Slashdot Mirror

Not that nuts he's aborted http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24076168

Perhaps he will try again. If not we'll have to turn to some other adventurer for our vicarious thrill-seeking.

Not that nuts he's aborted http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24076168

Well duh. Sharks need more than 3 ounces of water.

Sure, we know that now .

>the RM has already been broken up and sold off in stages, each made worse:
> PO Telephones became British Telecom became British Telecom Plc. in the '80s.

No. BT were a joke. I'm using a competitor. Cheaper and better.

Royal Mail are useless. I emailed Amazon begging them to use other people to deliver, not Royal Mail. This happened:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6768983.stm

You're not claiming they did that because of you are you?

They lied about posting stuff which didn't turn up; cards appeared at my door saying `you were out` when I was not out etc.

The Royal Mail aren't unique in that respect. Pretty much every delivery firm - or more correctly, their employees - does that sometimes.

Get rid of them, and introduce competition.

If you want competition, surely it would be better not to get rid of them. However, when it comes to delivering a letter, I doubt you can do better than next day (probably) delivery anywhere in the UK for 60p, which is the price of a first class stamp.

I don't need the mail much, but when I do, I want it to turn up on time, not end up lost (stolen, let's be honest)

Do you have evidence for that? Why would anybody want to steal your mail?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-188892/Quarter-million-letters-lost-week.html

The Daily Mail is the worst newspaper in the UK. The article is a blatantly dishonest spin on the situation. The headline says 280,000 a week lost. The small print says "lost or significantly delayed". The small print says that's 0.07% lost or significantly delayed or one letter in every 1,500. That doesn't seem quite so bad considering that 8 million letters a day are posted without a post code or with the wrong post code.

About minus eight years, so this has been going on since before there even was an iPhone.

>the RM has already been broken up and sold off in stages, each made worse:
> PO Telephones became British Telecom became British Telecom Plc. in the '80s.

No. BT were a joke. I'm using a competitor. Cheaper and better.

Royal Mail are useless. I emailed Amazon begging them to use other people to deliver, not Royal Mail. This happened:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6768983.stm

They lied about posting stuff which didn't turn up; cards appeared at my door saying `you were out` when I was not out etc.

They expect overtime when they finish their shift early (they're paid by the hour).

Get rid of them, and introduce competition. I don't need the mail much, but when I do, I want it to turn up on time, not end up lost (stolen, let's be honest)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-188892/Quarter-million-letters-lost-week.html

a) Historical sciences do in fact use the scientific method: make observations-> make theories-> make more observations-> refine theories.
b) Climate science is not at an early stage. A few of the predictions were slightly off, but that just means refining the parameters a little, not throwing out the whole model.

I looked up the "no ice in 2013" you mentioned, it's here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm. Notice that the actual estimates aren't predicting no ice until 2030 or 2040. We may be reversing the trend this year, but the longer trend is still towards less ice.

I see you responded to every comment except the one that actually answered your question, despite having undoubtedly read it. This link will tell you all you need to know.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm

And hey, when you combine that with maglaunch it actually becomes more cost effectiove to pull the stuff out of the sky, taking into account externalities like environmental damage and pollution. All of the raw materials are up there in far more than trace amounts. To respond to your other comment, phosphorus? Scientists believe that most of the earth's supply came from asteroids in the first place:

http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/1155/meteorites-donated-lifes-phosphorus

Nitrogen? It's right up there:

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunar/minecarb.html

Potassium? The moon is rotten with the stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_differentiation#Moon.27s_KREEP

Thing about the earth is, it's basically a big ball of rock floating among a bunch of other balls and lumps of rock which all formed around the same time and are made of the same stuff. Not always in the same proportions but you can find what you're looking for easily enough and tear it out with nukes if you want to because there's nothing up there to care. Solar furnaces are a better option of course.

So, yeah, anyway, I'll leave you to it.

"There's an abundance of everything we need in space"

1)If that were true, how come we need to bring everything?

