Bill Gates's foundation -- is supporting the creationists.
You'd think that, having gotten rich from selling Windows, always claiming it as intelligently designed, he'd know better, but no.
www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa008&articleID=0009973A-D518-10FA-89FB83414B7F0000&pageNumber=3&catID=2
QUOTE
"... it disturbs me when someone like Bill Gates, whose philanthropy I otherwise admire, helps finance one of the major promoters of intelligent design by giving money to a largely conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute. Yes, they got a recent grant from the Gates Foundation. It's true that the almost $10-million grant, which is the second they received from Gates, doesn't support intelligent design, but it does add credibility to a group whose goals and activities are, based on my experiences with them, intellectually suspect. During the science standards debate in Ohio, institute operatives constantly tried to suggest that there was controversy about evolution where there wasn't and framed the debate in terms of a fairness issue, which it isn't. [Editors' note: Amy Low, a media relations officer representing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says that the foundation "has decided not to respond to Dr. Krauss's comments."]..."
END QUOTE
I bought a handful of 5-1/4" 110v computer case fans and mounted them in door openings, and a larger room fan put in the room with the heater pointed up from the floor to the ceiling along an inside wall to circulate the air in the room. But the main issue is to move the hot air through the house. Remember if your attic is uninsulated you're moving the hot air along a cold surface and most of the heat is being transferred by the wallboard/plaster up into the attic and out. First thing to do is caulk cracks along top of room and insulate the attic. The pink *non-itchy* variety of fiberglass stuff is pretty easy to manage.
Next look for cold air coming IN -- a warm leaky house is just a slightly less efficient chimney *and by the way your fireplace if not closed off is leaking heat like mad to the ouside*.
An ordinary old house has lots of little tiny openings that add up to two or three square feet total. Might as well leave the window wide open.
Once you've got the air staying in the house, if you have a way to push air in a circle, push it from the top of the room with the heater into the room you want kept warm, and from there back around the circle to the origin. If you have a linear layout, same thing but your return path is along the floor, so the case fans up high and a few regular table fans on the floor pointing in opposite directions will keep the air circulating.
You can substitute an air filter, or put filters on the box/case/table fans, the cheapest kind will still collect a huge amount of house dust when you're keeping the air moving this way.
Not sure if you're looking for specifically bad/flaky/unsupported "self help" or if you're looking for recommendations that you can compare to what your class is studying.
If the latter, consider -- at least, read the introduction to -- this one:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/clickerpets/dontshootdog.html
Keep the kids away from the Mexican candy though:
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/2004/NEW01048.html
...lead contamination of some Mexican candy products being sold in the United States .... it would be prudent to not allow children to eat these products at this time.
.... products that contain significant amounts of chili powder may contain higher lead levels than other types of candy, such as candy that contains predominantly sugar. Examples of chili containing products include lollipops coated with chili and powdery mixtures of salt, lemon flavor and chili seasoning sold as a snack item.
In addition, tamarind, a popular Mexican candy item, can become contaminated with lead if it is sold in poorly made glazed ceramic vessels that release lead from the glaze into the candy. ...
Pop Quiz: Which Quote is Authentic? A, or B?
Quote A:
For too long, many nations, including the United States, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. You must take a different approach.
-- Osama Bin Laden
Quote B:
For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach.
-- George W. Bush
Pop Quiz: Which Quote is Authentic? A, or B?
Quote A:
For too long, many nations, including the United States, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. You must take a different approach.
-- Osama Bin Laden
Quote B:
For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach.
-- George W. Bush
Science fiction thought of it first, a couple of quick pointers off the top of my head.
Long thread here:
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/01/11/26/1752206.shtml
Heinlein: the water bed
I've sent MeFi contributions over the past few years, gratis -- first in thanks for a particularly useful or interesting bit of news there, another time in gratitude for the MeFi jailer's keeping the current inmates there confined (grin).
Both, actually; ran out of room in the field.
But yes, Iraq was first on their list.
