Slashdot Mirror

Wow.

He clearly states the first world, and by context it is clear he meant in America.
Rile him if you want for using 'first world' to mean 'America', but acting ignorant only makes your argument that much more of a strawman.

Not only was the GP limiting where these fundamentalist Christians were being evil in (America by implication, and 'the first world' by exact explicit words), yet you somehow twist things around to imply he said the entire world.

I hate to be the one to teach you this, but the entire world is much much larger than just America and much larger than just the 'first world'
You thinking America is the entire world is part of where this problem came from!

You even dropped words out of the quote from his post!
You might as well have quoted him saying he likes kicking puppies.

As you lied about the quoted part, and are making up things clearly never said, the rest of your post is worthy of ignoring and being modded down for being the strawman it is.

On top of that, why not answer the question? Which group exactly, in America, has more control than the fundamentalist Christians? That group comprises 25%[1] of the US government.
What group exactly has more control over America? Which group in this country, as a single group, spews more hate, and is larger than 25% of the entire government?

Posting anon so the biggots have no account to mark down and attack in the future when their buddies get mod points and they need a history of comments to mod troll...

[1] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1191955/fundamentalism/252663/Christian-fundamentalism-in-the-United-States

Citing two papers doesn't show much. Particularly when you read the abstract for the first citation and it says "Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun's output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present."

Yes, that's why I've got an entire section (7b) in the index devoted to the Sun's magnetic field effects on the Earth's climate. And, yes, UV light might be forcing the climate in ways that aren't currently understood. But the Sun is unusually dim right now, especially in UV light. Also, solar output varies primarily on an ~11 year cycle, and the recent warming has been growing for ~40 years. As I've repeatedly explained, the lack of a long-term trend in solar output means that it's probably not responsible for the recent warming.

The second paper you cited says that both CO2 and the natural causes must be accounted for in order to make the current models fit the actual data. In other words CO2 is not the dominate controller.

Of course! As I've been saying repeatedly, climatologists aren't saying that human emissions are completely responsible for everything happening to the climate. It's just that the recent warming can't be explained without including human emissions, which is making up a larger and larger proportion of the overall forcing of the global climate each decade.

I can dig up just as many citations that show that solar output is sufficient. For example http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/235402/global-warming/274834/Variations-in-solar-output Those papers also question the validity of measuring a single portion of the spectrum at the earth surface and ignoring cosmis radiation and sunspot activity.

I can't load that page, but this may be my cable modem's fault. At any rate, your description makes it sound like a retread of Svensmark 1998, which I've discussed already.

Citing two papers doesn't show much. Particularly when you read the abstract for the first citation and it says "Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun's output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present."

The second paper you cited says that both CO2 and the natural causes must be accounted for in order to make the current models fit the actual data. In other words CO2 is not the dominate controller.

I can dig up just as many citations that show that solar output is sufficient. For example http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/235402/global-warming/274834/Variations-in-solar-output Those papers also question the validity of measuring a single portion of the spectrum at the earth surface and ignoring cosmis radiation and sunspot activity. Hence my assertion that there is still doubt that CO2 is the prime cause of the global temperature variations.

we've deregulated

Deregulated? More like changed regulations not dropped them. Mortgage companies were encouraged to loan to under qualified people. That is to make bigger loans than borrowers were qualified to borrow. Regulations barring redlining were taken too far. As was the Community Reinvestment Act, which was meant to reduce redlining. Yes the Community Reinvestment Act was passed and became law in 1977 but it was changed in 1989, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2005, 2007, and 2008. Two of the mortgage companies that had high mortgage defaults were Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, and they were created by the federal government.

supported brutal dictators, and overturned governments because of Friedmanism

None of which is true. No matter how many tymes it's told a lie is still a lie. Friedman opposed dictators and coups against democratically elected governments. He believed economic freedom would lead to political freedom but he did not support dictatorships. "Defaming Milton Friedman" disputes the efforts to discredit Milton Friedman. One such effort, which you allude to here, is his supposed support for Augusto Pinochet the army general who lead the coup against Chilean president Salvador Allende. Friedman never advised Pinochet or accepted money from the regime. Yes he went to Chile, where after he was invited by a private foundation he gave public lectures. He was offered two honorary degrees from Chilean universities which he turned down.

