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Sorry to disappoint, but there's a lot of people inside drug companies that give a lot of shit about people. I personally know I could be making a hell of a lot more money in the financial industry than I do in pharma. Why have lobbiests & etc to deal w/ governmental issues? Tell ya what, when the HMO's, AARP, & etc quit pushing the government to expropriate drugs & give them away for free, the companies would be more than happy to drop the government affairs and get back to doing science. But in the current climate, if you don't lobby, your interests will get buried. And then, once the investors realize that there are no more paying customers, you'll have no drug industry. Hope there's good leaches around in a few years when you decide to get sick.

Where get the $1e9 dollars per drug? Lots of places. Here's a couple:

The Tufts CSDD studies is a good source, their estimate was $900 mil four years ago.

Medical News Today estimates $1.2 billion for a new biological

Essentially, when you want the drug companies to give away a drug, you want to expropriate their property. As an investor, ask yourself whether you're willing to put your money into an industry that's subject to expropriation, and think about whether you want a drug industry around or not the next time a pesky little virus emerges from the forrest.

• move any deleted stuff to /trash, possibly replicating the directory structure underneath
• move any deleted files to ./.trash

A dollar to every third person in the US, big deal.
That was based on my hypothetical. In reality, the cost to develop a drug is almost an order of magnitude higher, at over $800 million (source: http://csdd.tufts.edu/NewsEvents/RecentNews.asp?ne wsid=29 It also doesn't cover the potential liability after approval (Vioxx, anybody?), it doesn't account for the cost of drugs that don't make it to market, etc. It was a simplified example to illustrate a point, not a comprehensive analysis of every cost and revenue.

Way to pick apart the hypothetical and miss the argument, though.

As a classicist, I just have to say that actually ancient Greek temples fell down in major earthquakes with some frequency. For example, the temple of Apollo at Delphi was completely leveled by an earthquake in 373 BC:

http://www.ancient-greece.org/architecture/delphi- temple-of-apollo.html

and the temple of Zeus at Olympia was wrecked in the 5th century AD:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cl135/Students/Rebecc a_Furer/temple.html

Karen Carr, History
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon

Drug development is generally not publically funded. It is an expensive, long-term, high risk investment. In 2001, the average cost of developing a new prescription drug was $802 million, and took from 10 to 15 years. That does not include any marketing costs. Yes drug companies spend a ton of money on marketing, eclipsing their spending on R&D. Yes drug companies are highly profitable, high-risk investments generally produce higher return than low risk investments. Investment and advertising seem like things generally associated with free markets.

If you want to argue whether drug companies are sleezy and annoying and shouldn't be allowed to advertise on TV and are filthy rich and should do more to offer life-saving drugs to people who can't afford them, you'll have to find someone else, because I agree with you.

Your assertion that the US has "relatively low levels of access to basic health care" is also true, but unrelated. I have relatively low levels of access to a Ferrari. That doesn't mean the automotive industry is not a free market.

You are correct that even a capitalist like me can not cure viral disease. But neither can any other economic system. But what about productivity lost for conditions for which there are known treatments? In Canada, the median wait time to get treatment from a specialist is more than 17 weeks (see page 25 in this study, warning, it's a PDF). That's 17 weeks of reduced productivity for patients with conditions that have known treatments.

The economics of the US healthcare industry are complex. The Hippocratic Oath is often at odds with the economic desires of those who provide care. Crafting public policy that works for patients as well as providers is where all the action and debate is at, not whether the US healthcare industry is a free market or not.

For your perusal: (Guessing the editors couldn't pick just one)

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_Dangerous_Id ea

Video Pesentation at TED
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key =d_dennett&gclid=CJvOo4LXo4gCFR4IUAodOhKBVQ&flashE nabled=1

Book
http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Dangerous-Idea-Evolu tion-Meanings/dp/068482471X

HomePage
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/~ddennett.htm

Here's an essay you should take a look at: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/Relativityo fWrong.htm

This whole bit about theory and fact always comes up. I suspect that it has alot to do with the diversity of definitions for the word in english: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory

theory
n. pl. theories

      1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
      2. The branch of a science or art consisting of its explanatory statements, accepted principles, and methods of analysis, as opposed to practice: a fine musician who had never studied theory.
      3. A set of theorems that constitute a systematic view of a branch of mathematics.
      4. Abstract reasoning; speculation: a decision based on experience rather than theory.
      5. A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.
      6. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

Number one is what we're dealing with here. But of course in popular culture theory is a much more dubious and uncertain thing along the lines of 5 & 6.