The US was going to be welcomed with open arms, given control of the oil and then able to dictate prices to the Saudis.
Oil was going to be $2/barrel by now.
And no problems taking Iran, after that, expected.
In today's NYT, another early warning in the same vein (as pointed out in Metafilter)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?position=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
A brief excerpt
"... October 17, 2004
Without a Doubt
By RON SUSKIND
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' ..."
Hmmm.
The link works without the trailing slash but not with it.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/InfiltratingTheUSMilitaryGenBoykinsWarriors.html
The references (those hundred-sixty-plus footnotes) are worth a look, if you can get to the page. Among them you'll find references to a variety of Christians saying -- these people aren't behaving like Christians. Rather odd mirror much like the Moslems who are saying that Al-Quaeda isn't a religious group, come to think of it.
And don't you dare eat any candy manufactured in Canada, or any other country besides the United States -- they don't use Archer Daniels Midland Corn Syrup in those foreign countries, they use Sugar. Communist Cane Sugar.
Yes, corn syrup is bad for your health.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_241-242/ai_107201210
But it's patriotic.
What can we learn from history?
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html
> Isn't Iraq not supposed to have had ...
and
> why then are we worried ...
Are you asking these questions AFTER reading the Guardian article and understanding the history here?
The industrial capacity that Iraq had built was dismantled, inventoried, and locked up by the IAEA. Anything useful for trouble was safeguarded.
The USUK threw the IAEA out, overran the country, and left all that stuff unguarded. It's gone now.
I doubt I can be clearer than the author was; look for answers to your questions around these bits:
EXCERPTS, SEE ORIGINAL FOR FULL TEXT:
"sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear programme and sites previously subject to ongoing monitoring and verification by the agency"....
"Before the war, the buildings had been monitored and tagged with IAEA seals.... US authorities barred IAEA inspectors from returning ...in March 2003, instead deploying US teams in an unsuccessful search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction."
"[IAEA] relied largely on satellite imagery in the latest report. IAEA teams were allowed into Iraq in June 2003 to investigate reports of widespread looting ....
"... Iraq's nuclear programme had been "neutralised" by December 1998. In the two and a half months his agency had in which to resume inspections during 2003, his teams found "no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear related activities in Iraq".
"Last week a CIA report ... agreed that Saddam Hussein had all but given up on his nuclear programme after the first Gulf war in 1991."
No sweeping, no rug. You're entitled, as factcheck.org says, to your own opinion -- but not to your own facts.
Checking for "herbal remedy" +stimulant" +1996 -- cold remedies containing ephedra (now banned) and kava were then the most marketed 'herbal' remedies that test as stimulants.
From the BBC:
"...But the IAAF said in a statement: "The IAAF Medical Committee felt satisfied, however, on the basis of the information received that the cases had been properly concluded by the USOC as 'negative cases' in accordance with rules and regulations in place at the time and no further action was taken.
"'For this reason, the athletes concerned ... who went on to compete at the Olympic Games in Seoul were eligible to do so in accordance with IAAF Rules.'
"The USOC first disqualified Lewis before accepting his appeal that he had taken the stimulants inadvertently through an over-the-counter herbal remedy."
The (French language) X-15 site looks better than anything I've yet found in English.
The flight logs show up as an index page, but I get a "not authorized" screen when I try to look into them. Arrrrrgh.
Bill Gates's foundation -- is supporting the creationists. You'd think that, having gotten rich from selling Windows, always claiming it as intelligently designed, he'd know better, but no. www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa008&articleID=0009973A-D518-10FA-89FB83414B7F0000&pageNumber=3&catID=2 QUOTE "... it disturbs me when someone like Bill Gates, whose philanthropy I otherwise admire, helps finance one of the major promoters of intelligent design by giving money to a largely conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute. Yes, they got a recent grant from the Gates Foundation. It's true that the almost $10-million grant, which is the second they received from Gates, doesn't support intelligent design, but it does add credibility to a group whose goals and activities are, based on my experiences with them, intellectually suspect. During the science standards debate in Ohio, institute operatives constantly tried to suggest that there was controversy about evolution where there wasn't and framed the debate in terms of a fairness issue, which it isn't. [Editors' note: Amy Low, a media relations officer representing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says that the foundation "has decided not to respond to Dr. Krauss's comments."]..." END QUOTE
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "NBC: US Soldier Murders Unarmed Prisoner in Falluja."
