BZZZ! You would be wrong, but thanks for playing. Turn off talk-radio for a minute and listen. Obama is center-right, and no socialist unless you could the "socialism for the elites" that is wall-street bailouts (including the unauthorized stealth bailouts going on through the Fed). He is practically aligned with the republicans when it comes to fiscal policy (which is to continue the taxes != expenses that both parties have been running for a while), and has proved himself the opposite of a progressive in social policy as well, up to and including MURDERING an American citizen without trial (or did you miss that?). He has not done anything to overturn the civil-liberties murdering patriot act, nor has he called back the illegal wire-tapping program. His administration has prosecuted more people for "treason" in revealing secret information than ever before. He has not increased taxes (talking about it doesn't count), and he has essentially held back prosecutors from going after the massive fraud on wall street.

All this is immaterial, because the real truth is he's a massive sell-out, in the pockets of the monied interests, and full of lies and rhetoric like 99% of pliticians out there... and now we know.

-- Love, a pinko commie liberal that WISHES we had a real progressive, or any, left candidate for president

Replying to say I agree 100% with this. I actually don't really play games, I am way too busy with work and school. But I like supporting the EFF, I like supporting indie software developers of any kind, and I like the pay what you want DRM-free model. I too am "voting with my dollar": MORE OF THIS PLEASE!

Now, I did play Crayon physics on a long plane ride where I was too burned out to do more work, and I had my whole aisle and people behind me fascinated with a game that creative and smooth-running on linux. I'm sure there's more and I hope maybe over my next vacation I can enjoy them.

Indeed, Ron Paul passes the "Is the candidate a lying, corrupt sack of shit?" test. Unfortunately, I disagree with him on how to run the country. So, back to square one. If we can get not just three or four candidates of Ron Paul integrity spread accross the spectrum, but thousands of such candidates to fill local positions as well, then we can say we have something to vote for. Until then, no.

I believe the amount of not-easily-visible ordinary matter in the universe has already been accounted for in our models. We knew sources like this were there. Even at the most optimistic estimates, it is dwarfed by the amount needed to throw off the galaxy rotation curves, the main (but certainly not only) circumstantial evidence for "missing mass" which in turn leads to the idea of dark (non-baryonic, non-interacting) matter.

There was mention a while back about government projects to provide tools to agents so they could manage hundreds/thousands of online personas... paranoid linky: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread664190/pg1 Considering the hysterical attitude of the gov't about wikileaks, it's sadly not unbelievable that this would extend to such places as slashdot.

from a relative n00b - can netsukuku or something similar get us out of this?

http://www.netsukuku.org/?pag=about

Agree completely. I just walked into BofA today and closed my account. Went online and did paypal too. Felt amazingly good. Just hope ING continues not to suck, as they are my only bank now...

here's a hint: log(1) = 0. So it's the same size, which is why no one with a brain says "it's one time thinner".

how bad is it that my first thought was "Cool!" ... I'm astronomer, I've been waiting to be relevant to the safety of humanity for a while...

I'm under no illusion that I'm invincible. I've already had (most likely) the H1N1 as they're reporting 99% of the recent flu cases were in my area of Texas (I was very mildly ill after caring for a relative with it). But obviously I meant that I'm very unlikely to die from the regular flu. The H1N1 is another matter - my boyfriend saw many previously healthy people in their 20s die while he worked at the hospital here last month.

This is not necessarily surprising or a new idea. A researcher at Rice University (Michael Deem, whom I have heard speak on this) studies the genetic basis for the vaccine and the resulting efficacy in any given year and there are MANY years in which getting a flu vaccine the previous year will actually increase your chances of getting the flu the next, or make it worse. You can find an interesting calculator here: http://www.mwdeem.rice.edu/pepitope/, where there is also a link to his most important paper on it at the bottom (no registration req.). Here is an excerpt:

Vaccine efficacy can even be negative, however, due to original antigenic sin [7-9], the tendency for antibodies produced in response to exposure to infl uenza vaccine antigens to suppress the creation of new, different antibodies in response to exposure to new versions of the infl uenza virus. The efficacy of the annual in fluenza vaccine, and whether original antigenic sin may occur, depends sensitively on how similar the vaccine and circulating viral strains are. Current state of the art measures of antigenic distance are based on ferret antisera hemagglutinin inhibition assays [10-12], and these distances are assumed to correlate well with vaccine efficacies in humans. However, to our knowledge no such good correlation has ever been shown for an experimental or theoretical measure of antigenic distance.

Ever since I heard this talk, and learned that the flu vaccine is actually a random guess each year, I don't bother with it. I'm young, strong, and tough and very very unlikely to die, I figure.

Funny, I expected that line to go like...

The idea that every person who is reporting/informing/pushing/(whatever spin you like) the idea of global warming is secretly involved in a plan to profit once the entire public is convinced of it's veracity, either independently or through a broad conspiracy is naive

... or CRAZY.