PRODUCERS DON'T BOTHER TO RUIN POP TRACKS SCHEDULED FOR VINYL RELEASE . On the late, great lamented what.cd pirate site (1,780,000 torrents representing over744,000 releases by over 629,000 artists. 506,348 perfect flacs, 10/2016) it was possible to compare vinyl and CD releases of the same master tape (mix-down), and sometimes even look at spectrographs, phase content (L-R stereo signal) and, of course, level. CDs of rock albums were typically maxed out -- producers can dynamically drive equalization, phase modulation and, of course, level. Apparently many believe that "maxed out everything" attracts attention and sales. . If you take a great artist like Lady Gaga, the drama and impact of a track like "Bad Romance" falls flat with every psychoacoustic needle pinned at 0 VU. Where's the surprise if the volume never dropped for contrast? . Super-maxed everything all the time is impossible for vinyl, because the needle can't track it. I took vinyl tracks, but the difference isn't that vinyl per se is better. The difference is that producers can abuse the hell out of digital, but not vinyl. .

This is Rev 1 of intelligent life on this planet. You don't want to know what the software revision will be like.

They turned off our online banking access "because someone in Greensboro VA is trying to guess your password". Can't be too careful.
We go to the bank, they reestablish access , we change password, go home.
Can't log on, the SSL certificate for log-on page is invalid. Try two browsers on three operating systems, send browser "bad-certificate" messages to bank, please fix, can't log on.
BANK: 1. We fixed it in my office, you can log on at home. 2. If not, it's your problem, go to our help page. 3. That error text you sent "is martian to me."
No training in security, and this is the VP Branch Mgr.
Sent the letter to corporate headquarters, please fix your security certificates. Meanwhile,
bought $200 in stamps (extras for the pretty ones), have lots of envelopes, to hell with relying on an institution of this caliber for online bill-paying.

Temple,

The original article http://http//www.dw.de/eu-plastic-bag-debate-highlights-a-wider-global-problem/a-17241561 doesn't pass the back-of-the-envelope test. "The German environmental organization, Deutsche Umwelthilfe, estimates that more than a billion bags are used every year globally. Only about 10 percent of those are recycled." (World pop 7B. Sounds plausible.) "Europe is a major offender, producing nearly a million tons of plastic bags each year. " Problem. So, if Europe produces plastic bags for the entire planet, each bag weighs one kilogram. 1 million tons = 1 billion kg. 1 billion bags /1 billion kg = 1 kg per bag. --jerry

This is haughty and harsh. A lot of us are going to learn a lot from this. Yes, people with special expertise have to protect themselves, but we also have to raise the next generation -- a job that is failing us, as our chances for survival as a technically advanced civilization fade into the west.

My high school friend Ricky Ames never thought much of polygraph tests. In 1986 and '91, he passed two of them while spying for the Russians.

I once learned to self-regulate my brain waves (EEG), or at least to produce alpha waves at will. The autonomic nervous system responses measured in polygraph tests (chiefly GSR, pulse rate and breathing rhythm) would be easier to self-regulate than brainwaves. Try it at home.

Instead of 10 years of yoga (see, for example, Delmonte, M. M. (1984). Electrocortical activity and related phenomena associated with meditation practice: A literature review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 24, pp. 217-231), instead search on "GSR biofeedback and relaxation" and check out the GSR2 Biofeedback Relaxation System for $70 on Amazon.

Think of something you forgot to do, get a genuine pang of guilt, and watch the response. Now you know where you don't want your mind to go. If you can't convince yourself in your heart that you are a good little girl/boy (good that you forgot), and you can't zen out on pleasant scenes, then do mental arithmetic.

A lot of people in physiology have measured all these responses. I have no experience with polygraph testing per se. As the CIA found out with Ricky Ames, the tests are hard to do well. Still, I bet that if I had all the time in the world -- and some experience as an actor and toastmaster -- I could surprise and trick out most test evaders. But, in routine use with routine false positives, where's any justice for the victims of fallible technology and foolish policy?

Agree. When Obama claimed the right to assassinate U.S. citizens, he violated his oath of office. And when he did so, he became impeachable.

This kid went to Stockholm, Sweden, to remember playing with rockets:

By the time Watson and Crick were being honored here in Stockholm in 1962, I had been designing rockets with my adolescent companions for three years. For fuel, we discovered that a mixture of potassium nitrate and sugar could be very carefully melted over a charcoal stove and poured into a metal tube in a particular way with remarkable results. The tube grew larger with our successive experiments until it was about four feet long. My mother grew more cautious and often her head would appear out of an upstairs window and she would say things that were not encouraging. The sugar was reluctantly furnished from her own kitchen, and the potassium nitrate we purchased from the local druggist.
Back then in South Carolina young boys seeking chemicals were not immediately suspect. We could even buy dynamite fuse from the hardware with no questions asked. This was good, because we were spared from early extinction on one occasion when our rocket exploded on the launch pad, by the very reliable, slowly burning dynamite fuses we could employ, coupled with our ability to run like the wind once the fuse had been lit. Our fuses were in fact much improved over those which Alfred Nobel must have used when he was frightening his own mother. In one of our last experiments before we became so interested in the maturing young women around us that we would not think deeply about rocket fuels for another ten years, we blasted a frog a mile into the air and got him back alive. In another, we inadvertently frightened an airline pilot, who was preparing to land a DC-3 at Columbia airport. Our mistake. --Kary B. Mullis, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 1993
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1993/mullis-lecture.html

Yeah, a supervised childhood of structured "play" seems stultifying. Take a different path. Accumulate a carton of neat junk as you go through life. What seems to matter with kids is seeing what you enjoy doing, and hearing you question and laugh at authority figures, so your own kids will be OK. But your kids will be busy, so, when they bring the grandchildren over, tell them everything will be OK and get out the "Science Fun" carton. Pushing 70 now, plan seems 2B working so far.

A mother has been charged with a felony because her child was making dry ice bombs in soda pop bottles.

I applaud and support mother and child against somebody's attempt to jump-start a law enforcement career in anti-terrorism..

After I learned about getting water to conduct electricity by adding salt, and that with the conduction of electricity you could get electrolysis, and electrolysis turns H20 water molecules back into the original H2 hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, I got the gases. First I got them separately and verified there was always about twice as much hydrogen at the negative electrode as oxygen at the positive, so the formula for water, H2O, checked out. I couldn't get enough hydrogen to make a Hindenberg-type balloon (much lighter than helium, too bad). Now I know how to build the power supplies so I wouldn't use up batteries. Bring on the grandchildren! Failing a balloon, I next released both the H2 and the O2 into a single Coke bottle (I used upside-down Coke bottles filled with water to collect the bubbles). Of course, the proportions were perfect to make water, because they came from water -- the perfect mixture for an explosion. I lit the gas and got a neat, almost musical "Pop!!" from the Coke bottle. I was about 12. My childhood had its happy times, and somehow I survived it..

The ensuing research career was not successful, in that I never got academic tenure, but it brought me to great people at wonderful institutions around the world, and I enjoyed it with all the same enthusiasm and hunger to see for myself how things really worked, something now stifled by criminalization in the reported family. --jerry-VA

I could keep going, but I think I've made my point that you know nothing about what you're talking about.

Yes, lithium-system cathodes use manganese, cobalt and phosphate. Thank you for the information. Doubtless maturity will follow in time.