Perhaps Friedman himself would have taken it farther but to deny his influence in modern America is exceptionally naive.

No, what is naive, or passing the blame, is accusing Friedman of the problems caused by governments as well as the overthrow of a democratically elected government. If you want to blame someone for these blame politicians and the US intelligence system. It was Nixon and Kissinger along with the CIA who supported Pinochet. Ford and again Kissinger then supported Indonesian President Suharto's invasion of the independent country of East Timor. Approximately 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the population, was massacred afterwards. Neither had anything to do with Milton Friedman, the only thing that mattered was that those being supported was anti-communist.

Milton Friedman on the other hand did support the opening of the bamboo curtain, China. That was the one thing he had in common with Nixon and Ford. He thought a freer economy would lead to freer politics as well.

Falcon

Atheism

Agnosticism,

Theism

OK, here it is, read 'em and weap. Pick one.

Atheism

Agnosticism,

Theism

OK, here it is, read 'em and weap. Pick one.

Atheism

Agnosticism,

Theism

OK, here it is, read 'em and weap. Pick one.

The terms confused me for a long time, but the dictionaries are pretty consistent.

Perhaps you are confused, because you obviously haven't looked at them.

Many dictionaries support a range of definitions for atheism, not just those who believe God doesn't exist, but also those who reject belief, disbelieve, with some going so far as to cover anyone lacking belief. There are at least three definitions of "atheism":

* Lack of belief (also called implicit)
* Rejection of belief (also called explicit weak)
* Belief in non-existence (also called explicit strong).

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/40634/atheism - "The varieties of atheism are numerous, but all atheists reject such a set of beliefs."

http://www.answers.com/atheism gives "Disbelief in or denial", and lists that separate to "The doctrine that there is no God or gods"; Philosophy Dictionary says "Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none".

And I don't know of any dictionary that supports your definition of agnosticism. Agnosticism means that you either don't know if God exists, or you claim God's existence is unknowable. See http://www.answers.com/agnosticism : "The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist." Even if we did only accept the "strong" definition of atheism, it is still completely incorrect to misuse "agnostic" to mean a lack of belief. Instead, we'd just end up with no word for people who didn't believe in God - hardly a useful situation.

Also see http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm .

But most people who say they are Atheist are actually Agnostic and are just not using the standard English definitions.

They're not using the definitions that you made up, you mean. In reality, most people who claim they are agnostic are actually atheists, as shown by my dictionary refererences.

But who cares - the point is that they don't believe in God, that's more important than quibbling over definitions. It astonishes me how eager agnostics (at least, I bet you are?) are to criticise people who identify as atheists, and either claim they are using the wrong word, or absurdly claim that they are "in the same boat as the theist". On the contrary, it is agnostics who believe something without evidence (i.e., the claim that God cannot be proven nor disproven).

Environmentally nuclear is vastly better than all the other serious energy sources.

Prove it.

Now that I asked fro proof I'll provide my own evidence which supports my position as well as contradicts yours. "Report: Wind the Best Energy; Nuclear, Coal and Ethanol the Worst". "For Cheap Clean Energy, Go Geothermal, Study Says". "Oregon Geothermal Energy = Baseload Energy".

Wind and solar are not serious energy sources as is hinted by how much subsidies they need

By that criteria nuclear power is not a serious energy source because it needs massive subsidies. Not only does it need guarantied loans but it also needs it's liability limited and government disposal of it's waste. All alternative energy sources put together including geothermal, solar, tidal, wind, even biofuels only get a fraction of the subsidies nuclear power gets. "While renewable energy may require subsidies for the immediate future, nuclear power needs subsidies forever." From the Financial Times:

"'But those hoping for handouts would be disappointed. The "incentives" for nuclear and carbon capture and storage are only there to "help a nascent sector grow', he said."

"We are not going to achieve a competitive [nuclear] sector by handing out subsidies... we are not in the business of giving out subsidies. We are in the business of maintaining a level playing field."

"It's telling that the 'level playing field' the industry wants and the one the government wants bear little resemblance to each other."

Something is still going to need to provide the power to run the aluminium foundries and nuclear is the cleanest, safest long term solution for that.

