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Comment better link (Score 2, Informative) 162

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/092010-yahoo-opens-chicken-coop-green.html although the original link does a great job of showcasing local boosterism in a rust belt town feverishly hopeful for a better future ('Yay! 100 jobs! Some interest! The town is saved, paw'!), this link actually has details more likely to be of interest to a slashdot reader. The long and narrow design placed in consideration of prevailing winds seems clever, sure, but I don't get the big deal over it. Maybe using common sense really is so rare as to be considered innovative.

Comment Re:Israel vs arab nukes (Score 1) 307

Israel has never attacked it's neighbors in the way they have attacked Israel. Israel's attacks have been preemptive and limited to it's own immediate security needs. Israels neighbors have repeatedly attacked Israel with the express intention (still very much expressed today) of wiping it off the map and pushing every Jew into the sea.

Not that I think Israel should have nukes, but they do. And I don't find it hypocritical to deny an enemy threatening to kill you a weapon whether you have that weapon or not.

Comment Israel vs arab nukes (Score 1, Insightful) 307

Watching the news reports on Iran's nuclear program about a month ago, I started to wonder if Israel would rely on diplomacy alone to resolve the issue. They sure didn't in 1981 when Iraq was building a nuclear reactor in Osirak, they flew in F-16s and bombed it. So it's not without precedent for the Israelis to attack Arab nuclear facilities.

I for one respect their taking direct action in the interest of their national security. And if they can do so in a way that does not cost human life, all the better.

Comment talk - action = zero (Score 1) 305

Social networks are great at disseminating ideas and information, but nothing beats face time to motivate or sell someone on an important decision. I'm not going to take an action with real implications for making my life harder (like getting arrested at a demonstration, or 'direct action') based on something I've been sent online. But I might if someone I respect sits down and talks with me, and sells me on it.

Online discussion of issues is important, but real life follow through is essential.

Comment Rescue Me from loud commercials! (Score 1) 625

Now I can watch FX without holding the remote in my hand the whole time. That network really seems to allow much louder commercials than any other network, sometimes to the point of it being too frustrating to even watch a show on it when others are trying to sleep. Often I'll resort to closed captions and just keep the volume down to far to hear the shows without straining.

So, while thankful, let me just say if I were to write an ordered list of problems for congress to resolve this would easily have a four digit line item number.

Science

Submission + - 2010 IgNoble prize winners (improbable.com)

hex0D writes: This year's winners included research papers on collecting whale snot, why you should wear your socks on the outside of your shoes, how beards are a hazard, and the effect of fellatio on fruit bat copulation.
Science

Submission + - Rube Goldberg and the Strangeness of Electricity

Hugh Pickens writes: "Alexis Madrigal has written a very interesting essay in the Atlantic about the popular response of people in the 19th century to the development of the electric power industry. Before electricity, basically every factory had to run a bit like a Rube Goldberg machine, transmitting power from a water wheel or a steam engine to the machines of a manufactory but with the development of electric turbines and motors the public believed engineers were tapping mysterious, invisible forces with almost supernatural powers for mischief. "Think about it," writes Madrigal. "You've got a wire and you've got a magnet. Switch on the current — which you can't see and have no intuitive way to know exists — and suddenly the wire begins to rotate around the magnet. You can reverse the process, too. Rotate the magnet around the wire and it generates a current that can be turned into light, heat, or power." And that brings us back to Rube Goldberg, a cartoonist who was was shockingly popular in his heyday and whose popularity closely parallels the rise of electrification in America. "I think Goldberg's drawings reminded his contemporaries of a time when they could understand the world's industrial processes just by looking. No matter how absurd his work was, anyone could trace the reactions involved," writes Madrigal. "People like to complain that they can't understand modern cars because of all the fancy parts and electronic doo-dads in them now, but we lost that ability for most things long ago. ""

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