Too late. He was killed in 1945 by sympathizers of the Chinese Communist Party. He was a missionary who helped Jimmy Doolittle get to safety after bombing Tokyo.

I think you were talking about the society that was named for him thirteen years later. Google is your friend.

I think it's time to free your head from the idea that censorship is necessarily and always bad. If somebody wants to publish information about me that I'd rather not have shared, I'm tickled pink if someone can censor that expression. My problem with censorship is when it's done by the government in the form of prior restraint based on arbitrary standards which are, for the most part, unconstitutional. With a few other similar exceptions, a bit of well thought out censorship is a very good idea when used appropriately.

In the case of OpenDNS, the kinds of sites I've asked them not to serve to me are sites I don't want to see. I similarly have a reasonably substantial hosts file that points many domains I don't want loaded on my machine to 127.0.0.1. I also don't allow just any old script that comes across my http stream to load and run without my giving permission for that to happen. This is because my machine is mine, and my browsing experience is my responsibility.

If OpenDNS breaks something to the point that I can no longer do what I want them to do, I can stop using them in about 30 seconds, and that takes care of that problem.

Also, OpenDNS provides some convenient filtering of various kinds of websites, but it is far from comprehensive. Even if you decide you never want to see goatse sites, you're not going to be blocked from goatse videos on YouTube, or goatse profiles on FaceBook, or what have you. It only blocks entire domains, not individual sites, so it's ability to block content has not a few holes in it.

If you think it's tricky to get people to give up driving SUVs or eating beef, that's a cake walk prepared to trying to get people to stop breeding. The cultures still breeding above replacement level value will be the ones still around in 100 years to try to deal with these problems, so, if you want to have the idea of reducing the population still on the agenda in 100 years, you'd better breed and hope you're able to impart your ideas to your children (it's a Hell of a lot harder than it looks).

China is just recently breeding at something in the neighborhood of replacement level, but show of hands for people who want to be subjected to the population control regime they used to get there? Anybody? The other candidates for major changes in population levels ride on four horses, and there's not much chance humanity is going to stop trying to avoid them to tidy up our population problems.

Also, humans-as-locusts breaks down quickly because there is no locust equivalent to a George Washington Carver, who was able to develop hundreds of uses for previously unwanted plants and transform the agricultural economy of the United States and much of the rest of the world. Population control programs can't successfully predict which individuals are going to make the breakthroughs necessary to continue offsetting the problems increasing populations have made. Nor do they take into account the massive amount of work and production it takes to transform something large and complex like the global energy and material economy.

There are no simple answers here. We will make guesses, and we will find out where we are right, and where we are wrong. Anybody claiming to have an accurate crystal ball should be viewed with suspicion.

When people learn how much control they give up of their information, and when there are sites that show respect for their information. I've been trying for months to get CareerBuilder.com to stop spamming me, and, when that took too long, to delete my account. Their representative tells me that there is no way in the system to delete my account. The most they can(will) do is delete my subscriptions from the various (and they have many) mail lists. I have repeated that this is unacceptable, and that I want my account deleted, and they refuse to do so. Most likely, this is described in their privacy policy which I agreed to when I created my account. I will be more careful about such things in the future.

I would recommend anybody who wants control over their personal information to stay away from CareerBuilder.com until such time as they change this policy. The ease of access to job listings and employers doesn't counter the lack of control of your information, and the reality that you will be spammed repeatedly, even when you follow the directions available on the site to eliminate yourself from their mail lists, even when you've found a job and don't want to have any relationship with the site as all.

The ironic part is that I found very few employers who used the date I submitted to CareerBuilder.com. Many of the employers I was trying to reach had their own job application process on their own websites.

Actually, those all add up as additional costs of non-digital copies -- the requirement to successfully guess sales of the non-digital copies and where they should be sent. None of those is required for a digital copy, no matter what, whether you sell one or one million.

For tracks that are predicted to have relatively smaller sales, choosing digital-only isn't a bad idea either. That's where Amie Street is quite good, as is CD Baby.