Neither you nor anyone else has proven that nuclear power is clean yet I have provided evidence solar and wind are clean. Such as 2 of the links I provide above. Studies linked to say both wind and geothermal and cheaper and cleaner than nuclear. Now will you provide links to evidence says nuclear is cleaner?

Lets run through the check lists.

I provide evidence that this list is wrong, where is yours saying you're right? And for one on that list, "Wind is nice but it's unpredictable and bigger wind farms kill migrating birds", buildings cats, and cars kill more birds than turbines.

Try again.

Together they can never provide more than 20% of the grids needs simply for stability reasons. This is pretty much a hard cap, once you get more than that from unpredictable sources rolling blackouts start to become a real problem.

So you know more about solar power than the writers of the SciAm article "A Solar Grand Plan", and know more about wind power than the writers of a new study in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science" as well as those who created the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States at the National Renewable Energy Lab? What is your degree in and where did you get it so that you're smarter than they are? The SciAm article says that by 2050 solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs. The National Acad

Are you kidding me? Exposure to high radiation of any type WILL cause harmful side effects to anything fleshy, like mammals.

From encyclopedia Britannica:
Exposure to intense microwaves in excess of 20 milliwatts of power per square centimetre of body surface is harmful.

A quick google search also reveals many articles of studies showing nerve damage to the brain from microwaves and increased chances for various cancers from extended exposure to microwaves and/or other forms of radiation.

No physicist or electrical engineer would sit there and tell you with a straight face that being exposed to any form of radiation (depending on the power and/or time period) is safe or would produce "no deleterious effects." That's just bull shit. Sitting out in the sun is NOT safe, how would being exposed to this beam be safe?

I haven't been able to find any data on how much this thing would beam down, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in it's path.

Which brings the point... if they can absolutely prove that they can control this thing and there is a 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% probability that it won't be aimed at anything fleshy, then go for it. But don't come in here and start saying that exposure to radiation (any radiation) is safe, because it's not.

Sparrows are mainly seed-eating, but Swallows are insect-eaters.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/558300/sparrow

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/576163/swallow

Mosquitoes are only one type of insect that they may feed on, but the amount of nourishment in a mosquito is lower than in a fly, which means that they are more likely to select flies for food.

But the point is more to adjust the mosquitoes than to eradicate them.

As for diseases keeping humanity under control you should note that the western world have survived the fact that most mosquito-borne diseases have been eradicated.

Sparrows are mainly seed-eating, but Swallows are insect-eaters.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/558300/sparrow

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/576163/swallow

Mosquitoes are only one type of insect that they may feed on, but the amount of nourishment in a mosquito is lower than in a fly, which means that they are more likely to select flies for food.

But the point is more to adjust the mosquitoes than to eradicate them.

As for diseases keeping humanity under control you should note that the western world have survived the fact that most mosquito-borne diseases have been eradicated.

Well, there are sources that disagree.

Holes? How about the fact that no navy in the known universe is going to make a captain of a kid right out of the acadamy AND give him the fleet flagship to boot.

Captain refers both to a title and a rank. "An officer of lower rank is customarily given the courtesy title of captain when he is in command of a ship, so that he is addressed orally as captain, but he cannot claim the rank or be so addressed in writing."

This is what got a lot of CS in motion due to its "thorough" axiomatization of mathematics into symbolic logic.

The North west passage was first crossed in 1906 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/420084/Northwest-Passage

And had you read that article properly you would have seen that Amundsen's passage took *3 years* and that the NWP was not travelled in a single season until 1944.

The North west passage was first crossed in 1906 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/420084/Northwest-Passage

Al's famous hockey stick is dirty data taken from weather stations that have experienced heat islands being installed in the form of pavement. Go check out surface data.org. Sometimes one needs to "scrub" the data, and throw out obviously tainted data from a compromised station.

Remember all the data pointed to a new ice age in 1970, now the same data points to warming...

