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As we blithely await potential catastophes that directly impact all of us, we'll see more and more of this kind of action being taken. Guess what - the next president will be....a Republican. Not to hard to guess there (although I guessed the last election well before it completed). Don't you see a pattern occuring? It truely pains me to see the most obvious of actions being spun in a different light, yet every seems content or oblivious.

"I think Wikipedia is extremely elitist. [...] But it's an elitism of productive work, it's an elitism of results. [...] We don't vet people on their credentials [before they can contribute], so maybe we're anti-credentialist." Instead, contributors earn reputations within Wikipedia based on the quality of their work, he says. "There's a real passion for getting it right."

I do see a larger issue: business acumen. Most American businesses knew, for a while, that nuclear power would come into vogue again. Did they not read the comments by Patrick Moore? He co-founded Greenspeace, the pinnacle of pro-environment thought. Even Moore supports the use of nuclear power and sees that we must use it in order to protect the environment.

I just read that GM may go into bankruptcy. 10 years later, will ExxonMobile follow? Why didn't ExxonMobile buy Westinghouse?

Why are American business conglomerates so sluggish in responding to business opportunities? Small American companies like Google are swift and nimble, but American conglomerates are slow as a snail. Clearly, size is not the problem because Toshiba just snatched Westinghouse.

I believe the factor of safety for stell structures is in the order of 1.5. As for earthworks the factor of safety can be up to 3. A factor of safety of 10 is not needed. But you DO have to maintain the structures so they are still at their designed capacity.

I don't have the details about the New Orleans levees, but I honestly doubt cracking had anything to do with it. Such huge works are rarely made of expensive materials such as concrete. It's just too huge. Usually only the sections of levees protecting the most "critical" areas would be expected to be made of concrete. Most of it would be made of earth. This seems to be validated by some info that can be found on the levee failures

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1103/p02s02-ussc.htm l

• Katrina's storm surge overtopped some sections. The cascade eroded soils from the base of the landward side of some levee sections, causing them to fail.
• In sections where the surge didn't overtop levee segments, water percolated under the sheet pilings through layers of peat, sand, and clay and bubbled up on the other side. Ivor van Heerden, a marine scientist at Louisiana State University, noted that these failures tended to occur where the pilings were driven only 10 or 11 feet into the ground. Where pilings were driven 25 feet, the levees kept the water at bay. Indeed, he expressed concern that this percolation may have weakened other sections of the levee system that appear to have survived Katrina.
• The junctions between different kinds of levees were often weak. "If it's earth versus concrete, the earth will lose," Dr. Nicholson noted.
• Levees made from fill or dredge material from canals were more likely to fail if they lacked significant patches of marshland in front of them to blunt the effects of the incoming storm surge

One thing that you need to do when building any kind of water retaining structure is to have your impermeable cutoff wall deep enough to prevent percolation of water when the water is at its maximum. Either the water level was maintained higher than the levee height (which would have been difficult since the water would just have overtopped the levee... unless the whole area beyond the levee was already flooded, but then the water on the other side would have prevented that kind of percolation and resulting erosion) or the original design assumed the water would never reach the top of the levee. Either that or the flow properties of the underlying soil were compeltely erroneously estimated

In any event, cracking had nothing to do with any of the described failures. The comment in the article was pure "buzzword". I think it's the kind of research that will be of more use to mechanical and structural engineers than to geotechnical engineers.

In summary, the factor of safety was probably good enough to resist the forces applied to the levees. At least in terms of strength it probably was. Where the design seems to have been lacking is in terms of erosion protection. Erosion will weaken an earth structure.

I believe the factor of safety for stell structures is in the order of 1.5. As for earthworks the factor of safety can be up to 3. A factor of safety of 10 is not needed. But you DO have to maintain the structures so they are still at their designed capacity.

