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Have you seen his "house"? It's actually more of a compound with a large part of it hidden underground, with under ground tunnels connecting all the various buildings.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/tech/billgate/gates.h tm

Seriously, it looks to me like it was designed as a fortress more than a house.

Yeah, I know, meteorology isn't climatology. A key difference is a meteorologist's forecast horizon is considerably shorter and he's repeatedly reminded how wrong he can be. Climatologists don't have that luxury - they can be 100% wrong and not know it for decades. So they cover their bases by forecasting both very hot temperatures and freezing conditions. Their models support both outcomes which says to me their models aren't worth much. So reminiscent of Truman's wish for a one-armed economist.

Wow. After my initial post, I really didn't want to look at any replies. I was sure I would be buried by a torrent of abuse and unjustified rebuttals. Instead, I got two well-written replies full of sensible, factual, reasoned criticism (and a short one with a logical comment). It really reinforces my faith in Slashdot!

gd23ka, you did home in on several of the weaker points in my rant. Truth to tell, there are precious few nations or peoples that haven't, at some stage at least, believed they were "the chosen people". Tentatively, I think the Portuguese might be an exception - I know they set up a colonial empire, but they have always been fairly level-headed and modest. What I was trying to express was my sense of irony that an American would find French people annoyingly arrogant. (Pots and kettles). "Karl Martell" - a very neat way of reminding me that France and Germany had not even begun to emerge as nations back then. (This is a problem Americans don't face, as their nation only dates back 230 years). "Valor and scum" is fair comment, but a universal one - show me a war hero, and half the time I'll show you a latent violent criminal.

As for AC, I have to disagree. "Ironic you bring up Nappy, who was heroic in attempting to enslave europe, while the Resistance was heroic in attempting to prevent enslaving europe". I suspect you will not see it this way, but to my eyes Napoleon's role was analogous to that of Bush, and the French Resistance analogous to the Iraqi Resistance. Heroism is heroism, regardless of the justice of the cause. Incidentally, all the generals on both sides of the American Civil War idolised Napoleon. Perhaps you think they were all wrong?

"You should also look up "Lend Lease" - the USA was actively involved with fighting the Nazis long before Dec. 7, 1941, even sinking Nazi warships". I know about Lend Lease - for example, 50 obsolete WWI destroyers, which US sailors would never have been asked to take to sea, were "given" to Britain in return for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland. I also know that Britain paid back the last of its war debt to the USA last year. And before you ask, here's a US source: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/docpages/do cument_page71.htm. Where you can also read: 'In the 1940 Presidential election campaign, Roosevelt promised to keep America out of the war. He stated, "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."'

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

I wish people would stop stereotyping all people from Alabama as redneck, uneducated, slackjaw hicks. I am a male in my mid-20s, a democrat, have a college degree in both computer science and mathematics from the University of Alabama (currently #104 of the 1400 in the most widely referenced list. I live in Huntsville, a city of more than 160,000 residents speaking over 100 languages, home of Redstone Arsenal, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, and the 2nd largest research park in the United States (4th in the world). I work for NASA at MSFC making an upper-middleclass living, live in the suburb of Providence and drive an Audi, not a tractor. I don't follow any type of sports, run FreeBSD on one of the many computers at home, listen to music on my iPod while getting my MMORPG fix via EDGE on my widescreen Powerbook while drinking overpriced coffee.

Are there people in the state that fit your stereotypical remarks? You bet. Can you honestly say that there are no people in your state that you are embarassed by? Of course you can't. So the next time you make your uninformed, stereotypical remarks - remember the nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

They do a lot of things in Canada that should be regarded with horrified disgust by men who are free.

Y'all are subjects, not citizens. Chattel. Cogs in the Good Government machine.