Yes, because European colonists in the new world went forth boldly into the wilderness stark bollock naked, preferring to gnaw their tools from the deadfalls and cliffs they encountered. It takes time to set things up, but once you're set up you have an abundance in virgin territory. The tools are different but the principle is the same.

2)Space is a dead vacuum, with a few rocks here and there separated by light hours of nothing. If that's "abundant" to you, can I send you there one way?

Doesn't matter how far away the resources are as long as you have a steady supply line. Although in terms of the time it will take to get there, they aren't that far away at all. One such resource is the asteroid Eros.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm

Oh gosh, more base and precious metals than have ever or could ever be mined from the surface of the earth you say, and a giant natural furnace at your back to help extract and refine them, without ever having to care about environmental issues? I can see why nobody would be interested in doing that, or even call it abundance.

And that's just one rock. There are millions of them.

Did the guy who designed this not read about the building that melts cars with sunlight?

Hell, Archimedes supposedly tried this in ~200BC

The only reason it was added to rice is because that's what these people grow/eat on a daily basis.

Actually many of the people with vitamin A deficiency live in Africa, in areas not known as rice country.

The actual problem is an economic system that leads to people growing rice almost exclusively: "Beyond that though, poorly-fed people are unlikely to be able to absorb beta-carotene even when they eat golden rice. To use it, they need a diverse diet, including green leafy vegetables. But the sorts of vegetables people used to be able to find have declined in number as the green revolution of the 60s and 70s emphasised monocultures of new varieties. Household consumption of vegetables in India has fallen by 12% in two decades." -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3122923.stm

Golden rice only contributes to the problem (economic and ecological) of monoculture. Growing carrots, sweet potatoes,mangoes, papaya, or other vitamin-A rich crops is a much more sensible answer -- unless one is devoted to the current exploitative system.

The purpose of "golden rice" is not to solve malnutrition, that could be done far more cheaply and easily with carrots, etc. Its purpose is to provide good PR for the biotech industry: "Why, yes, our GM crops are largely untested for safety, and most of the studies on safety that do exist are ones we've done ourselves (trust us!); and yes, they present a novel ecological hazard of genome pollution; and yes, they have led to increased pesticides use; and yes, they give more control of agriculture to corporate interests -- but look! We found a very expensive and impractical way to prevent some cases of vitamin A deficiency! Love us! Worship us! Big Science!"

It's not science, it's scientism in the advancement of corporatism.

This is simply not true. According to the dept. of commerce, there are 100 million poor people who don't have internet access

http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/documents/exploringthedigitalnation-computerandinternetuseathome.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20899109

And if you leave the western world for a moment you'll find its even worse.

I don't know where you're getting your information about ubiquity, but it's just plain wrong.

Every gov knows what Russia, the UK and US do with their "Consulate" floors

Oh come now A., the club is bigger than that! The majority of countries get in on the spy game at some level.
The Germans: The German Prism: Berlin Wants to Spy
Very involved in the current crisis: Assad did not order Syria chemical weapons attack, says German press
The Finns and Swedes can't be left out: Supo wants expanded net surveillance powers
Nor the French: France 'runs vast electronic spying operation using NSA-style methods'
The club is bigger still: Think US snooping is bad? Try Italy, India orCanada
Thousands of Russian spies in US: ex-CIA agent
Gordievsky: Russia has as many spies in Britain now as the USSR ever did
Chinese Spies Targeting U.K., MI5 Warns
But of course! Chinese use honeytraps to spy on French companies, intelligence report claims
Germany accuses China of industrial espionage
Germany targets Russian, Chinese spies
Spies in Sweden mostly from China, Russia, Iran
Number of Foreign Spies on the Rise in Finland
Austrian capital ‘filled with Iranian spies’
Foreign spies targeting Polish shale - Natural Gas Europe
Spain arrests three suspected of spying for Iran
Russia warns Ireland it will retaliate in spy row
FBI releases papers on Russian Irish spies in US - ‘Ghost Stories’

Sometimes the trails can get very complicated.