Go see Geology.com for the latest in antarctic dust... Turns out that just about all dust in antarctic ice record comes from Patagonia. Previous thought was that dust in the antarctic ice record indicated global warm dry years. Current thought is dust in the antarctic ice record is heaviest in cold dry years when Patagonian glaciers were advancing, released little water, and dust from dry terminal moraine coated antarctic ice. Warm years in Patagonia the glaciers retreat flooding the terminal moraine, and trapping the dust.
http://www.geology.com/news/2009/antarctic-dust-and-climate-record.shtml
The real source is Nature.com, but I don't have an active account.

Dear 997083,

what you say is probably FUD, including the "per capita" reference that you provide where a 1st grader could point out that 3.1bln units produced by 1.5bln people in China is much less than the 2.8bln units produced by 350mln people in the USA.

Citations wanted ? here...

- Comment 5 on this page (not the main article)
- This answer
- waste too

"Somehow, attempting an argumentum ad misericordiam - a basic liberal trait - is a 'liberal' thing to conservatives. It's funny, really. The grandparent is a 'beautiful' illustration of the rational mindset."

There, fixed that for you.

I'd like to make some changes to the Britannica article on Wikipedia. As I'm not willing to give out my real name and address just to benefit a company I care little about, I'm just going to post my fixes (really more annotations) here:

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

"For many observers of these controversies[ weasel words ], a troubling difference between Wikipedia and other encyclopaedias lies in the absence of editors and authors who will accept responsibility for the accuracy and quality of their articles[ citation needed ]. These observers[ who? ] point out that identifiable individuals are far easier to hold accountable for mistakes, bias, and bad writing than is a community of anonymous volunteers, but other observers[ weasel ] respond that it is not entirely clear if there is a substantial difference. Regardless of such controversies--perhaps in part because of them[ speculation ]--Wikipedia has become a model of what the collaborative Internet community can and cannot do."

Props to you for pointing all this out.

Wow - I've not been to Britannica.com. I am surprised at how crappy it is. The article itself is displayed in an IFRAME about 4/5 of the screen wide, and 3/5 of the screen high. Inside that there are sidebars which are actually useful. Outside of it there's lots of website admin stuff (a top bar and a bottom bar), and a HUGE animated banner ad, as well as a prominent orange button for paying for premium content. To the side there's a huge JavaScript-based section with multimedia content. Inside the article proper there is a sponsored links section after a few paragraphs, and another one at the bottom.

The URLs are appalling.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/410919/neutron
versus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron

I can get to Wikipedia articles by typing them into the URL bar, or by setting Firefox to quick-search "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s". With Britannica I need to use their search box which uses a mind-numbing amount of JavaScript and is extremely cumbersome. (The site does work without JavaScript but I think it's more of a mistake than by design. Things are sized incorrectly and it flickers when it scrolls, and you can access "premium content" without logging in -- their security mechanism is a retarded JavaScript popover). Note that the number in the URL (ie. "410919") actually identifies the page, if you just change the title part of the URL it will redirect you back, so there is no possibility of guessing.

And ... what the hell. While I was browsing, a popover window appeared and asked me if I would like a popup window to appear when I leave the site so it can ask me a survey of what I thought of the site. Talk about invasive. Well I said no; they can read Slashdot if they want to know what people think.

The whole thing is just a mess. I come looking for information and I've got so many distractions thrown at me. This is one of the crappiest "professional" websites I've seen this decade. I understand they need advertising revenue, but they could do it more subtly. They really could take a page out of Wikipedia's book when it comes to design and simplicity -- let's not even get started on editorial process.

For those unfamiliar with wikipedia see Wikipedia.
For those unfamiliar with Britannica see Britannica.

HTH HAND

Did a search on Wikipedia regarding Britannica, the result was a detailed article clearly laid out with no web pollution.

Now on the other hand....

On top of that, the first Britannica article I looked at had all kinds of errors. There are grammar errors, like an capitalized sentence. And factual errors, for example,

Three other "pillars of wisdom" are: not to use copyrighted material, [...]

Uh, wrong! It is only to use free content, which almost always is under copyright.

Britannica has no redeeming features compared to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not only cost-free but also speech-free, which is a major plus. Wikipedia articles are at least as accurate, more detailed, and more plentiful. The Britannica website is an unusable, worthless mess of an interface that gets in your away at every step: completely unpleasant to use. Britannica is a dinosaur that will soon become extinct.

