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"I hope we hit another depression. Grandma and Grandpa knew how to live frugally."

The thing they don't tell you in the brochure is what the frugal people turn into in times of plenty. That's right, compulsive pack rats that will not spare a penny to improve their lives one iota when the honey's flowing. And I do mean pennies. They waste more money and time (theirs and others) trying to be penny pinchers than they ever would gain by simply spending the needed money to accomplish their goals.

"When these people have to start cutting their flour with cardboard to make it last longer, call me."

You and others exaggerate too much.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0106/p08s01-comv.html

This isn't the depression. Not by a long shot.

If there's a public outcry and the media ignores it, did it really happen?

Look a little longer. There's (at least) hints if not outright anger at the backlash.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E0DF143BF932A25757C0A9659C8B63

Robbins, who said he supports the troops, noted other recent attempts to squelch free speech after criticism of the war. ''One was when my wife, who was supposed to be the guest speaker at a United Way fund-raiser in Tampa, was cancelled because of her political views.'' Another, he said, is pressure from some viewers who have threatened to boycott ABC if the network goes ahead with plans to air a situation comedy starring Janeane Garofalo, another antiwar activist.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0501/p03s01-ussc.html

Still, many entertainers known for liberalism have kept silent on the war, buttressing Mr. Robbins's notion that "a chill wind is blowing." In a speech at the National Press Club, he contended: "A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown: 'If you oppose this administration, there ... will be ramifications.'"

As for the Dixie Chicks - I have to admit that I'm coming up short with quotes from them showing dismay over the business side. There's certainly some negative reaction. But anything that touches on business tends to be along the lines of a sort of brush-off that said fan base wasn't important. They even begin to change their music style. And in the end, the business side really doesn't seem to suffer that much.

Having said that - show business is often trading on stardom. I still find it hard to believe that seeing one's popularity take a hit isn't damaging to someone who's careers are impacted by that popularity.

The first sign that the words of neoconservatives differ markedly from their actions was the incident involving Creekstone Farms. In 2004, its management intended to perform mad-cow testing on 100% of the beef that it sold to consumers. Yet, the Bush administration blocked this comprehensive testing, interfering in the private business transaction between a private business and its customers. If a company wants to over-test its product, why does the government have a right to stop such testing?

The second sign that the words of neoconservatives differ markedly from their actions was the incident involving the troubled-asset-relief program (TARP) demanded by the Bush administration and authorized by Congress (at Bush's insistence). TARP is a program for using government money to buy toxic assets (and now to take an equity stake in banks) -- to rescue the people who deliberately and knowingly bought more house than they could afford and to rescue the fast-talking frauds who loaned the money to the house buyers.

The third sign that the words of neoconservatives differ markedly from their actions is the incident involving the allocation of $25 billion in government loans to the car companies. If they cannot build the cars that people want to buy, then they should be allowed to fail. That is how a free market works. The companies go into bankruptcy and possibly shutdown permanently. Why should the free-market advocating neoconservatives try to save these companies?

Why would neoconservatives act in this way? In case #1, the cattle industry regularly makes political donations to neoconservatives. In case #2, the financial industry regularly makes political donations to the neoconservatives. In case #3, the auto industry regularly makes political donations to the neoconservatives.

Case #3 is particularly egregious. Via collective bargaining, auto workers enjoy generous company-funded medical insurance. In order to maintain such private medical benefits, the same auto workers have opposed implementing federally guaranteed medical care (like that in Europe and Japan).

Here's the punch line. Let's condemn the neoconservatives for being liars. Let's condemn the auto workers for being hypocrites. Let's oppose any bailout for the auto companies, forcing them into bankruptcy and forcing millions of auto workers to lose their private medical insurance. The out-of-work auto workers can then "enjoy" the same lack of medical insurance that millions of unemployed workers have enjoyed in the absence of federally guaranteed medical care.

Remember how in Sim City an airport would dramatically increase pollution for your city? Yeeeeeah, it isn't far from the truth. Airports aren't transportation hubs; they're giant kerosene burners, which is why the air absolutely stinks for miles around. I seem to recall reading that one 747 during takeoff creates more pollution than a Toyota Prius will in its entire serviceable lifetime. Obviously you can't use microwaves at any kind of intensity during taxi, run-up, or takeoff, as the ass end of the plane is facing near or at the ground.

Also, it's pretty famous now, but someone studied the weather records around September 11th, 2001 and found there was a remarkable change in the weather across the country and in fact much of the world on the few days that followed where there was very little in the way of air traffic (and another change back to "normal" when air traffic resumed.) Ask most people and they remember it being rather nice out. I remember the weather in lower NY was absolutely spectacular for several days- beautiful blue skies like I'd never seen before in that part of NY.