I don't have the details about the New Orleans levees, but I honestly doubt cracking had anything to do with it. Such huge works are rarely made of expensive materials such as concrete. It's just too huge. Usually only the sections of levees protecting the most "critical" areas would be expected to be made of concrete. Most of it would be made of earth. This seems to be validated by some info that can be found on the levee failures

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1103/p02s02-ussc.htm l

• Katrina's storm surge overtopped some sections. The cascade eroded soils from the base of the landward side of some levee sections, causing them to fail.
• In sections where the surge didn't overtop levee segments, water percolated under the sheet pilings through layers of peat, sand, and clay and bubbled up on the other side. Ivor van Heerden, a marine scientist at Louisiana State University, noted that these failures tended to occur where the pilings were driven only 10 or 11 feet into the ground. Where pilings were driven 25 feet, the levees kept the water at bay. Indeed, he expressed concern that this percolation may have weakened other sections of the levee system that appear to have survived Katrina.
• The junctions between different kinds of levees were often weak. "If it's earth versus concrete, the earth will lose," Dr. Nicholson noted.
• Levees made from fill or dredge material from canals were more likely to fail if they lacked significant patches of marshland in front of them to blunt the effects of the incoming storm surge

One thing that you need to do when building any kind of water retaining structure is to have your impermeable cutoff wall deep enough to prevent percolation of water when the water is at its maximum. Either the water level was maintained higher than the levee height (which would have been difficult since the water would just have overtopped the levee... unless the whole area beyond the levee was already flooded, but then the water on the other side would have prevented that kind of percolation and resulting erosion) or the original design assumed the water would never reach the top of the levee. Either that or the flow properties of the underlying soil were compeltely erroneously estimated

In any event, cracking had nothing to do with any of the described failures. The comment in the article was pure "buzzword". I think it's the kind of research that will be of more use to mechanical and structural engineers than to geotechnical engineers.

In summary, the factor of safety was probably good enough to resist the forces applied to the levees. At least in terms of strength it probably was. Where the design seems to have been lacking is in terms of erosion protection. Erosion will weaken an earth structure.

"If you're standing on public property, you can shoot anything the naked eye can see... Photographing the outside of buildings - schools, hospitals, and even government buildings - is also legal. It's when you go inside that you need permission."

the QOTD at the bottom of this page was:

Destroy the most important thing.

In my opinion, Disney was just about to do this. They have been saved from this mistake. Maybe Disney can now go forth and innovate, rather than taking the tired Hollywood path of cranking out sequel after dismal sequel.

However, there may be a few other things they have to give up:
1. They might have to stop purchasing legislation to guarantee income from ancient work:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_s prigman.html
2. They might have to give up a little of the endless profits that they make to the creators (or their heirs) of the very thing that makes them so much:
http://www.svmedialaw.com/content-219-9th-circuit- rules-in-winniethepooh-case.html
3. They might have to stop the entire culture of cronyism at the highest levels that pays out huge amounts of money for no better reason than "friends":
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1117/p01s01-ussc.htm l
4. Speaking of the highest levels, they might have to clean house... oh wait! they already started:
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/03/03/disney. eisner/

here is an article that directly parallels the problem http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0828/p09s02-cojh.htm l to summarize, i video rental store was chopping out all the "adult" scenes from movies and renting them as rated "E" edited. he was sued, not sure how it turned out

So if we can't even clean up some small space junk hundreds of kilometers from Earth, what makes people think they have even a remote chance of diverting an asteroid?

No doubt the problems are different, but discouraging none the less.

http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0726/p01s04-stss.htm l

I was kinda thinking the same thing: photographing criminals seems like a more cost-effective way of "taking action". In which case, you don't really need a robot - you can just have mounted cameras at problem areas, much like the city of Chicago is doing (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0730/p01s02-usgn.ht ml). More effecient & WAY less scary than building robots to hunt people down.

