I know this may be a slippery slope, but it seems like if it was decided to monitor those with power 24/7 to make sure they aren't abusing that power at any point, then that would mean that you're giving someone else power by having them monitor those with power. So then it would seem that eventually we would need to monitor those monitoring others to make sure the monitors aren't abusing their power, and this would just continue until everyone's being monitored because who knows when anyone will abuse any amount of power that they could possibly have. Admittedly the power of any normal person is much different than that of a government official, but it doesn't seem like a very big stretch could be made from monitoring one to make sure they don't abuse their power to monitoring the other for similar reasons.

I think the idea that "If you haven't done anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to hide" isn't particularly true. You have to understand that everyone has a different concept of when something's "wrong." And some people respect others' beliefs in what is wrong enough to want to hide some parts of their lives that don't necessarily need to be out in the open in order to avoid unnecessary conflict.

Sucks for TENQ's new Ubuntu powered tablet.

I wouldn't try to inspire people through movies that you watch maybe in the theater once, maybe rent it once, possibly see it a grand total of two or three times. People aren't always watching movies. However, a lot of people watch a generous amount of television, something where you get a persistent storyline that spans seasons. You don't just get into the characters for an hour or two, you get into them several times a week. Just think, how many people wanted to get into forensics, much less learned that forensics existed, after shows like CSI got really popular? I can't count the number of people in my anthropology department that joined because they started watching Bones and really wanted to be a forensic anthropologist.

Previous studies have tried to link social network size to the size of the neocortex. Through this it was estimated that humans have social networks upwards near 150 people. This was further backed up through other research.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/pphfpu3c39ee9009/

This study, however, doesn't seem to address the neocortex since they only checked for links among different subcortical structures. The journal article itself doesn't even address the neocortex. In fact the article claims to be in accord with the "social brain hypothesis" which was formulated by Dunbar who developed the idea that the neocortex could be linked to social network size, which is in complete contrast to a belief that social network size can be calculated from the amygdala in the limbic system.

I feel like this could be pretty nifty if you're trying to learn a language by using the internet and you want to make sure that what you're looking at isn't going to go over your head for sure. However, while looking at google.de, it seems like the reading level isn't an option in advanced search.

This is the first time I've seen something that was published by Wikileaks that I don't think should have been. The summary refers to a cable documenting vital points to America's overall infrastructure. Most of the arguments for Wikileaks seem to say that the government should take responsibility for whatever bad things its representatives have communicated to others. However, this leak is something that I don't see as whistleblowing, or showing the government caught saying something they might regret. No, this is an outline of points of interest to keep the country running smoothly, important facilities spanning the entire globe. I can't see any actual good coming from the leak of this particular document.

When I see people saying the publishing of the cables is compromising US security, this is the first thing I have seen where I would agree.

This is a downside to the government doing something that they don't want others to know about in the first place. The downside comes from the fact that this information exists, not that it leaked. The quote on the bottom of the page is very appropriate right now. "Truth is hard to find and harder to obscure"

Doesn't making it the world's most boring day also make it much less boring?

This is a truly archaic way of thinking about language as restricting what we can think about. We can certainly conceptualize things that we don't have words or language to express. That entire sentence seems paradoxical to me; how did we come up with a language to express anything to start with if we couldn't conceive of the ideas the language expresses without a language to express them?

To me, the key to education in mathematics is teaching problem solving, but the curriculum and teaching methods have moved to just a simplistic model of teaching rules to learn to regurgitate. These rules are so abstract that it's hard to conceive their use in real life application, and so they're learned for students' tests in class, if even that, and then shortly forgotten because they're so inapplicable.

I completely understand where Ramanathan is coming from, but I think it comes off in this summary as needing to completely abolish math at all. Truly, the best idea seems to be not to strictly teach these rules in a 'reference sheet' sort of manner, but to teach how to come to the conclusions that lead to these rules. This will lead to a better actual understanding of what math is, I believe.

It seems like we've seen this already. Somewhere.....

"...either had way too much time on his hands or just really enjoys Halo..." I don't think this is an either or sort of thing...

Really, the government should require the companies to test these things instead of having the government completely involved in babying every toy company. Then when they slip up make them pay dearly. Making sure everything that reaches us is safe shouldn't be the direct responsibility of the government, rather making sure it's the companies that deliver these products to us responsibility.

If only this could be combined so that it sucks up oily water from the gulf of mexico, cleans off the oil, then makes clouds with it.

If I were to become a parent now, then I would only put these restrictions up on my teenagers to tell them: "You're restricted until you can figure out how to get around it." Because that's how I learned as much as I know now about computers.

Seriously though, forcing all of these restrictions will only cause them to resent you. If they want to look at porn then they'll find a way to get to it, if they can't find that then they have active enough imaginations and attractive enough girls at school. Sure, you can say that could happen, but at least you're not enabling it. However, talking to your children about it instead of just restricting them from it and saying that's that will help them from developing some sort of complex.

And how about this: Maybe your children are more night people than day people, as is the case with myself. This is a completely alright thing, but is for some reason frowned upon by parents who do things like restrict what hours they can be on the computer. Let them stay up as late as they want, let them sleep during the day. Soon they'll learn what they prefer. Either they'll dread feeling so tired at school because they didn't get enough sleep, or they'll miss spending time with their friends who don't keep the same hours as them, or they'll be completely fine with it.

You need to help them develop these things while under your supervision, because once they're set free in the world and not under your supervision anymore then all of these things that were taboo and inaccessible before are right there and they'll be poorly adjusted to them.

If you don't allow your children adult responsibility then when they're thrust into being expected to show it they're going to be completely lost.