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I bring this up mainly out of one of my main beefs with the Democratic party. As a liberaltarian there's many issues I'm diametrically opposite to the Democrats on. These are things like gun control, free speech (vs. PC speech), musicians rights, video game producers rights, etc. Because of these main disparities, I refer to the Democrats in the 3rd person. I typically call them "The Democrats", as in "I hope the Democrats don't..." However, I'm a registered Democrat. This is so I can vote in the Democratic party (and put in for my progressive/liberaltarian candidates of choice) I think this is a bit weird. Most people refer to their political party of choice in the first or second person. "My party" or "we". We better end the war and oust Bush! That's why we won the election! What about you?

Similar story: a planet 50% larger than earth and warm enough to have liquid water has been discovered: http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/243780/cs/1/

Bloomberg's been pushing for it pretty hardcore. I'm glad that Pelosi hasn't buckled. Perhaps a motivating factor is that existing laws already disqualified Cho Seung-Hui from owning a gun. The problem here seems to have been a bureaucratic one: automated background checks already in place did not disqualify him, apparently because they didn't catch that he was declared mentally ill in court. Pretty egregious oversight. I suspect if we see any legislation out of this it will be higher standards for automated background checks.

This Earth Day, Dell is giving away virtual saplings you can plant in Second Life Way to go! Don't they realize virtual trees = computation = electricity = CO2 emissions? Apparently not...

Pakistan is harboring the worst nuclear proliferator in the history of the world: A.Q. Khan. He sold nuclear technology to both Iran and North Korea. Pakistan considers him a national hero and despite his crimes he remains under house arrest with no formal penalties for his extremely dangerous actions.

An indicator of what a good job the neocons have done of framing the debate You're right. If the latest Pew poll is any indicator, then a sizable fraction of "the right" wants us out too: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=313

The funniest part of this is that Barbara Ann was written by an Iranian. The "Bomb Iran" parody appeared originally during the Iran Contra affair. It's since been resurrected. I used to respect McCain as something of a middle-of-the-road Republican of the sort I could respect. He has since obliterated that image completely. As far as I can tell he's doing an excellent job of alienating people on the right as well.

Nappy refers to the naturally curly hair of people of negroid descent. An "afro" is a type of hairstyle which leverages the natural curliness. Overall it represents a markedly different texture of hair where individual strands bunch together to form more solid shapes. "Hos" is an abbreviation for whores, a.k.a. prostitutes Al Sharpton's insinuation was that while both teams were of black descent, Imus was referencing a more direct negroid (i.e. African) lineage, as opposed to the more mulatto nature of the opposing team (which leads to hair which is naturally straight)

Keep in mind that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas.

I'd say the problem is the way neocons have framed the rhetoric This isn't a war. The war ended in 2003. This is a military occupation. We won the war. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! However, the military occupation isn't accomplishing anything. After "the Surge" there was a brief abatement of violence in Baghdad for the month of February. Fast forward two months, and we have, in one day (Wednesday of this week): http://www.juancole.com/2007/04/bloody-wednesday-guerrillas-violence.html - 300 dead from a string of bombings in Baghdad - Children being pulled alive from beneath the charred corpses of their parents - Furious Iraqi citizens throwing charred body parts at American soldiers This is, of course, a whole order of magnitude more deaths than occurred in America in the VT shootings, yet doesn't begin to enter into the public consciousness... whereas the VT shootings have completely dominated the news media. The military occupation of Iraq has not improved the state of the region. We are only there because this administration refuses to relent and admit past mistakes, an approach which extends to all levels of their operation.

It's math and theory confirmed with experiment, in this case several experiments which violate Bell's Inequality and this one which seems to further validate the point. I must admit I find this unsettling...

