I live here in what we euphemistically call the "People's REPUBLIC of Boulder". I would like to both help with the garden, as well as document(video audio) the efects of any court-mandated removal.

chris@CHRISMAYTAG.NET

I *love* gummi anything...

..and deeply regret that it's hs ard to find VEGETARIAN gumminesss.

> Once a light bulb burned out in a nearby
> section (not the one I was in, a few rows down)
> and they asked me to leave the store because it
> was dark over there.
>
> I assumed that they did it to stop people from
> stealing anything until the light was fixed,
> but once I was outside I noticed that no one
> else was being asked to leave.

Who staffs college area bookstores?

COLLEGE KIDS. Don't blamee the store. Blame the idiot and his floor manager.

I was the person who submitted this story, and I have a close family member who was/is one of the people who had to make this awful, difficult decision.

These wonderful poeple - the employees, the sales staff, the buyers, the managers - BELIEVE IN BOOKS. That's why they're there. Trust me, it's not because they were making big bucks.

I was lucky enough to grow up, almost entirely literally, in Cody's, first on Telegraph, then at the 4th st store. I never did get a chance to see the SF store or the final location downtown.

Aside from my family member's difficult, personal issues with this closure, it's a sad, worrisome sign of things to come.

I don't want to read my books on a computer screen (thanks, O'Reilly, for not letting me print my newest purchase from you legally!).

I don't want to shop for books by mouse click.

I want to walk into the old Cody's (or Powell's, or the Tattered Cover, for that matter) that I remember and in which I spent so many countless hours as a young teen, and discover the world through the printed word by holding paper in my hands. I want to feel the paper under my fingers. I want to browse secrions stocked with books that perhaps one person in a thousand would even look at - and to be magically transported by said book.

Do I shop at Amazon? Yes, I admit it. But we have lost -- collectively, all of us -- something with this closure.

I can only hope that we will not lose ALL such wonderful things in our headlong dash towards/through the future.

The bookstore is dead! God save the bookstore!

Nifty stuff!

owever, in the picture accompanying the article, neither of the pushbutton switches in the illustration would do anything, as neither straddles the centerline - pushing either will connect contacts that are already in electrical contact.

People upset about this need to purge. The pretensious, snotty, holier-than-thou attitudes of some veggies/vegans are the real problem - not people choosing to advocate for more humane eating using T & A as a tool.

> "If we could actually get 1,000,000 people to
> show up on the National Mall to protest not the
> war but the use of torture and the violations
> of the 4th and 1st Amendments maybe we could
> actually change something in this country."

Actually, if we got 1,000,000 to protest, as you suggest, what we'd accomplish is increasing the number of people on the watch list from 700,000 to 1,700,000...

:)

Arguably "...the moment in human history when we disassemble raw matter, turn it into 'computronium' and upload ourselves to it" is just one of many possible definitions of "The Singularity".

Vernor Vinge argues in his seminal essay "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" that several potential outcomes - and root causes - are possible. The "computronium+upload" model is one such possibility. The rise of AI, nanotech-based power over matter & energy, effective control of genetics and the development of effective immortality, and various kinds of new physics all play roles in alternate visions of "The Singularity". They all hold central, however, the fundamental concept that not only is the rate of change high in our modern world, but that the rate of change is itself accelerating (i.e., the 'jerk' factor is large). I knew understanding derivatives would be useful someday.

Reference for the curious:
Vinge, Vernor, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era", http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html

Can I send a present for her? How?

Cory, my most sincere congratulations to you!

May she turn the world on its ear!

> the sound the wheel makes as it spins is pleasant

I think it's interesting that Mark said this...precisely because sound indicates a dispersion of energy. i.e., it can't be a perpetual motion machine.

:)

#11: No, but there are just wars. Can anyone deny that going to war to stop the Jpanese and Germans was a Good Thing? That doesn't make that war nice, but it was just.

Oh, and a correction to my post #7: 'spectrometer'/'difraction grating', rather than 'spectrophotometer'.

Last I heard, TPF-I hadn't really been cancelled, but rather, it had never been approved, and was undergoing further study by the folks at NASA and JPL. Its originator, Web Cash of the University of Colorado, was a professor of mine a few years ago.

If it has been officially relegated to the dustbin of good-ideas-that-should-have-been, it would be a shame. I recall listening to him relating the idea to us in class one day, and then, later, having him give his presentation about it to our campus astro club. It's a remarkable idea, and very, very promising.

While I am a fan of human spaceflight, it's a shame to see budgetary constraints forcing NASA to choose human spaceflight or remote observation missions. As always, I'd rather my tax dollars were spent on research instead of fruitless wars.

> The team's conclusion: a great deal of
> information about a planet can be gleaned
> from that single pixel and the way it
> changes over time

This is true, but it's important to remember that while we're looking at a single pixel, we're also NOT jst looking at a single pixel.

What do I mean? The light intercepted by that single pixel is generally not recorded as 'electron counts per RGB sensor well', as is the case in, for instance, digital cameras.

Rather, the light is fed through a spectrophotometer, which allows us to see not just how MUCH light s recorded at that pixel, but how many photons ('electron events') are recorded by that pixel at each wavelength. Thus, we can see things like emission/absorption lines in the received light, and match those wavelengths to specific elements, molecules, etc. Coupled with the more crude-but-still-useful measurement of raw intensity, this is what gives us the ability to infer tremendous detail from a single pixel.

(pedantic mode OFF)

All I can say is that I am so very glad that Violet Blue and the many other people working to bring the realities and joys of human sexuality into the open (at least in the, umm....bluer states) are doing us all a great service.

Kudos, thanks and keep on keepin' on.