#10 - there is another version of this concept in one of Iain Bank's novels (I'm reasonably sure it is Against a Dark Background) where a fully enclosed unicycle-sorta vehicle has a large single wheel that has a large number of extensible spoke-analogues. It also has a BFG, making it even cooler. It can sort of tiptoe around or leap, or dash, or sidle. I want one. If I get 'into the zone' when driving or riding an intricate road I find myself remembering the device.

Ah, yes, wikipedia tells me it is indeed Against a Dark Background.

Ah, happy memories. Many years ago I worked as stage manager for a ballet school whenever they did shows. What a perfect job for a teenager; a place where a large number of barely dressed girls actually want you to watch them. Not all pleasure though; I used to learn the entire choreography so I could remind nervous dancers what their part was in the wings. Great fun.

#4, expect a knock on your door very soon. You're not supposed to mention us in public places.

Back when I was at the Royal College of Art in the early 80's, we used magic markers for renderings (no, Buffy, not that sort of rendering; pretty drawings) and in particular the automotive design guys used the solvent by the literal bucket-load. It is my contention that this explains late 80''s / early 90's car design, given that many of those guys were by then very senior designers. So perhaps this principal is just trying to save the poor kids from a lifetime of shame from being auto design serfs.

" (Though we did have a kid crack his skull in 4th grade attempting a wheelie on his "Chopper.")"

My best Chopper Wheelie moment - a friend was showing off in front of some girls (well, duh) and got a really terrific wheelie going... and the front wheel fell off :-)
So now he's speeding along on a very unsuitable unicycle with an audience of good looking girls. Worse yet, he's on grass so when the front comes down it sticks. Ouch.

Ah, happy days.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-10-23-wacosts_N.htm claims a CBO estimate of 2.4T through the next decade (I guess they mean 'up to the end of this decade' ?). CBO is hardly an anti-govt. organ.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/07/usa.iraq reports a Noble winning economist claiming the cost between 1 & 2 T.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html claims 3T.

Maybe they're wrong - and maybe they're right. I doubt it will ever be possible to correctly work it out, even though we're talking historical figures for which there ought to be actual records of some form.

Nordhaus claiming to be able to work out the final cost of something over an entire *century* in the future - now that's trolling. And he did it with a 'small but comprehensive model' as well. Funny how a large, heavily researched, well backed up set of models of the climate built by dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of researchers, will be derided as merely a guess but Mr Nordhaus's 'small but comprehensive model' is welcomed as the real deal.

According to http://www.reason.com/news/show/121926.html - a vigourously right wing source - Nordhaus's claims don't seem to involve numbers like 44T. I see claims of Stern's proposal having a net cost of 14T, Gore's 22T and Nordhaus' own suggestion claiming a net benefit of 3T (whilst only reducing estimated damage by ~5T instead of the ~12T for the other plans). He does at least proffer the advice that a low-cost minimal carbon technology would be worth 17T.

And you completely ignored the really sensible, profitable, effective suggestion to consider 'nega-dollars'. Profit now, benefit now and for the future. Real efficient use of capital, not the panty-waist half-brained feeble-minded capitalism beloved of Wall St. and their coke-addled pushers.

"What should scare everyone is these WAGs (Worshipers of Al Gore) want to spend MANY TRILLIONS on the THEORY that the earth MIGHT be warming A COUPLE OF DEGREES over the next FEW DECADES!!! And you thought the war was expensive!"

This is in contrast to the BALs (Bush Ass Lickers) who have already spent MANY TRILLIONS on the war in Iraq over the last FEW YEARS.

Not to mention you are ignoring a non-trivial body of work showing that it is quite profitable to spend 'nega-dollars' and improve efficiency by significant amounts.

Even if you are not particularly a fan of SF, you'd have to be a pretty odd person to not enjoy getting together with a bunch of friendly crazy people at 1am to sing purely for the fun of it.

OK, so some people that sing or play aren't terribly good at it; so what? Some filkers are extremely talented, some aren't. How is that any different to any other group of people in any other field? Me, I can't sing worth a damn but I can audience with the best of them which makes me a valuable member of the filk community.

Besides, there's usually good chocolate in the filk suite at a con :)

Don't forget the slight cock-up by the british civil service recently; 25 million personal records lost -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lost-in-the-post-the-personal-details-of-25-million-people-758867.html

So breeding dogs/sheep/cattle or trying to develop a new plant cultivar - all of which is DNA experiments - is wrong now?

#6 claims "BTW, polar ice caps on Mars are retreating just like they are on Earth."
This would appear to be wrong. Observations of the martian poles haven't been made for long enough to be sure what is happening to them and anyway the sun has been losing spots for the last few years (with a possible upswing starting this year) so insolation has been *decreasing*.

Or are the deniers claiming that there is some magical extra solar output that can't be measured by 'liberal science'?

#50 "I'm an asthmatic who lives in Minneapolis and i have to say that the smoking ban is one of the best things about living in this town."