-ccm

Heck, don't take his word for it. Read for yourself http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/0406 07/7john.htm

Perhaps the fault with that observation is you have a very small sample space. I attend a top 20 university, and such speech is certainly not uncommon among those who attend here, even those with excellent grades and hard schedules. Nor does Vanderbilt draw upon a large "Valley Girl" population, with a geographically diverse set of attendees. Here, as with most college students that I personally know, the focus on communication is efficiency, not obeying some unfortunate set of rules spawned more by history then clarity. The few professors remaining who focus more on grammatical correctness then on the strength of a student's arguments find themselves with lighter schedules.

My original assertion, though, remains valid. The language of my grandmother (who was a teen in the '30s) is quite different from even the language of my mother (a teen in the '70s), and it certainly bears even less in common with the language of my generation (teens in the '90s). That social pressure evolves the language we all speak is a view with plenty of historical precedent. Have you attempted to read Beowulf in the original Old English recently? If this evolution is understood and accepted, why should we cast doubt on the notion that language would evolve at a much more rapid pace today, as the rate of technological and social change is many times greater then that of the dark ages? Those who resist these changes are often stereotyped as conservatives, and I will shamelessly do the same here: isn't the conservative ideal a laissez-faire free market? If so, why should the evolution of language not be subjected to an intellectual market -- those ideas that survive will obviously have merit, and the contraposition must also hold: those ideas without merit will surely not survive.

Bullshit. My total cost for this semester (including tuition, fees, parking -- everything) is $3,197.50 (and yes, I'm taking a full course load). And my school, just as an example, has the second-best aerospace engineering program in the country. Then again, I guess maybe I'm lucky that I live in Georgia. Nevertheless, most states have at least one good research university, so chances are you can find a school that's both good and cheap if you try.

lives in a very humble house

I'd like to live at your place I guess. I don't think "humble" is an apt description of Gates' house. Granted, he may be able to afford more, but humble it's not.

It's the 66th best school in the nation. That is the 23ed best public school in the nation. And, no, the parties there suck.

Well, it may or may not be intelligent but Intellectual Property Law is a recognized legal specialty - and a lucrative one. Here is a listing of such law programs http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law /brief/lawsp05_brief.php

There are times when it seems like it would be handy.

"So can I spend $220 million in building bridges to uninhabited islands in my state?" Link

"No, we're going to the moon and fuck you."

--Ryv

How about maps of the addresses of patent holders? Like cancer clusters...

You mean Bill's house? Honestly, who aims for 3000 patents in one year? ...

And then you're in trouble with cancer again because of all the seafood thats
tainted with heavy metals and chemicals they pick up...

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/03031 7/17mercury.htm

this article has an entire chart on levels of metals in different types of fish

http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc.mhtml?i=103&s=fis h

There's a reason for that, it's called Living Beyond Your Means.

Michael Jackson may very well have the coolest house of all, but he's $300 million in debt.

Replying to myself... bleah...

In this interview, Bill Gates denies making any such quote.

No, he was correct. He did mean "the major University in the state"- not, "major stepping stone to pro-sports in the state". BYU has 32,000 + enrollmen, the other school has 28,933.

BYU beat that other school in business. . .
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/mba /brief/mbarank_brief.php

law. . .
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law /brief/lawrank_brief.php

And yes, Gordon graduated from that other school is SLC, but Ezra graduated from the Y. As well as Ken Jennings, Orson Scott Card, and the creators of Napolean Dynamite.

Finally, (and most damning of all) my brother-in-law graduated from the U. That should automatically cause any school to lose its accreditation.

No, he was correct. He did mean "the major University in the state"- not, "major stepping stone to pro-sports in the state". BYU has 32,000 + enrollmen, the other school has 28,933.

BYU beat that other school in business. . .
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/mba /brief/mbarank_brief.php

law. . .
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law /brief/lawrank_brief.php

And yes, Gordon graduated from that other school is SLC, but Ezra graduated from the Y. As well as Ken Jennings, Orson Scott Card, and the creators of Napolean Dynamite.

Finally, (and most damning of all) my brother-in-law graduated from the U. That should automatically cause any school to lose its accreditation.

Yeah, Robbie...I remember when it was difficult for Bill Gates to imagine a computer program that required more than 640K of memory...

