I clicked on K Chronicles expecting to be disappointed by a fatuous comic that wouldn't live up to the tagline.

Here's what the real litmus test for politicians should be...

I was pleasantly surprised to be completely wrong. If our media watchdogs hadn't been defanged, this voting machine problem would be at the top and bottom of every news cycle.

Our democracy is being carried off even more quietly than our rights. If we can't vote these craven money mongers out of office we have no chance of legally redressing the problems they have created.

Sounds like the Buddhist equivalent of the old "God is in the gaps" apologies for religion. That being essentially the argument from ignorance, anything you don't have scientific knowledge of must be the mystery of God. Just substitute consciousness for God and you have half his argument. What does he have left if the neuroscientists develop a complete explanation for consciousness?

With regard to the other half, the experiment to test his hypothesis sounds straightforward. If there are mental states which can be reached which do not have corresponding neurological states, then this can be measured. Hook the meditation expert up to brain monitor equipment. Blind her and anyone who interacts with her during the session to the monitored output. At agreed upon intervals have the meditor try to attain a particular special state. At the end, the meditor records at which intervals the special state was actually achieved.

If the meditator is honest, then there should be no distinct measurable change at the agreed intervals. If the neuroscientists are right, then there will be a distinct commonality to the changes in brain state observed at those intervals. You now have a proof within the limits of measurment and the honesty of the meditator. Repeat across multiple meditors and you can factor out dishonesty within some probability and them all being dishonest.

At the end you either have a signature brain function pattern matching that meditation target, or evidence that there may be a mind state which can be acheived without a corresponding measurable change in the brain. Either result presents interesting avenues for further investigation.

I work in supercomputing (intensive parallel applications spanning multiple computers) where women are even more rare (~10%) than in other computer science disciplines. I'm aware of no evidence that male parallel programmers are more misogynist or repellent on average than other male computer scientists. Which means there must be something intrinsic to the discipline, or perceptions of the discipline which fails to attract more women.

What makes supercomputing different? It is notoriously difficult to do well. The main reason to use parallel programming techniques is to speed up the time to solution for a problem. Which means that the rewards go to those will work hard to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the machine, requiring mastery of CPU, network, memory management, operating system, assemblers, compilers and application domain details. In other words, people willing to give up sleep, romance, hobbies, and the trappings of a normal schedule for work that really is a life staring at a computer screen.

In short, it disproportionately rewards serious nerds. Even programming nerds think we're nerds. Women are indisposed towards such activities in our culture. Its not an environment conducing to "having it all" if "all" includes a family and other things which require time and energy be devoted to something other than career. But nerdosity is not an absolute requirement. Many other countries field more nearly equal numbers of men and women in computer science.

It should be noted that computer science, and supercomputing in particular, are not alone in rewarding such activities. Scientific research in many fields is not so dissimilar. Corporate lawyers spend the bulk of their time reviewing exceedingly dull (to me) contracts and the minutiae of related contract law. Yet these are perceived to be more suitable, and therefore are more attractive, to women.

What is the difference? There is no countervailing good PR for computer science. None at all. There are no TV shows about attractive computer scientists doing interesting computer science in compelling narrative arcs. More importantly there are hardly any positive mass media representations of computer scientists of any sex, let alone successful well adjusted female ones. Yet you can't surf prime time without seeing a multitude of wondrous women lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, police detectives, and even criminal pathologists.

CS nerds are cultural outcasts and the cost of being outcast is higher for women than it is for men.

According to popular mailing lists there are no ORGANIC Bee losses. See my signature for the link (Salon forbids links in the body of a letter).

The linked article from an organic beekeeper speculates that the key difference is that the commercial bees are a special very large hybrid. Then asserts that this results in larger brood comb cells which are more vulnerable to parasites.

Clearly the evidence presented for that hypothesis is currently slim, nevertheless, the lack of CCD within the organic sector should present a compelling direction for study. At least one difference (perhaps a combination of factors) is causing the large scale commercial beekeeping world a very serious problem. They report difficulties in studying feral bees, yet an easy to study population without these problems apparently does exist. Isolation studies should be carried out to determine which differences are crucial so that the commercial beekeeping industry can adopt them.