Do other languages/cultures suffer from the same difficulty? That alone might explain some of the discrepancy.

Well, religious people often blow up things. They also kill, torture, or commit other atrocities.

But science doesn't work like that. With the scientific method you may find sometimes that you weren't absolutely right, but each step gets you closer to the truth.

Perseus has a (conjectural) gearing diagram for the mechanism:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students /Jesse/antik.gif

Ask and ye shall receive.

I posted this link already:
http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/fellows/bob_ morse_04/08_Franklin_Lab_Part_VIII.pdf

For the record here is Dr. Franklin's description in a letter to the Royal Society. It is quite a bit different than the popular story of his being struck by lightning. It is quoted in the PDF above.

"Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which, being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being silk is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder-clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all the other electric experiments be performed which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated."

From the link above also:

I. Bernard Cohen, in Benjamin Franklin's Science, pp 100-109 discusses the work of Jacques de Romas, who
carried out extensive kite experiments with atmospheric electricity, as well as Franklin's friend Ebenezer
Kinnersley, and John Lining. Abbé Beccaria used a kite to discover that there are electrical effects even in fair
weather. Pieter van Musschenbroek of Leyden jar fame also flew kites to investigate atmospheric electrification.

Schiffer, Draw the Lightning Down, (2003, University of California Press) pp. 166-171, describes kite investigations
by Bertholon, Cuthbertson and Cavallo. The latter reported hundreds of experiments, and noted that the worst
experience was a shock to his arms.

I am glad we have mythbusters to determine the truthfulness of historical accounts. Has it not entered your mind that just maybe Dr. Franklin was a bit more clever that a pop tv show crew.

The Philidelphia Experiment (as it was called) has been duplicated many times. Here is an account from Joseph Priestly in 1775:

"The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of its
being electrified. One very promising cloud had passed over it without any effect; when, at
length, just as he was beginning to despair of his contrivance, he observed some loose threads of
the hempen string to stand erect, and to avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on
a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance, he immediately presented his
knucle to the key, and (let the reader judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have felt at that
moment) the discovery was complete. He perceived a very evident electric spark. Others
succeeded, even before the string was wet, so as to put the matter past all dispute, and when the
rain had wetted the string, he collected electric fire very copiously. This happened in June 1752,
a month after the electricians in France had verified the same theory, but before he had heard of
any thing that they had done."

No serious historian disputes the account and no there is no dispute that the experiment was conducted sucessfully many times afterward. It's too bad that scientists in the eighteenth century were more skilled at experiments than Mythbusters.

If you want original sources see: http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/fellows/bob_ morse_04/08_Franklin_Lab_Part_VIII.pdf

That's constans, not contans.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/morphindex?la ng=la

In response to your first paragraph, please consider Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong.

Only a few.

You also have to ask yourself: what would you expect an evolution-dominated textbook to say? "We're presenting six hundred pages on evolution here, but we don't think it's important?"

Repeated assertion is not proof.

Evolution is a theory (perhaps I should say Theory) which attempts to explain Linnaeus' organisation. That it succeeds is what's in question here. The Creationists explain the same things which evolutionary principle has had kingship of claimed for it, many of them far more plausibly. They claim, with this as justification, that creation is the central organising principle of biology.

You assert that "creation science has yet to generate a single testable, falsifiable, hypothesis, which is the first step to becoming a theory", but you do so speciously. Creation science sites are awash in hypotheses and you simply haven't noticed. Fixed speciation is one such hypothesis, and it matches reality exactly. The absence of interspecies fossils is another prediction of Creartion, and so far they've won the day on that one pretty convincingly (the closest to a refutation we've come is that glorified hoatzin called archaeopteryx).

