I'm a little surprised that no political candidate has openly addressed the fact that the TSA represents what both parties hate the most; invasive governement bureaucracy run by detached idiots who've employed poor hapless nitwits that now have power to mess with people. I mean, really, Pol Pot could get elected in this country if they only promised promised to shut that monster down AND that everyone who wanted to, could kick a TSA agent in the nuts as payback.

Not as good as "Mr Machine".

The article states that trepanation was done while the subject was awake and without anaesthetic. I wonder how that is known. I can believe there's no evidence to the contrary, but then what would one expect to find, a video of the procedure from the dark ages?
It's widely suspected that while we may not know what exotic combinations of chemicals and other manipulative techniquest being used back then to make the subject tractible during the operation, I'd be surprised if, at the very least, the local harvest of mushrooms or other natural intoxicants weren't somehow involved.
And for those of you who've never had a really really ...I mean REALLY bad headache, you might not understand that the idea of somehow carving into one's own skull can sound like a good idea.
Also..the entire nature of pain and its connection to our perception of it is so poorly understood that when it comes to body manipulations, injuries and practices that seem painful, I have to believe the greatest pain is the result of the empathy in the observer.
I would suppose once the trepination wound is healed there could be some interesting effects achievable by placing ones finger on the spot...in a "knowing" way.

Interesting to see that the gorillas (as in planet of the apes) who are incharge of the security apparatus are as ingorant of the reality of science now as they were then. For more of this kind of evidence one should read Richard Feynmans autobiographical story of his working on the Manhattan project.
And don't forget to put your fluids in little bottle smaller than 3 ounces so there is no way it could be harmfull. Y'see...the bullying rather than reasoning...it never ends.

Fumes? What about global warming?

Fantastic...I would love to see more of this. When our buildings begin to incorportate natural water features, it will suggest to architects that large buildings are interesting when they do what small buildings cant; simulate a natural landscape.
A building a mere 500 feet tall looks better as a mountain than it does as a boring slab o grids and glass, and a landscape adds to the health of the city, both in an environmental sense and a psychological one. Our inability to express our species biophilia is a prime contributor to the mental illness that living in an urban environment provokes.
Imagine leaving one's flat or office and walking into a vertical garden...nice exercise and great views.

Small technical detail. The heating at re-entry is due to compression, not friction. It's one of those erroneous scientific thingees that's been repeated since Jules Bergman was in diapers.

I love what NASA was supposed to be, but not what it has become.

I'd like to have the entire constitution diagramed like this on a handkerchief so I could rub peoples' noses in it.

Welcome oh octopodeous overlords, welcome!

I would ask that anyone planning on voting in the upcoming elections here in the US, ask yourself what your favorite candidates position is on stuff like this? Being "against terrorism" isn't an answer.
I do know that I am very weary of the smoke and mirror game that TSA has created ostensibly to foil terrorist plots but most likely to cover its own ass and its massive stupidity. I guess there could be some internal logic in that nothing frightens a potential opponent more than knowing your enemy is soo freaking crazy it could literally screw the pooch, but we need something more in line with Israel's intelligent and doubtlessly effective system of interrogation and intelligence instead of an army of earnest but ill-managed would-be burger flippers.
FYI Ron Paul has said that he'd shut the thing down...Oh, and San Francisco's airport which uses private security instead of TSA has a better than 90% success rate at finding test simulation attempts to introduce explosive, while TSA's own get about 10%...Feel any safer now that the feds are "on the job" (which translates as "getting full benefits and impossible to fire")?
Me neither.

Have any of the candidates in the US said so much as a word about when elected that they'd kick the TSA out the door and replace it with something that has a collective average IQ higher than say 85? Of course not because these elite candidates don't actually travel with the rest of us. The constant insult of presuming that a name on a list takes precendence over an intelligent being's right to explain himself and have it carry some weight is going to be the end of us. When will some candidate say " if you show up at an airport and the only ID you have on you is an expired drivers license, but it still looks like you and is obviously you, it will be accepted." Anyone? Of course not and until one of 'em does begin to make simple and intelligent statements like that it's all a sham and ultimately it will cause the only security that will help our nation, the incentive for ordinary people to take part in the process, to withdraw and focus instead on their own solutions. Sadly.