The average coal plant produces 600 megawatts of electricity Link. The entire output of an Ovionics Solar Cell assemply plant is enough electricity to produce 30 megawatts a year if all solar cells are used simultaneously, in sunny weather, during the day Link. That means that you have to have 20 years worth of production from that plant to get enough solar cells to equal a coal plant. Wind is a little better with the largest onshore turbines producing 2.5megawatts Link.
Or about 240 needed to reproduce a coal plant, when the wind is blowing. There are about 62 gigawatts of new generating capacity in the works, according to the CS monitor story, for the continental U.S.

But what about solar powered homes? The average home uses 10656 kw/h per year or about 1.21 kw constant load Link. The average aluminum smelting plant uses 300mw of electricity or 250,000 times as much Link. The average chemical plant uses 12mw constant load or almost 1000x as much Link. There are lots of similar industrial users. <sarcasm> Of course, who needs all those plants anyway? Doesn't produce anything usefull? All just pollution right? </sarcasm>

Sure there's plenty of little stuff we can do about the energy problems of the world but I think the problem is far far bigger than most people imagine. So basically given the above, environmentalists really have no solution to the world's energy problem except de-industrialization and I really doubt we are going to go along with that much less China, India, Russia, or Brazil. There you go, with a little math I spoiled the whole alternative energy debate. You have read the last chapter of the book on Global warming: There is no solution (except nuclear!). If you have some alternative examples show me and please make sure they include actual figures in megawatts. Not things like "wind energy potential" but instead, how long it would take to build, how much money, how much energy would be provided, etc. BTW, I'm not saying that some technological revolution isn't going to save us but please, let's get some numbers into the discussion!

The hip thing now is the bi-fuel car.

This also isn't a strictly-Japanese thing. In the early 2000's (from the Super NES onwards), there was this perceived slight in the U.S. over Nintendo, before Sony and Microsoft took over the game console market. Nintendo of America was, functionally, a branch office of Nintendo of Japan (where the translators worked). Sony and Microsoft read more correctly what American gamers wanted — and Sony is a Japanese company. I believe NOA has more input into the process now. Not that this stopped them; NOA still successfully brought over Mario Party, Pokémon, and Harvest Moon --> Animal Crossing.

It's interesting to note that "The Last Samurai" wasn't received well in theatres on this side of the pond. It did well because it had Tom Cruise in it, before he went psycho.

Kudos on the "Japans can be racist too" comment. Japanese have a low level of memory and anger about Hiroshima. There's magnitudes more anger at Chinese. See this article for more insight.

As 2005 draws to a close, foreigners hold about $3 trillion (yes, that's trillion) in US dollars, Treasury bonds, and other government securities such as Fannie Mae mortgages. Two-thirds of this is held by four Asian countries - Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea.

After that, the most common form of biodiesel supply is oil palms.

Not that this makes it any better of solution for the UK, but it's been a huge part of the US energy debate since the 70s.

Like this contest, you design a bridge no one will ever use. All you have to do is suck up to a politican. The prize is $2b.

One large, overlooked factor in global warming: tropical forest fires

carbon dioxide (CO2) released was "equivalent to 13 to 40 percent of the mean annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and contributed greatly to the largest annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration detected since records began in 1957."

Tropical forest fires worrisome

"The one thing we've learned is that fires are more important ... than we thought to the amount of greenhouse gases," staff scientist G. James Collatz of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told United Press International. If so, this factor raises important questions about future trends in climate change and in the role of the tropics, either as a sink or a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, he said.

Are Wildland Fires Fueling the Greenhouse?

Wildland fires are taking tons of carbon out of storage and feeding it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas.

US notches world's highest incarceration rate

Does the United States lead the world in prison population?

You realize that up until recently, it was illegal to sell private health insurance in Canada? (The Canadian high court overturned the law making it illegal just a few months ago.) You realize that the Clinton health-care plan, which thankfully never got past the talking stages, was going to be based on a single-payer plan system modeled after the Canadian system?