Okay, how about he wait until after a mass murder which so far has absolutely no connection to video games is out of the public spotlight to make his point? Otherwise it's just "I'd like to use this recent tragedy to advance my pet theory that video games cause violent crime, even though there's no evidence that's the case here" He's capitalizing on a national tragedy to try to convince people of his political views, when there is zero connection between them. It's about as bad as Michael Moore trying to capitalize on Columbine to preach his message of gun control (and here I was just lauding Michael Moore for his innovative approach to dealing with Fred Phelps) Ever heard of the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, i.e. correlation does not imply causation? That's the first thing that's going on here. But Dr. Phil is going a step beyond that: There's not even a correlation! Yes, Jack Thompson is perhaps the foremost video-games-turn-you-into-violent-killers advocate out there. Just like Microsoft Flight Simulator will teach you how to fly a real airplane? Or how World of Warcraft will teach you how to swordfight. Godfather will teach you how to work your way up to a mafia crime boss! Starfox will teach you how to fly a spaceship. As a gun owner and video game player, I can attest: The only games that even come close to letting you "simulate mass killings" are along the lines of Time Crisis or Silent Scope. These are gun games for the arcade which have simulated guns that you actually have to aim in a quasi-similar manner real ones. (and I'm sorry if my knowledge of gun games is a bit dated, I don't go to the arcade anymore) And unlike more realistic gun games like police trainer which focus on honing aiming skills, in these games you actually kill people. These games abstract away all the complexity of actually operating a firearm. The firearms are light, have no recoil, let you reload by shooting offscreen, and you stand and hold them in the same position. I played dozens of gun games before handling an actual firearm, and let me tell you, no video game prepared me for the experience. But beyond that, compare gun games to ones like GTA and Doom/Quake/etc. which are played with a controller or keyboard/mouse. Here the separation between the actual act and the simulated one is further separated by an interface which is absolutely nothing like a gun. Beyond the scope of this event, you're still stuck with correlation implies causation. There's absolutely no evidence that video games bear any responsibility for violent crime. If you want to play the correlation implies causation game, then it would appear, looking at actual data, that video games actually decrease violent crime: http://www.gamerevolution.com/features/violence_and_videogames He has the right to do so, but that still makes him an asshole. You might as well blame MC Chris, MC Lars, or Scroobius Pip for violence in rap music. (To quote Scroobius Pip: Guns, bitches, and bling were never part of the four elements, and never will be!) And you're lumping video game authors in with tobacco companies? The tobacco companies make products which kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. Are you claiming that video game authors do anything comparable?

The problem with all these projections is that they assume that demand will continue along present trends because people aren't switching to alternatives. If a viable alternative enters the mainstream, then the peak goes away. Overproduction would lead to a scaling down of both extraction and discovery.

No video games were found among Cho Seung-hui's personal effects: http://gaygamer.net/2007/04/warrant_reveals_no_games_in_ch.html As to whether video games are part of the "fiber of society" and somehow vicariously responsible, I'm going to go with "No". Humans have been violent forever. There's innumerable sources of violence we could pull out of our ass and try to pin this on. How about the war in Iraq? Or professional wrestling. That sort of reasoning is nothing but the specious ramblings of an O'Reilly-esque culture warrior who tries to take a case instance and with no supporting rationale whatsoever make some point about what they consider to be the degradation of culture. At least in this instance there is still zero evidence that video games are to blame.

The Second Life server is going open source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=142 Linden (its creator) hopes to create a fully distributed, interoperable virtual world

I have no problem with late term abortions for any neural tube defect, even if the birth would not directly threaten the mother's life. As I mentioned earlier, these defects can go undiscovered until the third trimester. In the case of a severe neural tube defect like anencephaly the child is born with only a brain stem and absolutely no cerebrum whatsoever, in addition to no cranium with the inside of the skull and the small amount of brain tissue they actually developed exposed. Such "children" live for a few hours to a few days. Should an exemption be made in this case? What about cases of severe spina bifida (another neural tube defect) affecting the cervical vertebrae and causing severe hydrocephalus resulting in severe brain damage? Not only will they be born with severe brain damage but their motor function will be severely impared due to an incompletely formed spinal cord. This ban takes an absolutist position with absolutely no consideration for cases where it should be inapplicable. If the baby is healthy and the mother's health isn't in jeopardy then I'm opposed to late term abortions. That's the strawman that Republicans threw up against Clinton when he opposed late-term abortions on the grounds that there were no medical exemptions: Clinton wanted evil mothers who didn't bother to get an abortion earlier to be able to kill their babies. That isn't the case and there's practical reasons why late term abortions should be performed.

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070416/full/070416-9.html Would this include Bohmian mechanics?

Is it me or have there been a lot of 5-4 rulings lately? http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/18/scotus.abortion/index.html While past Presidents have been almost criminalized for opposing this ban (e.g. Clinton) such rebuke overlooks what was lacking in the proposed legislation all along: medical exemptions. This law essentially condems any woman who would die while giving birth to a death sentence. Never mind if the baby will die as well or be born without a brain (neural tube defects can go undiscovered until the third trimester), you can't get a partial birth abortion even you will die otherwise. Oh, and Roberts made his views on abortion pretty clear with his ruling. I get the feeling he wants Roe vs. Wade overturned.

Don't forget about violent video games. All the anti-violent video games are gabbing on about how they're sure that Cho Sueng-Hui probably played them. There's no real evidence yet, but that doesn't stop people from trying to milk the situation to push a political point (yeah, I'm guilty of it too)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Limitations

Nerds are scaring away the girls

Flash wears out. Using it for something like swap is a horrible idea. I can only assume ReadyBoost avoids making multiple successive writes to the same memory location.

And by that I mean the Virginia Tech shooter... assuming he was in the military Where the deaths of soldiers and innocent civilians in a foreign land may garner marginal attention, I'd bet the vicarious deaths of American civilians on our home soil would be considerably more compelling.

Sounds like you're describing mesh wireless And yes, it's the FUTURE OF WIRELESS! Yay

I really doubt it. The core routers are all doing IPv4 routing, so there's no need for a 128-bit processor. Also, 128-bit general purpose processors don't really exist yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/128-bit