No surprise. Whenever the monkeys get together with a new set of sweeping reforming laws designed to address some of the monkeys obsessive concerns over whatever it is that concerns 'em...usually having to do with their sense (sense in contrast to "actual") of security, material comfort and presitge, it invariably is used to knock us over the head and tie our shoelaces together. I for one think the rule of the jungle should be left alone as it's done wonderful things so far. Where it lacks the ability to address some problems should be addressed locally.

Poor service and grouchy staff is one thing, but when their groucheyness ends up with a citizen being harassed by semi-sanctioned security guys who are essentially immune to your protests and repurcussions, that is when it goes over the edge, as it seems in this case.
In part it's our own fault for expecting security to flow out of increased military/police presence instead of through the agency of intelligence which seems to be focused more on pot growers and peaceniks than curbing the legitimate security gaps that a five year old could probably describe.
As much as I consider myself a civic minded stand-up kinda person, when my neighbor has a mean dog and claims it will keep the entire neighborhood crime free, I still don't like it when it looks like that at me and my children. That's not the kind of security that will keep us safe. Motivate and involved neighbors who look out for each other will, but who will do that with the possibility that your help will be held accountable when anything goes wrong the security apparatchic are looking for someone to blame?
Consider Ron Paul as a step towards self reliance and responsible behavior.

Y'know, it's not nice to make fun of the retarded, even when the retardation is self-impossed as in the case of huckabee. But I have to admit, it is funny, and will remain so until we see bus-loads of bible brained evangelicals being taken to the polls, in which case the fact that the majority of citizens don't vote, it will stop being all that funny, except in the pathetic sense of the word.

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than that which reveals our stupidity...and nothing says stupidity more than having the idiots be the deciders.

High heels look best on a woman when she is having sex...and just before. But please, don't wear 'em for running a marathon. Also, don't use an anvil as a life preserver unless you've somehow found yourself sinking in liquid mercury. I guess you have to spell some things out for folks.

I'm hoping Sir Norman Foster reads this and takes it to heart...actually, he might have read it as a child and concepts like this are currently fuelling his mind for his next step in creating envrironment and not just architecture.
My only problem with the design is that they've attempted to make it look like some sleek skyscraper from the age of the chrysler building...but immagine if the entire exterior were designed to replicate a mountain in a forest with water features and walking trails offering great views...peregrins and pigeons in balance...marmots instead of norweigan brown rats...and terraces for cafes and galleries. It would pay for itself in increased efficiency and decreased health problems.
What this image fails to show, however is that the interior of the sturcture is largely hollow,creating a wonderfull lightfilled envrironment similar to the ancestral home of monkeys...warm air, gentle rain and the calls of our fellow monkeys happily conversing with tropical birds. uh oh...here comes the harpies!

How is it that mold,and a lot of other things with which humans have been living so long and had up until now seemingly developed immunity, is now causing such terrible effects. Are they real? Are they just immagined? I know that when I put an xmas tree in a room people like the smell, but open a can of turpentine and they all complain that they can't breath...same with latex paint..is it something they imagine? I mean, some of that mold might be edible and based on cheese based on the nomenclature used in the article. The fact that a company that makes its money convincing you to have them remove the difficult problem on mold...even the slightest trace of it...well, leaves me sceptical of the entire story.
Recently read an article that blamed a lot of our problems with the recent rise in auto-immune diseases on the fact that we in developed countries have eliminated blood worm parasites from our system and that they might have been instrumental in our body's setting-up its immune system properly and effectively. So, our passion for cleanliness is undermining our health...and the passion is based on smart people presuming that their intelligence is valid outside of their fields...an age old tale. By the way Xeni...loved your essay over at the Edge on "changing ones mind". I think we all need to "change one's mind" about how we interpret the environment we live in and how fear drives us to even worse conditions...the panic over global warming comes to mind...not the genuine concern, but the media fuelled anxiety is leading to some very stupid decisions being made by people who are smart enough to convince us they know what they're talking about but in reality even the experts are somewhat perplexed by the complexity they see, even if some prime minister isn't.