That would be funny if he actually said that but he didn't fucking say it.

Now please take your trolls somewhere else.

Then why bring it up? Why throw around wild accusations if you don't know what you are talking about? You are accusing me of being a moron?

However, you were claiming that the war in Iraq was justified because "he's the baddie" and my point was he's not the only one, and others are bad right now.

Well, that's quite an oversimplification of my point, but I'll let is slide. If he is a baddie, what is wrong with fixing one of the many problems in the world? Because there are others we shouldn't do anything? That's a pretty hopeless position, don't you think? Last I heard that's how WW II got started.

Also, you list Pinoches civilan deaths, then use total war death in regard to Saddam. Apples and Oranges.

Most deaths were civilian. Did you bother to look at the URL? It listed all death tolls for all conflicts up to modern times.

Wasn't an invasion, it was a liberation from an pre-existing invasion. HUGE difference.

And this was liberation from tyranny. Enemies and oppressors to a peoples are either foreign or domestic. Either way, they are enemies and oppressors. Were the Taliban foreign occupators?

"You didn't hear the stories saying "why didn't WE do anything".

You either have a short memory, or you weren't paying attention ( http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/rwarev.htm http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/040412/ 12spotlight.htm).

There is no doubt that AT LEAST 100,000 people are dead that would not be dead if the USA had not invaded.

You jump from 21,795 to 100,000 just like that without any evidence whatsoever. That does wonders for your credibility.

Drop the moral high-ground buddy, it's not there. Either you are a callous bastard profiteering from this, or you are a sheep yourself

Ok, let's talk about moral high-ground. You claim that we shouldn't be there so Saddam could keep on killing another million. I'm sure that's the moral high ground. So, do you want the US troops to leave? Should we abandon all efforts at establishing a democracy? If Halliburton left today, would you be happy? If money is your preoccupation (your profit criticsm) is all of the money that Halliburton going to make worth more than all of the lives that Saddam could've taken up to now? You advocate inaction rather than going in for the wrong reasons. Yet inaction is exactly what Saddam wanted, so he could keep terrorizing his people. I don't care to excuse the orginal reasons for the war (that's a different discussion). I'm pointing out that at the present, I do have the moral high ground because I want the Iraqi people to succeed and live in a decent country. You do not want that?

US News and World Report. 2005: #1 Berkeley

Huh? According to the actual U.S. News & World Report rankings, Berkeley was 21 overall for undergrad for National Universities. It was, however, #1 for public institutions. A more relevant ranking here would probably be undergraduate engineering. That list has MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley, in that order.

To be honest, in my experience, undergraduate engineering education at big research universities doesn't necessarily produce good practicing engineers.

US News and World Report. 2005: #1 Berkeley

Huh? According to the actual U.S. News & World Report rankings, Berkeley was 21 overall for undergrad for National Universities. It was, however, #1 for public institutions. A more relevant ranking here would probably be undergraduate engineering. That list has MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley, in that order.

To be honest, in my experience, undergraduate engineering education at big research universities doesn't necessarily produce good practicing engineers.

very insightful, i think its cases like these that show how little USA knows how the rest of the world works, then again they are only 200years old which in civilisation terms means they are still shitting their diapers and throwing tantrums when they dont get their own way, oblivious that the rest of the world puts food on its plate, and we are just about to send them to their room without any dinner

They don't want people to question legal and competent orders. Whitness Hugh Thompson. There are of course other examples new and old, but I like this one.

What they do is an interesting, and pretty clever. They set the rules in opposition in such a way as to leverage the advantages of the culture to enhance the doctrine of manuver warfare. Some of that has disadvantages. Notice in Abu Grabe that you had people who formed their little groups, and people who dissented and got the information out. And the inventiveness with which they pursued their ends in that goofy little community. Well,... that's self evident. Naked Iraqi pyramids just wouldn't have occured to me. That said, it's not so unbelievable. Everyone knows the story of the Berkley experiment involving grad students as prison guards and prisoners. In a way, it just reminds how dark nearly all of us are deep down inside where the lizard lives. We would expect roughly 4% of all POW's under control of US forces to have that kind of experience historically speaking. Which is actually pretty good, historically speaking. Again, it's just one of the many things that could have been prevented by better planning, but on some level, was always inevitable.

