As far as cleanup, take a gander at the Moab tailings pile left behind from the last time someone made a buck off "cheap, clean nuclear power".

Given the simplicity of the computer guided cockroach, I'd be unsurprised if someone said "Let's find a rather large flying bug that can handle the weight of the circuitry and make a flying spy bug." And given that it was about 10 years ago that the cockroach was demonstrated, it's not a huge stretch to think it would be available for field testing at this point. And if it's done right, the hardware could be reclaimed when the wetware wears out, which reduces cost.

None of this answers the question of why, though. All your statements about easier ways to do this still stand.

I was amazed by the fact that it took 25 years to reach one billion PCs. That number will change to two billion by 2008 according to Gartner Dataquest.
You know what this is leading toward. Without a nation wide effort of recycling its a slow and steady progression of these PCs ending up in closests, storage facilities and land fills. This subject doesn't grab the media's attention like such subjects as Global warming or dirty bombs, but considering the toxic materials PC are made with it should at least raise some questions. The picture in my mind references a tv PSA of long ago. I see a decades worth of computers tossed back and marked as obsolete, while an Native american looks toward you and sheds a tear (ok so he wasn't really an Indian but its sentiment that I wanted you to remember),

Please do not forget that not all exercise is created equal. Those meatheads who have arms as big as your torso may be doing horrible things inside their brains.
Recent studies have documented cases of brain stem injury and subarachnoid hemorrhage with maximal resistive exercise. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Effect+of+breathing+ instruction+on+blood+pressure+responses+during+... -a08012731
So they pump and pump and their brains pop and pop. Just a note, to clarify some comments people are making in jest. Jest accurately! Lest we quest vapidly!