"And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martiansâ"dead!â"slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth." Admittedly, Wells had a better fleshed out mechanism for his bacteria.

Small non-profit volunteer groups outside the U.S. are also losing with this. Registered U.S. non-profits can use the full apps free, but the free version was extremely well suited to small groups outside of America. Between exchange rates, being the kind of people who are time rich/ money poor but wanting to volunteer (retired and students), and that all such groups need are a few email addresses and some web space, there is now way such groups would justify the full business edition. It might be different for those groups who exist to raise money, but currently it closes an good easy pathway. I set up a group like this last week, who are a registered charity in my country, but are just starting up so have time and enthusiasm but not much cash in $US business terms.

If anyone from the Romney team is reading this let me help. This explanation is good for Kindergartener level, so should be useful despite a few simplifications
The Earth is a globe made atoms of different kinds. It is held together by gravity, which is a force that pulls atoms together. When you have atoms of different kinds the heavy, tightly packed atoms tend to wind up closer to the middle than the light ones. So we have heavy solids, then a layer of liquid, then a layer of air. Within the layer of air, the air closer to the ground is more tightly packed than the air closer to space. A jet plane can travel so high it can move people from where the air is what we are use to, to where the air is too thinly spread out to breath. To let people breath, jet planes need to keep the air inside. To do this, they do not let people open the windows, as this would let the air out.
P.S. when talking about air, the expression "The air is thin at the top" is not a business metaphor for a limited number of first class jobs, it means there is not much air high up from the ground.

Actual-green parties (which is to say ones with a representation in parliament), rather than straw-man imagined green parties, are normally on the same side as the non-corporate libertarians when it comes to matters of government transparency.
I think most of the hate comes from people with no actual experience of living anywhere with greens in government, so not knowing they have actually been quite effective at pushing pro-open government, anti-corporate influence issues in a direction that suits most libertarians.

shot with 30 pulses over a 10-second period by Curiosity's laser today in order to determine what elements it was made of

or as H.G. Wells put it,

...the Martians rattle for a time and then become still. The giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses until the last; then in a moment the Heat-Ray was brought to bear, and the town became a heap of fiery ruins. Then the Thing shut off the Heat-Ray, and turning its back...

I wouldn't worry about algal carbon sequestering leading to no fish, the acidification of the oceans from current atmospheric carbon levels will take care of that.

>I'm having trouble understanding exactly what kinds of technology this device is using to obtain accuracy


Handwavium?

I am also a New Zealander, and in reply to the parent need to point out that if the nation votes to keep MMP then then MMP will be up for review, and one of the issues under the gun will be the rule about if someone wins an electorate seat does the party vote apply when it otherwise will not.

Having had about half my life (ignoring the early bits I can't remember) under the preceding First Past the Post system and about half under MMP, I'd say the major difference is the for fraction of the population to obtain influence under FPP they would gain control of one of the major parties then execute rapid change while they were in control. In MMP the brakes have largely gone on, as to get anything passed it needs to have the support of the parties that a majority of people have actually voted for (though I have to say the present Government have been remarkably effective at governing by decree).

Truth be told MMP is not really more 'Unstable" than FPP, in the early 90s there was the kind of instability people attribute to MMP occurring under FPP (as it had many times previously in history), and MMP has in most sessions been more stable.

If anyone wants details on the New Zealand Referendum on what voting system we use that is taking place this weekend you could start at http://www.referendum.org.nz/votingsystems

I support MMP because it results in governments having less power to push through laws against the wishes of the people. Without it I think we would have had much more pro-multinational-corporation friendly copyright legislation when they recently changed the laws around that.

I know some who basically did this with a cheap digital camera that had a Camera to TV set cable. I think, from memory it was a Kodak Camera. Put the camera on a stand with a lot of lighting, and enough shielding that the lights used to illuminate the book are not going to interfere with someone with poor eyesight being able to see the TV screen clearly.
That said, I also know several people with strong levels of visual impairment who have found the various iDevices to be game changers for them in the past few years, particularly when on the go. In this case, if electronic texts of favorite works are available I can think of ways of scripted conversions to movie files to play via an Apple TV. Basically compiling a movie file of text (sized and fonted for easy reading) playing at an appropriate reading speed.

Not a Lawyer, am a New Zealander. After the 3rd warning notice the copyright owner can take you (the account holder of the IP address, as they are the one's liable) to the Copyright Tribunal (not a standard court), if they win it is damages in the range $275 to $15000.
For more information see the 3strikes website.

Didn't you read the summary?

Putting aside that There Is No Religious Gene so the premise is bunk, the study is starting from the present and extrapolating forwards. If there was a genetic basis for religion, then the huge worldwide rise of secularism over the past 20 generations suggests that it has been massively selected for, and I can see no reason for that long running trend to suddenly change.

Neat project, but I'm more impressed that your 11 year old daughter can write python

In teaching her python, the key explanation that made things understandable was:
hey_you.do_this(with_this)
Which covered enough understanding of object orientation to make useful progress.

If my child was 13, she would love to participate in this.
Last year she won the regional science fair here (which was open to 11-17 year olds), but could not progress to the national contest (which was open to 13-17 year olds).
For reference, a link to her project site . Hopefully, this will continue to run in the future, when she is eligible.

Maybe a lot of interesting stuff did happen on April 18ths in other years. But the article is about the most boring day since 1900 (though that wasn't mentioned in the summary) rather than most boring day of the year, hence the computer determining April 11th 1954. April 18th 1930 was the day noted at the time as so boring they cancelled the evening news.