Also, Britannica's servers keep going down today because a few extra people are looking at them. Pathetic. Britannica articles have no business returning as Google search results at all.

I just went to http://www.britannica.com and got a 404.

I just checked http://www.britannica.com/ and get:

HTTP Status 404 - /

type Status report

message /

description The requested resource (/) is not available.
Apache Tomcat/6.0.14

Oh sure, we all rushing to go make edits at Britannica with all their linking and copywrite restrictions: http://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html compared to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights Why work to make them richer? If they go CC or GNU Free Documentation License, it will be impressive and of course, have a better chance of succeeding...but dont see any evidence this is a route they going.

As a follow-uy I finally did find a Britannica entry on Cherenkov Radiation, featuring all of a paragraph of info and no pictures (had to use Google, not Britannica's own search engine, to find it). Now, compare that to the Wikipedia entry. And they WONDER why Wikipedia's articles rank higher?!?!

You're absolutely right.

Wikipedia is ranked higher because it is more linked throughout the web. But this is just another example where PageRank really is working: it's returning results that are most useful to the searcher.

For instance for "neutron" on Google, the first link is to Wikipedia. Britannica is nowhere on the first page. If you go directly to Britannica, they do indeed have an article on "neutron". However, it is a "premium topic" and keeps asking me to become a member. So when someone is searching for information about neutrons, what source is more useful: the one that immediately provides some information, with references; or the one that asks you to pay some money (or try the free trial...) in order to get full access, so that you can then figure out whether the information they have is useful or not... ?

The fact is that Wikipedia is more heavily linked because it is a more accessible, therefore more useful, source of information. Even if Britannica's content were superior, this would still be the case. The fact that Wikipedia is more expansive, more timely, and frequently more detailed/referenced than Britannica just makes the choice even clearer.

PageRank works. Wikipedia is overall a more useful source to the average web surfer, and thus deserves a much higher rank.

Or, if you like, another stereoscope 'inventor' is Sir Charles Wheatstone: Brittanica says it was "First described in 1832 by English physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone". The 'Viewmaster'-type stereoscope was created by Sir David Brewster, an improvement on Wheatstone's design.

Wheatstone didn't invent the Wheatstone Bridge ... he 'popularized' it (and got his name on it); British mathematician Samuel Christie invented it. He did invent the Playfair Cipher.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/565655/stereoscope

There's not much certainty in those old attributions; Brittanica doesn't always agree with itself. Possibly it was an old gizmo (say, from the 1600s) that, later, clever men seeking fame 'invented' anew. In those times, people didn't seize on such stuff: Brewster had to go to France to find a manufacturer.

"Binocular drawings were made by Giovanni Battista della Porta (1538-1615), whilst about the same period Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli (1554-1640) produced drawings side by side which clearly indicated his understanding of binocular vision. In 1613 the Jesuit Francois d'Aguillion (1567-1617), in his treatise, coined the word "stéréoscopique""

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/stereosc.htm

First off, you should read Why I ban laptops in my classroom and the professor vs laptop article that recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education and then Paul Graham's Disconnecting Distraction and then Is Google Making Us Stupid? in The Atlantic. If Paul Graham finds the Internet ceaselessly distracting, what hope do ninth graders have?

Secondly, I've read some of the pro-laptop comments, and while I sympathize with their points, paternalism is not *always* a bad thing. Sometimes it's a necessary component of developing discipline and other positive traits. Banning laptops might be one, as it could help one develop the ability to focus for a sustained period of time and not get lost in class, particularly during discussions about complex material.

I went to law school for a year by accident, where virtually everyone had laptops in every classroom. They were used for taking notes, yes. But they were also used for Facebook, and checking out bar happy hours, and IM, and IMing about the incompetence of the person speaking, and checking the score, and a variety of other things. I know, the jokes are coming: you must've been a dumb law student, gone to a bad school, had bad professor, etc. Maybe: but I think the bigger problem is that letting one's attention temporarily wander is made so much easier by having a laptop and Internet connection is almost overwhelming. Sure, you can stay on a diet with a chocolate cake sitting on the counter in your living room. Sure, you'd never lie on that mortgage application about your income--but, you know, you really want that McMansion, and no one is going to check it, and you just have to inflate it a little... The problem is that laptops made distraction so easy. They make continuous partial attention more likely than deep engagement.