But my point was that everybody was talking about this in terms of revenue only, and revenue is only part of the question -- cost is also an important factor. Digital distribution of music, after a relatively small threshold has much lower cost than non-digital music does, and that's something the music companies need to be thinking about.

Not exactly. Pirating from private torrent trackers may not come with a direct dollar cost, but that's not exactly free. Quality isn't assured, and neither is the content assured, nor is download speed.

Buying from Amazon gives me a guarantee that the content I buy is what I get at a 256k bitrate, and the downloads are reasonably fast -- faster than many of the torrent downloads I'm aware of.

Itunes, unfortunately, requires more of my soul than I want to give up, so I can't vouch for that.

Digital cost increase is also more than matched by a non-digital cost decrease. Specifically, the marginal increase in cost for a digital copy of a track is much, much lower than the marginal increase in cost for a non-digital copy. There is no physical media, no printing of the CD label, no case, no shrink-wrap, no theft prevention device, no shipping cost, no shelf-space. Eventually, enough digital copies can require some additional bandwidth and server space, but that's more than made up for by the increased revenue for all of those digital copies.

So total revenues may not be up 25%, but those marginal digital revenues had a much higher marginal profit than the same revenues would have had in non-digital formats.

And the point was more that legal music downloads are producing more and more income as time goes on, which was predicted by many folks around these parts a long time ago. I'm gleefully loving the Amazon download service -- high bitrates, no DRM, and bargains if you're willing to wait for them (Dark Side of the Moon today for $5). But CD-Baby and Amie Street have some good stuff as well -- Amie Street with a very interesting pricing model worth checking out by those with non-mainstream tastes and musicians interested in opportunities outside the traditional studios.

It's not that simple. Combining CO2 and H2O through photosynthesis gives you carbohydrates (made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) directly, not hydrocarbons (made up of just carbon and hydrogen). Plants and animals can take energy from carbohydrates and produce fatty acids (hydrocarbons), but it's not the automatic result of combining carbon dioxide and water.

Seems to me that this is an opportunity in a different fashion. Squish the algae for the oil you can get from it, then take the left-over material (mostly cellulose) and use the catalytic process for converting that to ethanol, and you can get a second shot at harnessing the solar energy the algae absorbed as vehicle fuel.

This would also be a good recovery pattern for non-oil algae strains infiltrating an oil-based crop.

Well, thanks. Looks like somebody fulfilled your wish and decided you were pretty insightful yourself. It's interesting to see the partisan moderating that happens in threads like this. AFAICT, I'm (thus far) net zero in the thread, and I got comments agreeing with and challenging my points, which is way more interesting to me than the karma consequences.

And, if it wasn't clear, I'm completely agreeing that breastfeeding is a good thing which should happen probably more than it is, and that those who consider it dirty or disgusting are out of whack. I understand that it's not always an option (had that happen with one of my kids), but would encourage it to happen as much as it can without piling guilt on those it just won't work for. Unfortunately, the care and feeding and rearing of children, especially babies, has become quite a partisan battle field, with lots of guilt and accusations piling on post-partum depression to make everything not just a little nuts.

And taking the middle ground tends to mean getting arrows in both sides of your head. Been there before, and I'll likely be there again.

I think FB/MS can enforce their ToS as they see fit, and, if they piss you off, you can go somewhere else. If they see BF pictures as violating their ToS, then that's that.

That "legal right doesn't make it right" sword has two edges. Be careful with it.

And no, I wasn't talking about militant "free thinkers." I was talking about militant breast-feeding activists who feel justified in mistreating me because somebody else mistreated them. That dog don't hunt with me.

Breastfeeding, like many other natural processes, doesn't need to be shared with the whole world, for the protection of the people participating in it as much as the people who don't wish to see it. Privacy isn't for bad things -- it's for private things. Personally, I'd rather not watch. Note the gun I'm not holding in my hand to enforce that preference.

What I'm saying is that there's no need for pictures of people eating, belching or blowing their noses. The igniting of farts is also unnecessary. I don't see a purpose in pushing a massive pull-down either.

That the mothers see this as important (as in, an important thing to do) is irrelevant. There are a number of things that are important to do that don't need to be photographed and presented to the world.

