And thank you -- tools for language study is an angle i haven't explored yet.

Thank you -- you've provided a whole new avenue I can craft Google searches around, and the linked software is very interesting, too.

I'm almost ready to teach myself multimedia programming -- i'd love to have a simple program that would show a picture of an object, say the name of the object ("Say 'snake'") and then record the child saying the word, then play it back for them to hear themselves saying it through headphones. Icing would be if it could somehow evaluate the word and maybe have them try a 2nd or third time if they didn't get it right.

Even more icing would be to make it fun on some level.

There's lots of stuff out there but it's way more expensive and/or complex then just the simple computer program described used to augment traditional speech therapy.

I believe the blades have a variable pitch, so you set the pitch to "zero" so the air moving past them does not make them rotate.

I am not a meteorologist, but don't tornadoes occur because there is a horizontal boundary between two different types of air masses, and the tornado acts as a funnel to equalize the pressure between the two or something? Maybe wind turbines, and the mixed and turbulence they cause actually prevent tornadoes. Who knows? And, don't many tornadoes occur over particularly flat land? The turbines might reshape the landscape enough to disturb the atmosphere enough to prevent them. Turbines looking like tornadoes on radar make me think i'm not totally crazy.

Are you saying you like Jar Jar or that movies should never fool with physics? Or that you just don't like Star Wars in total? I'm confused.

It seems they "fixed" it for the second one; at least now they have a bunch of transforming transformers. But for the first movie, it seemed the majority of the toys did not transform. My son has a rather neat looking Optimus robot, about a foot tall, that has wheels and doors, looks like the movie character, but does not transform.

I suppose I can agree with the summary if we are talking about the George Lucas that made "Jar Jar" -- but not the George Lucas I imagine existed before that. The movie has a strange mix of incredibly awesome and stunningly amateurish or "dumbed down by committee" pieces that kind of made me angry that it fell short of its total awesomeness potential. Kind of like making a Transformer movie and then produce toys that don't transform. Who would think that's a good idea? Thank god Hollywood would never do something like that, so I wouldn't ever have to explain to a three year old on Christmas, "No, honey, it doesn't transform into a semi truck; it's just a robot" ANYWAY you should see District 9 if you haven't but don't expect it to be soo awesome in total, it's pretty good, though. My wife is the true sci-fi fan so I'll wait for her report back tomorrow.

...at least we can be assured whatever disaster happens, it will happen slowly. Just kidding!