The whole issue is that there IS no controversy, except between closed-minded pinheads and ignoramuses and educated people. Teaching creationism is just teaching religion; there is no scientific basis no matter what the ID people say. And as for UFOs, the only people who believe in them are conspirasy nuts and people who thrive on rumor rather than objective observations. It continues to be a travesty that impressionistic students are fed this kind of crap.

It appears that slashdot readers also don't know how to stop a car suffering from "unintended acceleration". Modern cars - the ones most likely to have this happen - have throttle controls that prevent the engine from over-revving. If one turns off the key, the power steering and power brakes no longer are effective (or as effective) and the car can be hard or impossible to control. Just pushing hard on the brake pedal can be futile because the transmission downshifts, thinking the car is going uphill. So --- the solution is to shift the transmission into neutral. The engine will speed up to near maximum rpm but will not be destroyed. Then push hard on the brake pedal to bring the car to a stop. Only then turn the key off. It is also important not to pump the brake pedal because that uses up the vacuum storage, and with the engine near full throttle there is little ability to recover the vacuum. Several European manufacturers have so-called "smart throttles" which are disabled when the brake is pushed, a simple thing which prevents this from being a crisis happening.

Of course it is not possible to modify any code without the possibility of introducing bugs, but they are probably putting in a relatively small amount of code which sets a flag when the brake is pushed, read by the throttle code to disable the throttle. If you don't take it, then at least follow the advice of the current pundits on this subject, and DON'T cut the engine in the case of a stuck throttle; rather shift into neutral. The engine software has speed limiting, so it won't self-destruct, and the running engine permits the power assist stuff to continue to work so you can brake and steer the car.

Such meters (horodateurs in french) are widely used here in Europe and are accepted as an alternative to individual meters. Really, to a person here the original complaints are ludicrous: a) "..walk half a block" - wow, not only an inconvenience but may cause the need for new clothes due to fat shrinkage! b)"wait in line ..." - how many cars turn over per minute in that 1/2 a block? Usually there is nobody in line, of course. c) "pay .. $84 ..." - the complaint is about the machine or the price of parking? d)"wait for " - if this guy is average the Chicago resident must be pretty busy; printing takes under five seconds. e)"place on dashboard, etc., probably passing the Paybox a second time" - whew! More exercise. Really, fella, get a life. You probably spent more time typing the posting than you spent in the past month walking to and waiting at a meter. As for better ways, I always liked the approach of a sticker one pays for by the year, together with a clockface card put on the dash to indicate the time parked (with large fines for finding a clock set ahead). For those casual parkers who use the system more rarely (and tourists), the current approach is not very burdensome, the poster's arguments notwithstanding. So long as the credit card reader works, the Chicago meter seems to be a reasonable approach.

"Protect kids from EMF ..." - this is more unscientific panic - a load of crap, in other words. There are only three mechanisms for damage to cells: induced electrical currents in the body, tissue heating and ionization. The first can occur only below about 3 kHz. Tissue heating happens when the tissue absorbs enough energy in the 30 MHz to 300 GHz range - to raise the cellular temperature enough to cause damage requires substantial power. Ionizing radiation is from wavelengths in the ultraviolet and below (X-rays and gamma rays). All this has been studied at length and tens of thousands of papers written over the past thirty years. The clear conclusion is that cell phones simply do not have the power to cause any kind of damage to cells in the vicinity of their antenna. See www.emfandhealth.com for complete coverage of the subject.

Spelling is a skill that comes from READING, not from writing. If one continues to read regularly, one finds that a word "looks" wrong if misspelled. In fact, there are words that I really don't know how to spell, in the sense that I couldn't get them right in a spelling bee, but when I write them (incorrectly) I find I can tell by sight that they are wrongly spelled and correct them. Once is a while this takes two tries, but when it's right, I can tell.

You guys obviously either don't have astigmatism or prism error, or read only very large print. The cheap reading glasses give me a grand headache after only a few minutes, and I'd need a different pair to get a headache with my computer monitor. My "$100" reading glasses are actually bifocal lenses in my distance glasses; they work perfectly, but require that I hold the book at about 12 inches. I need my computer lenses for reading at a more comfortable distance, but that doesn't work for very small print. Naturally I could continue what I do now, which is to keep the two kinds of glasses and constantly change between them, but clearly this Trufocal system would be much more comfortable and easy for me to use. For those who might respond that progressive lenses work well, I can only note that the "sweet spot" for focus at any distance is much narrower than either bifocals or reading glasses, and this requires that I turn my head to scan across the book or computer screen - again, tiring.