It's all about the trade-off. The small family run farms can produce the pristine raw milk that is good and safe to drink (well, most of the time). It's an art, not a science. In order to get any economies of scale, we have to trade off some of the art of agriculture and bring in the science. Plenty of very well meaning local and organic small time farmers understand this. The public expects safety and reliability (and low cost) in their food. The best way to do this for milk is through pasturization.

There are some people who put taste above saftey in their milk. They should be able to get their raw, and they should be aware of the risks.

I think that the only way to keep raw milk (relatively) safe is to keep it small and prevent its mass-production.

Am I dreaming? Is the government waking from a long dark slumber and getting back to reality?

When the Dems got voted back in, I didn't really think it would make a difference. I think I'm about to be proved wrong.

Why are you even suggesting that corn should be used as a biofuel when even in your own columns you suggest that it is a net loss of energy (or only barely positive)?

Perhaps these theoretical higher yields will make it corn a better candidate for biofuel, but wouldn't switchgrass be even better? Even Pres Bush gets that, or at least he pretends to---it's what he suggested in last year's speech.

My prediction is that Bush will make some kind of bold statement tonight that will try to appease enviros and the corn lobby, while not pissing off Big Oil. We'll all be talking about it for 2 months with excitement that maybe, just maybe, this guy really does have a clue.

Then we will forget all about it, and he will "forget" to fund all of these wonderful alternative fuel projects that he talked about.

Just a hunch...maybe it's because this is exactly what he did last year.

Finally, it seems, the US government is waking up to reality (or at least strong scientific evidence). They are proposing meager steps towards addressing the environmental problems we've created.

Whereas I agree that we shouldn't be too happy about these relatively small things. We should be happy that this is the beginning. If these new legislations do indeed pass in the House and are not vetoed, it opens the door to more aggressive changes.

Once people see that the government is taking global warming seriously, then people will demand for even more change.

I hope (and fairly confident, too) that this is the start of much bigger changes. It may be little, it may be late, but we have to be happy with what we get and then demand for more.

Whereas I think you have every right to denigrate anyone who puts forth that oxy moronic statement, most of these scientific journals are for profit. My understanding is that they most of their money from standard revenue streams such as subscriptions and advertising. Once you remove these sources of money by providing the content free from government sources, how will they make money?

The problem is that most scientific journals are stodgy, old, and out of touch.

Well, this is actually not too big of a problem if you change your thinking a bit. As would be expected, computer science (the area I am quite familiar with), with its strong ties to open source, is way ahead of the other sciences here. Most of the big journals do offer their content for free (or at least, they leave the copyright with the authors who can then post it on their website for non-commercial use). The publishers of the journals get most of their income from sponsoring conferences and membership fees. Everyone's happy. The content is largely free, and people are making money.

That's unbelievable.

Maybe it's not a big deal...most of them are just slippers.

One of my favorite podcasts (The World Technology Podcast) just had a piece on a similar topic: coal towns in rural China and the destruction they are causing to the villages:

http://www.theworld.org/pod/tech/podcast137.mp3

What confuses me is that the spammers must already own the stock before they can advertise that they want to sell it.

Remember, as Alex mentioned, penny stocks are very volatile to price changes. Their price can fluctuate due to a very small number of transactions.

Here are some possibilities to explain it:

• the spammers bought the stock recently before they sold it (but if this were the case, the stock price would have gone up when the spammers bought)
• the spammers have owned the stock for a while and have purchased it over a long period of time so as not to upset the price (but this implies lots of preplanning)
• the spammers are selling on behalf of someone who already owns the stock (eg- the company itself)

So, how do they do it? Of the three possibilities above, the third one seems most likely. Are the companies complicit, or is there something I missed?

ps- great article.