You realize you're wrong? A simple Google search would yield you any number of articles that would tell you that the Supreme Court struck down a law in Quebec to that effect. It was a provincial law, not federal, and everyone already knows that Quebec's laws are much different from the rest of the country. This is why, for example, so many contests and lotteries would say you can enter if you live anywhere in Canada except Quebec.

As a resident of Ontario, I've had private health insurance coverage for years! This is because OHIP (Ontario's public health insurance) doesn't cover everything; you really need to supplement it with something else. For example, my dental surgery last year wasn't covered by the government plan. Good thing I had private insurance for that. Saved me a couple grand.

They're erasing the line between civil and criminal law. Where the hell does this end?

With the world's highest incarceration rate?

Oh wait, we're already there.

"Christian Science" is based on the teachings of Jesus, as interpreted by Mary Baker Eddy. They're kind of like gnostics, is gnosticism were invented by a Presbyterian woman in the Southeast in the 19th century. They believe in solving worldly problems through spiritual means so as to trancend the illusion of the material world and grow closer to God (that's why they don't go to the doctor). They operate quiet reading rooms and an highly respected news organization

Big difference.

Not originally. At first, things like the New York Times were cached and able to be searched; that is, the articles they were trying to make people pay for. The NYT asked Google to take those pages down.

And for books, Google Print scans books for which the copyright has already expired.
No. That's the Yahoo and Microsoft versions. Google will scan copyrighted books without explicit permission. See this article, by way of example.

"The Google project ... includes both public domain works and printed materials under copyright, although it would handle and display these two differently.
...
The OCA [Open Content Alliance] will seek to digitize all public domain works, but only copyright material for which they gain explicit consent from the publisher. Made up of Google competitors Yahoo! and the Microsoft Network (MSN)"

"the people will revolt within ten years."

I doubt it. Plenty of Americans have a brain but they tend to be brushed asided as extremists. Half the public is so programmed by now they trip over themselves to salute the flag and the military like the old Soviet May day military parades. (a sure sign of individualists and people concerned peace)

Americas view of freedom and human rights has become too distorted by TV mega-corps by now (like Rupert's ironfist control of Fox that forced all 170+ of his outlets to support the war in Iraq.).

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=122948

  Some Americans are so naive they still think they are "freeing" Iraq--- when the Iraqi people themselves view them as an occupation force and the Neocons blantantly admit they are trying to export America.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4369350.stm
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101 .html

Americans aren't the Nazis, but if you add up all the wars they've actively pursued and tens of million of people they've killed in the past 100 years for THEIR national security--they sure ain't the Swiss or Canadians nor can they remotely claim they are altruistic. Many of them view new age thought processes like Objectivism and libeterianism as something new-- when in fact it is very very old thinking that has caused countless wars and threatens our annihilation as a species.

If one is selfish... sure you can end up with lots of stuff-- when the people around you aren't as aggressive. When EVERYONE is selfish though--you end up with with a phenomena called EVIL. People (not just Americans) clearly mistake power for morality... and the ability to speak-- for the ability to effect change.

It's not even just America anymore. A good chunk of the world has been seduced into being easily manipulated shop-bots that just can't see they are actually economic slaves to a handful of related megacorps and venture capitalists.

  There I said it.

No. I don't wish for the Soviet Union but nor do I wish to exchange one set of masters for another. I also don't wish to turn this earth into a wasteland of mostly useless junk that will cause countless animal species to become extinct. Let's hope intelligent life out there doesn't treat us with the same regard.

OK I've said my peace. The spooks logged my IP and the data is a black mark in my file. I've been marked as a target for potential assasination or slander.

Freedom. Yeah right.

Yeah, that little bit of revisionist history isn't playing well over in Italy right now, especially due to Nigergate (Italy was the source of the Niger memos; former Italian intelligence officers drafted them long ago to make money, but the US, British, French, and Italians wouldn't buy them because they were obviously bogus; however, this time around, not only did they take the very documents that they had filed as bogus, then passed them off to the British and Americans as genuine). Of course, that's just the start; they were the funnel for half of the INC and other groups' tripe that flooded in as "intelligence".