Early Creationists (at least in Europe) got too carried away with this and insisted that not just species but individual subspecies of animal were immutable. This in the face of cross-breeding programs. Mind you, this was back in the day when Spontaneous Generation was accepted as the scientifically valid opposition to this concept, so I'm inclined to cut both sides some slack here.

Go and actually read some Creationist sites -- know thy enemy and all that. They've got reasonable-sounding hypotheses on geology, astronomy, all manner of stuff. If you're going into a battle of wits, do remember to go in armed! Read some of the refutations of DDI (and DCD's errata) as well. Have an argument, not a shouting match! (-:

Meanwhile, there are many evolutionary biologists who would cheerfully donate a limb to the cause if they thought they'd get a naturalistic self-organising principle out of it. That alone should be a big hint that there's something major still missing from the panacea called evolution.

seriously:

http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~couch/software.html see Peep

now:

http://www.auralizer.com/

academic paper:

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceed ings/lisa2000/gilfix/gilfix_html/

"If you don't settle your statistical methods before starting to analyze the data, then it ain't science."

You misunderstand the nature of Bayesian statistics. The data and the initial prior determine the analysis, the analysis generates a prediction, which becomes the new prior. It not only tests hypotheses but generates new hypotheses. You can construct an accurate Bayesian model from nearly any initial prior given sufficient data.

Actually, I don't know anything about Bayesian statistics. However, from TFA:

Dr Griffiths and Dr Tenenbaum conducted their experiment by giving individual nuggets of information to each of the participants in their study (of which they had, in an ironically frequentist way of doing things, a total of 350), and asking them to draw a general conclusion.

The Scientific Method requires that the hypothesis makes the predictions before they are tested. This is an essential requirement regardless the actual statistical methods used. For example, consider that an arbitrary amount of completely random data of just 6 variables is likely to yield at least one "statistically significant" correlation for the determined data-miner to write his paper about.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with what the authors did (except maybe being in the popular press before publication) it's just not the kind of thing that the FDA would let you go to market with.

In most situations communications would improve the estimates.

I dunno, I'd guess any kind of "consensusing" would destroy this magic distribution-detecting ability. Anecdotally, the one time I was on a jury this one young male juror worked hard to score the phone number of a young female juror, who's ex was a cop, etc..

• Compass - Invented by the Chinese and first used in Europe by pagan Vikings in the 12th Century.
• Stirrup - Invented by the Chinese and introduced into Europe by the Swedes in the 7th Century.
• Crossbow - Chinese had them as did the Romans.
• Eyeglasses - Probably 13th Century Italian, but early lens's were discovered in ancient Nineveh. Ben Franklin is generally credited with the invention of bifocals.
• Clocks - Were known to the Greeks.

While it is true that on an absolute basis, methane is the second largest contributor to climate change, it has a very low global warming potential compared to most other GHGs. Even so, CH4 is 21 times as potent as CO2. So, if the CH4 to CO2 proportion (tons CH4 emitted:tons CO2 stored) from a tree (over its lifecycle) is greater than 1:21, then trees are part of the problem (rather than part of the solution). According to Tufts: a tree stores 671 lbs of CO2 over its lifetime (presumably, lifetime excludes decomposition). Source http://www.tufts.edu/tie/tci/seques tration.htm So, if the CH4 emitted per tree is 32 lbs or more, we'z in a heap o' trouble. The Nature study's coauthor, Thomas Röckmann, stated, "Rough estimates suggest the positive effect of storing carbon far outweighs a plant's emissions of methane . . . ." Source: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/health/1 3636155.htm Sounds like Röckmann has already done an estimate of the proportions. I suppose that Röckmann et al did not make the estimated proportions available to the press since the proportions were not covered. Was the "rough" estimate enough to conclude that a more detailed estimate was not necessary? One might ask, why wasn't a per tree comparison included in the report? The omission of the estimated emission proportions seems to me to be a major weakness. I have a hard time believing the findings when something so obvious seems not to have made its way into the hands of the press. How does the rate of methane emission change over time? At what stage in its lifecycle does a tree cease producing methane? How does the methane emission rate change between species? The report summaries suggest that the conclusions were based on lab studies of rye grass. It seems to be a bit of a stretch to go from lab rye grass to the entire Amazon. Who funded the work? Röckmann has the answers. Greg

I want to teach the kids on my team better version control practices (Lord knows we need it!) and I find that easier with text programs rather than binary files as the kids can better understand the value of revision comments when they can use some visual diff tool to examine the old file versus the new one they are about to check in.