Fantastic. I've been a devoted fan of anything relating to R. Buckminster Fuller for many years and of course the design emulates Fuller's dymaxion car, which is well worth researching even today to understand how important decisions are made regarding our oh-so engineered infrastructure. I too am curious about the inhertntly unstable position of the front wheel...something the dymaxion car didn't have to worry about with it's tiller wheel in the back.
Next time Detroit's designers are pretending to scratch their heads, shrugging their shoulders as an indication of how there's nothing they can do...someone please suggest the gesture will be a lot more meaningful and contributory if they'd simply put their heads back into their nether regions while other countries do the heavy lifting in innovative designs for a while.

Allow someone, who has lived in close proximity to moose and who has had a number of encounters, tell you that the boy is lucky to escape and the game designers should upgrade their understanding if they wish it to reflect real life. A moose lashes out at what it sees as threats, such as wolves or bears. It doesn't have an instinct for a prey/pursuit, as do carnivores like cats(lions), dogs(wolves) or bears...uh, some bears, anyway. Ask anyone who lives in Anchorage AK and they'll tell you that crouching is likely to be interpreted by the moose not so much that you're not a threat but that you're NOT leaving the scene. So why the moose didn't at least stomp on this kid has nothing to do with lying down. And if it happens again, he or anyone would be wise to get away and zig zag between trees and other obstacles because 1200 lb moose is lethal when it starts to lash with its powerfull legs. It will only chase you for a short while and only until you are gone from its sense of the immediate surroundings. That's no joke.

I think the car buying public IS ready to accept a car that is 10 feet long and only 500 lbs...even with the gigantic SUV looming along side it...after all, we do ride motorcycles and they're a lot less protective. Of course, these days, the little bubble cars would have air bags and gps systems and at 87 mpg who need the news hybrids? My #1 choice would be the littel Italian topolino...sweet.

I think the radiation sign is the right way and that you're standing on your head or reading this in NZ...
I remember way back when, among ceramicists and glass-blowers, uranium ore was practically the holy grail needed in order to achieve a distinctive and particular kind of transluscent/transmitting color to glazes and glasses. The feds had listed all uranium ore as a strategic material and forbid the possession of it by those who had no legitimate defense related need. Now let's get back to making glass that glowed with the wonder of a time before the a-bomb.

Mujadaddy mentions the Owls of Bohemia...which leads me to suggest that an owl mysteriously oversees the activity of the super-elite and super-secret club, the Bohemian Club in SF which annually puts on the be-all and end-all super secret wheeler-dealer secret red-wood grove symbolic sacrifice.
The owl at the entrance to the club's San Francisco residence is quite the piece...worth checkin' out at the corner of Taylor and Post. There's a cool little poem inscribed on a plaque near the corner...

The human mind is largely uncharted, (though modern neurology is makinig inroads and progress in charting its more salient territories) and that part of our brains which deal with sex in particular is in especially murky and complex region.
Whether there is some kind of cross wiring, harmonic resonance, capacitance leakage across gray matter membranes, who can tell, but sometime in the future I'm sure we'll be discovering that stuff like this, just like voices from the divine are largely an expression of either some organic disease, genetic behavioral diversity or a combination of the two...and not a result of sin,immorality, not deviant educational practices nor being rejected by their parents while in infancy.
Another question to ask is "what part of our brains is it that generates such a strong emotional reaction to freakishness?"

Stupid and dangerous? When does he get the Medal of Freedom?

OM..what? Someone older AND uglier than Barbara Bush? Poppy's got a serious fetish for feckless...Aliester Crowley must be chucklin' in his fiery grave.