For some reason this video comes to mind: Its a Small World

LADEE will end its mission by crashing into the Moon.

Will the crash site be chosen in some hope of finding ice on the moon? Finding ice on the moon is crucial to a moon base isn't it? There's been no mention whether searching for signs of ice is part of LADEE's mission.

Yes, the planet has gone through many, many periods of extreme warming and cooling over the millenniums however there is no previous warming trend spanning 110 years like we have since the 1900's. Data suggests the start of the industrialized age has contributed heavily heavily to the climate change issue. We've never seen warming before over 20 year periods like we see since 1900 [1] and the only best guess at this point is industrialization and anthropogenic activity impact the climate negatively.

So, depending who is making what claim, it's very easy to misrepresent the facts or misinterpret the data and the public quickly becomes confused or frustrated by it and declares "Nobody knows what's going on and I'm not letting you waste my time anymore". If you're an oil or energy magnate, this is precisely what you want as it keeps anyone from talking about curbing emissions or looking at alternative energy sources.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/climate_change/describing_climatic_trends_rev1.shtml

Could it be the case that the wife planned to visit the area where her body was found, maybe for a photography hobby.

It could be just unfortunate she met her killer there and died. Not unusual for a wife to use her husbands laptop. Many couples trust each other with passwords. She might even have asked him to do the search for her.

Planting evidence doesn't have to be the alternative option and some times there are coincidences.

E.g

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21442107

A man has been jailed for life for killing a 19-year-old woman more than a decade after her boyfriend was wrongly jailed for the crime.

Shahidul Ahmed strangled Rachel Manning in Milton Keynes and dumped her body at a golf course in 2000.

In 2002, Barri White was convicted of murder and his friend Keith Hyatt of perverting the course of justice. Both had their convictions quashed in 2007.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21412241

Keith's only involvement on the night of Rachel Manning's murder was to give a lift to his friend Barri White, who was looking for his girlfriend Rachel after she became lost in Milton Keynes in December 2000.

In a tragic coincidence, Keith was going about his job as a courier two days later when he spotted police at Woburn Golf Club.

He parked his van and made the fatal mistake of asking about the missing teenager, at the very spot where her body had been found.

It was simply another act of kindness for Barri and for Rachel, but it roused suspicion.

Police seized Keith's van and, he believes, "stopped investigating the murder" and built a case around him and Barri, an "easy touch".

There is a whole lot more behind this story including a "jail house confession" to another inmate which is obviously discredited now.

Hopefully the retrial will be conclusive in this cisco case.
     

Could it be the case that the wife planned to visit the area where her body was found, maybe for a photography hobby.

It could be just unfortunate she met her killer there and died. Not unusual for a wife to use her husbands laptop. Many couples trust each other with passwords. She might even have asked him to do the search for her.

Planting evidence doesn't have to be the alternative option and some times there are coincidences.

E.g

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21442107

A man has been jailed for life for killing a 19-year-old woman more than a decade after her boyfriend was wrongly jailed for the crime.

Shahidul Ahmed strangled Rachel Manning in Milton Keynes and dumped her body at a golf course in 2000.

In 2002, Barri White was convicted of murder and his friend Keith Hyatt of perverting the course of justice. Both had their convictions quashed in 2007.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21412241

Keith's only involvement on the night of Rachel Manning's murder was to give a lift to his friend Barri White, who was looking for his girlfriend Rachel after she became lost in Milton Keynes in December 2000.

In a tragic coincidence, Keith was going about his job as a courier two days later when he spotted police at Woburn Golf Club.

He parked his van and made the fatal mistake of asking about the missing teenager, at the very spot where her body had been found.

It was simply another act of kindness for Barri and for Rachel, but it roused suspicion.

Police seized Keith's van and, he believes, "stopped investigating the murder" and built a case around him and Barri, an "easy touch".

