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It would appear that Hezbollah may soon be in control of the Lebanese parliament. Yes, Hezbollah, bad people, I'll agree with Faux News on that one. I'll refrain from using the word "terrorist" to describe them, first because I think that word is bandied about far too much, and second because the phrase is intended to describe organizations who aren't directly involved with the government, whereas it would appear Hezbollah will effectively be the Lebanese government soon (I mean, they were before, but now they'll have total control) Calling Hezbollah a terrorist organization makes about as much sense to me as calling the Republican Party a terrorist organization. As the CNN article I linked also states, I don't think this bodes well for Obama's plans for mid-east peace. However, I don't know what can be done. It's their country... if they hold democratic elections which put a bunch of thugs into power, it would seem rather against the spirit of democracy to try to interfere.

Actually... ...but thanks for playing! Hmm, Bible verses in official top secret DoD documents? Durr, no, of course not, no separation of church and state issues there.

Documents available here: http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret So much for separation of church and state, eh? They're being released as part of a more comprehensive story on how mistakes and incompetence at the DoD cost American lives. This New York Times op ed was pretty interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17rich-5.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all And the message is pretty poignant: Obama will not be able to put Bush behind him until there's full transparency and accountability for what happened. Until then, little juicy nuggets like this will keep dripping out of the woodwork, stealing the spotlight from Obama and forcing us to continue to reflect on the Bush years.

I've been kind of disappointed with it so far... it wasn't what I was expecting. Also it's been broken a lot...

America is politically fractious and polarized. The religious right commands a great deal of power in this country, certainly much more so than almost anywhere in Europe. On the flipside you have states like California, which may elect a Republican (in name) but clearly have a more progressive agenda than other areas in the country. America is a chunky stew of vastly different political orientations and because of it we come off as being somewhat politically bipolar.

I got 27, which is about smack dab in the middle of the "above average" range. I certainly have autistic tendencies but perhaps I'm in enough social situations on a day-to-day basis that I don't have trouble coping. I've noticed there's all sorts of descriptions of autistic people which don't fit me as well (e.g. I'm more of a big picture person than one who is always obsessed with the details). I think at some point in my life I became almost obsessed with trying new things and constantly seeking novelty, so maybe that helps. Part of my brain always bitches and complains at first but in the end I always love the joy of synthesizing new experiences. Recently I've been going to trade shows and conferences, acting as a salesman in the former and a presenter in the latter, and to my surprise I don't think I'm too bad at either. As an aside: This test was made by Baron-Cohen, S.? I can't help but think of Sacha Baron Cohen a.k.a. Ali G/Borat/Bruno

Jordan's king today urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a two state solution.

...by a considerable margin. 60 senators actively opposed the bill: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/politics/14cards.html?_r=1&ref=business I'm confused as to why there's so much opposition, especially in the wake of the recession/depression. It's okay to give banks hundreds of billions of dollars, but there's strong opposition to capping interest rates on credit cards?

I'm more concerned about Obama's plans to detain terror suspects indefinitely without trial. So much for habeas corpus

Yes MIT recently switched to Python as their introductory language for their CS courses (for purely practical reasons, too)

I'd say we're already there with things like glasses, hearing aids, artificial limbs, artificial hearts, etc. It's just a question of how far things will go at this point.

Yes, whoops I'm just saying I'd like them to officially recognize that I won't be getting money from social security. Rather than having a separate line item for social security, taxes would just go up and the fund would receive a dedicated chunk from the treasury. Who's letting who do what? The program is doomed. I'm just saying it's time to face reality. Well, that's why I'm saying set an age threshhold where people haven't paid into it as long so maybe they won't be as pissed off. Even with something like that, it's quite likely the older people won't ever see all their benefits. They'll wind up getting some fraction of what they should've recevied. Personally I have an IRA for this very reason. Yep, that's the reality... I'll be paying in but will never see a dime, so I'd like for them to just recognize that officially.

Correct (I believe). As someone who has been taking bits and pieces of two CFLs and trying to put them together in practice I can certainly attest as to the difficulty. It's only possible for the intersection of two CFLs to be a CFL when you do a lot of tedious manual work deciding which conflicting parts of the two languages you want to keep. I believe this one is true, and more, that you may even be able to express that as a regular language. For example, here's a regular expression that will match strings of even length only: ^(..)*$ Couldn't you just take the intersection of that with another regular language and get a regular language which matches the description? I have a vague idea of what the question is asking but have no idea what the answer is?