I'm not quite sure why people are so vitriolic in their response to this. It's not like these guys are asking us to submit to their prediction devices or donate to vaporware. They're simply studying what they define as an interesting phenomena. The only problem is that that their observation questions some of current theories with regard to biology and physics. Isn't that the essence of science?

Maybe it's because, in Feynman's words, science is skepticism.

Skepticism should, however, go both ways. An unwavering belief that our theories are unquestionably correct is only slightly better than mysticism.

This is a big problem in the scientific world right now. All the talented scientists are afraid to do anything unusual. Because as soon as you do, your career is effectively over; it's damn near impossible to get the stigma of "pseudoscience" off. Read some PhD thesis papers that come out nowadays. Nothing of real merit is accomplished in them, and they are always full of references and citations--just in case anybody questions their validity.

A perfect example: for years two researchers in Australia had been claiming that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria, but nobody believed them. Bacteria could at best survive in the stomach; surely they couldn't thrive there! In the end, the one of the scientists, Barry Marshall actually had to publicly infect and then cure himself before anyone would listen. Of course, now it's common knowledge that bacteria cause ulcers and there's a couple drugs used to treat them.

So, whatever, if these guys want to analyze the results of random number generators, let them! It's not likely that they're right for a bunch of reasons that have already been discussed at length by others, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have an open mind.

-Grym

I'm serious:
http://brianwilson.net/pages/ethnic.html
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ ID=30692
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneweb/mb_ 040603.htm
http://www.rfcnet.org/news/default.asp?action=deta il&article=79

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22dead+w hite+guys%22+school+%22founding+fathers%22

How is saying "this isn't true" (which is a fact) a troll? Wait... wait ... do i actually care about karma? I guess not, by typing this mail (which will be moderated OT without a doubt).

Is it that hard for an employer to get an HR intern or lackey to compile a list of all "real" universities in the US? Wouldn't this be as simple as getting the latest U.S. News & World Report college guide and looking at their top 200 list? (Or at least their directory).

(Also referencing this post).

I could understand if you were checking on high schools (does Arco, ID have a Butte County High School, and are they really the Butte Pirates??), but colleges and universities?

It's the old story: college campuses are becoming more and more connected. Students are getting more "internet-savvy" as they do everything online. There seems to be an overemphasis on the "connectedness" of colleges - this doesn't necessarily translate into a good educational environment. Take a look at the America's top connected universities and compare to the best universities. Two different lists.

1. The US government has a history of using its citizens in classified research wihtout their consent:
   
   "From the end of world War II well in to the 1970s, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Defense Department, the military services, the CIA and other agencies used prisoners, drug addicts, mental patients, college students, soldiers, even bar patrons, in a vast range of government-run experiments to test the effects of everything from radiation, LSD and nerve gas to intense electric shocks and prolonged 'sensory deprivation.' Some of the human guinea pigs knew what they were getting into; many others did not even know they were being experimented on."
   
   The Cold War Experiments , Budiansky, Goode and Gest,
   U.S News and World Report , January 24, 1994
2. The US government is good at keeping involuntary experiments on its citizens secret. The news media will not report it:
   
   "Suddenly, at the close of 1993, the public was bombarded with "news" about the feeding of radioactive substances to pregnant women and mentally retarded students, about the unethical irradiation of workers, soldiers, medical patients, and prison inmates, and about the government's own internal fears that these experiments had 'a little of the Buchenwald touch.'
   ...
   I am among those who persistently tried to get national media coverage of this outrageous example of government wrongdoing. To say that the media were reluctant to listen would be an understatement. The fact is that, for more than a decade, documentation was ignored and facts were misreported."
   