Or, is there any good way with RoboLab (and the NXT compiler) to diff the files?

Also, how does the NXT compiler compare to RoboLab?

Thanks!
Dave

Well I certainly remember babies getting quite a bit of attention (and I'm pretty sure treats) when they were being taught how to speak (and I do remember having them taught how to speak).

There's a lot of evidence that how ever much people may try to teach babies to speak, babies ignore them. The best evidence for this is that babies will persist in making systematic errors (e.g. "sheeps") even if explicitly corrected by an adult. Of course, whenever you speak to a baby, what you say is potentially available to the baby as linguistic data, but that doesn't mean that there's any teaching going on.

But regardless, apes have learnt sign language without being actively taught (just go to the links I provided).

A quick look at the links you've provided shows no such thing. The closest I found was that apes were observed signing to each other without trainers present, which of course just goes to show that they had at some point been trained. "Loulis", according to this article managed to aquire 50 signs without instruction, but (leaving aside the fact that this is a miniscule achievement compared to the vocabulary a baby learns in similar circumstances) we don't know whether she showed any significant ability to produce structured sentences using these signs. The chimps at the CHCI (allegedly) show some limited ability in this regard, but they were trained.

Some of the scholarship in the articles you link to is a little shoddy. For example, this article describes Chomsky's (supposed) views on the subject, but only cites a secondary source as justification (Booth). Chomsky would in fact probably agree that apes have many of the cognitive mechanisms necessary for language (see the recent work by Chomsky, Hauser & Fitch), though he still denies that chimps have a fully formed language faculty. These days, he would say that the crucial ability they lack is recursion.

the researchers were very lax about what they accepted as a sign, etc.
they of course had their own agenda to push

While research bias (either for or against chimps communicating) is a problem that is difficult to overcome in such a strong issue (for many), I have read quite a bit on the successes. I was referring to an instance where chimpanzee's (or another primate) did create words. The example I remember is "bad+dream" for nightmare.

they imitated some key words, but didn't originate their own

Humans have the "inventing words gene," while I believe other primates don't. But that isn't a bad thing (IMO), as it allows us to continue to understand them. If they did invent new words, they would have to teach us, and their ability to teach humans (they are, after all, not equal to our intelligence) could be limited.

Having said that this article says that it's quite possible bonobo's (a type of chimpanzee) do create verbal sounds for specific things, which I presume they've invented. I don't know if it is true that they are verbal "words," but it does bear more research.

However I don't see their inability to create words as them being unable to learn language. This page (it was only a quick search, info may be a bit suspect, but it seems fairly valid and jibes with what I've read in the past) has info on both success and failures. Why I like it is because it outlines those against the results proving language's opinions, as well as those opinions who are for it. One man called Herb Terrace doesn't believe the results so far are indicative of language aquisition, but merely "aping." Some of his complaints are:
* That the apes were were performing rote memorization tasks similar to pigeons who are taught to peck at colors in specific orders.

This I take issue with, because the page earlier shows an ape taking a word in one context "more" and using it in others. It isn't a simple case of "sign X always follows action Y" but instead, reasoning what sign X actually means, and applying it in other situations.

* Primates only signed in order to please their trainers, not for the personal gratification of using the signs.

I take issue with this, as many sources I've read say apes do spontaneously speak with each other. Having said that, it appears Terrace's complaints were actually made a few decades ago, and that research since then has proven him wrong. More info here

* A primate might learn to connect a sign with food and reproduce the sign through simple conditioning, just as Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell.