Ok, first of all, emergency contraceptive pills are not prescribed drugs. Anyone can go to a pharmacy and get them over the shelf!

Well, sort of. Many places still refuse to take them out from behind the counter, and they insist on putting the patient through an "interview" before allowing them to purchase the drug. I'm not sure if they'll actually deny them the drug if they're not happy with the answers to the questions.

Second, if I read your post right, the idea that a pharmacist has the authority to deny me drugs that a doctor prescribed, based soly on their religious beliefs is complete and utter bullshit!

It is absolutely bullshit. And yet it happens.

Obama is not a socialist, not even close. I should know, I am one.

Regardless of where between Obama and Stalin you are, Obama is classified as "Socialist-lite". In other words, there will be no concentration camps, but severe economic inefficiencies... No one can make everyone equally rich, but in trying everyone becomes equally poor.

Many justices think their role - as un-elected, serve-for-life judges - is to make law and policy.

Scalia thinks otherwise. He thinks his role is to follow the Constitution. So much so, that the Federalist Society considers him a hero.

If that makes him insane, I want more crazies on SCOTUS.

...increased taxes, less incentive for doctors to be doctors, less medical innovation, etc. etc. etc.

Australia's universal coverage system is called "Medicare." The Australian "Medicare Levy" is 1.5% of taxable income. (Since you like citations: http://www.livingin-australia.com/income-tax-australia.html) Australians are welcome to buy private health insurance, in addition to Medicare. People who are more wealthy are expected to buy some kind of private hospital insurance, or their Medicare Levy goes up to 2.5%.

The United States has two safety net systems, called "Medicare," and "Medicaid." Medicare is only available to people of retirement age and people with certain disabilities. Medicaid only covers poor people who belong to certain designated eligibility groups. For Medicare, alone, our employers must pay 1.45% of our income, and we must pay an additional 1.45%, coming to a total of 2.9%. Yes, we are already paying more for coverage that most of us don't benefit from. And that's before we even count Medicaid.

So, universal healthcare doesn't necessarily have to cost more. That begs the question: Why are we paying so damn much for Medicare, already? It's probably because our healthcare costs more, across the board. Some folks like to argue that it's because we have the best healthcare in the world. However, our national health stats just plain don't back that up. Worse, some American health insurance companies are starting to look at sending patients overseas for medical procedures, because it's cheaper. I don't know what the hell would be "less incentive for doctors to be doctors" than having their jobs outsourced to India.

Our healthcare in the US is too expensive, but if the insurance industry is now looking at sending people overseas, they have effectively thrown their hands up in the air over the matter. No good answers are forthcoming from our allmighty free market, so far. I'm not holding my breath.

yet I won't hold my breath. In the mean time, I will continue to burn B20 and SVO in my old diesel.

In addition to brewing diesel from cellulose, I would also like to see biofuels manufacturers brew butanol (with Clostridium acetobutylicum, or better) from cellulose. Seriously, it is a much better gasoline replacement than E85. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol

In any case, foodstock based ethanol is the WORST FUEL SUBSTITUTE EVAR. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0512/p08s01-comv.html

If the chevy volt doesn't turn out to be a piece of shit, (yeah, good luck with that. Can GM manage NOT to make a piece of shit?) I would totally buy that for my daily commute and keep the diesel for my occasional interstate forays. Or maybe the Th!nk OX http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2008/03/think-ox-concep.html will be available in the US by then. Or maybe Toyota will get its head out of its ass and realize that not everyone thinks a hybrid is the future, and they will out-chevy-volt the chevy volt.

While I am enumerating my wish list, a 10 minute recharge battery, and start the infrastructure build-out by creating charging stations at toll-way rest areas, then add them to interstate rest areas (which tend to be 50 miles apart on most of the interstates I've traveled.) http://www.onelectriccars.com/lightning-gt-promises-10-minute-recharge/74/
That will "untether" electric cars, and is feasible with current battery technology. Then fueling stations can invest in charging devices if enough people have EVs in their area
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/electricity_locations.html

heh. I'm just rambling now...

Went fine and no I'm not telling.

Anyway regardless of whom we get in, I'm more concerned for the after.

I wouldn't expect to see any right wing insurgent activity

Of course you wouldn't.

Oh and by the way, re: your original post, the liberals didn't do jack shit to your glorious leader's war. Bush "stayed the course" and refused to "outsource the position of commander in chief", he has personally earned every last bit of glory coming to him for it, no matter how much that fact makes you rage.