There is a whole lot more behind this story including a "jail house confession" to another inmate which is obviously discredited now.

Hopefully the retrial will be conclusive in this cisco case.
     

Only the top left corner of each slashdot story is round though. Don't forget to specify that.

Whoa! You posted to a slashdot story! East Texas here I come!

Most deserts around the world are situated in the subtropical zones where the dry air from the Hadley cells descends, around 30 degrees north and south. Global warming appears to be expanding the Hadley cells somewhat which will move the desertified zones a little further toward the poles without necessarily shifting the other edges of those zones further from the equator thus expanding the desert area. For example there is evidence that southern Europe is getting drier but the southern edge of the Sahara Desert shows no signs of shifting northward.

These articles seem to disagree:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8150415.stm
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2811
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/16/highereducation.climatechange
http://www.co2science.org/subject/d/summaries/desertification.php

"One of the most famous successes of the British Security Service was its great spy round-up of August 1914. The event is still celebrated by MI5, but a careful study of the recently-opened records show it to be a complete fabrication - MI5 created and perpetuated this remarkable lie.

The great spy round-up of August 1914 never took place - as it was a complete fabrication designed to protect MO5(G) from the interference of politicians or bureaucrats.

The claim made next day that all but one had been arrested was false, and its constant repetition by Kell and Holt-Wilson was a lie."

In other words - MI5 had followed the shining example of William Le Queux and made it all up.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER

Convenient paranoia in the TLAs is not new.

Someone posted this in a comment a few days ago.
It is a comment from Adam Curtis of the BBC on MI5, which quite well illustrates how effective paranoia driven internal witch hunts are. I can't believe it would any different in American intelligence organisation.

I believe this comment is quite appropriate once again.Read it. Its worth the laugh.

According to the BBC, the income would need to be twice the current price per megawatt-hour (£45/MWhr), so whoever runs it, it probably won't be cost effective.

Today, electricity sells on the wholesale market for about £45 per megawatt-hour (MwH). But anything under £90 a MwH would see Hinkley lose money

Don't get me wrong, I think we need some kind of reliable power production capability and I think nuclear meets that criteria without having to rely on fossil fuels. We just have to keep Australia on side for the fuel.

In MOST Western European countries, public schools are GOOD.

In some, they are best in the world. Like mine (Finland). I had more a few discussions about it with US exchange students back in university, and not a single one of them could ever get their head around the fact that "best public schools in the world according to international tests many years in a row" also function on basis of "no child left behind" and "tests aren't that important until 8th-9th grade". They'd accept the former, and then their brain would short out completely when hearing the latter two. It's like trying to convince someone that black is while. I actually got accused of lying several times. Nowadays, I just post this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm

Frankly, after having the same issue a lot of times with people from very different parts of US I suspect that you're being fed a line as a nation to make you want to have the system you currently have to line someone's pockets.

Actually I don't see how the Moon can move away. That would require the Moon acquiring energy in the process,

Um, the moon is moving away from the Earth, at a rate of 3.8cm per year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(astronomy)

Reason why: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12311119

PS: The Earth's rotation is also slowing down...(!)

heh.
Should I be watching the BBC or PBS?

We're left with trying to news from multiple sources and trying to piece together the truth. Yes, Russia Today is a propaganda outfit. Do they do propagandize any more than Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN? The BBC? PBS?

I guess the question then is did Turkish police really find 2kg of sarin gas and arrest the Syrian rebels who were transporting it?
We may never really know the truth on that. English-language sources:
http://rt.com/news/sarin-gas-turkey-al-nusra-021/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22720647
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/30/us-syria-crisis-turkey-idUSBRE94T0YO20130530

Spanish media did pick it up, so if you can read Spanish - http://www.abc.es/internacional/20130531/abci-sarin-siria-201305301816.html
Apparently Fox News also reports on this stuff, but only in Spanish:
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/espanol/2013/05/30/detienen-en-turquia-con-gas-sarin-doce-islamistas-radicales-segun-la-prensa/

And for what it's worth, some of the UN research team members are starting to say there is a clear indication that it was the rebels, not the government who did it.

