Several of my colleagues work/have worked for Doctors without Borders and through them I have met some of their non-medical personnel as well (esp. the logisticians). They strike me as one of the most deserving charities who provide relief without agenda (they are secular). I occasionally donate to other charities as well, but MSF are my No. 1 and I admire their work.

I was going to write basically the same comment. You'd think that if they truly believed they would not have a problem going to a lecture and hearing arguments against their belief. It's the furious opposition to education that betrays how little some people *really* believe. They just cover their ears and go "la la la" not to hear anything that would lead to even worse cognitive dissonance than they already have to face.

Exactly. If the possible answers really were ALWAYS, SOMETIMES, NEVER, I would expect all scientists to answer SOMETIMES, regardless of their own belief/lack thereof.

There was a study done to quantify what people understand under terms such as "sometimes", "usually", "frequently" and so on. It turns out "sometimes" ranges from 1 % to some 80 % (I don't have the exact numbers now, I saw the study in a workshop given by people from the National Board of Medical Examiners).

Without reading the original study though, I am inclined to think that it may be the journalists interpretation of what they think the researchers said.

I hope this whole tablet business will not delay what I really expect from Amazon - a hi-res color e-ink Kindle. Same format but a larger display. And please no touch screen, thank you, I don't want my greasy fingers on the display I read.

Tablets have a long way to go to replace dedicated e-book readers. Until they are easily readable in broad daylight and can last at least couple weeks, there will be a market for Kindle.

I am with you. I bought my Kindle a month ago, after very very long hesitation. And I love it. It's light, small, portable and the display is amazing. I love the fact that I can sit in the sun and read, just as I would with a book. That I can read in the evening in bed, without having to look at a back-lit display (some people may not mind, I do).

I love the fact that it does nothing else - I was impressed how immersive the reading is and I guess the fact that it does not have Skype, email, news, facebook, or any other of the million distractions is a huge plus. Of course, I know that on a tablet you can switch all these off and get the same undisturbed experience, but Kindle just makes it so much easier for you. When I read to fall asleep, without being tempted to check my mail one last time.

And don't underestimate the importance of the incredible battery life. I hope for a future where all devices will be like this - you just use them without having to constantly care about battery charge. With my android phone, I have to make sure that it's fully charged when I leave the house in the morning.

As for touch - I don't want to touch the screen of my e-reader (or my computer for that matter) with my dirty greasy fingers, thank you.

YMMV, but for me, the future Kindle should have a larger display, colour and possibly be even a little lighter. That I would buy immediatelly.

From TFA: It seems unlikely that most people — or even technology enthusiasts — will want to buy a product that involves sitting alone and wearing a little helmet.

Really? What about gaming? What about porn?

How difficult is it to block the application the first time it spams your wall? Two, three clicks? Maybe it's the choice of friends who I let appear in my Facebook feed, but few mouse clicks every couple weeks/months when a new game appears does not seems to "ruin" anything for me. But then again, I don't have friends who start playing five new games every day and of my 200 contacts, only about 20 are not "hidden" competely from my wall, so my experience may be different.

I know I'm nitpicking here, but saying that the "level is 3 uSv above normal background" does not make sense. 3 uSv is a dose (a tiny one) and background is measured in dose/time. So 3 uSv above background/second would be very significant, whereas 3 uSv above background/year would be totally negligible.

Why would you have to vocalise "every" command you make? It seems to me most of the objections here are based on the strange notion that there would suddenly be no other way to control things. I would not mind having the option to use voice commands when appropriate and effective. That does not mean I'd throw out my keyboard and mouse. Things are not black and white, you know.

I don't know about Canada, but here (EU, Czech Republic) we pay the levy for hard drives, USB flash disks, copiers,... Except for blank paper, I believe they have it covered. So it's hard to feel quilty when your new hard drive comes "pre-paid".

Or maybe not use hyperlinks? I mean, if I want to warn people about www.crazyscammer.com, why would I need to make it into a clickable link? I don't. Now he gets linked from NYTimes. Well done.

Could you supply a source on the "[...]image processing centre which is a common form of blindness"? As far as I know, and yes IAAMD, eye-related conditions are by far the most common cause of blindness, whereas cortical blindness represents only a small fraction of the total blind population (significant, no doubt).