   The Radiation Story No One Would Touch,
   Geoffrey Sea, Columbia Journalism Review, March / April 1994
3. When the US government conducts experiments on secretly influencing human behavior, using 'unwitting', i.e. involuntary, test subjects is considered essential:
   
   "... On December 17, 1963, Deputy Director for Plans Helms wrote a memo to the DDCI, who with the Inspector General and the Executive Director-Comptroller had opposed the covert testing. He noted two aspects of the problem: (1) 'for over a decade the Clandestine Services has had the mission of maintaining a capability for influencing human behavior;' and (2) 'testing arrangements in furtherance of this mission should be as operationally realistic and yet as controllable as possible.' Helms argued that the individuals must be 'unwitting' as this was 'the only realistic method of maintaining the capability, considering the intended operational use of materials to influence human behavior as the operational targets will certainly be unwitting. Should the subjects of the testing not be unwitting, the program would only be 'pro forma' resulting in a 'false sense of accomplishment and readiness.' ' [Memorandum for the Record prepared by the Inspector General, 5/15/63]"
   
   Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Behavior Modification,
   Appendix A, XVII. Testing And Use Of Chemical
   And Biological Agents By The Intelligence Community,
   Joint Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence,
   U.S. Senate, 95th Congress, 1977
4. The US government is currently conducting experiments to investigate the ability of modulated beamed energy, including electromagnetic, to influence human behavior:
   
   "Scores of new contracts have been let, and scientists, aided by government research on the 'bioeffects' of beamed energy, are searching the electromagnetic and sonic spectrums for wavelengths that can affect human behavior."
   
   Wonder Weapons: The Pentagon's quest for nonlethal arms is amazing. But is it smart?, archived copy

Are you sure?

Not true. There has been a huge controversy in the polling community about these exit polls (specifically, those conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland) not matching the election results. They prompted an early, inaccurate announcement that Chavez had lost. Some criticize their methodology (some of the data collection was conducted by the opposition party); others insist that the election was rigged. More background here .

Congratulations on buying a supercomputer for your third rate school with our money. The smart people who made it in California and sold it to you must be very happy. And thanks for hosting a NASA test site too dirty for any state of smart people to have in their backyard (at least 200 miles from yours), though it's a good demonstration of socialism working to drag smart people from out of state to prop up a failed society. Offering them the state's 70 miles of beachfront probably helped them ignore the swamp of ignorance and mud to the north.

Since I embrace the smart Mississipians who can cut it here in New York City (and elsewhere that I've met your refugees), I'm hardly the bigot that you are. Unless a prejudice for smart people as "smart" is bad. Of course, I don't expect you to understand words like "bigot", when you point at state schools which admit 13% of their students as black in a state with 36% black people: "in 1992 it was necessary for the U.S. Supreme Court to order the state college system to end its tradition of segregation". Thanks for the chance to quickly research the facts behind the obvious display of bigotry and idiocy that is synonymous with "Mississippi" after all your hard work. Please send back some of our tax money - I promise New York will spend it on sending you more of that good TV that you love so much.

How exactly is Kerry a "traitor?"

I know it can't be Vietnam, since he was the face of those so grievously harmed by the political meddeling in a pointless war. He simply repeated what many had publically confessed to congress. And absolutely crushed O'Neal (head of the Swift Boat Vets organization) on the Dick Cavett show, getting O'Neal to admit to having commited war crimes un the Geneva conventions. To say nothing of the story of Hugh Thompson and the well documented excesses of Lt. Calley.

I know it can't be his votes on arms reductions, since most of them were for reducing stockpiles of nuclear weapons (unless MX missles with 10 Mirvs and 5 decoys were weapons essential to winning the war on terror), and creating programs encouraging cost savings in weapons programs such as those built into the Joint Strike Fighter. The others were cuts championed by the likes of Cheney in continuing Clinton's pursuit of a lighter more agile military that could deploy more quickly. Not to mention Al-Queda doesn't have an advanced interlocking air defense network that needs a B-2 to penetrate it. I know it can't be the 87 Billion dollars, because Kerry voted for it when it wasn't going to be put on a high interest credit card, even though he thought the administration was low-balling and cutting corners, which has later been proven to be accurate.