To be honest, is it possible to prove that human children don't speak for the same reasons? I don't think so. Think about it, when a baby is learning to speak, we heap attention and treats on them. The Pavlovian method of teaching requires this to begin with, which is then removed and the taught actions continue regardless. A problem with detractors of ape speech is that they often ask questions we can't answer when it comes to humans.

but if anyone did do some proper communicating with chimps, i don't know about it.

Unfortunately I to, do not know if anyone has. The article I linked to before, does suggest that researchers are doing their best to communicate properly with apes, but it's a hot issue for those involved. I believe current research is very indicative, but it can't silence critics yet. But I do believe it's enough (or at least enough to warrant a much more structured research program with a definitive goal of giving apes more rights) to say "y'know. Maybe we should reconsider how we treat them. Perhaps there is a better place in our society for them."

Eh, I hesitated using the eye example because I'm much more familiar with molecular biology. So here goes:

http://www.tufts.edu/sackler/physiology/faculty/fo rgac/V-ATPase1.jpg

Go look at that. It's a vacuolar ATPase. Basically it pumps ATP through a membrane and uses that equilibrium difference to turn the middle shaft. However, when you look at the parts, they are useless. I don't remember exactly, but there are like 27 different proteins that make up that enzyme. You cannot reduce the system to fewer parts, it is useless without the shaft or without the membrane coil or without the ATP binding and passage area.

Out of curiosity, how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false? You said: "Macro-evolution is, as you point out, a theory, but it is a testable and falsifiable theory...". I'm just wondering how you would go about doing that. Any suggestions?

I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species. If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?

Here is a decent link form Tufts Univ:

http://csdd.tufts.edu/NewsEvents/RecentNews.asp?ne wsid=5

Average amount in 2001 was $802 million (several were significantly above that; there is a 'long tail effect' here).

According to a more recent link it is 1.7 Billion:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/topstory/8150/8150notw5.ht ml

That sounds just like the philosophy or Epicurious, or if you prefer Latin to Greek then Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (Latin | English) parroted it pretty well. Note that epicurianism (contrary to modern stereotype) is not hedonism, true it advocates the maximization of pleasure, but it advises that the best way to do that is to live a life of moderation and to avoid all pain. Pleasure is the abscence of pain. Or something like that. I don't know that I agree with it, but it is interesting to thinka bout.

That sounds just like the philosophy or Epicurious, or if you prefer Latin to Greek then Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (Latin | English) parroted it pretty well. Note that epicurianism (contrary to modern stereotype) is not hedonism, true it advocates the maximization of pleasure, but it advises that the best way to do that is to live a life of moderation and to avoid all pain. Pleasure is the abscence of pain. Or something like that. I don't know that I agree with it, but it is interesting to thinka bout.

I think you mean Augean stables.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/stables.html

FYI - "Between the time research begins to develop a new prescription medicine until it receives approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the drug in the United States, a drug company typically spends $802 million over the course of 10 to 15 years."
http://csdd.tufts.edu/NewsEvents/RecentNews.asp?ne wsid=4

I'm just saying it's highly likely that any philosophy or world-view a particular science-technique appears to imply at this point in time (with Evolution, a philosophy of No God, No Plan) is HIGHLY likely to be .... Dead wrong.

Not "dead wrong." Partially wrong. The world is less than totally deterministic, but it is not totally non-deterministic. Causes have reasonably predictable effects. A deterministic universe, while inaccurate, was more useful than the totally non-deterministic universe which existed before Newton, where anything could happen.

Asimov spoke brilliantly to this line of reasoning in his essay "the relativity of wrong."
To quote him;

when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/Relativityo fWrong.htm

Perseus has many classic Greek works, in Greek or in translation, and has now become invaluable to young people studying Greek who do not want to check out the entire Loeb Library to do research.

It is art.

