Make sure you distinguish between the claims that are made by the researchers and the claims that are made by human resources/technology transfer/publicity departments. Anyone who has ever seen that particular machine in action will attest to its ability to transform modest scientific claims into ones would make a late-night infomercial host blush.

Which is not a bad strategy when you consider the alternative: absurdly high entrance requirements. That's the strategy that medical schools have adopted, at least up here in Canada, and it's pretty clear that trying to separate the top 1% from the top 10% for admissions doesn't make for more successful students. If anything, it selects for the hyper-competitive, the resume-builders, and/or the lucky.

Better to let in as many as possible and let the actual material decide who really has the needed ability and passion.

Well, so what? You could say something similar about music, film, and literature. Fine - that doesn't mean that the increasingly focus-tested, mass-appeal garbage we're getting in all of these media isn't worse than it used to be.

Find me any 1950's equivalents to Justin Bieber, like Elvis for example, and I will guarantee they will have more artistic merit than the Biebs.

This is amazing and one more nail in the coffin of our long-held dogma of genes being passed down from two parents, expressed but otherwise unaltered, then passed down to our children, all with just a little bit of mixing and mutation. From epigenetic modifications, to massive variances of stomach flora even between relatives, now to food's ability to affect our very gene expression... we've got some serious reconsidering to do about what makes us who we are.

Very cool.

Maybe you or the average geek can't be expected to know this, but this idea is not at at all new. The concept that an author is not the authority on his/her own work has been common, even accepted, in literary analysis for decades. It's sometimes called the 'intentional fallacy'. Calling the author a 'medium' is just the article's way of making an old idea seem new and sexy.

But even if you wouldn't go as far as saying that the interpretor sets the meaning, maybe we could all agree that going back and modifying a work that you've made is a shitty thing to do if that work already holds meaning for millions of people. As is pointed out in TFA, this is exactly what Lucas did that started this debate

Side note - literary analysis can have practical ramifications after all! Who knew?

You did say vacation, right?

The library cost a hefty $81 million, but the alternative was expanding the old library's capacity - and that was estimated at $67 million. So for $14 million, the university gets a brand new library with all the prestige and sex appeal of this new, high-tech approach with lower operating costs to boot. And anyway, the library's namesakes donated $25million, an amount that was probably increased by the prospect of the donator's getting to slap their name all over this exciting new building. What I'm saying is that this was a no-brainer for the university in terms of cost/benefit.

Now, whether you want to trade a building full of beautiful old books which you can peruse at your own convenience, and staffed with generally knowledgeable bibliophiles, for a mechanized building with 5-minute delay times on book requests and far fewer human employees... that's not so straightforward I hope.

The administrator's defense: The university could not access twitter from behind the firewall!

The 'TSA': the level of radiation received from an airport body scanner. As in, you have the 'freedom' to opt to receive a TSA rub-down or a TSA of radiation on each and every flight.

The only potential problem with this unit is that nobody has any idea of its size.

But wouldn't a spiny penis help men to keep their hands out of their jeans?

Ohhhh, genes you say. . .

This was all done at TRIUMF, the world's largest cyclotron and by far the best particle accelerator in Canada. Plus, Donald Truhlar (a giant in the field) supported the experimental rate constants with quantum mechanical predictions - very neat stuff indeed!

Huh, I don't get it. The hell is an oil-er-gy?

I'm also not clear on why Ken Ono would be described as hitting good ol' Eul just for completing a theory of his: