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It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.

• ... 3 times more vulnerable than Australians, Americans or Europeans ... every minute on average four Indians have heart attacks ... 2.5 million people need to undergo heart operations and currently only about 50,000 people are undergoing the operation, only 50,000 ...

In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.

Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....

• A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.

It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.

• ... 3 times more vulnerable than Australians, Americans or Europeans ... every minute on average four Indians have heart attacks ... 2.5 million people need to undergo heart operations and currently only about 50,000 people are undergoing the operation, only 50,000 ...

In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.

Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....

• A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.

It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.

• ... 3 times more vulnerable than Australians, Americans or Europeans ... every minute on average four Indians have heart attacks ... 2.5 million people need to undergo heart operations and currently only about 50,000 people are undergoing the operation, only 50,000 ...

In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.

Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....

• A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.

It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.

• ... 3 times more vulnerable than Australians, Americans or Europeans ... every minute on average four Indians have heart attacks ... 2.5 million people need to undergo heart operations and currently only about 50,000 people are undergoing the operation, only 50,000 ...

In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.

Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....

• A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.

It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.

• ... 3 times more vulnerable than Australians, Americans or Europeans ... every minute on average four Indians have heart attacks ... 2.5 million people need to undergo heart operations and currently only about 50,000 people are undergoing the operation, only 50,000 ...

In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.

Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....

• A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.

It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.

• ... 3 times more vulnerable than Australians, Americans or Europeans ... every minute on average four Indians have heart attacks ... 2.5 million people need to undergo heart operations and currently only about 50,000 people are undergoing the operation, only 50,000 ...

In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.

Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....

• A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.

For Australia, the agreement includes:

• Immediate access to US markets for all manufactured goods and services;
• Elimination of tariffs on exports to the US of wheat, other cereal crops and minerals;
• Almost all tariffs to be removed from manufactured exports and the automotive industry;
• Sixty-six per cent of agriculture tariffs to go;
• The right to maintain local content rules in broadcasting and film;
• Maintenance of the hotly contested Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, although a committee will continue dialogue on health policy.

• Maintain full tariffs on Australian sugar imports;
• Maintain partial protection for its beef and dairy industries, with above-quota tariffs for beef not phased out for 18 years and an above-quota tariff allowed to remain on dairy;
• Enjoy open access to all of Australia's agricultural, manufacturing and service sectors.

It does appear there have been additional concessions made by Howard that are not being made known to the Australian public. It is only through the American spokepeople that we are aware of these concessions at all.

It has not yet been ratified by parliament, and the opposition is promising to block it in the Senate in it's current form.

We will see...

Q.

A link to the Australian Broadcasting Council news story on the same item.

It's actually the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as noted throughout their copyright notice, etc.

This may be 'finalised' but it has got to get through both houses of parliament, and in the run up to a close election, with any luck the Senate (the upper house) will eviscerate the "DMCA by stealth" approach. At least they didn't get to shaft the Australian pharmaceutical scheme, which the US pharmas desperately wanted to do, as it is very cheap and fair.

A link to the Australian Broadcasting Council news story on the same item.

"MyDoom worm linked to Russian sources"

.b-lou

> Yes, but compare that to the MATRIX bill. The grandparent was quick to point out the real "cause" behind civil liberty infrigement, and I still maintain that his point was ridiculous.

It makes a whole lot more sense if you understand the unspoken assumption that the corporations are the real power and the government is just doing what the corporations want them to do. Remember how eager Oracle Corporation was to help build a national identification database? The point is that corporations just see this as another short term business opportunity, regardless of the civil liberty consequences.

Yep sure h5n1 is a great great worry. Enough to make you think all computer viruses are small stuff indeed. Especially, if h5n1 combines with human influenza, as some in the WHO are expecting (or so it is reported).

OK. Since your post was offtopic we might as well go way further off topic. Check out this excellent article on the Black Death and what it might have really been (hint: not spread by rats). Hmmm, yeah a global pandemic would certainly cost more.

a bird flu pandemic is currently something to watch.

• A third of Europe's population died over four years due to the Black Death. But was it really spread by rats and fleas? Could it have been caused by a virus? (On the trail of the black death, ABC Science.)

This is a real problem for countries with *compromised* infrastructure - health services, sanatation etc. I would not want to be in a country like India if a pandemic strikes.

a bird flu pandemic is currently something to watch.

• A third of Europe's population died over four years due to the Black Death. But was it really spread by rats and fleas? Could it have been caused by a virus? (On the trail of the black death, ABC Science.)

This is a real problem for countries with *compromised* infrastructure - health services, sanatation etc. I would not want to be in a country like India if a pandemic strikes.

No, they don't really grow gold, they just sort of extract it and move it around. Unlike growing a potato.

SMH.com.au has a more informed description of what happens. The gold is not "grown," it is "collected." Bacteria break down and carry gold material away from a larger vein, and another group picks it up and deposits it when they get to a chunk or nugget. ABC au also has a good article.

So unless you happen to live near a large, undiscovered underground tract of gold, your chance of growing gold in your backyard like potatoes is just about zero.

The previous responder's link identifies "abandoned mine shafts" as one of the several possibilities, but I suppose those mines would have to be very deep and have few fractures, else the CO2 would leak right out again.

FWIW, one of the advantages of using "spent" oil wells is that you can't recover all of the oil just by pumping. CO2 is a nice non-polar solvent and it dissolves the remaining oil stuck in the pores of the rock, so you can circulate it and boil off the CO2 from the stuff you bring back up, leaving oil as the bottoms. This might not be economical to do for its own sake, but if you are already paying for the CO2 disposal the oil recovery would be icing on the cake.

If you have asteroid strikes reaching the bottom of the oceans or nuclear blasts in just about any form, CO2 probably ain't your biggest problem.

Here's a reference to the abandoned mine storage concept.
=Smidge=

The belly button lint one's been pretty well solved!

As stated in this news release

The honour does not allow them to use the title sir.

No Sir for you! [Mr Gates]

A bit of information on where money from CDs goes.

"And no nuclear plant has *ever* killed 3500 people in one week and caused 14,000 illnesses. (link) The highest figures for illnesses *possibly* linked to Chernobyl get nowhere close."

We still don't know all the consequences that the Cs-137's going to provide. We're still not entirely sure about the Sr-90 contamination consequences either. We've never had QUITE as much spread of those contaminants over such a large area as with Chernobyl. To say that the plant hasn't killed as many people is jumping the gun on all of this. I'm not saying that it HAS killed as many people- I'm just saying we don't know much of anything yet.

Also worth noting is that various sources indicate that you're wrong about the death tolls involved with Chernobyl...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/722533.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/778408.stm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/environment/200 1/04/item20010425145050_1.htm
http://www.atominfo.org.ua/news/chernobyl_toll_aug _15_2003.htm

The last one lists a lower figure than the others, but I'm inclined to believe somewhere between 2,500 to 25,000 deaths (tolls ove 100k or more might be possible, but I have a hard time believing them at this point in time...) that could be attributed to the accident, based on various news and official sources of information. Not QUITE over a week's time, no. But it's not as safe as you're making it out to sound by any stretch.

"One of the biggest pushes in nuclear science is to stop treating reactors like large coal plants. Instead, small module-style reactors (say 6-10 megawatts) should be interspersed throughout the population. These reactors would require minimal maintenance and would simply be pulled and rebuilt every few years. The advantages are smaller, safer reactor designs and standardized maintenance. The disadvantages include possible contamination of heavily populated areas and fear of terrorists acquiring fissible materials. I haven't yet made up my mind how I feel about the idea."

I've noticed. One of the best, most promising designs I've seen so far is the Pebble Bed reactors. They run at higher temperatures, burn more of the fuel, and leave very little in the way of proliferable materials and minimal high and low level wastes compared to any of the other designs. The max size is typically 300MWe and they really ARE intrinsically safe from all of what I can tell, not being in the field directly. A breach would be very problematic, but not a catastrophe like Chernobyl ended up being. The fuel is contained in capsules that keep all the Actinides, etc. contained and it'd take a lot to extricate the fuel pellet out of the pebble. Breaching a reactor of this design would largely make a radioactive mess that would only require pickup and containment of the pellets and irradiated reactor components. Yes, there is a risk to populated areas having a breach, but it's not as much as something like a breach with any of the other current designs.

From our discussion back and forth, it seems we're mostly of the same mind, just that you don't see the risks being as bad as I do. It's been a pleasure discussing it with you- it's not often that someone can hold down a discussion of this nature on Slashdot. :-)

AFAIK Wasn't Columbia the only space shuttle that could dock with Hubble, sacrificing it's ability to dock with the ISS?

Thats what the the local 11pm Sunday night science show tells me.

In fact, the one-way trip idea has already been suggested by Professor Paul Davies at Macquarie University. See the article "One way to Mars, please" from ABC News Online on January 10. Unfortunately, I don't see how you're going to get enough people up there that they can have a happy existence.

Specifically this:

Practically all plate glass made before 1959 had some degree of waviness in it. It was uneven in thickness. When the glaziers would install it in a window, they would normally do it like you build a building - with the bigger bits at the bottom and the thinner bits at the top. But, Stephen Hawkes from Oregon, who has dedicated his life to dismantling and repairing medieval glass windows, says that while most of the glass that he has seen was bottom-heavy, he has seen hundreds of pieces of old plate glass that were thicker at the top.

Check youre windows, you will find they are larger at the bottom as it drips.

>The place to cut is in military spending. The war in Iraq would have paid for a lot of space travel, unfortunately it paid for blowing up buildings instead. We have lots of highly specialized weapons that are very expensive - millions of dollars per explosion.

Hey, I know the Iraq war was a distraction for the patriotic, well-meaning but uninformed populace... but think of the alternative:

If we DIDN'T *blame* Iraq for 9-11, invent a story about Saddam buying uranium in Africa (then "out" the CIA agents who could correct that story)... where would we be today?

Answer?

In Saudi Arabia. For a few days after September 11, the news actually stood up to Bush by trumpeting:
WHERE THE HIJACKERS CAME FROM
-and-
WHO TRANSFERRED MONEY TO THEM.

As they said in "All The President's Men", Follow The Money. How close is the Bush family to King Fahd? Isn't MOST of the Bush family wealth tied up in investments in Saudi Arabia? Hmm.

When it comes to screwing over America, the Bush family wins 3-0 (oh yeah, the 3rd Bush act against us: paying
Iran to hold the hostages until AFTER Reagan was sworn in... as if Iran/Contra deals REALLY happened after the hostages were safely home... puhleeze!)

Invading Iraq was stupid but necessary. Besides his personal wealth at stake, Bush knew if we invaded Saudi Arabia, we'd be at war with EVERY NATION between Indonesia and Morocco! We're talking major war that the US could not possibly win without using WMD's.

Iraq was a Faustian Bargain, and one that ALL SIDES are prepared to live with.

You think those explosions in the Australian outback are a coincidence? That ain't a fractionator mate, it's a launch tower! Those weren't gas explosions, they were rocket fuel!!! Think Dubya is being a mongrel by not signing Kyoto? It's not that he doesn't like it, just that it is irrelevant, 'cause he won't be here!!! Is he a bastard for tearing up the ABM treaty? He needs that gone so he can get his launch vehicles away! Dick's affilation with big business is just a front for the collection of global fatcats who will be riding the rocketship to freedom, away from environmental disaster.

Up until now the only bit we haven't been able to figure out has been the destination. Now we know! It's Mars!!! First stop will be the moon, from where Dubya and friends will move onto their new Martian Utopia while the rest of us fry back here on earth!!!

As I write this, I'm boucing through the outback, in a ute with my comrades, tinfoil akubra on my head. Our objective is to save civilisation from this menace . It's a tough mission, but someone's gotta do it. Wish us well and pray for us as we roll towards our destiny...

Yeah, I don't think that ever happened. That would require landing on mars which we have all seen is difficult in itself but would also require taking back off from Mars. That would probably be more difficult then landing. It would require making it land with enough fuel to take off and get back to earth making it much more dangerous. It would also require more then twice the amount of fuel then a one way mission would. And if it costs near 100 million to take off from earth just think what it would cost to take off from mars.

I seem to remember reports of fossilized bacteria found in meteorites or something like that. I really doubt that it was from mars.

No, actually the scientists did think the meteorite was from Mars. Here is one story.

And here is NASA's take on it. As I said, I was confused and after thinking about it a bit realized that this had to be the only instance of Mars rocks, for the reasons described. By the way, it would not take twice as much fuel to bring rocks back from Mars because Mars gravity is 0.11G. It's quite a bt tougher than bringing back moon rocks, but it could be done in theory. I had thought that perhaps we could send a probe to mars that was capable of taking off later, but we have not done that yet.

I suppose a lion or a horse might have more luck than a dog

• UK policy on Chilean refugees FCO 7/2421, FCO 7/2421/1, FCO 7/2422, FCO 7/2422/1
  
• Internal political situation in Chile FCO 7/2410, FCO 7/2410/1
  
• Export of military equipment from the UK to Chile FCO 7/2433
  

God, I love coffee.

I guess then you'll be very much looking forward to the recently announced 70% Reduced Caffeine GM Coffee Plant

However, I do agree with you that the best advertisement is a non-existent one, but I doubt that will ever come to pass.

And that's why I rarely watch commercial TV.

I live in Australia, so I primarily watch the ABC (similar to Britain's BBC). Advertising is banned by the ABC charter.