I just got a letter from the Social Security Administration explaining the same thing: you've paid this much into Social Security, but Social Security is in trouble!!! I would be perfectly fine with the goverment saying "everyone over the age of 35 doesn't get social security", and raise taxes in lieu of me paying into "social security" with a goal of sunsetting the program.

Yes, she called people like Jenny McCarthy "parasites". Perhaps that was not aptly phrased. I would call people like Jenny McCarthy pseudoscience-peddling f*cktards who deserve as much criticism and ridicule as the public wishes to vest upon them. Yes, agreed. Peet's arguments are steeped in science as she learned everything she knows from doctors whom she consulted about whether autism poses a risk. I don't know if it needs to go that far, but if a non-immunized child causes an outbreak, I feel the parent who failed to immunize their child should be charged for any collateral damage the outbreak causes. They should, at the very least, pay the medical bills of any children affected by the outbreak, and if the outbreak causes death, they should be charged with manslaughter. I think parents should have the right to immunize their children or not, but failure to immunize can have drastic consequences, and the parents who choose not to immunize should pay for those consequences, either out of pocket or with jail time, depending on the circumstances.

What was that? Cool I see As I don't have anything to go on but the gut feelings of scientists, what do you feel about the accusations that DM lacks explanatory power for the types of anomalies they are describing?

Possible today? No. Possible tomorrow! Sure! You might check out the thread on the Emotiv controller. It talks about Brain/Computer interfaces, which are an emerging field. Eventually I can only assume we'll have interfaces that are bidirectional and allow the device to input data into the brain, rather than just read from it.

No, because as soon as factions are created you wind up with the in-group versus out-group thing, which seems to be an essential part of human nature. Also, only the strongest factions will survive, and for that to even happen they have to have the will to survive. For example, I think the Republicans are great at playing politics... much better than the Democrats... this came about through yeahs of evolution as a party. Given the power and resources (i.e. people, money) the Democrats and Republicans already wield it's a bad environment for third parties to evolve in the US.

Is dark matter losing support? This Physorg article seems to think so: http://www.physorg.com/news160726282.html They suggest that perhaps there's yet another deviation in Newtonian mechanics at play which needs a different theory to explain besides the "dark matter" explanation. What do you think?

The proposed "57 state solution" would have the entire Muslim world recognize Israel (and I guess its right to exist?): http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084660.html Could it work? I have my doubts about countries like Iran... (Edit: Bleh, title should read Jordan's king)

Well, here's a way to save $26 billion... end oil and gas industry tax breaks: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090507/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_budget_energy/print;_ylt=AlyH0WcrXtrYM43v4QQG4IMGw_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTB1MjgxN2UzBHBvcwMxNARzZWMDdG9vbHMtdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

I looked up the Cheney quote that Bartlett was referencing: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26402-2004Jun8?language=printer The article just gets worse and worse the more I read. Wow. At least the Obama is trying. The Bush administration just didn't care (or rather, those who did were silenced) Where were the tea parties then, when the Bush Administration was off starting expensive wars and cutting taxes while the deficit was skyrocketing?

Most certainly I don't know the law on the matter, but in 20/20 hindsight their actions were anything but shrewd. Yes, a systemic problem with the world economy is a far cry from "we're all out of coke" So when Joe Blow loses his job because the company he's working at went out of business due to the depression, that's his fault?

Okay, so this guy's like a former Reagan policy adviser and stuff... and worked under Bush for the US Treasury. http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/07/deficit-tea-party-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html He basically says the tea parties were retarded. Republicans were thrown out of power because of the giant mess they created. Within a little more than 100 days of Obama's presidency, there's suddenly a massive conservative outrage at the budget deficit. Apparently Democrats need to fix the budget deficit at the same time as dealing with a financial crisis and a recession/depression. We need to go haphazardly slashing through the national budget now, but under Bush everything was a-ok. WTF hypocrisy? Cut them some slack? Seriously. And were you talking about the national debt during the Bush years? I sure was... in 2005 and in 2007.