I think he means the empty shell casings.

I was going to say the same thing, but my article is only from 2007... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17717151

This was forever ago, but "BINKY" was a similar concept. It had a full band, though. http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Rocks-BINKY-Brown-Chapter/dp/0316115436

I know you were probably just going for the joke, but corn can grow on slopes if they're not too steep. Contour farming would be highly recommended, as well as strip cropping to keep the soil from eroding. Corn isn't the best at making dirt stay put.

I found a but like this while working as a medical assistant in two elderly doctors' office two years ago. Every month or two, the medical database would lock up and we would have to call the programmer and have him email us a fix. I took it upon myself to open it up in Visual Studio one day (all I had on my laptop at the time) and I discovered that it was programmed to rename its own file library upon opening after a certain date. Apparently, this had been happening since about 1993, and he had been charging the doctors $300 per month for his "maintenance fee." Our office then switched to a new, infinitely better database solution, though no charges were filed.

Also noteworthy, the faulty program didn't appear to have been really updated since they licensed it in '93; it still had that wonderful DOS goodness.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Is there no way to "win," then? I played through once and found only Grace's print-out of the JenniferAnn.org website. Found nothing else, called Natalie, "lost."
I played again, but this time when I clicked the picture, there was a dialogue that hadn't played before about Natalie's clothes. I clicked around to make sure there wasn't anything else, so then I called her, thinking "This is it! Now I have evidence!"

But sadly, no. The conversation went no differently. As far as I can tell, there is no way to change the outcome. Natalie will always hang up on you and stay with abusive Ken and "his crews."

I did, however, learn that wearing more clothes and wristbands may be a sign of violent relationships, but not enough of one to discuss. I suppose if I were really dealing with this, the JenniferAnn.org link would be helpful, but in what way would it be better than the link without the game itself?

It's called "theology."

Practically speaking, what has relativity done for us? Or plate tectonics, for that matter? We still have catastrophic earthquakes, and we still can't time-warp with wormholes. How long have these theories been around now? Sure, they may be useful down the road, but probably not within the next decade or two. And evolution? Don't get me started on the practical applications of pondering our origins and the immediate tangible rewards thereof.

And speaking of the obesity epidemic, heart disease, and whatnot... How many of these phenomena were caused directly by "scientific breakthroughs"? It could be (and has been) argued that artificial sweeteners, one such breakthrough, have actually contributed significantly to the obesity epidemic. There can be little doubt that our mostly sedentary lifestyles directly contribute to obesity as well as heart disease, and how much do you think we would sit around without our modern technology? And while we may be more aware of the world we live in now, how much of it have we destroyed or defiled with our science? (See also: DDT, plastics, killer bees.)

Don't get me wrong, the quest for knowledge is a noble one. We have learned how to treat many diseases, feed more people, squeeze ever more people onto a planet that can barely support them, and even look for other planets that may be our only hope of continued existence once we've finished this one off. But human beings are ill-prepared to handle the knowledge we seek. We learn how to string hydrocarbons together, and what do we make? Styrofoam! We learn how to launch satellites, and what fills our exosphere? Space junk. We learn how to split atoms, and what's the first thing we make? Yeah.

I think a part of it is that we're so used to hearing about all these "scientific breakthroughs" and "important discoveries" all the time. Every scientific article talks about the potentially life-changing applications of each little project, and by the time those developments take place, they're less spectacular (or less unusual, given today's society) than originally believed. I think another part of it is that so many scientists think their chosen fields are the most important. It does make sense that they would think so, given that they've devoted their careers (or entire lives) to the cause, but it sometimes seems to give their claims a sense of embellishment. After all, in how many ways have scientists predicted the end of the world? And of all those urgent warnings, how many have actually ended the world? Not counting the killer asteroids and alien invasions, of course.

The PCR part is already largely autonomous. Throw all the ingredients into the mix, heat it up to a certain temperature in a warm bath, cool it off, heat it up again, cool it off again... You get the idea. Each cycle doubles the amount of DNA produced. All you have to do is make sure there's enough ingredients in the mix; most versions of the equipment can do the heating-cooling cycles themselves.

All you need is a little polymerase chain reaction. I assume that's how the grad student could outdo the global silicon chip industry as mentioned in the article summary.

Agreed.

As I posted above, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/organic. Definitions 3a vs. 3b. Round Two. Fight!

It's true. And pretty much anything else you find in an organic chemistry textbook. That doesn't mean they're USDA Certified Organic, though.