The problem isn't that he is or isn't Muslim, but rather that it appears by all accounts that he was at least for a time raised Muslim, and then turned his back on the religion - an apostate, and the worst kind, according to the Christian Science Monitor, because he was "gifted by Allah" to be born a Muslim, and then renounced the religion. I think the real fear with if he is/was Muslim at any point during his life is if the Muslim community considers him an apostate, it could give them another reason to attack the U.S. if Obama is elected.

Yes, this war was unnecessary in that we were not attacked by Iraq and it costs money. But put away your emotion and knee-jerk ideology and Bush Derangement Syndrome and note some important facts:

1) Compared to the chief role of the US government today - redistribution of wealth - The Iraq War is a mere drop in the bucket;

2) Compared to other wars, this one is rather cheap, and we are spending about 38% on the military today compared to what we did in 1960;

3) The war won't last forever. Government programs will.

I am not ignoring the costs of the war. It all adds up. But for God's sake people, we are spending 60% of our budget on entitlements (not called for by the Constitution) while we spend 17% on the military (called for in the Constitution). Get some perspective.

I'll be reasonable and say the war costs money. OK, that's bad. Now it's your turn to be reasonable and say that spending $1.8 trillion of our $3 trillion budget with a $10T debt - and the $75T off-budget Social Security and Medicare liability looming - is a larger problem than any temporary war, and is not only bad, but really really bad.

Tell me, being that the root of this whole mess are subprime loans, were you this concerned when some Congressmen tried to enact new regulations on Fannie and Freddie, and others blocked it, citing such economic justifications as "racism" and "fairness"? Because it's in the Constitution that everyone gets a house, you know.

Do you have a citation for the "racism and fairness" bit? What actually happened is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got greedy and paid congress to stop the regulations: "Since 1990, Freddie Mac has contributed more than $9.7 million to federal campaigns. Fannie Mae's political action committee chalked up more than $2.9 million since 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Together, they spent some $7.4 million in lobbying in the first six months of 2008 alone." -- http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0912/p03s01-usec.html

They should build floating houses

If by 'they', you mean the Dutch, then they already have.

Perhaps my favourite bit is that they're floating on concrete, which is an often overlooked/unappreciated building material.

Despite the fact that you are wrong, I trust Wikipedia more than most other sources of information. In fact, I would trust Wikipedia before some of the textbooks here in the US. Back in the small town I grew up in we were using really old textbooks in some classes. Of course we rarely got to the end of them, but we thought it pretty funny when we noticed Gerald Ford was the last President mentioned in one of our middle school history books (and this was mid-90's).

Want to reflect a lot of light back? Require all new homes to go up with white roof coverings...

wasn't that a slashdot article a month or so back?
MIT article tracker
LA times article
Christian Science Monitor Blog
Powerpoint presentation from LBL: "Global Cooling: Increasing World-wide Urban Albedos to Offset CO2," Hashem Akbari (as pdf):

As a percentage of GDP we spend a *lot* less now than we did back in the 1960's (17% to 45%). It is entitlements, now 60% of our 3 trillion budget, that is killing the US. So 17% on something the Constitution requires is too much, whereas 60% on something the Constitution is silent on is not enough. Got it.

As for 'World Police,' yeah, go ask Rwandans and those in Darfur how America sitting back and letting the 'world community' deal with evil has worked out for them.

Here's the original rubber duck pioneers: a crate full of rubber ducks washed over the side of a container ship. The brave little ducks (and their turtle friends) sailed the world's oceans, even surviving a four year trip frozen through the arctic.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0731/p01s04-woeu.html

We should continue this tradition by landing a rubber duck on the next spacecraft to Mars. A fitting tribute.

I don't know, who the "repubs" want to pay, but the Democrats' intentions are certainly "less than honorable". Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama are the two-highest beneficiaries of the Fannie and Freddie lobbying efforts -- despite the vast accounting irregularities of both monsters.

IIRC, the total lobbying effort of Fannie and Freddie has been in the hundreds of millions, and the Obama campaign's share is about $112,000. I'm not sure he's received more than 1-2% of their attention. The lobbying effort has been so huge that I doubt there are very many federal offices that haven't been touched by it.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0912/p03s01-usec.html

There are certainly connections with the McCain campaign:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aQIOOr9klOnE&refer=home
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22mccain.html

Not that this is a partisan issue. It's pretty clear Fannie and Freddie really worked hard to have as much influence as possible, and I think that's one of the reasons why the recent bailout had a provision that they had to curtail lobbying activity.

For off, calling the USA "warmongers" should be modded flamebait.

