This isn't for your children or for mine. But this is for the parent who is not letting their kids out unsupervised. If this enables kids in such families to have to chance to go out on their own without constant adult supervision then this is a good thing for them.

Certainly if you put a growing garlic plant in a microwave oven and hit it full blast it would effect how it grows. But the microwaves we are talking about are so weak as to be truly negligible. If you read the article, you will find that the power is several orders of magnitude less than what would prevent the crops from getting an "organic" label. And even that cut-off is meaningless.

It's pretty clear what is going on with this particular farmer. He is one of the many people who see modern technology as a dangerous tampering with nature and the natural order. He was grasping at straws with his talk of "shaking molecules" and "genetic mutation". What we need to consider in these cases is not the specific claims that people like this make about science. Those will invariably be nonsense. We need to consider what underlies his panic.

Of course what underlies his panic is also irrational, but we need to remember that a lot of people share that (although to a lesser extent). Somehow, I don't know how, we need to address those fears.

I largely agree. When we moved to Texas, my wife wanted a house by a creek. Everything we looked at was built above the flood line, but by quick inspection I could see which houses were going to be undermined by repeated flooding of their creeks. (For some houses the "upper" backyards were already peeling away.)

Once we moved into a place (with a very solid retaining wall just where it needs to be) I had to convince my wife that we shouldn't put in benches or swing sets in the "lower" back yard. She thought I was nuts until our first really big set of rains when we had a swing set delivered to our back yard from somewhere upstream.

I've shown people these kinds of logs in real time. It does get a message across, though it's not clear whether the effect lasted.

So to get a real improvement, show them those logs and then give them practical advice on using a good password management system.

Thank you for the elaboration of some of the mechanism by which microwaves shake water.

I had thought of putting in a note that "shaking" isn't the best word for describing how microwaves heat water. I had mistakenly thought that given the context, I would be cut a little bit of slack there. I was just trying to point out that the idiot's talk of "shaking" wasn't as far from the mark as what the post I was replying to suggested. None the less, I acknowledge that just as the rag that wipes the pot that calls the kettle black is the last to come clean, I should have been more precise and explicit.

We are talking about microwave radiation. Microwave radiation cooks food by "shaking" the molecules (of water). Of course that isn't going to cause genetic mutation. Yes the guy is an idiot, but if you're going to get into name calling, try to get your own facts right.

If you Google "ppc linux," the top hit

seems to answer many of your questions. I don't know about finding someone who will do the install for you, but it really shouldn't be hard to do it yourself.

... the New Sensationalist seriously as a science magazine.

(Fine, mod this flamebait. I've got Karma to burn and I really dislike that rag.)

Thanks for that informative post, but if I were to get a firearm, I think I would go with a semi-automatic handgun loaded with snake shot. By far and away, the only think I'm likely to need to shoot is a snake.

A handgun would be less unwieldy for someone like me than a rifle. Any person I could ever see myself needing to shoot would be in the house. Snake shot is unlikely to kill anyone and is extremely unlikely to injure a non-target if I miss. Sure it probably won't stop a very determined attacker, but that is why I want a semi-automatic. I want neither range nor power. I want something light and usable by a poor marksman. I want to deter and frighten. If I'm going up against someone who knows what they are doing and is armed, then I've got no chance anyway.

But for the most part I'm one of those people who feel uncomfortable with firearms and is not at all comfortable with the fact that so many people in my state (Texas) have them. But accepting the Constitution is an all or nothing thing. It's not like the Bible where you pick and choose which bits to apply.

Of course actually knowing the answer to the question itself may not help address the philosophical issues raised by the question.

See this comment and the reply to it.

For more than ten years the New Sensationalist has been predicting catastrophes, world changing technologies, and the like. It's about time someone tried to call them on it.