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Not only they think they can, they can:Bills about swine flu could be used to prohibit gatherings, most handy in case of economic collapse.

Anyone notice the increase in stories in the mainstream media connecting Craigslist to various crimes - the "Craigslist robber", selling babies on Craigslist, Cragislist hookers, Craigslist attempted murderers, Craigslist scammers, etc, etc.

It seems that every struggling newspaper in the country goes to some effort to tie Craigslist to any local crime. I don't recall any of these papers connecting crimes to their own classified ads. It's almost like these papers have some sort of agenda...

If the government buys the car for you, it doesn't save any money. http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2009_05_07_Free_cars_for_poor_fuel_road_rage/srvc=home&position=also

The NYT already tried this, failed and moved back to an ad-based free site. The bottom line is that few people want a subscription model for an on-line service and that pay as you go articles are too expensive (as we've already seen with the private publishers of scientific articles, who wants to pay $25 or more per article?).

P.S. you might want to amend your signature, the current situation is hardly Obama's fault: From the day Bush took office to the day he left office, the Dow dropped a net of 2,306 points, which is the worst performance of any president. You can check the facts here. What's also interesting is that the U.S. National debt nearly doubled under Bush. If that's what we can expect from a "fiscal conservative", maybe you should consider giving Obama a chance to un-fuck what's happened instead of practicing the usual brand of trolling and character assassination that the party of "family values" likes to use.

As for your quip about funding - everyone is after money. Which means that it is a completely useless metric to determine the accuracy of a scientific study.

Actually, it's a great tool to determine the accuracy of a scientific study. Let's see, a scientist writes a report that will ultimately give more power to the body that pays his salary and for his possible future grants. Combine that will all the scientists that lost grants and/or their jobs because they dared challenge the governments pre-determined conclusion. You really don't see anything wrong with that?

Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn't believe that humans are causing global warming.

"I don't think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

"They've seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven't gone along with the so-called political consensus that we're in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.

You may call me a kook. That's fine. I will call you a sheeple. Go ahead and give your rights to the government because they funded a study says that we will all die if you don't. Sheeple!

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
-Samuel Adams

Oh, and here's something for you manmade-global-warming nuts: a former astronaut calling out global warming hucksters as perpetuating lies and academic intimidation as a means to increase government control. http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/general/view.bg?articleid=1152427

Way to make it personal, asshole. I'm a college student so I can get away with charging 20 bucks an hour undercutting everyone else (high gas prices and an outdated website, you see; the website does no selling for me) and it's still a reasonable amount of money considering my expenses -- and I'm really good at what I do, if my continued referrals mean anything.

Discarding the politics of personal destruction and returning to the issues, it's silly of you to assert that only Democrats have dissonance within their ranks. There are many varied viewpoints in the Republican party, from the wacky (and IMO quite stupid) Creationists to the pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage Giuliani conservatives to the corrupt idiots like Ted Stevens who I'm happy to see go. People like me consider the Ted Stevenses and the Arlen Specters and the Olympia Snowes (the latter two of which supported this pork-laden stimulus package in the Senate) to be, as you say, wolves in sheeps' clothing.

And unfortunately, Barack was pitched to us as a messenger from fairy land sent to save us all, that he would magically make everything better. He can't even instill his own purported values of transparency, freedom of information and clean government in his own party members despite his sweeping election. There is no hope for them; indeed, I think they've started to rub off on him -- there are no pork or earmarks in the stimulus bill, but there are special spending projects and shovel-ready construction projects and countless other Democrat special projects that just can't wait to garner Democrat votes with government dollars.

I think it's kinda funny that we naively go about our business believing that the prison systems cannot afford to implement things like cell phone honeypots or jamming devices locally when they are obviously not as poor as we think. Let's take this recent example of a prison system that spent 77,000 dollars to update the prison with 117 brand new flat screen high definition televisions for their inmates.
     

I submitted a story about this Monday, Constitutionality of P2P law "under attack" (rejected) after seeing it in an AP story in the Chicago Tribune. That story quoted NYCL, who it of course called Ray Beckerman. I wondered at the time why he hadn't submitted it himself.

But at any rate, for the corporate media spin on this, here are a few links:
Billion Dollar Charlie vs. the RIAA
Legal Jujitsu in a File-Sharing Copyright Case
Lawsuits Brought by Music Industry Are Unconstitutional, Lawyer Says
Law professor fires back at song-swapping lawsuits (AP)
Law Professor Takes on RIAA
Prof: Penalty unfair, will help with $1M download lawsuit
RIAA defendant enlists Harvard Law prof, students
Harvard Professor: File-Sharing Lawsuits Unconstitutional

I find it amusing that you are accusing me of lying. I said this:

What's smart about believing that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that man and the dinosaurs walked the Earth together?