More information for whoever is interested: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188

They aren't showing the public what "endangered" or whose lives were actually endangered. We are suppose to just believe them.

So what it comes down to is that the only way to convince you that the lives of secret agents are endangered by there being a list of them in the wild is to actually show you the list of secret agents and explain how they are in danger? And everyone in the public needs to be convinced in the same way?

Am I the only one that sees even a tiny problem with that?

The only people I'd have respect for are those who are doing something to stop this shit. David Miranda, Julian Assage, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, rebels, terrorists, and others.

So your sympathies are literally with the terrorists? What could possibly go wrong?

Would you care for a lifetime supply of bus tickets?

If it does endanger lives. Well- good. Maybe it'll teach people working for the government is dangerous and stupid. Putting your life in danger for money is not a bright move.

So you are for terrorists and want the lives of government officials endangered? You seem to have an endless supply of bad ideas. Maybe you're ready for a lifestyle change?

What enemy, you ask? Well, that would (generally) be the citizens and the alternative and independent media that hasn't been compromised or taken over.

It looks like you are guessing, and are way off the mark. Try again.... here is a hint.

At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
London terror bomb plot: the four terrorists
7 July Bombings

chemical weapons was last week.

this morning, a fighter dropped either napalm or thermite on a fucking school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-23892594

that oil spill was competently handled after the fact

Oh, you mean like this?? Or this?

How about this:

In July 2013, the discovery of a 40,000 pound tar mat near East Grand Terre, Louisiana prompted the closure of waters to commercial fishing

Sorry, but if you believe what BP has been telling you, you are gravely mistaken.

If by 'completely handled' you mean done badly, incompletely, and we get lied about it sure .. if you mean actually remediating the damage from it, well, you're either delusional or on the payroll.

I listened to one of Tyson's radio segments a few months ago. I can't remember which station it was. There seemed to be two minutes of chat with an expert, followed by 5 minutes of adverts for the entire length of the show. Worse, Tyson has a side-kick who's only purpose is to be a smart arse and constantly wise-crack while the expert is talking. This guy was probably the most punchable radio presenter I think I've ever heard. Perhaps punchable is the wrong word to use. I actually turned to look at the cricket bat I had resting up against the wall. The show was horrific. Tyson should be ashamed to call himself a science communicator.

I speak as someone who regularly listens to Melvin Bragg's In Our Time of course, so I'm used to something a little more cerebral.

World War 3 is what is being staged here. Russia has already sent a fleet to the area. Both Russia and China have warned the US not to strike Syria.

That was not said at all. They cautioned about leaping to conclusions about the nature of the attack and should let the weapons inspectors finish their investigation. They said, literally, "Military strikes could have catastrophic consequences for the entire region." No one said anything about war, except Iran, who no one cares about. Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23845800

"Rubbish, show me what was misquoted."

You have to quote something to be misquoted, the fact you didn't quote anything and just made stuff up makes it kind of difficult for me to quote anything. If you want to see what I'm referring to you could just follow the thread back up, it's not difficult.

"Citation is required, I see no evidence anywhere. No, some blogger's opinion from the UK does not count. Facts only."

Read the news, any news source on the issue will do. In fact, the fact you haven't explains why you're woefully misinformed on this topic. See here for example:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/25/us-syria-crisis-russia-idUSBRE97O09820130825

Relevant quote:

"Russia, which has suggested that Syrian rebels may have carried out the attack"

"You could have found by searching for "United Nations finds rebels guilty". You obviously didn't try very hard to search."

I did that exact search and the only thing from the UN was a suspicion from a specific individual at the UN:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188

Quote:

"According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated."