So I'd really like to know what it is that makes him a traitor.

I tire of this. How much do you need? I have posted several links already, as have others before me. This is not a new issue... there were articles about it before the 2000 (s)election, and there are articles now. You want articles? Here:

• http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2004/02/ 02_802.html
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7372-200 4Feb2?language=printer
• http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0219-03.htm
• http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040920/usnews/2 0guard.htm

Some of these links are from admittedly conservative sources, others from admittedly liberal sources. They do discuss the releases of info by the WH on the issue, and all come to the same conclusion: the pay stubs and the dental record do not disprove the gap in service, but only support it. Now, as I have said before, I tire of this. You obviously have your opinion, which is fine. What wears on me, though, is your steadfast dedication to the expression of this opinion through falsehood. It is one thing to state that Bush is a "war president," or to state that he is at all presidential material. It's a clearly seperate thing, though, to state that Bush was obviously not AWOL. This is not an opinion, but a simply act of willful ignorance. Maybe Bush wasn't AWOL. I sure as hell don't know. What I do know, though, is that I have evidence supporting that he was AWOL, and none opposing. Thus, until the situation stands, it is not logical, nor reasonable to confuse this simple reality with opinion. What is the signifigance of this issue? Well, that's your opinion. What is the fact of the issue? That isn't.

Apparently you haven't yet seen his $97M house.

There is a great article on the caucus in Iowa that basically decided the Democratic candidate with quotes from a lot of the people involved including Kerry, Dean, and Trippi.

Quick summary: Dean lost way before "the scream." His campaign was disorganized, dysfunctional, and too inexperienced.

I'm a 2002 alumni of RHIT...don't worry about THAT ranking. This ranking matters a bit more.

However, if you're ranking by wireless coverage, Rose-Hulman isn't going to be too far up there. They really only have a couple wireless access points in the main social areas. There really isn't a NEED for wireless access anywhere else, since practically every desk has had an Ethernet port since before wireless was practical. Plus, it's a small school: providing wireless access to tens of thousands of students is a bit more of an accomplishment.

I'm less inclined to believe that TV is to blame, and more inclined to believe it's caused by a known neurological toxin, like low levels of mercury (a great deal of which comes from coal burning plants, by the way).

No, it [nuclear power] is not safe

Nothing is completely safe. Thing is, the alternatives - the real, viable alternatives -- to nuclear power are even less safe.

You may recall the recent FDA advisory warning pregnant women and children to limit their intake of several types of fish because of mercury contamination in those fish.

The FDA guidelines call for children and pregnant women -- and women who "may become pregnant" to abstain completely from shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish, and to limit intake to six onces of albacore tuna a week.

What you might not have heard is that the panel that made the recommendation contained two members who were former lobbyists for the fishing industry -- or that another member, a scientist, not a lobbyist, resigned in protest because he believes that even six onces a week of albacore tuna is dangerous, and that that recommendation was only made because of industry lobbying.

What you also might not have heard is that the primary source of mercury in fish is from "mercury rain" -- and the primary source of mercury rain is from coal fired power plants .

As it happens, the EPA is retreating from plans to more closely regulate mercury pollution from power plants, and "just coincidently" some of the language justifying that retreat is word-for-word the same as language in utility company memos.

So on the one hand, the fishing industry influences the FDA to soft-pedal its warnings to children and pregnant women, and on the other hand the power industry gets the EPA to continue to allow pollution.

And this is not to mention the other dangers of coal: despoiling the environment by digging it up, despoiling the air with smog when it's burnt, giving miners black-lung, etc.

I grew up a few miles from Three Mile Island, and I was still there when the accident happened, and I'll take clean nuclear power any day. Even in the worst case, we can contain a nuclear plant accident -- but we can't contain an ocean of mercury contaminated fish.