That would be http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolu tion/docs/text/text_cult_3.html

A few thoughts, not having read penrose, but being quite familiar with philosophical arguments based on psychology (as i do research pretty much in that domain):

consciousness and free will are different. the argument that free will and voluntary behavior are somehow dependent on quantum uncertainty is an easier claim to build than that of consciousness. consciousness is generally understood in cognitive psychology to be a top-down executive filter and chooser...

so it's quite possible for nonhuman animals to have free will/exhibit voluntary behavior, but not have what we understand as consciousness (or, if it's a gradient, have as much consciousness).

now, as far as neural development and the neurophysiology: repeatability does not entail deterministic function. the nervous system is highly stochastic (probabilistic). neural firing depends on activation to cross a critical threshold, mediated by molecules bouncing around. i'm not a biochemist, but i'm pretty sure one would tell you that "protein machinery" isn't machinery like humans build machinery. it's messy. it involves a lot of bouncing around until things end up "just right." this bouncing is at a low enough level that it very well can be influenced by quantum uncertainty.

now take this stochastic system and build a massively parallel processor from it, and build in the ability to filter the noise, basically. now you've got at least an illusion of voluntariness, in that behavior is unpredictable and self-initiated.

Whatever algorithm they're using, it seems to be sensitve to the horizon line, colour, shading, orientation of the aircraft, etc. It seems to be operating at the level of a pigeon (who have been shown to discriminate photos depicting trees, water, and particular people - as well as art by Picasso and Monet. See http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/avc/huber for other examples. It will be some time before algorithms can match on the basis of model numbers and such. It took humans quite a while to evolve a cortex to enable such fine discriminations.

One bottleneck that is on the verge of being taken on with the advent of various dual core processors is that of concurrency. Due to the nature of Virtual Reality programming, parallel processing demands are very high (just think of how many things run in parallel in the real world).

Languages such as The SHADOW System that are designed for programming Virtual Reality Environments are highly threaded and designed to take advantage of these systems. However, the concepts were ahead of their time in the case because the computing power simply did (does) not exist. In fact, the degree of parallel processing required is so high, that it will not be sufficed by the initial wave of dual core CPUs, but they will go a long way in terms of improvement of Virtual Reality systems.

Read the permananent version of this post here and more on the topic here

The Perseus project at Tufts is an excellent source of ancient literature, as well as some translations.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

If true classics are your thing. ;)

First, almah does not imply virginity.

You keep pressing that point, but aren't even trying to back it up. The connotations of the term certainly do imply virgiinity, in the same way referring to a "little girl" in modern English would imply virginity, or using "Miss" to address a woman in Victorian England would imply that she was unmarried and, presumably, a virgin.

A 14 year old wife would definitely be an almah, but would not be a virgin (betulah.)

No, she wouldn't be almah - read up a bit more; that term was never used for a married woman. It might be used for a woman who was betrothed, but not for a woman who's marriage had been consumated. In that case, she was neither almah nor betulah

Second, we know that a group of Rabbis translated the Torah into greek, and that was the foundation of the Septuagint. History is silent on who translated the rest - it could have been rabbis, assimilated jews, non-jews, etc.

Regardless of who did the translating: the translation of almah as parthenos was accepted by Alexandrian Jews and others who made use of the Septuagint. This seems to indicate that even if almah did not, specifically, mean "virgin", there was considerable overlap between the words.

Was she a virgin? Absolutely not. That shows us that parthenos also does not mean virgin.

The meaning of the Greek word is not determined by it's usage in the Septuagint; it's determined from it's usage in the Greek language. One of the more significant meanings of parthenos is virgin - Athena's two most prominent titles were Pallas Athena and Parthenos, specifically because she was the virgin goddess.

(BTW, if you could point me at a reference to the use of parthenos w/respect to Dinah, I'd appreciate it.)

I don't know where you christians get your info from regarding the meanings of various hebrew and greek words, but it's always amusing

From Liddel-Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, among others. Take a look at the various definitions for parthenos, and it's pretty clear that it means a virgin, or by implication, an unmaried woman presumed to be a virgin.

I think I saw an article here sometime ago about raven's fashioning tools out of paperclips in order to snag food.

A quick search on google turns up an entire site devoted to tool use in birds.