Even she accepts there's no incontrovertible proof. All the links from that search are either speculation by private individuals or Del Ponte's viewpoint. There is no official UN ruling on the issue. In fact, on Google by the 6th link it starts talking about Sierra Leone, if this is widespread and common knowledge as you claim that the UN has officially claimed that the rebels definitely used chemical weapons then there would be pages of hits from such a search. You're confusing opinion and suspicion with fact, which is quite ironic given that's what you're claiming the US shouldn't base an attack on Syria on.

You need to link to the official UN ruling itself, or at least a site that references it or just admit you were wrong. Linking to vague third party sites of private individuals with little credibility that don't even back up your claim of official UN condemnation does nothing for your argument.

"The Syrian Army is now planting IEDs and blowing them up huh? Come on now, you can't really be that daft can you?"

You really don't have the slightest understanding of this conflict do you? You know Assad's forces are comprised of not just the Syrian military but Hezbollah, and pro-Assad paramilitaries? The latter of which both very much have IEDs as their modus-operandi, especially against witnesses to a massacre they just caught red handed committing.

But anyway I'm done, it's clear you're arguing from a point of complete lack of understanding on the topic. You obviously have absolutely no idea given that you think Assad's forces comprise only of the Syrian military itself, given that you think it's still in question as to whether a chemical attack even happened. I really can't be bothered to waste any more time on someone who can't at least even keep up with the current news on the topic and at least have a basic grasp of the various players involved in the conflict on both sides. You're lazy and forming an opinion on next to no information, that's a guaranteed recipe for ignorance and you've proven that. Well done.

Protesters have dumped several chests of tea into Boston harbour.

Seriously, this was reported over a week ago - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23776345 I thought this was supposed to be a news website.

Same deal happened with Passenger Pigeons,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon or Wild Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is an extinct North American bird. The species lived in enormous migratory flocks until the early 20th century, when hunting and habitat destruction led to its demise.[2] One flock in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being 1 mi (1.5 km) wide and 300 mi (500 km) long, took 14 hours to pass, and held in excess of 3.5 billion birds.

Tunnel nets were also used to great effect, and one particularly large net was capable of catching 3,500 pigeons at a time.

At a nesting site in Petoskey, Michigan in 1878, 50,000 birds were killed each day for nearly five months.

Paul Ehrlich reported that a "single hunter" sent three million birds to eastern cities during his career.

By the mid-1890s, the Passenger Pigeon almost completely disappeared. In 1897, a bill was introduced in the Michigan legislature asking for a 10-year closed season on Passenger Pigeons. This was a futile gesture. Similar legal measures were passed and disregarded in Pennsylvania.

The last fully authenticated record of a wild bird was near Sargents, Pike County, Ohio, on March 22 or 24, 1900, when the bird was killed by a boy named Press Clay Southworth with a BB gun.

And today, same thing happening with birds passing through Afghanistan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23486991

So what do you expect from AGW? People will do *nothing* until it bites them in the ass. Montreal Protocol was only created to preserve Ozone because,

      1. ozone depletion already started and there were measurable effects - including sunburn
      2. you could replace the CFCs in question with better ones - one company that had a patent was against regulation, but they changed their mind when patent expired! Imagine that!
    3. some didn't like that if nothing was done, ozone would be completely gone by 2020 and we'd have UV index of 60+ instead of mere 10 or 15

With AGW, it will be ignored until it can't be ignored no more. By then, the effects could become catastrophic, just like with passenger pigeons. Unlike CFCs that kill ozone for 40 years, released carbon stays in carbon cycle for many centuries.. Even acting when we chose to act will not stop AGW from being very nasty indeed. +10C minimum over current temperatures (of +15C).

We abbolished nuclear plants last year (but they are STILL running). Building a coal plant takes 10 years of planning nad 5 years of construction.

Actually most of these coal projects were planned almost a decade ago after Germany decided for the first time to exit nuclear power in 2000 during the time of Gerhard Schroder.