My understanding of the ToS guidelines (the ones I've looked at) is "no nipples." If exceptions are made for nipples shown during breastfeeding, that relatively simple standard becomes complicated and, potentially, useless. When you agree to the ToS, you abide by the ToS, like them or don't. If you can'd abide by them, go somewhere else.

That last paragraph is pretty close to totally off-base, afaict. There's nobody saying that there's anything wrong with breastfeeding that I've seen (I'm not trolling at 0 and reading every AC). Some folks are saying they'd rather not see it. I'm suggesting some modesty is appropriate. I've not called anybody a freak, sinner nor pervert for disagreeing with me about this. If you want to bark at the people who have done more than I have, be my guest, but that's not me, and I'm not going to apologize for something I haven't done.

It's interesting to me that, when I've been in a discussion that involves me asking women to not show me their breasts for any reason, I'm the bad guy. Perhaps I should be as insistent that women show me their breasts. It's not that they aren't fun to look at.

Don't know what happened, but some of my paragraphs got scrambled. Here's how that was supposed to read:

Two of my three children were breastfed, and I have no problem with boob-food happening. I don't think it's sexual (not that some weird folks can't make it so for themselves). When it happens in public, I think using a blanket/towel/etc. is a good idea, not because there's anything dirty about the breast, but because I don't think it's something that needs the amount and quality of attention it's likely to get in public.

I see no need for pictures of anybody eating on FB/MS, regardless of age or what they're eating. I also don't see a need for pictures of people belching, or blowing their noses. I don't think that needs to be a ToS issue (as of yet). When it comes to babies breastfeeding, I don't see any purpose in showing pictures of that. It's a crappy angle for looking at the baby. I'd rather see the baby sleeping or playing or smiling or being cute or something -- speaking just for me.

The pushing of the boob is getting to be an issue for me. I ran into a guy on an IM network who's an amateur photographer, and he wanted to send me some of his pictures. Since I didn't know him, I was a bit concerned about what the pictures would be, which he picked up on, and assured me that he didn't do nudes. However, he did do some tasteful topless shots of his wife. I told him I didn't want to see those, and he's been so intrigued by that that it comes up every time we chat (every week or three). I'm planning on getting very direct the next time he asks, if he does. Topless isn't all he does, and I don't mind looking at his other shots from time to time.

I do think there's something of militancy in this movement of "accept me, approve of me, or you're a bigot/puritan/pervert." And that I'm totally ready to give the finger to. I don't shove my lifestyle down your throat or demand your acceptance or approval, and I'm not obliged to build your feelings of self-worth.

Two of my three children were breastfed, and I have no problem with boob-food happening. I don't think it's sexual (not that some weird folks can't make it so for themselves). When it happens in public, I think using a blanket/towel/etc. is a good idea, not because there's anything dirty about the breast, but because I don't think it's something that needs the amount and quality of attention it's likely to get in public. Topless isn't all he does, and I don't mind looking at his other shots from time to time.

I do think there's something of militancy in this movement of "accept me, approve of me, or you're a bigot/puritan/pervert." And that I'm totally ready to give the finger to. I don't shove my lifestyle down your throat or demand your acceptance or approval, and I'm not obliged to build your feelings of self-worth.

I see no need for pictures of anybody eating on FB/MS, regardless of age or what they're eating. I also don't see a need for pictures of people belching, or blowing their noses. I don't think that needs to be a ToS issue (as of yet). When it comes to babies breastfeeding, I don't see any purpose in showing pictures of that. It's a crappy angle for looking at the baby. I'd rather see the baby sleeping or playing or smiling or being cute or something -- speaking just for me.

The pushing of the boob is getting to be an issue for me. I ran into a guy on an IM network who's an amateur photographer, and he wanted to send me some of his pictures. Since I didn't know him, I was a bit concerned about what the pictures would be, which he picked up on, and assured me that he didn't do nudes. However, he did do some tasteful topless shots of his wife. I told him I didn't want to see those, and he's been so intrigued by that that it comes up every time we chat (every week or three). I'm planning on getting very direct the next time he asks, if he does.

George Bush. Everything is his fault.

Expect the holes to start closing in about five weeks.