I see WashU bantered about on Slashdot all the time. As my former Uni, I wonder how many people went there, and how they feel about the education they got.
The year that I applied, they were ranked third in the U.S. and dropped slightly the years I actually attended, but their ranking seems to have fallen to the mid-thirties.
Is engineering at WashU going down the tubes?

Though it's a moot point for me (I'm a 4-year grad), a good rule of thumb might be: "Any place that offers completion of the high school diploma as well as a high-tech degree ..." Well, you know the rest.

These places are clearly businesses first, with the "Starbucks mentality" of sprouting campuses everywhere and hoping that the disenfranchised see it as a way into the executive washroom.

I have a friend who works for the company that markets University of Phoenix. He confesses that they are clearly just a business using the typical (dubious) marketing techniques (Disclaimer: Quinstreet is essentially a SPAM/Pop-Up design company, so unleash your wrath). He doesn't like what his company does but his rationale is what everybody else's is. It's a job.

But, then again, my "real" University resorted to, if I recall, a lot of mass mailings (like many colleges), and it's not a bad school.

Each business has it's target demographic.

I would definetly suggest checking out US News. They have an awesome website, in regards to "rankings" of the U.S. top schools and such, and they have them separated by degree and "rankings". While this may not be THE DEFINITIVE answer, it is certainly a step in the right direction. . .

When a core melt-down happens, there is not a damn thing on this planet (that I know of) that can the molten (and getting hotter by the second) glob that used to be the core.

It has been theorized that if this happens, the molten core will burn through the earth until it reaches water.

part(s) of the core of Chernobyl 4 melted down. (though i'm not entirely sure if this was due to a runaway reaction producing too much heat, or due to external heating from the graphite moderator fire started by the steam explosion. nor am i sure which would be the worse thing.)

what basically happened was that the molten core material had to melt its way through its containment (what there was of it). in the process, of course, it became diluted with molten whatever-it-had-just-touched matter. this can't go on forever without the core matter going subcritical; the "china syndrome", melt-through-the-planet scenario presupposes some mechanism for the fissile material to stay homogenous and concentrated, and i for one can't think of any.

I read a few days ago an article about figuring out how to bust apart the prions in BSE (mad cow) - but cannot for the life of me find the link. There's a similar disease in sheep, scrapie, which they've had some success using monoclonal antibodies to reduce the damage from.

That would be a next step in Alzheimer research - if we can bust apart the amyloid beta plaques in sufferers, we might not be able to get back all old function, but it would very likely help current sufferers. One we have the ounce of prevention - it would be nice to have the pound of cure, too.

Unfortunately, the guy seems very good at collecting money (regardless of how he got it) and very poor at spending it.

Funny, that's not what things look like on the map...

You might be interested in the story of Hugh Thompson. Who subsequently recieved military honors for telling the door gunner to turn his M-60 on the US forces if they advanced on the building.

And yet, one of the darkest days in US military history, certainly modern, where 500 civilians were murdered didn't pass with US soldiers interviening and putting an end to it Yeah, Lt. Calley got off light, he should have been hung. But where was that unbelievable humanity in the Japanese Imperial army? The Nazis? (I actually can think of a few examples. A handful really, about as many modern military atrocities as commited by the modern US military.)

You should check out the Black Hawk Down game. You're discouraged from shooting civilians, even if they huck rocks at you.

Time to put down the anti-american dogma. It's a lot of work denying the truth all the time. Hey, ask your girlfriend if her grandparents ever told her stories of Japanese parents throwing their children off seaside cliffs to the abject horror of advancing US forces. Haha. I bet that would be a real mood killer.

I'll put my second rate history education up against the whitewashing most everyone else in the world gets any day of the week. Hell there are French people, and I still can't fucking believe it, who think the Maginot line was built after WWII. Why are they even wasting their time keeping kids in school over there, clearly they should be out learning to forage in the woods or playing frisbee.

because their contestants where still stuck in Mcdonalds

in other news...
The Rockland Department of Health has received an $80,000 grant to develop programs to combat childhood obesity.