I have my doubts about both these assertions.

The persuasion game works like state lottery commissions claim their games work: you can't win if you don't play. In the Internet age it's impossible to drive a stake through the heart of a crackpot theory; people assemble into self-reinforcing communities which preserve and spread fringe ideas until they're no longer so fringe. Take scientific racism; it was a museum-piece article of crankery when I went to school in the 80s, but all those sloppy, half-baked papers from the 1930s have gained a new life on sites like Stormfront. It's the whole epistemic bubble thing; people take comfort in the company of like-minded people, and crackpots are not excluded from that. They'll keep their ideas alive, and if scientific consensus absents itself from the debate platform for long enough they'll take the opportunity to create a new generation of true believers.

Now as for the whole round number milestone thing, it's a occasion to stay in the persuasion game. It's an opportunity to inform the people who have other things to think about in their lives that the problem hasn't gone away just because the media attention has died down somewhat. Yes, there's certain arbitrariness to the round number chosen. If we had eight, or eleven fingers, we'd be observing a somewhat different milestone, but the exact number doesn't really matter. What matters is that the issue is periodically brought up before the public so that the debate can be aired again.

LBT -- Listen Before Talk.

I have always found it best to understand users' problems first before trying to teach them what they need to know. Part of that is to learn their language. I spent a number of years working with environmental scientists, and after a few years it was quite common for scientists to assume I was a biologist who happened to do information technology, because I learned to speak the language of biology fluently. In an earlier job I worked with accountants, and learned their language too, all the way down to the in-jokes accountants tell.

I'll give you two really good reasons why you want.to do it this way, rather than try to teach management to be IT experts. First, success in this approach depends entirely upon you: your patience, your motivation, your thoroughness. It doesn't hinge on the eagerness of management to learn about software architecture. The second reason is that you don't want management to think they've become IT experts and mess around with stuff that's over their head. Understand the asymmetry in your relationship with your management: your boss can stop you from acting like you're an expert in his job, but you can't.stop him from acting like he's an expert in your job.

I'm not saying to keep your management in the dark, or not to teach them what they need to know. But first *understand what they need to know*; they've got their own work to do. What they need to know is what they need from you (or your successor), how to get it, and what is reasonable to expect. If you've got the balls to do it, teach them how to hold you responsible -- that's the most important thing they need to know and it shows you're confident in your competence.

The fact that you're contemplating this means your employer is not in some kind of IT field. That means you, as IT guy, are in a support position, not a "line" position. Your job is to take care of other people's needs, just like the janitor is, only you're much, much better paid and so a higher level of professionalism is expected. I know this, because I've been in that position. Take it from me, if you want to be happy in that position, embrace your role as support for the main show. You wan't be happy otherwise. If you want to run your own business, then start an IT business, but if you're doing IT *in* a business, your job is to help the organization do its thing. Your job viz the management is to get them out of trouble, steer them away from trouble, and provide them with the tools they need to succeed.

If you're smart, one of the most things you'll teach them is how to recognize what an amazingly good job you're doing. But teaching them to do your job? It's a waste of their time and asking for trouble.

Actually I share your concern with Supermax prisons. I think for some prisoners they're necessary for the protection of the public and the people who guard them, but I get the nagging feeling that some places use detention in Supermax as a kind of unconstitutionally enhanced punishment.

If Tsarnaev's sent to the kind of facility you're talking about, it'll be the federal facility in Florence Colorado -- which is an antiseptic hell-hole.

I didn't think Massachusetts had its own facility that meets Supermax security standards, but it turns out I was wrong. There's Souza-Baranowski in Shirley Mass, which some have called the most technologically advanced prison in the world. I kid you not, it runs entirely on renewable energy sources. Go ahead and laugh at liberal Massachusetts, because it *is* funny that our version of Devil's Island is solar powered.

According to the Mass DOC, Souza-Baranowski "offers a full range of educational, vocational and substance abuse programming," which sets it apart from the kind of Supermax prisons you're talking about, where prisoners rot away in solitary confinement.

Well, I've been on two Massachusetts juries, one of which found "guilty" the other of which found "not guilty". The "not guilty" verdict was in a case that involved a fairly heinous crime. Given the seriousness of the crime it took us a long time to come to the "not guilty" conclusion -- I was the last juror to make up his mind in fact. While I believe all of us thought the preponderance of evidence was that the guy did it, we took the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard seriously. We worked, very, very hard to come up with the right verdict, especially because in this case it ran counter to our feelings about the man.

That doesn't mean it'll be easy to get a jury like that in this case. I have a niece who is on social media right now calling for this guy to be tortured and left to bleed to death. I don't think she'd get on the jury, and if she did, I'd speak up. I think *I* could give this guy a fair hearing, and I'm not really that unusual in understanding the importance of a juror's duty to be open-minded.

I happen think there's a very good chance, given the prominence of this case, that some big time lawyers and law professors will take up this guy's defense.

Nope. We have Romneycare, the model for Obamacare nationwide (although to give credit where credit is due it should probably be called BobDoleCare). Massachusetts hasthe lowest rate of uninsured in the country, so he's probably covered.

Not here in Massachusetts. He will be taken to a world-class hospital and his wounds treated. Once he is well, he will await trial in a comfortable jail, with access to his lawyer so he can prepare his defense. If he can't afford a lawyer we'll hire one for him. In such a high profile case, he may even get a top drawer lawyer working pro-bono to ensure his defense doesn't get steamrollered by public opinion. If he chooses to plead not guilty he will have the fairest trial we can possibly contrive, and the burden of proof will be on the prosecutor. If the prosecutor proves he is guilty, and he escapes the Federal death penalty (we don't have a state death penalty), he will be housed for the rest of his life in a correctional facility that is humanely operated to the maximum extent consistent with ensuring public safety.