And your history and math are wrong. Ike warned of the military industrial complex, not on the use of the military, which he obviously supported, you know, having led the largest invasion in world history. But anti-military types just love to misquote Ike.

The US spends *much less* of its GDP than it did in Ike's time, much less.

The left should be pleased that defense spending as a percentage of the federal budget has steadily declined during the past decades. In the early 1960s the Department of Defense constituted 45 percent of federal spending, whereas this year it will constitute an estimated 17 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Source

As the article points out, the real scandal is the ever-increasing entitlement pending that is going to bankrupt America.

For off, calling the USA "warmongers" should be modded flamebait.

And your history and math are wrong. Ike warned of the military industrial complex, not on the use of the military, which he obviously supported, you know, having led the largest invasion in world history. But anti-military types just love to misquote Ike.

The US spends *much less* of its GDP than it did in Ike's time, much less.

The left should be pleased that defense spending as a percentage of the federal budget has steadily declined during the past decades. In the early 1960s the Department of Defense constituted 45 percent of federal spending, whereas this year it will constitute an estimated 17 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Source

As the article points out, the real scandal is the ever-increasing entitlement pending that is going to bankrupt America.

With the planned $700 billion bailout of Wall St. criminals, the percentage of GDP spent on defense will decline even more. That says nothing about how much actual money is spent on defense. Maybe a little "shock and awe" on Wall St. would be money better spent. I would pay to watch video of corrupt financiers being waterboarded. Well, ok, I'd probably torrent it, but it's the thought that counts.

For off, calling the USA "warmongers" should be modded flamebait.

And your history and math are wrong. Ike warned of the military industrial complex, not on the use of the military, which he obviously supported, you know, having led the largest invasion in world history. But anti-military types just love to misquote Ike.

The US spends *much less* of its GDP than it did in Ike's time, much less.

The left should be pleased that defense spending as a percentage of the federal budget has steadily declined during the past decades. In the early 1960s the Department of Defense constituted 45 percent of federal spending, whereas this year it will constitute an estimated 17 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Source

As the article points out, the real scandal is the ever-increasing entitlement pending that is going to bankrupt America.

For off, calling the USA "warmongers" should be modded flamebait.

And your history and math are wrong. Ike warned of the military industrial complex, not on the use of the military, which he obviously supported, you know, having led the largest invasion in world history. But anti-military types just love to misquote Ike.

The US spends *much less* of its GDP than it did in Ike's time, much less.

The left should be pleased that defense spending as a percentage of the federal budget has steadily declined during the past decades. In the early 1960s the Department of Defense constituted 45 percent of federal spending, whereas this year it will constitute an estimated 17 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Source

As the article points out, the real scandal is the ever-increasing entitlement pending that is going to bankrupt America.

With the planned $700 billion bailout of Wall St. criminals, the percentage of GDP spent on defense will decline even more. That says nothing about how much actual money is spent on defense. Maybe a little "shock and awe" on Wall St. would be money better spent. I would pay to watch video of corrupt financiers being waterboarded. Well, ok, I'd probably torrent it, but it's the thought that counts.

Anyone who's older than about 15 would certainly remember the last the time American public got fed this crap about how our awesome new laser weapons are the "future of modern warfare" and would enable us "precisely" kill scads of baddies while minimizing collateral damage. Remember good ol' Norm Schwarzkopf up there on CNN with those gripping black and white films of F-117 dropping GBUs down stovepipes? I do!

Well, it turns out that those laser-guided bombs hit their target a whopping sixty percent of the time!! (Although, strangely, 100% of the TV images shown to the public were direct hits. Hmm.) I wonder where the rest went? Pardon the pun, but would a 40% failure rate fly in the hallowed field of aeronautical engineering? Or would you admit your product is a piece of crap and go back to the drawing board?

Or, if you were really smart, would you admit that there is forever a disconnect between the structured, theoretical world of the engineer, and the imperfect, nonlinear world of the layman who will be putting your creation to use? Your directed energy weapon system may perform great in the lab, but do you really trust somebody with a high school education operating in a high stress environment not to accidentally kill an innocent civilians with it? How bout a whole bunch of these people working in tandem?

For off, calling the USA "warmongers" should be modded flamebait.

And your history and math are wrong. Ike warned of the military industrial complex, not on the use of the military, which he obviously supported, you know, having led the largest invasion in world history. But anti-military types just love to misquote Ike.

The US spends *much less* of its GDP than it did in Ike's time, much less.

The left should be pleased that defense spending as a percentage of the federal budget has steadily declined during the past decades. In the early 1960s the Department of Defense constituted 45 percent of federal spending, whereas this year it will constitute an estimated 17 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Source

As the article points out, the real scandal is the ever-increasing entitlement pending that is going to bankrupt America.