Gosh, it's changed in the years since I last went there - I remember flying in from SFO (living in silly-con valley at the time) and as the plane started final descent towards the a/p the outside air started coming in and the smell of tobacco was just vomit inducing. I couldn't believe how many people smoked, that smoking was allowed in restaurants, etc. I really had a bad time - and then I had to go on to chicago and that was just horrible.

What is this 'health insurance' that you apparently need to pay for?

"eg. IBM invented concept of RISC processors and then sat on the idea because they realized it would cannibalize their existing, quite profitable systems, and it took ARM to come along and actually commercialize RISC technology successfully."

Nonsense. It just happens that I was involved in both in their early days.

IBM developed the 801 which became the powerPC and successors. You might remember a range or two of machines based on that cpu. IBM still sells rather a lot. They licensed the design to a number of companies and they continue sell quite a few. I had an 801 machine for a while when I was an IBM Research Fellow.

Acorn invented the ARM because nobody there liked the 68000 or x86 or NS32000 for their plans to move beyond the 8bit BBC Micro. I still have an original handbuilt prototype machine that was provided to do the Smalltalk-80 for the commercial version.

SUN of course had the Sparc. I used to have one of them too but never really liked the architecture.

All three 'successfully commercialised' RISC cpus before ARM (the company) was founded. Apple dropped the dreadful 'hobbit' and moved to ARM for the Newton, and wanted a slightly more arms length relationship between the cpu and Acorn, so Acorn, Apple, VTi and ... somebody else... formed a separate company and the Acorn Risc Machine became the Advance Risc Machine and took over the world of non-desktops.

Forget metal detectors in schools, it's clearly time for mental detectors - stop those with no brain activity from entering!

This is all just a small part of the War on Knowledge - as soon as these mechanisms are in place in colleges, universities and schools they will be used to pervert, subvert and censor what people are allowed to look at. After a few years of this people will forget there was ever truth outside the official story. They'll even start believing that Faux News has a decent truthiness level.

"Would universal health care as they have in Canada and the UK help Americans find their courage again?"

Well of course not! Everyone knows that socialised medicine is the same as socialIST medicine which is COMMUNIST medicine and that my friend is TREASON!

Some years ago the BBC broadcast a really nice radio play (actually I think it was a n-short pieces in one program sort of playlet thing) about Laika. It was terribly sad in a lovely sort of way, made me cry.

Wish I could find a reference for you but no luck so far.

Perhaps it's just because I've been programming in Smalltalk for 25 years but I can't imagine why you would use a monospace font when writing software. What virtue(s) would you claim it has?

#7 you're misquoting umbriel in #5. What s/he said was
"I don't happen to think that ID should be taught as science, but I don't think that Darwinian evolution should be taught as theology either."

That is *extremely* different to your statement. I.D. (and how I *hate* them for usurping the initials previously used for my profession) is a political farrago intended to be part of the general religionist strategy of fighting science, free thought, honest enquiry and the entire concept of the rule of law. Darwin's theory of evolution is a rather successful scientific theory explaining how evolution proceeds. It is not a theory *that* it happens. It is a theory of *how* it happens. Evolution *happens* whether Darwin was right or wrong.

(from the article)
He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

Umm, maybe because that is actually how capitalist companies are supposed to work according to the Great God On High, Milton Friedman ? All they're doing is externalising the costs of their business, it's just that in this case they've externalised them to the dupes - er I mean authors - instead of the community at large.

#7 - that would be because you live on the Left Coast and must therefore be an America Hater and therefore you get your passport quickly but with a special mark so they can keep you out.

:-)

(I hope)

My niece (in rural Wales) has been waiting on Bt for over a year now; mostly they just fob us off but occasionally they send a nice letter explaining how they're going to have a meeting to decide if they can afford to 'provision the service'.

The really funny part is that for a short while they did in fact provide her with broadband albeit rather unreliably. So the line *can* work....

Sigh.

And it seems that until Bt 'fix' the line no other company is able/willing to provide service either.

If anyone knows a high-up in Bt for the central wales area, do please let me know how to contact them!

"Where's my damned picturephone and hoovercar with the bubble top?"

Well for the first I can offer iChat AV. Works nicely for me.

Not sure about the hoovercar, unless you're after a scaled up Roomba?

#28 - "Second, kiss it goodbye, because it's never going to happen. Canada would have to agree to it, and they know us far too well for that."

Don't bet on it; the current numbskull sitting in 24 Sussex Drive seems to have his head far enough up Odious George's rectum to be able to see the scars left by Tony Blair and John Howard.

What does he mean 'might collapse'? From the perspective of someone living outside the US but paid in USD (and with a shrinking 401k) it already *has* collapsed.

When I moved up to Canada it was US:CA 1:1.6. Now it's 1:0.98

If China were to delink currency the US would implode. You've completely outsourced your economy!

"The Short Story has proved hardier and more versatile than the Radio Play, which was vanquished utterly by the arrival of the Television Serial "

Um, I guess you don't listen to the BBC much then. I hear a number of radio plays each week; probably into double digits at a guess. Classics, new stuff, even SF. Right now they're doing a series of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.