However, I do agree with you that the best advertisement is a non-existent one, but I doubt that will ever come to pass.

And that's why I rarely watch commercial TV.

I live in Australia, so I primarily watch the ABC (similar to Britain's BBC). Advertising is banned by the ABC charter.

Sounds like what happened to the Russian Venus lander:

The Soviets used the diamond as a front glass to protect the lens ... once the spacecraft had landed, the lens cap was thrown off ... Each spacecraft also had an experiment called the "Dynamic Penetrometer". The Penetrometer was a spring-loaded arm with a point on the end of it. The point would penetrate deep into soft ground ... but the photographs from Venera 14 show that the point of the penetrometer landed exactly on the lens cap. This is proof that Murphy's Law is a universal law.

OK, long-time /. reader, first time poster .. be gentle CowboyNeal! :-P

In the early-to-mid 1980's, for some reason, the Australian commercial-free public TV station (the ABC) broadcast a number of Japanese shows - anime shows Astroboy, Kimba the White Lion, and live-action show Monkey.

Both of those anime are from the god of manga, Osamu Tezuka

These shows got me interested in Japan - at age 8, I wanted to be a ninja..

I studied Japanese at high school and ended up doing it at university too. Now I'm pretty fluent - and guess what, I learned quite a bit from reading manga,watching anime and Japanese movies..

Some people here have mentioned Engrish/Japlish T-shirts in Japan - well, I've seen plenty of Australians wearing shirts with Japanese characters that say, for example, "strange foreigner", "winter", "fire" and "water"..

Why do people wear shirts (and get tattoos) with languages they don't understand? Because they think they look cool!

Q.

Anytime anybody posts a link to the washington times I completely dismiss their entire post.

Thats pretty childish, don't you think?

How about these links, then:
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/12/17122003 153543.asp
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s1012216.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280 ,-3517412,00.html
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/200 3/12/18/2003080039
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2001817106_iraqdig17.html

Those all say pretty much the same thing as the Washington Times, or do you dismiss posts that link to the taipeitimes or guardian, too?

Spain and Morocco to build train tunnel under sea

Spain and Morocco plan tunnel link

Tunnel to link Spain and Morocco agreed


Tunnel link for Africa and Europe


Spain, Morocco to build tunnel under Mediterranean Sea

Spain, Morocco plan undersea tunnel

DON'T MOD THIS UP. MY KARMA IS ALREADY EXCELLENT (has been for months!)

So what happens when a tyranny is created?

We should repair our own democracy first before forcing it on the rest of the world.
And Taiwan is not really democratic

Why the hell not?

Interestingly enough, the real question seems to be insurance; guy has no insurance cover for tagging his plane along on a ship. Also, there were a few comments here suggesting that he was taking a Great Circle "short-cut" while flying over the Antarctic; he wasn't, he was only trying to be the first man ever to fly over the South Pole on a homemade plane. Or whatever.

And oh, he has time only till (next?) Thursday to decide, or face spending Christmas and the New Year there.

abc.net.au:

For the time being the Americans are giving him food and a couch in the refuelling shed to sleep on, but no fuel.
JON JOHANSON: I guess officialdom are afraid to be seen to be helping in case the hordes come down and invade and I can understand their decisions, I really can and I don't, I haven't asked for their help. All I would like to do is make a commercial transaction of fuel.

AN Australian pilot remains stranded in the Antarctic after his government today failed to sway two of its greatest allies to sell him 400 litres of fuel....Mr Johanson needs 400 litres of fuel to return to New Zealand, but both US and NZ authorities have refused to supply it under a policy to discourage tourists to the base.

Here is a radio interview with him, and the point of view of another Australian adventurer.

From what I see, the Americans are being pretty unreasonable and the New Zealanders are basically having to do a bit of arse licking with the Americans as of late, as being an ally equates to bending over, as far as the current US government is concerned.

Here is a radio interview with him, and the point of view of another Australian adventurer.

From what I see, the Americans are being pretty unreasonable and the New Zealanders are basically having to do a bit of arse licking with the Americans as of late, as being an ally equates to bending over, as far as the current US government is concerned.

Either way it totally unimportant because windmills just plain suck compared to Gyromills. There is no competition here. Surface winds are slow and irregular where the jet stream is VERY fast and consistent. I mean just look at a Gyromills. its 20 feet of square steel tubing and two electric motor/generators and a tether. Not a very big capital expenditure, in fact it's so elegant and simple and profoundly smart it boggles the mind but no one is doing shit about it. It makes me sick.

