I've ran into the same issue and have run a programming club for kids that used the old Lamba MOO software and Netlogo. Both are available for free and the kids loved them.

I couldn't stand for either one enough to vote either. I hate to just say "Me too!" but... Me too!

I thought the movie was not nearly so bad as this review makes out -- perhaps this is because I haven't read the books yet. The tone of the review reminds me of how I felt after I had seen the first of the Lord of the Rings movies. They grew on me, but I was left rather cold at first for much the same reasons the reviewer describes here. I enjoyed this first installment of the Pullman trilogy and hope we will get to see more which can take advantage of what we now know about this enchanting and compelling world.

Although air conditioning may be a proximate cause, I think a more important -- and closer to ultimate cause -- is cheap energy. Air conditioning is just one result of cheap energy. Things were originally organized the way they were because energy was expensive in general, but in particular with respect to transportation. Being able to use water and rail transportation were keys to industrial success -- and being in close proximity with other business was also important. With energy so cheap you could just carry everything all over the world in trucks and planes, it didn't matter where you located factories. That's one important reason why so many of them are in China now. As energy costs increase, it seems likely that a lot of these rust belt locations will become important again, as water and rail transportation are, far and away, more energy efficient than anything else.

Unfortunately, McCain is just playing politics as usual. Other presidents have made similar statements that ignored the economic and scientific merits of funded research in order to score political points.

The Bush administration vetoed homeland security funding that included "a new building for [...] bugs and worms" -- without acknowledging that (1) the Smithsonian collection is of inestimable value commercially because it turns out that bugs and worms include a lot of agricultural pests and (2) the specimens are stored in alcohol and, if targeted, could have compromised the rest of the building they were stored in.

The bad behavior crosses party lines too: I believe it was Bill Clinton who mocked NSF funding to study horseshoe crab blood without understanding the unique values that this blood has to the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. I hope our next president will be an advocate for good science, rather than suppressing it or twisting it to make rhetorical arguments.

It sounds like the glass is half-empty *and* contaminated.