"I tremble before my nation when I think that God is just, that his justice will not sleep forever." ---- Thomas Jefferson
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Curious, George: HeaterFilter."
I bought a handful of 5-1/4" 110v computer case fans and mounted them in door openings, and a larger room fan put in the room with the heater pointed up from the floor to the ceiling along an inside wall to circulate the air in the room. But the main issue is to move the hot air through the house. Remember if your attic is uninsulated you're moving the hot air along a cold surface and most of the heat is being transferred by the wallboard/plaster up into the attic and out. First thing to do is caulk cracks along top of room and insulate the attic. The pink *non-itchy* variety of fiberglass stuff is pretty easy to manage. Next look for cold air coming IN -- a warm leaky house is just a slightly less efficient chimney *and by the way your fireplace if not closed off is leaking heat like mad to the ouside*. An ordinary old house has lots of little tiny openings that add up to two or three square feet total. Might as well leave the window wide open. Once you've got the air staying in the house, if you have a way to push air in a circle, push it from the top of the room with the heater into the room you want kept warm, and from there back around the circle to the origin. If you have a linear layout, same thing but your return path is along the floor, so the case fans up high and a few regular table fans on the floor pointing in opposite directions will keep the air circulating. You can substitute an air filter, or put filters on the box/case/table fans, the cheapest kind will still collect a huge amount of house dust when you're keeping the air moving this way.
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Curious George: Self Help"
Not sure if you're looking for specifically bad/flaky/unsupported "self help" or if you're looking for recommendations that you can compare to what your class is studying. If the latter, consider -- at least, read the introduction to -- this one: http://shop.store.yahoo.com/clickerpets/dontshootdog.html
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "The formula is X = a x ((24-b) x (c+d+e) + f x (g+h+i) "
Winter depression may be helped a lot by using a dawn simulator; here's one that works fine for about $25. http://www.humboldt1.com/~zerdo/
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Observing the Day of the Dead"
Keep the kids away from the Mexican candy though: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/2004/NEW01048.html ...lead contamination of some Mexican candy products being sold in the United States .... it would be prudent to not allow children to eat these products at this time. .... products that contain significant amounts of chili powder may contain higher lead levels than other types of candy, such as candy that contains predominantly sugar. Examples of chili containing products include lollipops coated with chili and powdery mixtures of salt, lemon flavor and chili seasoning sold as a snack item. In addition, tamarind, a popular Mexican candy item, can become contaminated with lead if it is sold in poorly made glazed ceramic vessels that release lead from the glaze into the candy. ...
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Kerry gets an endorsement he might not want."
Pop Quiz: Which Quote is Authentic? A, or B? Quote A: For too long, many nations, including the United States, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. You must take a different approach. -- Osama Bin Laden Quote B: For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. -- George W. Bush
posted by hank 19 years ago
Pop Quiz: Which Quote is Authentic? A, or B? Quote A: For too long, many nations, including the United States, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. You must take a different approach. -- Osama Bin Laden Quote B: For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. -- George W. Bush
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Care to try your hand at a caption for this pic?"
"See, doesn't my thumb taste better than your own? That's because I'm the President."
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Just what is around the corner?"
Science fiction thought of it first, a couple of quick pointers off the top of my head. Long thread here: http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/01/11/26/1752206.shtml Heinlein: the water bed
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Silenced by the President---Oregon Police Fire On Bystanders Watching Presidential Motorcade "
This is also mentioned a couple of times in comments in a MeFi thread: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36408
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "For $5 the wonderful world of MeFi can be yours"
I've sent MeFi contributions over the past few years, gratis -- first in thanks for a particularly useful or interesting bit of news there, another time in gratitude for the MeFi jailer's keeping the current inmates there confined (grin).