Much preferrable to what whe have here in the US where mysticism in the form of un-reasoning adherence to some crazy made-up quasi-religous cult (fundametalist xians)is left disguised as the inheritor of western culture's cumulative culture of reason, which it plainly is not.

The late iconoclastic polymath, Thomas Gold of Cornell, suggested that methane hydrate deposits of the floor of the atlantic periodically become unstable. When triggered they erupt(evidence for this happening, circular depressions, are abundant) on the floor of the North Atlantic as a expanding mass of gassy bubbles from below which, for an unlucky ship, would mean that the inherent bouyancy of the water would be less (foamy water has little lift and little density to support a craft). The foundering vessel would find itself in utter confusion with no experience on how to manage what was happening to them. Taking to the lifeboat would be perfectly sensible and in the slowly foundering situation one would be reluctant to be attached to a vessel going down...the barrels of alcohol may have been knocked open in the chaos, the contents evaporating over the interval when the ship was foating free.
These methane eruptions are relatively brief in duration and leave no sign of their existence. They have been implicated in certain classes of disappearances for both ships and planes.

The artist deserves a Hugo Award for making a lamp out of a Hugo Award.

Toad lickin' is my kinda religion.

As a caregiver for an elderly family member who has the classic metabolic suite of disability: diabetes type 2, mild dementia, heart disease and low funcioning kindeys (approx 25%), finding food he will eat while travelling is difficult at best so I take carefull note of the nutritional charts. Notice the good old MacDonalds burger is relatively low in sodium...lower than a typical bran muffin for that matter...a lot lower in many cases. And the bun is the biggest source of sodium for that burger. Even a regular sized bag of french fries has less sodium than the burger's bun.
Nowadays everyone is checked for high blood pressure, even a commercial drivers license will require the driver's BP to be normal...so lots of BP medicine is being dispensed even though our intake of salt is probably the biggest factor.

Q&Q is one of the best science programs available. When I compare it to NPR's pathetic "lowest possible denominator" attempt at bringing science to the public as exemplified by Ira Flatow's "Science Friday" it explains a lot of our lame public policy debates regarding our technological culture-scape.

Keeping it illegal keeps it expensive and I mean expensive in direct proportion to the amount of tax dollars being wasted in enforcing what amounts to yet another incarnation of the utterly counter-productive prohibition-style enforcement. Keeping it expensive, of course, means lots of extra profits with which to rig the game of politics, speaking of which, what other protected american industry has seen its profits and its power with the overlords of the country's governing process soar over the last few years? Religion. Yeah...not ususally thought of as an industry, but we all know it is and like any entity it strives to be..uh, relevant..and powerful. Be very carefull anytime both religion and big time crime are sharing the reins of power in the horse cart that's carrying you and your most cherished posssessions.

Maybe they could use robots to re-build Noah's ark and the garden of eden too. I have to admit I do like watching robots doing stupid stuff and this would rate way at the top of my list.

Not only does the current system NOT inspire confidence, it provokes and nurtures a feeling of antipathy towards our government that makes our generally recognized hatred for the IRS pale in comparison. I really wonder if I ever will lift another finger to help anyone if it means encountering any kind of government program and its administration. I probably will, but I fully expect to regret it.

How quickly can i have a million halloween masks made in China for delivery on Oct 30th?

Yet another prime example of what was originally captured so beautifully by the cartoonist Walt Kelly in his strip "Pogo" in which was coined the memorable (not to mention accurate in regards to this example) line "we have met the enemy and he is us."
I think Ron Paul might be the only candidate who's identified this particular example of beaurocratic magical thinking as being a complete waste of effort and emblematic of everything large governement beaurocracies function. I sure hope he runs as an independent, cuz I'd reluctant to vote for the GOP after they've ejected the bulk of the true conservatives.