And I'm proud that's we do things. It's civilized. Some people may kill, maim or hurt people because they're feeling angry, but we as a people don't do things like that. That's what makes us better than they are.

We got the job done, there's no reason to spike the ball. In fact there's plenty reason *not* to. We give the state power to kill people, to inflict pain, to deprive them of their freedom, but those powers ought to be limited to their proper application by strict rules. They should not be used at the whim of an individual government official or group of officials.

Had Tsarnaev continued resisting arrest and got himself shot, I'd shake the hand of the officer who shot him. But now that he's given up, I'd call for the prosecution of any official who uses excessive force on him.

Well ... I don't know if what's driving it is *usability*; I think it's more that they've decided that touch interfaces are the way things will go.

The whole dual interface thing in Windows 8 reminds me of Windows 3; you had a new interface (a GUI), with only a few apps written for it, and you had your DOS shell which could run your important apps Like Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect.

Well, maybe you're onto something. Gun legislation would force somebody to switch from using a powerful, highly lethal, high capacity firearm to some kind of hare-brained improved explosive -- as was used here.

The result is that only two people are killed and a couple of dozen injured, instead of the carnage that would have been inflicted if the persons responsible had pulled out an AR-15 with a couple of 30 round clips taped together "jungle style". If we're lucky, a lot of the people responsible for this sort of thing will save us the trouble of hunting them down by blowing themselves up.

Thanks for spoiling the story for me. Now I guess I'll have to read something else.

Not to mention pesticides people put down to control them. This is a problem with a lot of wild foods. A plant that is perfectly safe when harvested from a remote mountainside is something you'd want to give a pass if it came from the side of a highway.

Even where a pesticide is safe for use on human crops, if a specific product is not formulated for that use it may contain impurities (e.g. dioxins) that make *that formulation* unsafe for use on anything a human would eat.

According to Wikipedia *people* eat them:

However, this snail is an important source of animal protein for West African forest-dwelling ethnic groups, and commercial farming of these snails holds great promise.

I worked for many years in vector borne disease surveillance. Most of what you have said is wrong or misleading.

DDT based mosquito "eradication" programs never eradicated any mosquito populations, because a single surviving gravid Anopheles mosquito can lay over two hundred eggs at a time. But malaria has a weakness that mosquito borne encephalitis does not have: most strains of Plasmodium have no significant enzootic reservoirs -- that is to say most strains that infect humans, infect humans exclusively. This means if you can eradicate human-to-human transmission, you eradicate the underlying infectious agent.

In the late 40s DDT *was* instrumental in eradicating endemic malaria in the US, but that was through over four million "domestic" treatments -- applications. These are treatments of the *interiors* of homes. In domestic applications, the DDT does not enter the food chain and does not bio-accumulate.

DDT is not magic pixie dust. It's not the only pesticide that works, and it is neither necessary nor sufficient for malaria eradication. It is, however, valuable. It is cheap, effective, and relatively long-lasting, which is a huge boon in domestic applications because it reduces the number of re-treatments you have to do. That same property of longevity makes it a very poor choice for agricultural use.

I attended a number of meetings where the prospect of using DDT for malaria eradication in the third world was discussed. The key problem is that many places where it is needed are desperately poor, and theft is rife. I knew plenty of researchers who had their field equipment stolen; some of them took to putting their computers and backups in a backpack and slept with it to keep from losing their data. There is a high risk of DDT being stolen and diverted to agricultural use, where its drawbacks come into play: under certain conditions it can persist in the soil for years, and it has a high potential to bio-accumulate, so even small concentrations can have effects on predatory animals. Furthermore runoff into water sources in sub-lethal concentrations has a high potential to create DDT resistance in target species including Anopheles, the vector of malaria. That could undermine attempts to eradicate a number of mosquito borne diseases other than malaria. This could have significant effects on attempts to control many mosquito borne diseases, malaria included.

Chemists who create chemicals to save people's lives are not mad scientists and these anti-DDT activists are not all knowing supermen come to save the planet

Well, this is kind of a strawman argument. I've worked with people in the pesticide industry, in public health, and with environmental groups, and as far as I can see the images you mention here are entirely a figment of your own imagination. Everybody who studied this problem understand there are risks and benefits to using DDT, mainly they differ on how they weigh the risks.

In any case, if we knew that domestic DDT applications could eradicate malaria in an area back in 1950, why wasn't it eradicated worldwide? Because there's never been the political will to do that. There has never been a worldwide ban on DDT (which is why they're seeing way up in Tibet), so why hasn't it been eradicated in more places? Because there was never the political will to do it. If the will existed, we could do it, with or without DDT, just with somewhat less initial cash outlay for DDT.

Let me reiterate: DDT is not magic pixie dust. It *does* have potential to reduce the initial *cost* of eradicating malaria (except in SE Asia, where zoonotic forms of Plasmodium exist). But wherever malaria could be eradicated *with* DDT, it could also be eradicated with something else, say with synthetic pyrethrins. Pyrethrins have a very short half-life outdoors, reducing problems of pesticide resistance and bio-accumulation. The main drawback is that they also have a somewhat shorter half-life indoors, requiring more repeat treatments in the eradication phase. That'd still be a bargain in terms of human life.

That's an interesting take on this. So do you think the Navy might be thinking about something like an electrically powered battlecruiser?

When I was a kid in the 60s, the North End still had a kind of stale-candy smell on a hot summer day. I thought that was how all cities smelled in a heat wave, but later I learned it was from the Great Molasses Flood.

Well, I haven't tried cicada, but I *have* tried escargot (with champagne). To tell you the truth, broiled in garlic butter that way it *could* have been cicadas in that snail shell. If you broiled snot in that much garlic you wouldn't be able to tell what it was.