The prime backers of the war were:
1) US
2) Britain
3) Spain
4) Italy
5) Australia

Check UN speech transcripts. Check disclosed memos. Check the transcripts of Bush and Burlusconi's public meetings. Check anything - those countries were pro-war every step of the way. Aznar got kicked out of office by the antiwar Spanish, and it looks like Berlusconi, who went against the overwhelming will of the Italian public in supporting the war and is up for elections in a few months, is trying to avoid the same fate. Barring a miracle, it's not going to work. He's in serious trouble, and is trying to pretend that one of the war's staunchest lobbyist on every forum was secretly trying to undermine it. At least Britain and Australia only had small majorities against the war; Spain and Italy were 70-80% against it. Really, he doesn't have much of a chance.

Having the US keeping the root DNS servers doesn't equate to meaning they "control the internet". Exactly what can the US do that will so harm non-Americans in using the Internet? They can setup their own DNS at any time.

What sort of harm could they do to non-Americans? Forgetting for a moment that fragmenting of the DNS system would harm us all lets take a look at a recent post about Estonia using online voting in their latest election as an example. If you read this article you'll see that their government has moved much of their infrastructure online. Imagine what could happen to a country like Estonia if someone pulled their root server plug. Sure, they could set up their own DNS, but that would take time and when much of the civil infrastructure has been moved to the Internet time is a luxury you don't really have. Then of course there are the commercial concerns. Banking, airlines, telecommunications, pretty much everything has become dependant on the Internet... and Estonia is just one example. Major infrastructure is moving online in almost every country. Use IP addresses you say? Quick, without looking it up, what's the IP address of your bank's web server?

Controlling the root servers gives the US a mighty big stick to weild should it ever be tempted to do so and the current administration's handling of foreign affairs hasn't exactly instilled the international community with confidence. Even long-time allies are right to be concerned, after all if the US isn't going to weild its big stick why is it so anxious to hang on to it?

Checkout the photo at the bottom of the article:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1018/p02s01-sten.htm l

Then checkout this photo:
http://www.jdhodges.com/photos/8756

Pretty amazing similarities!

Various analysts estimate it can take up to 10 years for savings at the gas pump to equal the extra cash a hybrid costs.

It doesn't need to get to $6/gal. It's already relatively high. Thats good enough to force some change.

http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/d urable/1999/11/03/fp8s2-csm.shtml

"Shrinking corporate tax revenues opens the door to a hot campaign issue. Democrats could accuse the Republicans of expanding "corporate welfare" - rewarding generous corporate campaign givers with tax breaks. That may be one reason Bill Archer (R) of Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, just announced a hearing on corporate tax shelters on Nov. 10. Treasury will be testifying."

I think I'll take the CS Monitor's definition of corporate welfare over most.

Also, when they get to keep their money "without being tortured and murdered" and we pick up the tab for cleaning up their toxic waste, for example, that's corporate welfare.

But Iraq didn't fuck with us. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The only way Iraq fucked with us was by considering trading oil in Euros.

Not exactly, or at least not in the George W. Bush view of the world. Bush delivered what amounts to a famous ultimatum, when he said that in the war on terror, you're "with or against us". After that, Saddam specifically came out and said publicly that he rejected the idea that there were only those two options.

Bush saw this as defiance, which is of course exactly what it was. Whether that justifies an invasion is another question. But it does constitute fucking with us, or at least challenging our power.

My feeling is that Bush felt we were better safe than sorry with regards to Iraq. There was uncertainty about whether Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction left (here's some background on that). To me, it seems like Bush though there might be WMD, and Saddam is an evil guy and thorn in our side, so why not just go take him out? Once again, I am not saying this does justify war, but I am saying that Bush had other reasons to invade Iraq that don't have anything to do with oil. I think he saw Iraq as Step 2 on the list of housecleaning that he felt like ought to be done in the post-9/11 environment.