Yet another excellent example of how the "war on Drugs" has permutated into the very thing that one would think should cause our leadership the greatest concern; loss of credibility. Fortunately, it doesn't cause 'em a lick of concern that smart people have come to see their elected leaders as dummies...they don't have a very high opinion of the people that elected 'em either.

Another example of imprisonment being used against the presumed innocent. I hope she can sue the pants off of the authorities who did this and that they are held personally and publicly responsible.

So if she'd read the bible just before jumping I suppose they would have made that illegal too. No?
Well, let's just hope that if they're going to make it illegal that they do so much the same way that they've made marijuanna illegal to sell in quantity even though it obviously is being sold commercially to supply the cafes. See, laws are fine if we simply reserve them for times we need them instead of using them as some sorta ugly stick to beat the populace into submission. As for the suicidal girl...I think it's against the law to jump off of bridges with the purpose of killing oneself, yes?

I think I'll just wait for the movie to come out.
Let's hope Kevin Smith directs.

I like the idea of using shipping containers for housing but couldn't some kind of natural setting be part of the plan if for no other reason than to break the monotony and dreariness of these residential area. It looks positively soviet, but if architects and planners would get out into the woods and fields, the mountains and rivers, maybe they'd nurture theirown biophilia and instead of a concret cobblestone streeet lined with nearly identical boxes (this as a result of someone with a degree in planning), why not a mountain of them, stacked and jumbled a bit, including trees and waterfalls and natural features of plants and ponds...The occasional rooftop garden is the weakest kind of acknowledgement of our human craving for proximity to nature..and yet architects design as if it's something to merely tolerate until the feeling goes away, and then they go on designing yet another expensive denial of our instinctual desire for a window with a view of something natural.

Re: decapitation...I was lead to believe that it wasn't the lack of oxygen per se that caused unconsciousness, but rather the massive and instantaneous drop in blood pressure.
My preferred method for humane execution would be a slight variation on the method employed by the state during the Soviet Era. The condemned would be alone in a room where they could contemplate their condition in silence not knowing if or when they would be dispatched. A marksman using a hidden opening would fire a shot to the head at close range. The speed of the bullet, which is faster than the speed at which sensation can travel from one neuron to another, insures a painless death free of the anxiety from seeing the path one is condemned to take. Ironic, isn't it, that ourown system, obsessed with the idea of not being cruel has devised what to my mind is the ultimate horror device in which the human mind can agonize as it has a lot of time in which to think and project itself into the most horrible sense of loss and pain.

The introduction into our diet back in the early part of the last century of hydrogenated oils to solidify them and prolong their shelf-lives (and in the case of crisco; to look and behave like the product it hoped to replace, lard) coincides very nicely with the rise in arterial circulatory system disease (arterial sclerosis) particularly if one allows for the delay that naturally is part of the process (you don't get hardening of the arteries over-night). Of course it's part of a larger picture including sedentary life-styles, smoking, and a wide array of other potentially and poorly understood problematic new products.
It should be noted that even lard these days is hydrogenated and stands in contrast to the kinds of healthy contribution that un-modified animal fats have for us. Our public health sense has been so badly distorted by a public health sector that is so dominated by the agri-business concerns that a clear picture of our relationship with diet has never really emerged, but the actuary tables reveal the unseen and newer emerging understanding on how the body metabolizes is shedding some light on the subject and dispelling a lot of myths on nutrition. The sooner the better.

I am an ivory carver and thank you for sharing those beautiful finds.
I carve in fossil ivory and strongly believe that the killing of ivory producing animals for the commercial use of ivory is a bad idea, but I wish there were a way to work with fresh material in large scale...it really is like no other material on earth and it is a loss that our appreciation for it has cost the natural world so much, though in fact, the commercial use of ivory had more to do with such mundane articles like billiard balls, hair brushes, gun handles and foundation stays than with the carvers of netsukes and other art/craft items and and their ilk.

Will we feel equally besieged when we start hearing reports of climate change that have a positive impact on human habitability? For instance, are we seeing increased rainfall in arid regions?