And since you are going on about production, what exactly has Israel produced for the world except a continued source of strife in the middle east?

You forgot irrigation expertise, which they export to many other countries. Not exactly bananas, though.

FTA - He said media coverage of fraudulent activity stemming from Nigeria had given the country "a bad image"

He does have a point, if Australians had never reported being scammed, then Nigeria wouldn't have a bad image. Yeah, this is really all the fault of those racist Australians. This pattern reminds me of the Jena-6 myths, that were all shown to have originated from journalists that were seduced by a false narrative of racial injustice.

Which makes more sense?

1) Install a single, as-large-as-you-want, possibly even fuel generating smokestack scrubber on a single smokestack, or:

2) Install millions of mufflers on millions of combustion engines which have difficult engineering restraints on them? Mufflers need to be small, lightweight, and inexpensive as design concerns - concerns that are placed at least on equal footing with efficiency. Possibly more so.

Which seems like the better idea?

"When Metascore implementations form within communities, they will periodically ask the existing government (or other authority) to cede power to the open source communities pertinent to their region."

Yeah, the State and Federal governments are really gonna respect that. There are two scenarios that could realistically happen, One is the perpetual ineffectuallity of something like The Second Vermont Republic. Where it is just ignored until it becomes a joke, or you get The Montana Freemen, where a belief in individual sovereignty is repudiated by Federal Agents with big guns and armored vehicles, while any valid claims for secession are ignored by the media in favor of painting you as nutjobs. You don't actually think that government owned voting machines are ever going to show a vote in favor of secession or major government restructuring do you ?

See e.g. here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1130/p01s01-usfp.html

So ... yes ... China would be interested in any intelligence it can get its hands on. From innocuous material from open sources to more valuable material, likewise from open sources. But also the more clandestine stuff. From pure industrial espionage to scientific and military espionage. But then so would numerous other countries (see e.g. http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel/t-nsiad-96-114.pdf). Like Russia, France, Japan, Korea, Israel, South-Africa. Just Google for "economic espionage in the US" and marvel. Have I forgotten anyone? Join the queue on the right please and don't shove! Just about every country in the world gathers economic, industrial, and military intelligence. Starting with the good old US of A of course.

What I mean to say is that there's no reason to be especially paranoid about the Chinese spying on individual travelers to the Olympics, but every reason to be cautious.

China as a country has an active espionage operation in the US, and there is no reason why they would *not* analyze a small surge of electronic communications from Americans abroad through the web. After all ... they have state-of-the-art routers (courtesy of Cisco, 3Com, Sun, HP etc.) that can filter out the more interesting communications as they happen.

Although I can't imagine why a bunch of Olympic-goers would be in a position to yield more interesting data than the scores of people working in the Valley, at Sandia, Livermore, and everyone and his grandmother here who uses MS Windows and a browser that's happy to execute any Javascript it comes across etc. etc..

But even so, ... it's probably not a good idea to use an unencrypted network connection from your Beijing hotel room to the company you work for. Especially if someone might be interested in that company. Or in examining the structure of the computer system at the other end, and the communication between them. And surely no-one would be daft enough to log into company machines from abroad without at least the protection of a VPN, right?

Let's at least make Chinese intelligence collectors *work* for their money . No need to make them a present of passwords or hosts, or to alert them to insecure communication protocols into US servers. Whilst there is no need to get paranoid, there's no reason to give them a presents either.

And let's not forget that the risk from non-state sources, shall we? Americans who have the means to visit the Beijing Olympics are, from the point of view of the average Chinese, obscenely rich. And suddenly there will be a few thousand of them in the city. Being foreigners they will be *much* less likely to have the Chinese policy actively investigate any complaints they may have about their credit-cards being plundered by unspecified third parties. Especially if they only find out after their return, right?

I think that perhaps we should simply interpret the warning as a low-key reminder that it's more than likely that China will be interested in anything they can get at without risk and with minimal effort, and that there will be scores of people with good technical knowledge who regard them as extraordinarily rich. So why not warn people that they should take sensible precautions against exposing the more gaping security holes when they surf the web from their Beijing hotel room?

Please don't try to coopt the global warming issue to promote the animal rights issue. Like a bunch of people recently tried to hijack the Sierra Club by claiming that illegal immigration is an environmental issue.

Animal exhalations of methane and CO2 are not directly related to global warming because animals consume living matter. The carbon they emit was in the atmosphere just a few months ago. Cows, in and of themselves, are 100% carbon neutral.