Students in universities succumb to the Beer and Circus mentality, and if they do, what luck will middle- and high-school students have? I teach freshmen English now at the University of Arizona and ban laptops because they're likely to be used for Facebook, and IM, and everything else but taking notes. I know: if you're not a compelling enough teacher to keep their attention, they deserve to use laptops to get around you. But what if you can't get their attention in the first place? What if you're trying to impart something important but that doesn't have the immediacy of Perez Hilton? Then give them the Cs they deserve when they write bad papers. And then they whine to you about the grades they got. You, the Slashdot commenter, would be such a strong writer or coder or mathematician that you could get by: congratulations. But the other 24 people in the classroom probably can't.

All this is to say that laptops can very easily and quickly become more a burden than benefit. But they aren't necessarily a burden: I could see wanting them for programming classes, for math classes that could use advanced visualizations, for blogging, for exchanging immediate responses among a group, for editing papers on the fly, the moment you get feedback on them. But not every lesson will call for them and not every teacher will want to use them. "Here's the dilemma -- how much freedom do you give to students?" you ask. The answer depends too much on the instructor to give a firm answer, but I give the answer above in part because so many of the initial responses tend towards "let them do whatever they want." Sure: and throw someone into an ocean a mile from shore and see what happens. If the teacher wants them to conduct a textual analysis of a Facebook profile, let them.

Oh it has been used and is found in most encyclopedias but you are confusing computer concepts with various types and classifications of memory like L1 and L2 cache memory like a n00b would.

You want a 4G RAM system to hit virtual memory load up several videos, edit huge pictures in Photoshop, open up as many application windows as you can until you finally hit the page file. Sure the average user just surfing the Internet and writing word processing documents and email won't hit that page file, but the above average user that loads a lot of things into memory will.

And that's why libertarians are very supportive of the first amendment.
Oh, wait....

http://www.lp.org/issues/freedom-of-speech
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2007/04/libertarianism-the-stuggle-ahead/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/libertarianism.html

Why do people keep donating to this unreliable source, especially when there are deletionist assholes like TTN and abusive administrators like Antandurus and Spacebirdy.

You can get the Encyclopedia Britannica for just $39.95 which is not full of assholes and is not subject to editwares, "citation needed" and the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months.

Like Linux, it is only "free" if your time is worthless.

This PSA brought to you by Willy on Wheels and Grawp.

http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/14/65214-004-5A49F3A6.jpg

rj

Taking up again the tradition of the Friesian School, this is a non-peer-reviewed electronic journal

non-peer reviewed journal. yeah right! Read some peer reviewed (or at least more mainstream) stuff here:
http://wcar.alrc.net/mainfile2.php/For+the+negative/14/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/living/caste.shtml

Today, caste barriers have largely broken down in the large cities. "Untouchability" has been abolished by law.
However, loyalty to a caste is much harder to eliminate and it still provides a sense of community and belonging, particularly in country areas.

Plus, India has an extensive system of affirmative actions

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

That's been in place for a while now, which is why they've had a disadvantaged for a president:

And caste system exists among non-Hindus as well in India

(Muslims:
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/ambedkar_partition/410.html

  Christians:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/115071/Christian-caste
http://www.webindia123.com/goa/people/caste.htm

) so religion has little to do with it (although it does have a peripheral influence)

In other words, pretty much the same as post desegregation USA deep south.

But then again, I could be wrong.

Perhaps.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/599941/19248/Map-of-the-average-annual-frequency-of-tornadoes-in-the

A good portion of "Tornado Alley" is in Texas. And a quick 'n easy Wiki reveals that the state gets more tornadoes than any other.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/449585/penal-colony

In my honest opinion, I think Webster's adds buzz words like these mostly knowing it will give them free advertisement when the media lets everyone know what pop culture words are now somewhat legit. Dictionaries dont really need to add nonsense words that tend to be slang or are too silly to ever be used outside of a joke (looking at you webinar). For words like these, there's always urbandictionary.com. After all, wikipedia may have an article on Jenna Jameson, but Britannica does not.

