The researchers trying to identify what genes affect intelligence should first come up with an undeniable definition of the term. I personally know of someone who does not have a lot of "book learning" (and probably would not do well in school) but he had a lot of "common sense". At the same time, there are brilliant scientists out there that are clueless about social interactions. You can be brilliant in one area and a complete idiot in another area. Are these people geniuses or idiots (or both).

Adobe, your web programs (Flash and PDF Reader) have been a pox on computer users everywhere even if they are not aware of the risks. I hope you will entirely give up on the Internet and concentrate on software where they will do no harm. Better yet, just leave the business entirely.

Oh, I love that Nineteen Eighty-Four speak where "public safety'" actually means Internet spying and censorship! What is even more galling is that this comes not from a country like China or Burma but from a country like Canada!.

If security is really what the government wants to promote, it would go the other way. No more evading the security check lanes by anyone. If you are rich enough to own a private jet, you still should have to pass through the security check lanes before you are allowed to get on your private jet. Some private jets are really big! A private jet can be just as dangerous when crashed into a building as a commercial jet. Also, a private jet might be easier to hijack than regular commercial jets because there are usually a lot less people aboard that might foil your hijack plans.

The real point is this. There should be no distinction between the elites (rich) and the common man when dealing with the government.

Note: I said SHOULD.

Not only were the flood walls not high enough but they failed to account for the ground settling because of subsidence. As a result of the earthquake, the actual ground d5opped by as much as five feet in areas. Lets assume that you barely made the flood wall high enough lets say 3 feet higher than the tsunami. Part of the problem was the base of the flood wall was now 5 feet lower than it was before the earthquake. The result would be that the top of the flood wall is now 2 feet lower than the tsunami.

"However, the civilisation system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. "

BINGO, we have a winner!

Take, for example the rules of capitalism. (I could cite other economic systems but this one is more relevant for the moment.) Capitalism seems to favour those who are more willing to cut corners, without crossing the line into illegal behaviour. I'll give a real life example from a company I worked for.

In the early 1980's the Clean Water Act was in the process of ramping up to full enforcement. Due to legal challenges, it took about 10 years for the EPA to come down hard on water pollution. I worked as a chemist for a plating company and knew that some VERY nasty stuff ( cyanide, hexavalent chrome, cadmium etc.) could be simply put down the drain. My company did something about the dumping even before there was a law banning it. As a result, we had a pretty sophisticated and costly waste treatment facility. Now comes the part where (unfair) competition comes to play. In the area, all but one plating company, when forced by law to do something about the water pollution. did something to come into compliance (some companies barely met the deadline). This one company refused to comply with the law. It used the competitive advantage of not having an expensive waste treatment system to put several conscientious plating companies out of business because of their low prices (they almost drove the company I worked for out of business). Finally, the EPA got a court order that this rogue company had to install pollution equipment of shut down. This company then had the gall to ask the local plating companies for technical help on how we solved the problem and were able to stay in business. Of course they got no cooperation because they were undercutting everyone with their low prices.

My point is this. Capitalism seems to reward the bad actors while driving the good companies out of business. Last week we discussed if rich people were moral or not. The rich become rich because capitalism favours their bad behaviour. They then lobby for (or against) laws that will give them even more clout so they can get away with even more bad behaviour without risking going to jail. Good as in moral and good as capitalism looks at it are two different things. In recent times, MBAs are taught that the only responsibility of a business is to make a profit. That was corrupted into meaning that morality (ethics), that got in the way of earning profits, was bad. Eventually it became "Greed is good!".

Or they might have recognised the danger of allowing them to leave and exterminated them instead!

Actually, a large part of the radioactive fallout does not come from the bomb itself. The bomb makes a huge excess of neutrons and these neutrons irradiate the debris from the bomb and create isotopes which are radioactive.

We are still using 24 bits / 32 bits because more would be simply overkill. You see, there is still an old element in the equation, it is the eye! Even an accomplished artist cant see more than 2^24 ( 16,777,216 )colors. The 2^32 ( 4,294,967,296 ) are there simply for the convenience of the graphics card designers. Actually, we probably could get decent graphics using only 2^16 ( 65536 colors )! Until someone updates the our eyes to version 2.0, it simply is not necessary to go over 2^24 colors.

"'Memory (RAM): We seem to have convinced most manufacturers to adopt eight megabytes as standard, compared with four megabytes in 1994. "

Did I read the summary correctly? It clearly says the new standard is 8 megabytes! Hell, no modern operating will even load with only 8 megabytes of RAM! Right now I am writing this reply on a computer that has 8 Gigabytes of RAM. Surely they meant 8 gigabytes and not 8 megabytes.

I read about it in a BBC article. They said that they caught one person who was a trucker. Probably the trucker was not just a curious kid. It still begs the question... Why? What purpose does it serve?

"Should billionaires rule our schools?"

To that question, I answer NO! At least to schools that receive ANY public money. If it is an ENTIRELY private schools, OK. Most charter schools (at least in my state) receive a voucher from the parents which, in my opinion, is the same as getting state money.

On another front, which I find extremely troubling, is universities accepting Koch Foundation funds. The money coming from this foundation comes with BIG strings attached. The university has to agree to allow the Koch Foundation to veto any professor tenure for any reason. There goes your academic independence. If the foundation wants to entirely fund and buy that university, I find that to be acceptable. Right now, public funding of universities is declining so more and more universities are tempted to accept that money and the strings that come with it.

"it's that there are frequently no words"

Are you crazy or did you only listen to a superficial sampling of classical music. Granted, a lot of classical music is only instrumental but there are a lot a vocal pieces as well. There is all the operas, the 9'th symphony by Beethoven, Handles Messiah and these examples are just for starters. To say classical music is mostly instrumental is ludicrous.

The German air raid that almost destroyed Coventry was an example of this, The Brits knew it was coming but they also knew that the Germans were beginning to get suspicious. As a result, the British government felt that they had to let this air raid occur even though they knew many people would be killed.

Doesn't Ron Paul represent parts of East Texas? If not, he's not too far away from there. They have some strange ideas in those parts of Texas.