The only carbon we really need to be worried about is that which comes out of deep stores. The CO2 that is produced by burning fossil fuels was last in the atmosphere millions of years ago. By adding it back into the atmosphere now, we are disturbing the current balance. A balance which, by the way, all living emitters of CO2 are part of. Even if we kill them and eat them.

Now it is true that the agriculture industry (not just the meat industry--the entire ag industry) burns a lot of fossil fuels to produce and ship their product, and that contributes to global warming. But the solution to that would be the same as for trucking--replace the internal combustion engine and gasoline.

Actually, methane seems to be nearly as bad, if not worse, than carbon dioxide and is easily preventable in large part by moving to a vegetarian or vegan diet. There have been serious studies on the global warming/climate change implications of eating meat. Personally, I'm not 100% sold on the issue of man-made climate change; but considering the massive amounts of methane (a greenhouse gas far more effective at trapping heat, pound per pound, than CO2) produced by cattle, I've taken to completely disregarding those most vocal of global warming proponents who haven't taken up vegetarianism. Assuming they really and truly believe what they are saying, they need to look to their own hypocrisy first, before attempting to change the behavior of others.

Gee, I wonder if submarines and space stations designers just go "oh, carbon oxides? Those are emitted by all animal life, we don't have to worry about those!".

... that my claims are anything but "extraordinary"! Where did you get this idea? Are you somehow of the opinion that just because I disagree with you (for good reason, by the way), that my claims must therefore be "extraordinary"??? How fascinatingly arrogant. Well, let's work on concrete statements rather than trying to read between the lines. Apparently, what you are asserting (at least), is that someone who disagrees with the IPCC reports has an "extraordinary" point of view. Wow. And YOU are accusing ME of being "different". Just wow.

As I have clearly stated here more than once, I am merely echoing what a lot of reputable scientists are saying. And I can safely say that at least some of them are scientists with much more credibility that the vast majority of the reviewers of the IPCC reports.

I mentioned before that you could find well-supported contrary opinions by spending only a few moments on Google. You have refused to do so. So, just this one time (because I dislike your smarmy attitude so much), I will indulge you and actually do just a little bit of your homework for you. I am not your daddy, so do not expect me to do it again.

I would like you to know up front that just as I stated was possible a few posts ago, I actually spent less than 2 minutes on Google pulling up these articles. The links below actually represent only a small percentage of all I found, and I did not spend a lot of time choosing among them. I could have spent a LOT of time following related links... but I figure that if you are actually interested in learning you can do that for yourself. I suspect that you can actually feed yourself too, if you try. But in any case, even if you disagree, if you do not hear opposing arguments then by definition you are being deliberately biased.

To anticipate a possible objection, I will state from the outset that most of these are not "peer reviewed" papers from "science journals", but they do contain a good many links to same. Read to the depth you care but if you do not care, then do not come back later and ask me yet again to do it for you.

To start, here are just a few pieces that support my statements about the problems with "peer review". These are only a few of the huge list I found. The amount of literature out there on problems with and utter failings of peer review, especially in recent years, is vast:

PROBLEMS WITH PEER REVIEW: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p14s02-stss.htm

NY TIMES: "For Science's Gatekeepers, a Credibility Gap" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/health/02docs.html

Nature: Quality and value: How can we research peer review? http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05006.html



There is a lot more I could say here, but I believe that under the circumstances it would be pointless. Here are some more links. Understand that these are only a very small sampling of those that are out there. But (this one time only), you asked for some, you got some.

Letter from Chris Landsea http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/landsea.html

International Conference on Integrity in Science http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002299.html

Economic Formulas in IPCC Report Criticized for Overstating Emissions http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22786

Here's a DIFFERENT former IPCC participant: Former IPCC Member Slams UN Scientists' Lack of Geologic Knowledge http://newsbusters.org/node/13971

Yet another official IPCC reviewer criticizes the

I don't see him forcing anybody to do anything; he just asks if you support him, and if you do he says "you can support me better if you do X." The internet and social networking just makes the second part ultra-efficient and targeted. I don't see him demonizing his opponents, or their supporters.

The campaign is the anti-Furerprinzip:

The campaign promises much:

• Regular "fireside" Internet chats from a President Obama (the country just got a sample of that in his preemptive Web video announcing his reversal on public funding).
• Online town-halls held by cabinet members, and important meetings of public agencies streamed live with an ability for public input â" a sort of White House C-SPAN.
• Laws posted on the Web for public comment five days before Obama would be due to sign them, and federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts with officials made easily available for citizen tracking.

Your argument only makes sense if you conflate his campaign with "The State."