It's not a foolproof way to keep terrorists from assembling a liquid bomb on board. It just means you need a larger number of suicide bombers at a go.

You need more agents, yes. And you need more money for plane tickets, yes. But you don't need more people willing to die for their cause. By separating security from boarding, then letting people mill around in a large area, you could easily walk onto a plane with a gallon of liquid. Simply have a bunch of agents booked for different flights leaving within the same window. If you're feeling really paranoid, arrange to meet at a busy hub like Chicago and arrive from different airports with layovers that happen to overlap. Each brings in the fraction of a quart of precursor chemicals in their carryon. Once inside they bump into each other. Two might use adjacent bathrooms stalls, and assuming no one busts them for signalling for gay sex, they just pass the chemicals between them. They could meet in one of the restaurants, passing things under the table. The suicide bomber collects the liquid in some sort of expanding container that he brought through empty.

Sure, after the fact review of security video may reveal the connections, but at that point it's too late. A hub like Chicago is too large and too full of people to catch amazingly brief interactions between perhaps 20 people among the 190,000 passing through in a single day. Your agents don't even need to be dedicated members of your movement; since the risk to them is low you simply need to find someone psychopathic enough to take money for other people's lives.

The current liquid restrictions are stupid. They only protects us from terrorists with enough money, knowledge, and connections to acquire to buy unusual liquid explosives, but not enough money, knowledge, and connections to buy 20 people plane tickets.

The soul of Wikipedia is obviously inclusionism. If you start picking what stays and what goes, then it will become just like every other encyclopedic resource out there. The problem is that people are treating Wikipedia as if it were supposed to be "the" resource rather than just "a" resource. If you use it knowing that the information within is not meant to be authoritative, than it can be a great resource to use as a starting point or for situations where incorrect information is not going to cause problems down the line. The word "wiki" itself means "quick" or "fast", as in, an encyclopedia for quick answers, not necessarily absolute answers.

As far as my daily light research needs are concerned, if Wikipedia becomes a deletionsim camp, then they better change the "wiki" part of their name; because even by their supposed competitor's definitions of the word "wiki" it would be a lie. And seriously, what would you prefer? One of the ad laden, content starved, dead ended, upselling pages at the previous three links? Or this one?

The soul of Wikipedia is obviously inclusionism. If you start picking what stays and what goes, then it will become just like every other encyclopedic resource out there. The problem is that people are treating Wikipedia as if it were supposed to be "the" resource rather than just "a" resource. If you use it knowing that the information within is not meant to be authoritative, than it can be a great resource to use as a starting point or for situations where incorrect information is not going to cause problems down the line. The word "wiki" itself means "quick" or "fast", as in, an encyclopedia for quick answers, not necessarily absolute answers.

As far as my daily light research needs are concerned, if Wikipedia becomes a deletionsim camp, then they better change the "wiki" part of their name; because even by their supposed competitor's definitions of the word "wiki" it would be a lie. And seriously, what would you prefer? One of the ad laden, content starved, dead ended, upselling pages at the previous three links? Or this one?

Wikipedia cites anthropologist John H. Moore as saying the minimum reasonable size is around 170. I'm assuming these individuals would be measurably unrelated.

Four people isn't enough to start a colony. You need enough unrelated folks to prevent genetic drift. Not sure how many, but it's a lot more than 4.

I'm not surprised by the internal squabbles or that the company would pick a spec that's lower than what some engineers argued for. Well when you ignore the advice of engineers, what's the worst that could happen?

You don't "refute" evidence by saying it is "circumstantial". "Circumstantial" is a class of evidence, as opposed to "direct". Most evidence is circumstantial and most people are convicted on purely circumstantial evidence. DNA evidence is always circumstantial evidence, as is the someone possessing a gun matching the bullet embedded in the victim, someone possessing a knife covered with the victim's blood, and all manner of conviction-worthy things. For instance, Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted on purely circumstantial evidence. (As having the hacked up victim's body in your freezer is ALSO "circumstantial evidence".)

Really? I'm glad there are people who actually looked rather than just answered. Aren't you?

Beyond that a quick set google searches suggests you can find the following redily on the moon, out of various mineral forms:
Sulfur
Iron
Oxygen
Potassium
Aluminum
Hydrogen
Calcium