The New York Times has had its problems, but their reporters are some of the best in the business, and while there is an editorial slant, it isn't extreme. The Atlantic provides good monthly material, and The Economist does so on a weekly basis. Those are my picks for daily, weekly, and monthly news, but there are other sources. The Christian Science Monitor is a great daily paper, for example. You may agree or disagree with my picks, but the profession of journalism isn't dead, and good sources of news are available.

I would also advance the notion that just because the editorial bias of a newspaper is disagreeable to you doesn't mean that the organization is corrupt. Newspapers are run by people, and people sometimes make mistakes. Note that during the runup to the Iraq invasion, The Atlantic provided excellent coverage and made many warnings that the Administration's plans were misguided. To me that is proof that following only one news source is a bad idea. You have to read from more than one source, whose biases you know, and make your own assessments from there.

I realize that it's de rigeur to bash on the news media, whether you're attacking from the Right or the Left, but the media is a business, and it gives people what they want. Americans need to take responsibility for at least some of the sorry state of our media. We have consistently voted in politicians who allowed the media conglomerates more and more power. We watch trash like Fox News. We read USA Today. That's not proof of a lack of credible journalism. It's proof that we're lazy.

Your points considered and rejected.

Are people so addicted to government now...

On Addiction:

Consider major government spending projects:

Columbus' discovery of America (Spanish Monarchy)
U.S. Involvement in WWII
Internet (via DARPA) and important comp-sci projects (Berkeley Unix, MIT AI lab).
Space program
Interstate highways

So, Mr. Geeste, free yourself from addiction! All you have to do is

not use GNU tools (remember Stallman was at MIT AI lab)
the internet
return Europe to the Nazis
not live in the U.S. (government funding discovered the new world, after all!)
not use Cell phones or any satellite-based technology
stay off of government funded interstate highways

The fact is that there are some projects (including the ones above) that are either too large, too basic or too far reaching political scope that only the government can and should fund and run them.

Surely, reasonable people can see a big difference between "not funding" and "actively impeding".

Yes, there is a difference. However, why not lower funding for all medical research? By selectively prohibiting Federal funding on stem-cell research (as opposed to other medical research), the Bush Administration effectively has hamstrung national research on stem-cell reasearch.

Whatever happened to the days of actually convincing people to voluntarily spend their money on your schemes?

Fine - here are some government programs that I would like to be convinced on:

A billion dollar bridge to nowhere
A missle defense boondoggle

If you support thses programs, please tell me why these deserve Federal funding so much more than stem-cell research that may lead to tremendous medical advances.

Oh, and I don't need to hear the "corporations are short-sighted" argument either. You're short-sighted too in that you spend money consuming things you don't really need rather than saving it or investing it in new technology.)

Translated into a syllogism:

Premise #1: Corporations are short-sighted when it comes to basic research
Premise #2: People are short-sighted about stem-cell research
Conclusion: The government shouldn't fund stem-cell research

Now tell me again how the conclusion follows? Because I sure don't see it.

Go ahead and mod me down

This is an attempt at reverse psychology, and a pathetic show of egocentric defensiveness. Please refrain from using this Slashdot cliche. Either stand up for your ideas or refrain from posting.

Should the Executive have the power to ignore the Constitution by detaining people indefinitely without trial, and shall there be no recourse in the courts? Or do the courts have the right to interpret the Constitution and demand that a suspect (like Jose Padilla) be tried or released?

No person should be held without charges brought against them, what's next requiring all Muslims to register? Then make them wear arm bands with a red cresent on their sleeves? Then we can herd them all into a gheto a la Warsaw. Actually this has already been before the USSC when as president Lincoln authorizes the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. on 27 April 1861. Then when "Chief Justice Roger Taney declares the president's actions unconstitutional, Lincoln blatantly ignores the ruling."