My Feeds: Select: All 95 subscriptions, None, Unassigned A to Z Kids Stuff children http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/atoz.xml ABC News: Top Stories news http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/fp_rss20.xml About Computing Center technology http://z.about.com/6/g/pcworld/b/rss2.xml About.com Archaeology Archaeology http://z.about.com/6/g/archaeology/b/rss2.xml All Things Digital technology http://feeds.allthingsd.com/atd-feed/ Archaeology News Archaeology news http://www.topix.net/rss/science/archaeology.xml Ars Technica tech news http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/BAaf ArsTechnica: Security Content Security technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/arstechnica/security BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition U.K. http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition Science/Nature http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/science/nature/rss.xml Boing Boing odd http://feeds.boingboing.net/boingboing/iBag Breaking News: CBSNews.com news http://www.cbsnews.com/feeds/rss/main.rss Breitbart.tv varied news topics http://www.breitbart.com/xml/recentvideo.xml ChannelWeb Complete Feed Computer news http://www.crn.com/cwb/globalcontent/cweball/index.xml;jsessionid=L0I1HBDQISHBCQSNDLQSKH0CJUNN2JVN Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories news http://www.csmonitor.com/rss/top.rss CNN.com - Offbeat odd http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_offbeat.rss CNN.com - Politics politics http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_allpolitics.rss CNN.com - U.S. U.S. news http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_us.rss Computerworld Breaking News technology http://feeds.computerworld.com/Computerworld/News Cool Tools technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoolTools Courant.com - Connecticut News Ct. news http://feeds.courant.com/Courant/ConnecticutNews Defense Tech U.S. defense news http://www.defensetech.org/index.rdf Discovery News - Technology technology http://dsc.discovery.com/news/subjects/technology/xdb/topstories.xml Drudge Report news http://feeds.feedburner.com/FeedPalooza/lwDu Dvorak Uncensored news http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?feed=rss2 Engadget robots & gadgets http://www.engadget.com/rss.xml Extremetech technology http://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/extreme.xml Fark.com news http://www.pluck.com/rss/fark.rss FileForum software http://fileforum.b

For all intents and purposes, you're correct with the facts. But speaking of family values, do you not remember Bill Clinton's sexual practices (in the most storied and important building in the US, none the less) committing a crime in attempted cover-up, and also ordering a military strike in the thick of his personal and legal mess to take the press off of him? And then giving pure amnesty to family and cronies via pardons as he left office? Or perhaps while countless Louisianans were dying and/or having their lives destroyed by hurricane Katrina, Congressman William Jefferson used a National Guard helicopter to retrieve personal belongings? Already mentioned Spitzer.... and those are hardly the only embarrassing episodes in recent memory.

My point is that a very good percentage of news articles about about a Republican doing something stupid are often more about embarrassing and discrediting the party than they are about a thorough depiction of of the events that spurred the story at hand to begin with. Surveys show that there are substantially (on the scale of 2-5 times) more Democrats than Republicans in journalism. (source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0603/p02s01-usgn.html) And I think almost all of them will find honest answers to the questions they ask. Yes, a pretty decent number of Republicans have been douche bags. That's an honest fact. But they don't even ask the question of how douche bag-esque Democrats have been lately. I don't believe the discrepancy, if any, is large.

That's an oversimplification. Initially you may be right but as farmers are more profitable, they will grow more food. At some point the government will institute policies limiting exports. (See http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0422/p12s01-woap.html for instance.)

Corn based plastics are just the tip of the iceberg, we will be seeing dozens of new plant based plastics in the decade. Just because oil has been used for a 100 years doesn't mean that they will even need it in another 100.

Socialized medicine has been proven to work far better than privatized? LOL Are you kidding me? Have you been to countries like England and seen the state of their health care? They have rampant problems with Necrotizing fasciitis. Not to mention how clogged their hospitals are. It's insane. Maybe if you did a little research and visited a country with the type of healthcare you'd like to have here in the US, you'd realize how foolish that is. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1019/p04s01-woeu.html

The incidence of murder in the United States was 16,528 in 2005 of 5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. As you can see from the charts, less that 1,000 of those have known connections to gangs. If we assume this is an average, we are talking about ~100,000 in a population of more than 300 million.

Contrast with conservative Iraqi war casualty estimates. We have 151,000 people dead and an estimated 9 out of 10 as a result of U.S. military combat operations or ~135,000 in a population of slightly more than 28 million.

it is malformed individuals who most frequently subvert moral and ethical behavior, not governmental organizations. really, fruitcake, that's the truth

Most instances of genocide, torture and a whole variety of other immoral behaviors happen directly because of government, and on a scale unthinkable to the individual.

in fact, within the context of a human organization, there is the further observation that any subversive activity is not actually being done in the name of that organization. on other wordsa, individual within that organization are just gaming the system for selfish goals, not working in the name of the system

It's all just a few "bad apples", right? Abu Gharib, School of the Americas, the many instances of genocide is just a few bad individuals and doesn't reveal something about how government encourages people to immoral behavior that would be unthinkable to most alone, right? I don't buy it.