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "“What I’m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God’s kingdom.”"
Now featured at Metafilter: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36334
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Found in an old article on California's energy crisis: Why the US should invade Iran -- as of April 2001 "
Both, actually; ran out of room in the field. But yes, Iraq was first on their list. The US was going to be welcomed with open arms, given control of the oil and then able to dictate prices to the Saudis. Oil was going to be $2/barrel by now. And no problems taking Iran, after that, expected.
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "“What I’m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God’s kingdom.”"
In today's NYT, another early warning in the same vein (as pointed out in Metafilter) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?position=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position= A brief excerpt "... October 17, 2004 Without a Doubt By RON SUSKIND Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion. ''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . . ''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' ..."
posted by hank 19 years ago
Hmmm. The link works without the trailing slash but not with it. http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/InfiltratingTheUSMilitaryGenBoykinsWarriors.html The references (those hundred-sixty-plus footnotes) are worth a look, if you can get to the page. Among them you'll find references to a variety of Christians saying -- these people aren't behaving like Christians. Rather odd mirror much like the Moslems who are saying that Al-Quaeda isn't a religious group, come to think of it.
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Juris my diction crap"
And don't you dare eat any candy manufactured in Canada, or any other country besides the United States -- they don't use Archer Daniels Midland Corn Syrup in those foreign countries, they use Sugar. Communist Cane Sugar. Yes, corn syrup is bad for your health. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_241-242/ai_107201210 But it's patriotic. What can we learn from history? http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Previously monitored nuclear material goes walkies"
> Isn't Iraq not supposed to have had ... and > why then are we worried ... Are you asking these questions AFTER reading the Guardian article and understanding the history here? The industrial capacity that Iraq had built was dismantled, inventoried, and locked up by the IAEA. Anything useful for trouble was safeguarded. The USUK threw the IAEA out, overran the country, and left all that stuff unguarded. It's gone now. I doubt I can be clearer than the author was; look for answers to your questions around these bits: EXCERPTS, SEE ORIGINAL FOR FULL TEXT: "sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear programme and sites previously subject to ongoing monitoring and verification by the agency".... "Before the war, the buildings had been monitored and tagged with IAEA seals.... US authorities barred IAEA inspectors from returning ...in March 2003, instead deploying US teams in an unsuccessful search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction." "[IAEA] relied largely on satellite imagery in the latest report. IAEA teams were allowed into Iraq in June 2003 to investigate reports of widespread looting .... "... Iraq's nuclear programme had been "neutralised" by December 1998. In the two and a half months his agency had in which to resume inspections during 2003, his teams found "no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear related activities in Iraq". "Last week a CIA report ... agreed that Saddam Hussein had all but given up on his nuclear programme after the first Gulf war in 1991."
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "Carl Lewis: Oh dear."
No sweeping, no rug. You're entitled, as factcheck.org says, to your own opinion -- but not to your own facts. Checking for "herbal remedy" +stimulant" +1996 -- cold remedies containing ephedra (now banned) and kava were then the most marketed 'herbal' remedies that test as stimulants. From the BBC: "...But the IAAF said in a statement: "The IAAF Medical Committee felt satisfied, however, on the basis of the information received that the cases had been properly concluded by the USOC as 'negative cases' in accordance with rules and regulations in place at the time and no further action was taken. "'For this reason, the athletes concerned ... who went on to compete at the Olympic Games in Seoul were eligible to do so in accordance with IAAF Rules.' "The USOC first disqualified Lewis before accepting his appeal that he had taken the stimulants inadvertently through an over-the-counter herbal remedy."
posted by hank 19 years ago
In "roll stability"
The (French language) X-15 site looks better than anything I've yet found in English. The flight logs show up as an index page, but I get a "not authorized" screen when I try to look into them. Arrrrrgh.
posted by hank 19 years ago
(limited to the most recent 20 comments)