Its just like the energy bill, if they just put some money into these things, and Changing the World Technologies Thermal Depolymerization process we could stop importing oil, stop putting shit in our rivers, and taking carbon from the ground and putting into the air.

Dams? Dams suck but did you know that a array of micro turbines would generate more power without disrupting the rivers? It all about people not wanting to change because they spent so much money on building a wall of concrete that they don't want to admit that something better might have come along. Its Galileo vs. the Church.

Nuclear? Did you read the article in Wired some time ago that they now have a process where you expose waste to a high-energy gamma ray and speed up the half-life? It even generates waste heat that can be turned into power. When you're done you just have the results of the 60/40 split.

So in conclusion it's not how fast the rotors go, its price/dollar. Its antiquated-flat-world-no-such-thing-as-germs-desig n vs. elegant. It just happens that the most efficient, cheapest, and most easily deployed happens to be environmentally friendly too. Wow what a concept.

Forty-eight countries are publicly committed to the Coalition

countries? yes
public no.
most of the world does not approve of what the US is doing in the war against terror.

Read these news items. These are countries from the coalition. None had a public opinion that supported starting the war in Iraq.

Japan: 65% opposed
Britain: two-thirds opposed
Spain: 91% opposed
Hungary: 82% opposed
Poland: 63% opposed
Czech republic: 12% supports it
britain spain Japan Eastern Europe

Actually, it's easy to find specific allegations of torture. It's also quite easy to find that the international and US courts have no control over guantanamo bay prisoners. And it's easy to find this from multiple sources. To me the very fact that the US government doesn't want courts to get involved signifies they're likely doing stuff that can not see the light of day. If there's nothing to hide, why are they hiding it?

Ofcourse, you could argue that these are all lies and hearsay, and that the US government would never ever use torture. But it is a fact that prisoners on guantanamo bay are held illegally (according to the geneva convention they should be pow's, but the US claims they aren't), and that they do not have due process rights (inalienable human right). If the US is breaking the law anyway in their detainment of these prisoners, would it be such a stretch to imagine them using torture as well?

There is such a thing as psychological torture by the way. If you're being held without accusation, without promise of release, ever (despite that the war in afghanistan is over, pow's haven't been returned or formally accused of a crime), and without even access to counsel or basically the outside world, would you feel ok? I'd feel downright miserable in such circumstances, even if they did not lay a hand on me. The geneva convention's definition of torture is "cruel and unusual treatment", which does not need to have a physical component involved.

I see no need for guantanamo bay. If the people there did something wrong, the regular US judicial system should be able to handle it. If they didn't do something wrong (and no, fighting for your country is not a crime), they should be freed. The very existance of guantanamo bay is a slap in the face of justice.

Actually, it's easy to find specific allegations of torture. It's also quite easy to find that the international and US courts have no control over guantanamo bay prisoners. And it's easy to find this from multiple sources. To me the very fact that the US government doesn't want courts to get involved signifies they're likely doing stuff that can not see the light of day. If there's nothing to hide, why are they hiding it?

Ofcourse, you could argue that these are all lies and hearsay, and that the US government would never ever use torture. But it is a fact that prisoners on guantanamo bay are held illegally (according to the geneva convention they should be pow's, but the US claims they aren't), and that they do not have due process rights (inalienable human right). If the US is breaking the law anyway in their detainment of these prisoners, would it be such a stretch to imagine them using torture as well?

There is such a thing as psychological torture by the way. If you're being held without accusation, without promise of release, ever (despite that the war in afghanistan is over, pow's haven't been returned or formally accused of a crime), and without even access to counsel or basically the outside world, would you feel ok? I'd feel downright miserable in such circumstances, even if they did not lay a hand on me. The geneva convention's definition of torture is "cruel and unusual treatment", which does not need to have a physical component involved.

I see no need for guantanamo bay. If the people there did something wrong, the regular US judicial system should be able to handle it. If they didn't do something wrong (and no, fighting for your country is not a crime), they should be freed. The very existance of guantanamo bay is a slap in the face of justice.

Nash himself said he felt his best years were behind him at age 30

That's very typical. As people get older, they get less creative. As people get married, they become unimaginative dolts.

Of course, I'm happily married, and I'd like to think that I still have *some* creative spark, but then, I *am* here, at 6:33 PM on Turkey-Day eve, reading slashdot...

Maybe they're right, after all?

ARIA are already proposing a CD-R levy to compensate for lost ARIA^H^H^H^H artist's revenue, claiming that it "makes sense".

Looks like burning Linux ISO's just more expensive Down Under.