To which you said this:

Second, please post the entire quote that proves what you're claiming she thinks is true.

So I provided this story from the Los Angeles Times. Quoting:

After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.

Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.

Now you are accusing me of lying. Where was that lie exactly? Did I say she was quoted as saying that? Someone who lived with her is quoted as saying that. There was also the matter of the librarian she fired. Some sort of book banning attempt. You can call those sources liars if you want, but I don't see where I lied. Rather interesting though that there are two different sources for her wacko beliefs.

Um, ok WTF does that have to do with me, A DEMOCRAT?

Sorry, I just assumed you were a hyper-partisan Republican troll. I guess I was giving you too much credit. You are just an asshole. Jumping all over the thread and posting to unrelated comments whining about the fact that I hadn't replied to you first.

I'd like to apologize to all hyper-partisan Republican trolls. He's clearly not one of you.

Yes, Barack Obama, by mentioning arugula, has shown he is the elitist among the major party candidates.

John McCain, on the other hand, is just chock-full of mavericky goodness and simple values, and isn't elitist at all, despite the fact that he and his wife own a private jet and 8-12 homes on 8 properties (McCain says he doesn't know... it must be hard to keep track), spent $273,000 on household employees last year, and THIS JUST IN: own 13 cars. Oh, and despite McCain's claims that he has only bought American cars all his life, those cars include a Honda, a Lexus, and a Volkswagen, and also in the family is the Prius he boasted about his daughter buying just last year when he was pandering to voters with different concerns.

Oh, and Cindy McCain may have worn a $313,100 outfit on the first night of the Republican convention and said you just can't get around Arizona without a private plane, but trust the people who brought you the Iraq war: she's as down-to-Earth and "simple folk" as they come.

Those "uppity" Obamas, with their one house, on which they got a better-than-average mortgage deal (gasp!) based on Obama's senate income and book proceeds, have one car for the family. And both Obamas paid for their education with student loans, with Barack, who was raised by a single mother and his grandparents, ending up as president of the Harvard Law Review. John McCain, the son and grandson of Navy Admirals, was practically the definition of a legacy admission at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Yeah, that arugula comment really tells the whole story of who's an elitist.

the FBI and Secret Service will react strongly.

I hope they will, mainly due to what's been going on with "Troopergate"

Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4 Article 5 Article 6 Article 7 Article 8

It's a bit of reading but they do cover emails within the investigations.

You forgot about her attempts at censorship: http://news.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1117009&srvc=2008campaign&position=15 or perhaps you don't have a good analogue on the Obama side.

If you follow the link in TFA to the Boston Herald article it is apparent that this is a different project to the XO 2. The article itself is a bit muddled though so it does look as though it is talking about the same system.

The argument isn't that blacks are genetically predisposed to committing crime. That is a strawman and it unfairly preempts any discussion on genetic differences between races.

The argument is that groups of people who share relatively close genetic markers will share the phenotypic traits defined by the DNA. Identical twins share identical DNA, so they look and behave very similarly to each other. Not only their physical attributes, but also their mental attributes and temperament come from the sharing of DNA. Similarly, children will share traits (both physical and mental) with their parents.

As anthropological history shows, humans have lived in relatively small groups and intermarried amongst relatives for most of history. In small closed societies, specific traits become more prevalent. White skin, curly hair, bone density, height, nose shape, and yes, intelligence. These differences are real and specifically linked to the history of our genes. There is no "genetic lottery". You get the genes that your parents have, and they got theirs from their parents. The only lottery is to which parents a person is born, and except in the most colloquial of terms such a thing can hardly be called chance.

Since intelligence is one of biggest factors in societal success or failure, even a slight advantage is enough to propel one person higher than another (even at the microcosmic scale of a university classroom, the smartest students are easily identified over the lower tiers). As humanity progresses towards modernity, the impact of intelligence is much greater than in primitive hunter-gatherer societies. A group with a high average intelligence will gradually (perhaps suddenly) outperform a group with low average intelligence.

This is not to say that average group intelligence applies to any particular individual within the group. As with any distribution there are outliers on both sides of the average. An above average individual in a lower average group could definitely outperform a below average individual from a high average group. The overlap is significant. However, looking at the groups as a whole, the tendency of the high average group to outperform the low average group is consistent.

Nurture, education, and nutrition play very significant roles in the underperformance of certain groups, but to discount genetics as a factor of intelligence and thus also societal success just because it seems racist is to be putting illogic and superstition above science.