I find it interesting that those on the right-wing on one hand seem to want an abandonment of case law and at the same time want to see more consistancy in how cases are delt with.

Of course. Much like democrats, republicans want to do what benefits them, so when case law fits it's "good" when it doesn't it's "bad" and needs to be overturned.

If students are leaving engineering but there is no shortage of geeks, maybe there just isn't the same demand that there once was. Or maybe people don't see engineering as a cash cow anymore.
So only students who have an interest in engineering enroll and complete the courses. I wonder what the numbers of high schoolers taking science and higher math are.

"Heck, they recently changed the rules so capitialists can join the Chinese Communist Party."

What "recent" change are you talking about? Most of China's leading "capitalists" are members of the Communist party, and the leading ones are members of its Central Committtee, and always have been, at least since they started their market reforms around 1984. If they aren't top party members they are relatives of prominent party members. Most of its big "captialist" companies are still partly or wholly stated owned.

Zhang Rumin is one example. He is CEO of Haier, China's largest appliance maker, which recently attempted a takeover of Maytag. He was a key party official managing factories in China before he turned in to a "capitalist" and gained control of a multi billion dollar corporation.

Lenovo, now owner of IBM's PC division, was originally founded by China's Academy of Sciences, a state owned enterprise.

CNOOC the Chinese oil company that attempted the takeover of Unocal, and which is buying up oil reserves around the world is also largely a front for the Chinese government.

Starting around 1984 when China began its market reforms, its pretty much transitioned from Socialism to Fascism. This transition had a couple key benefits:

- Western business and governments wouldn't touch China with a 10 foot pool as long as they didn't allow private ownership of Capital. Now they are rushing to transfer all their capital, factories, IP, and markets to Chinese control

- The top members of the Communist party were constrained in how much wealth they could accumulate without violating the sham that was Communism there. Under the new system they can use their political power to accumulate vast fortunes pretty much over night.

All in all it is complete insanity for the West to have anything to do with China. Its "free market" is anything but free. Western corporations are forbidden from having a controlling interest in any Chinese corporation. To gain access to Chinese markets, which is what pretty much what every greedy Western businessmen wants, the Chinese government is compelling them to transfer massive amounts of wealth, capital, market presence and IP to China, as IBM did in the Lenovo deal.

The Chinese government apparently actively dictates to Cisco how much of business will be transfered to China, both manufacturing and R&D, to stay in favor with the Chinese government so they can sell in to their markets. Cisco's CEO wasn't kidding when he said Cisco is becoming a "Chinese company".

Its just an unfortunate trait of Western businessmen and politicians, that they have no scruples about dealing with Fascists regimes, while they seek to snuff out Socialist ones, though they are so similar in things like repression. Only difference, Fascism allows private ownership of Capital and Communism doesn't. Western business was eager to invest in Nazi Germany throughout the '30's just as they are investing in China now. In the first case they helped create a monster, and chances are they are doing the same in the latter. Of course China and the U.S. are starting to converge in to pretty similar political and economic models, authoritarian, some private ownership of capital, massive intervention in the economy by the government to benefit favored members of the party in power.

That'd be Amado Carrillo, aka the "Lord of the Skies" ("El señor de los Cielos"). To this day, however, it remains kind of uncertain, surrounded by mysterious circumstances, and there are many who believe it was all staged to allow him to disappear.

Anyone know whatever happened to his plastic surgeon?

Hollywood and conspiracy fans rejoice: they were found dead along a highway, stuffed in oil drums.

Exactly. Some of the worst health care there is. I've been to both, have had friends in both with medical problems, and they're terrible. Add in the fact that "free" health care costs consumers more than free market health care, and you've got a sinking ship. Government's solution to the terrible "free" health care problem: more money!

Funny - that's not the conclusion people who've actually studied suicide terrorism have come to. From The American Conservative:

RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

According to someone who's studied the problem, the "other methods" include such things as removing our troops from unfriendly foreign soil and our military backing from autocratic foreign regimes. Basically, stop stomping around in other people's backyards and maybe they'll stop telling us to leave.