If you're looking for cutting edge HCI research, go to where the researchers are: the universities. Here's a pretty exhaustive directory of HCI educational links, university departments, etc.

I'm currently taking some HCI grad school courses at Tufts, and the department head is doing a lot of work in the field of Tangible User Interfaces .

If you're looking for cutting edge HCI research, go to where the researchers are: the universities. Here's a pretty exhaustive directory of HCI educational links, university departments, etc.

I'm currently taking some HCI grad school courses at Tufts, and the department head is doing a lot of work in the field of Tangible User Interfaces .

"They [the hippopotami] present the following appearance; four-footed, with cloven hooves like cattle; blunt-nosed; with a horse's mane, visible tusks, a horse's tail and voice; big as the biggest bull. Their hide is so thick that, when it is dried, spearshafts are made of it." (Herodotus, 2.71.1).

We have two programs, one with a local library which centers around the Lego Mindstorm robotics kits as a vehicle to teach engineering, programming, and modeling. This has been on-going for about two years, and has been very successful.

The second is with an underprivileged middle school (a charter school.) The school has extra-curricular clubs, and after we hosted an Engineering Day at our facility they expressed an interest in a science/engineering club. Here we begin with simple ideas of building towers or bridges with different materials (toothpicks and marshmallows vs. linguini and gumdrops vs. index cards and paper clips vs. Lego blocks, for example.) We'll move on to Lego Mindstorms in the coming weeks. Another possible idea we're considering is exploring flight with paper airplanes. At the library we once did a program with model rockets. This charter school program is much younger and quite different from the library program.

Both of these programs have been recognized by our company's charitable foundation, and have been awarded with donations. And the kids really do just eat it up. (Not to mention the marshmallows and gumdrops.) Thusfar we have mostly targeted students from ages 7 through 13.

Simple suggestions: Local libraries can be a great community resource, and should be put to use if they are willing collaborators. This plays into the my second suggestion: Don't pattern it after school work. Make it fun! Tap into your most subversive notions to make the kids see that this is not just geek stuff. Check out Chris Rogers' site at Tufts.

And finally, stale marshmallows are the best. They are more structurally rigid and less likely to be eaten.

Have you discovered Perseus? Actually somewhat more useful that the Loebs -- you can click on words to see the translation, case, etc.

Nobody knows what they are talking about when they say they experience something.

Daniel dennet wrote a paper on this
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm/

How do you know that the green color is green? When you were a kid, an object of green color was shown to you and you were taught that it's green.

Does that mean when you see green, your brain reacts (fire the same neurons or generate the same waves or whatever) the same as when you see green?
No.

Is it necessary that the same thing should happen in your brain and mine when we see green for both of us to agree that its green?
No.

Joe

Oops. I spoke too soon. I looked up the word at Perseus and it turns out that it's neuter. As neuter, its proper plural is vira, not some confused American perversion viri.

Oops. I spoke too soon. I looked up the word at Perseus and it turns out that it's neuter. As neuter, its proper plural is vira, not some confused American perversion viri.

Have you seen the Perseus Project? It's web-based, free, and lets you search through many of the Greek & Latin classics (in original or in translation):
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

For reference, here are some links to the bit where Plato actually tells the story of Atlantis:

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html (search for the bit starting "Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true ...")
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup= Plat.+Tim.+20d&vers=en
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=P lat.+Tim.+20d&vers=en

In response to your comments: yeah, Troy was thought to have been maybe fictitious, until someone discovered that a city had existed at around about the right time in round about the right place, which is now for the sake of convenience called "Troy".

As for the story of Atlantis which Plato puts in Critias' mouth: (1) the story is actually about the people of Athens conquering Atlantis - thousands of years before Athens existed; (2) did you by any chance get that idea of multiplying the numbers by 10 from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis? Sound historical research, that.

Virus, i, n. [Sanscr. visham; Gr. ios, poison] , a slimy liquid, slime.

The "i" after the word is the genitive form; the genitive of fourth declension is in -us, as is the plural. Don't feel bad about it, I made the same assumption for years until I looked it up in L&S, and I took 8 years of Latin.