Germany's coal-fired power plants contributed more than 50% to the nation's electricity demand in the first half of this year as output from natural gas-fired power plants and wind turbines dropped, according to the Fraunhofer Institute.

No, by burning coal.

No, I read the BBC interview of Phil Jones himself. No AWG supporter has been able to ever answer any of the issues brougt up by that.

That's because he answered them himself. There are essentially no 'hanging questions' about the CRU data. It's all in your confused little mind.

No, I read the BBC interview of Phil Jones himself. No AWG supporter has been able to ever answer any of the issues brougt up by that.

This. There have been independently raised suspicions that rebels have also used chemical weapons. It's reckless to put everything on the regime without clear proof in this case, especially when the stakes are so high.

Liberia is a failed state, ranking 174 (of 187 countries) in the Human Development Index. Probably, somebody has manipulated the admission exam for his own profit. Reminds me a bit of Robert Mugabe winning the lottery.

"Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know very much about the world."

In the UK, and I would guess in most of the rest of the world, women were "allowed" into IT early on because it wasn't seen as being a career. As soon as money could be made from it, the women were squeezed out. Grace Hopper likely would not have been hired in the 1960s, never mind now.

Britain did have significant numbers of women programmers - ICL used to have an army of "pregnant programmers" who did a lot of its software support while on maternity leave (back in the days of 300 baud modems) and Steve Shirley's company "Freelance Programmers" employed women based at home. And there, I think you have it: until the IT industry is prepared to employ people who want to go home occasionally and have a life outside work, it's going to be more hostile on average to women than men.

Check out the this article and search for the section on Geoffrey Prime and read what he got up to.

And remember his "data collection" was done on pieces of card, and was before the days that most adults/parents carry mobile tracking devices around with them so their locations could be known at most times.

Spying on love interests is one thing, but spying on innocent children to plan sexually assaulting them is a different category. It's happened before, and I don't understand how people can still defend these monstrous surveillence activities.

Why won't someone think of the children when it's finally appropriate?

I think in US it is not the unions that can help. These are incompetent, corrupt bureaucrats that are charge with tasks that overwhelm them. The problem is elsewhere me thinks. The general attitude seems to be confrontation with workers organizing themselves being seen as communists or mob or both.

I am really at a loss as to why of late any news coming from US is about corruption, stupidity, oppression, showing people that are arrogant, badly educated or the opposite but then smart enough to reap off anybody else and this all comes always in a mix with 'we are the best' pride usually. Come to think of it the only things US of A is good at seem to be sending carrier groups all over the place and punishing people for silly things.

I am pretty sure there is more to it than that - maybe it is the pond between us that is allowing only the ugly noise to come over.

the BBC suggests so

Mr Ballmer's planned departure comes shortly after activist investing fund ValueAct Capital Management took a small stake in the company, and started agitating for a change in strategy and a clear succession plan.

Despite the recent criticism, the timing of his decision to go surprised analysts.

"Yes, this was a surprise, especially considering how close it is to the recently announced strategic overhaul towards devices and services," said Sid Parakh, an analyst at McAdams Wright Ragen.

Nonsense. Different sects within their own belief system blow each other up all the time.

Blowing things up IS WHAT THEY DO. They are trained from birth that blowing something up and taking yourself with it is the way to heaven.

All you have to do is have a SLIGHTLY different system of beliefs and they will blow you up.

What places have the MOST bombings? Places like India and Pakistan.

Look at this item - just came out on BBC 5 minutes ago:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23811328

Lebanon, two muslim groups exchanging bombings.

Hah, you should see how the surveillance system got started over here in the UK. Read this and weep.

I was expecting a map pinpointing where every death occurred, instead we have a a funny interface to a list of ~30 countries with the # of death per 100k people.

I was too, as I've seen several before for the UK.

Something like this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8401344.stm (for the UK)
Or this http://citybeast.com/londoncyclists.html (cycle injuries/deaths in London).