People are ethical. Organizations are not ethical, and most organizations these days are designed to absolve people of personal responsibility. I was just following orders. I just did what the experts told me to do. I was just following the will of the people. No personal responsibility. No morality to it.

In any event, I find your post interesting. It's a rather knee-jerk reaction, peppered with lots of name calling - that frankly, I don't understand. I look at the fruit of government, and other large organizations such as big business, and while I can understand that they have benefits, I also understand that they have drawbacks - and one of those drawbacks is that organizations are not moral and that, by trying to short-circuit around personal responsibility - make it much more likely that people involved in it will do something immoral.

You can disagree, but it is observationally wrong - as you put it. Still, it is possible that you have made a mistake or even that I have (though you certainly haven't made a good case for it). I wouldn't rush to call you a moron because for one, I don't think you are - I regularly find your posts interesting. I just couldn't let this particular one go without comment.

Righhhhttttt....

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=1997083
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0213/p03s03-usju.html

I guess what they really want is everyone to live a year without China. I have to wonder how many consumer items that all those protesters use every day come from China. It's hard for their government to take our protests seriously when we are handing them our money as fast as we can.

We too have draconian punishment with about 10% of total US population in jail now.
But somehow our laws seem to punish the individual crimes, rather than the larger crimes by corporates or the government itself.
Why have we not had a CEO being jailed or hanged on behalf of a corporation which was criminally convicted of manslaughter like Exxon or the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in India?
Take for instance the zealousness of German judges in convicting Volkswagen execs: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0325/p12s01-woeu.html/

In US case, the government supports corporates explicitly and wishes courts release them from any liability for defective medicine even if it kills.

There are other examples of totalitarian capitalist countries.

capitalist!=free

Russia would be interested too.
Russia's already got more nukes than it knows what to do with. (Or than it knows where they are. Oops.)

call a friend on the mainland
There are approximately six people in Taiwan who would sell nuke tech to China (which is, after all, the country that keeps shooting missile "warning shots" at them). Besides, China also already has the Bomb, and doesn't need 1960s-era fuse technology (look for the phrase "quite dated"). Much more likely that the stuff would get sold to Japan (though they're understandably touchy about the whole nuclear thing still) or S. Korea, in which case the US probably wouldn't mind too much; but the biggest use of all would be for Taiwan to start building a couple missiles of its own, which is why you'll see that now China is (predictably) kicking up a fuss about the whole thing. After all, they want ALL US arms sales to Taiwan to stop, because they want Taiwan defenseless.

It looks like the story was preemptively spread mainly to convince China that nothing actually had happened (per a cursory reading of this), especially in light of recent developments in Taiwanese mid-range missile technology (which I did not know about). Think that's about the best I can do to explain...

No, the most predictable thing on Slashdot is posters who don't read the articles and who parrot the most popular opinion.

The article doesn't mention anything resembling terrorism as the reason. What the article discusses in some detail is that the Japanese ruling political party, the LDP, has ruled the country virtually unchallenged for decades. The slightest bit of thought shows that the LDP has achieved almost every single goal of what the most progressive Democrats are advocating in the United States: universal health care, effective mass transit, a constitutional ban against the use of the military except to defend the nation, unparalleled Internet connectivity and infrastructure, all within the framework of a liberal democracy. (And for many environmentalists, Japan has achieved the ideal of negative population growth.) As part of the system that rules Japan, college entrance exams are used as a filter to establish that those who ascend to rule Japan are part of a meritocracy. This and not terrorism is the context of Japanese concerns to save the children. As has been discussed by the Christian Science Monitor, the Japanese are probably far more willing to accept Internet filtering to protect the children out of fear of web sites that discuss topics such as group suicides.

And given that the Japanese system works better than almost any other in the world (only a few Western European nations even have an argument), a response of apathetic indifference by the majority ruled by that system is indeed perfectly rational and defensible. The bloggers who fear being censored represent the malcontents, the rejects, the people who were not quite good enough, the people who have not demonstrated their ability to responsibly maintain what the Japanese system has built to the envy of the rest of the world.

Can Source Forge perhaps sue Microsoft for infringing on the trademark Sourceforge? (it's at least a closer approximation than Mike Row Soft)