1066 apps in the official catalog as of today.
http://www.precentral.net/app-gallery/app-catalog/, http://projectappetite.com

393 apps in the homebrew section.
http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps

There's some overlap as things from homebrew eventually go into the official catalog.

The one thing that people forget though is Classic. The Classic app allows you to use the thousands of apps made for PalmOS or your WebOS device.
http://www.motionapps.com/classic/overview/

You mean like Google's Android Developer Challenge - http://code.google.com/android/adc/

Apple had a little bit of an advantage with the iPhone since it had been out for almost a year with the iPod, had tons of units already in circulation when they initiated their developer program and don't kid yourself into thinking that Apple doesn't offer it's own incentives with their "partnerships" and such.

Forgot to include that Palm WebOS will also be taking advantage of WebGL when it arrives.

You're making an assumption that the goal of every marathon is to win 1st place.

I'm not sure what you mean by letting go of a dieing technology. Linux? Web Standards (JavaScript, HTML, CSS)? C, C++? I haven't seen any signs that any of those are dying. In fact Gartner had a paper on how Web Apps are the next big economy. That would suggest that Palm has positioned itself very well, especially considering how HTML5 and Canvas are poised to change RIA development.

So they had a hot chicks room? Did they also have a bucket of truth in the back? That might be what was missing for them to be able to complete the game.

AIM seems to be pointed to in a quite a few of the reviews as a huge consumer of battery life. Better to go without it until the AIM developers optimize the code -- or carry some spare batteries with you.

Saying that police line-ups are objective or in anyway use the scientific method even in the best case is flawed thinking. Most famously, ask Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson about how accurate line-ups are, or the hundreds and thousands of other people falsely accused based solely on "eye-witness" testimony.

People's memories are faulty and malleable. Morals are similarly malleable. In order to establish a scientific method of identifying content you'd first have to get everyone to agree on the definition of lewd. The first judge or prosecutor that disagrees with that definition based on his local jurisdiction's interpretation or the church he goes, and the scientific method gets thrown out the window due to public outcry or political expediency.

Nice goal in theory and I'm sure people will keep trying but in reality we need to put more emphasis on education, outreach, and understanding than we do on creating a new set of complicated rules that people will eventually skirt anyway.

What does this have to do with the book, string theory, or anything else for that matter?

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes Nobel-winner Murray Gell-Mann as once saying, "Smolin? Is he that young guy with those crazy ideas? He may not be wrong."

Why is it that suddenly people are working out ways to mention Dawkins in as many articles as they can that have little if nothing to do with him? Are we playing a six-degrees-to-Richard-Dawkins game here?