Why should we study this? What good could come out of finding a certain group sufficiently deficient? The most obvious is to find ways of structuring society to maximize their potential. By pitting underachievers against overachievers, the result is reasonbly guaranteed to fall in favor of the overachiever. If the alternative to repeated failure is crime, then the underachiever is very tempted by the easier path of crime.

It's Science

Kick'em to the curb. Period.

They pull this crap every few weeks and have some of the worst "service" fees around. I say fuck them and move your registration and hosting out of the US (line GANDI.net but there are many others just as good. Every time you pay Godaddy for anything you are supporting their less than reasonable actions.

You have been warned now and many times before: stop using godaddy.

BTW: Cops are biggest "welfare queens" in the world. They make six figures and still want more. Fuck them.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1042838

Catch the part about the nametag in the original stories? Probably not... we'll probably find out later on that it was a nametag with 3 LEDS and a battery, maybe a wire was showing ... then all hell broke loose at Logan airport!

Here's one to start with : http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1033288

Actually, looking at other mainstream press coverage suggests that it was indeed a test set of the XO computers that are part of the OLPC project. I think the Gizmodo text is mistaken.

Take a look at the most recent Reuters story, which is datelined in Nigerian capital Abuja. By inference, the "U.S. aid organization" being referred to in the lede is the OLPC nonprofit mentioned later. (Terribly ambiguous writing!)

For a little more proof, take a look at this earlier coverage of the initial laptop donation to the Abuja school. This coverage says that the "News Agency of Nigeria" (which Reuters said reported Friday about porn on the laptops) reported on June 29 that a donation of 300 laptops had been received from the OLPC program. The reason it was a story then is that the school which received the donated laptops did not have power.

An interesting question: why the negative spin? Why report that the school which got the laptops had no power; and why report that the laptops are being used to look at porn? Is there coverage of positive educational uses of the devices that the other media isn't picking up?

Every hydrocarbon you save can be used somewhere else.

Cops == Morlocks
You == Eloi

Honestly it's more like a veal-thing but you get the point. BTW, did you know there are cops pulling down $200k a year?

Welcome to dinner, we'll be serving you soon.

Oh wow, so maybe there were two fires Tuesday (as per my earlier post) because there
was smoke in the same area (in the tunnels) at 3PM that day.

I also what there is to burn in that area, Longfellow is stone and they say
"roof of the bridge", but it's not exactly something you'd see in Madison County.
The Herald gives a slightly better idea of the scene.

Yeah, but does anything happen to them after that?

Meanwhile, Massachusetts, which is known for generally being stupid, is bucking its long-held tradition of stupidity by experimenting with longer school days. Check it out: http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg ?articleid=184827 , http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070224/ap_on_re_us/lo nger_school_days , http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles /2007/02/25/massachusetts_leading_national_effort_ for_longer_school_days/

Actually, it has now come to light that their actions after the fiasco has started may have furthered the problem through willful inaction. See http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg ?articleid=181301 and make your own judgment call.

The article gives their defense as "we didn't know it was our signs causing the debacle that we were filming", but their close proximity puts that in question.

And even more bad that the two poor schmucks working for the ad agency are still charged with crimes. They should be set free, and whatever moron phoned in a litebrite as a "bomb" (and the corresponding police moron who agreed with him) should be looking at potential liability.

The Boston Herald has reported that the two in question are on video at Sullivan Square T station filming the police responce and subsequent detonation of one of the first devices...which contradicts their statements that they were unaware of the panic the devices were causing. if this is true they may not be out of the woods yet. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg ?articleid=181301

Put up flashing lights == Charges

Plant a fake bomb (made to look like a bomb) == No Charges

"In the hospital incident, investigators believe a former hospital employee planted the phony bomb in an office at 185 Harrison Ave. He has been identified but has not been charged, the sources said."

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg ?articleid=180349
Same city, same cops, same time period... what gives???

actually, part of the problem was that they found two fake pipe bombs on the same day http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg ?articleid=180349 . Otherwise this nonsense would probably have been over quick

Not always, by any means--things often change at the last minute. Just an example: Yo-Yo Ma played with some students at Patrick Deval's inaugral gala last week (http://news.bostonherald.com/localPolitics/view.b g?articleid=174458). One song they played he finished arranging at 2:00PM the afternoon of the performance, faxed it over to where the students were waiting, and rehearsed with them at 3:30 PM. They performed it a few hours later. Oh, they knew what they were playing in a vague sense before then--they knew the song--but they didn't know the details of what notes they were expected to play (the arrangement). It's not so different from software development after all--in fact, that was the third arrangement of the same song they had been given. Changing requirements, anyone?

Remember the Forrester report just two weeks ago claiming that iTunes sales were collapsing? What ever happened to the Forrester that always seemed to predict hockey-stick growth for any and all online endeavors? Lately they just haven't been as upbeat, even when evidence indicates that they ought to be.

Can you partisan wackos ever see beyond the red and blue and realize you both suck?

... I suddenly remembered that mainstream journalists have been doing this for awhile now, so no worries. Falsify away.

Why not? It will make it easier to get pictures to go with their fake news.

Canadian Suicide Car Bombers??

This Canadian suicide bomber killed fellow Canadians in Afghanistan. These Canadian Al Qaeda supporters, who had world-wide connections, were preparing to start attacking various targets in Canada, and were trying to obtain enough explosives for a large truck bomb. Al Qaeda has warned Canada that it is subject to attack (due at least in part to the fact that Canadians as a whole don't follow extreme Islam). If Britain can have suicide bombers attack inside the country, I doubt that there is any reason Canada couldn't. A suicide bicycle bomber killed four Candian soldiers in September, and a suicide car bomber killed two Canadian soldiers last week. Canadians are already being killed by suicide terrorists, at least one of which was Canadian, and there are more like minded people already operating in Canada, partially due to extremists exploiting holes in Canada's immigration policy. Hopefully, when the Canadian security services break up terror cells in the future, they won't just deport them, but will send them to prison. Canada is a great nation facing some difficult choices and tasks.

Sony rushed everything and anything about this console, and now people are literally getting shot for one. With the 360 already entrenched, and the Wii taking the rest of the gamer population (and many more outside it), there is no reason at present to develop for, or purchase this console. Maybe in time that will change, but you only have so long before the fickle mob moves on.

The $250 million deal, reached Tuesday, would provide the nation with 1.2 million computers, a server in each school, a team of technical advisers, satellite internet service and other infrastructure.

I don't live in the US, but even I can see that most news stations are firmly pro Bush. How else do you explain the free passes and non-quetsions that get askled of him.

http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg ?articleid=155897

...but the trouble with human emissions is that they coinside with destrction of the Earths natural Carbon Sink mechanisms, eg. deforestation of the Amazon which has reached a crutial tipping point and the so-called Mega-fires have already started, as not reported on Slashdot (sniff).

You'd be suprised how fast 15 billion can go when you're talking massive amounts of construction. For example, This article puts a 1,000 foot tower at 1-1.5 Billion.

You're talking about building a structure 33 times as tall, tight enough to hold a reasonable vacuum, associated power plant, etc...

It's interesting, especially given recent "doomsday laws"* passed recently by the US Government

* it was surprisingly hard to find any link to this in the mainstream press. I had hoped to link a CNN article or similar, but google just wasn't helping me. You can make up your own mind on the non-reporting of this major law change, but IMHO it simply backs up the point of this story. People just aren't bothered.

Imagine a time and place where you have a security rating ... you approach an airport terminal and hand them your ID card (or scan your arm) but you can't board the plane because you've been making too many phone calls to your friends who happen to have a rap sheet.

You don't have to imagine that hard, to a certain extent it's already happening - just not with airplanes, instead your banned from going to the senior prom. The officials apparenly have backed off due to preasure, but it's got to start somewhere...

Scalia said "vaffunculo", which means "go fuck yourself":

'Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese's weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship. "The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, 'To my critics, I say, 'Vaffanculo,' " punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.'

'Smith said the jurist "immediately knew he'd made a mistake, and said, 'You're not going to print that, are you?' " '

I'm pretty sure Apple Records is still doing a lot more business than most small-time indie labels

Business, maybe, but money, no:

The company hasn't posted huge profits: For the year ended Jan. 1, 2005, Apple Corps claimed a loss of nearly $950,000.

"I'm more worried about whether I've left my hair iron on than this little email exchange,"

"It really isn't going to affect my career," says Ms. Abdala, "and if it does, it's probably for the better."

Abdala said she filed a complaint with the state Board of Bar Overseers. "Attorney Korman threatened my career," she said, "and I don't think anybody would have been welcoming to such a threat."

She has since started her own practice, saying she will do court-appointed criminal defense work.

Personally, I applaud the actions of the librarian. Not everybody feels the same however: http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?artic leid=122959/

So, no horrible beatings and abuse happen in the Northeast?

Don't act so "holier than thou".

Here's a link to that if you're interested...