Will it work? I dunno. But even the CIA says our current approach is failing, and is making the threat of terrorism worse:

The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.

The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.

It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.

I agree he supported terrorists in other parts of the world, used gas on his own (Kurdish) people, and deserved no better treatment than we gave him. In short, he was a very, very bad man.

However, it would behoove us to remember what has happened in the past when we've taken it upon ourselves to "encourage" regime change.

Short version:

• In 1953, the CIA ousted Iranian President Mohammad Mossadegh. This resulted in the US-friendly Shah (Mohammed Reza Pahlavi), followed by the not-so-friendly Ayatollah Khomeini.
• In 1954, the CIA ousted Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. Result: civil war lasting until 1996.
• In 1960, the US and Belgium organized a coup resulting in the assassination of a democratically elected prime minister (backed by the USSR), who was replaced by the oh-so-lovable Joseph Sese Seko Mobuto.
• In 1973, we helped bring Pinochet to power.

Ignoring our history, it seems like things can only get better in Iraq with Saddam out of the way, and I sincerely hope that in 5-10 years you can tell me that you told me so.

Of course, I can't finish this comment without pointing out this gem. By your logic, it would seem that those who supported Saddam can also be blamed for 9/11.

Quote: Not to slight Russia, but with all of their economic troubles

you mean "troubles" like this,& this?

now, i'm the last person to support the IMF, to say nothing of Russia's choice to pay "them" off rather than focus such monies into social needs, but paying off early a 7 billion USD debt seems like there's some to go around. i agree it is tragic Russia doesn't use the money to take care of its inherit social problems, but perhaps they're modeling themselves after some other big country's spending habits

Quote: its troubling that their space program is comparable to ours in many ways...

yes, god forbid another country do something better than Americans. oh wait... most of the world does many things better than Americans. Unless you count Greed, we are better than everyone at that.

I hate to see more of this tired "we" are good and "they" are not rhetoric. As an American, I have to ask when will the propoganda inflated "red threat" die like racism is supposed to have in our "great" country? Hmm, it sounds like someone else has been sleeping under a rock? =)

I sympathize with the plight of european motorists, but you guys pay a lot more in gasoline taxes than we do. If your respective governments lowered taxes, you would pay closer to what we pay.

Lot of folks want to throw out the "gas in Europe costs more than gas in the USA, so don't cry about your 'high gas prices'" line. What you need to look at, though, is where this cost comes from. The answer is taxes. From http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0826/p01s03-woeu.htm l:

In Britain, the government takes 75 percent, and raises taxes by 5 percent above inflation every year (though it has forgone this year's rise in view of rocketing oil prices, and the French government has promised tax rebates this year to taxi drivers, truckers, fishermen, and others who depend heavily on gasoline.) On August 8, for example, the price of gas in the US, without taxes, would be $2.17, instead of $2.56; in Britain, it would be $1.97, instead of $6.06.

Given that, I'm not sure it's a fair comparison to make: Europe has decided to tax the hell out of gasoline, a decision the government can undo should there be a need, while the USA is paying higher prices to the oil companies, which can't be controlled as easily.

Not really sure what my point is, really,

robert

This is what everyone should really be doing. And that was published on August 16th.

most of Hollywood has almost no desire to make films that appeal to adults, and even less of an idea how to make them

Twenty years or so ago I did a marketing study for Fox about movie attendance. At that time people aged 12-24 in our study saw some 12-15 movies a year in a theater; people over forty watched about 3-4. This meant that the much smaller group of young people actually accounted for a very large share of total admissions.

These days I'd bet the market is even more heavily weighted in favor of younger theater-goers. Adults have even more options for at-home entertainment these days than they did in the 1980's, while teens and young adults have social motives for movie-going that don't apply to most older people.

I also suspect that gaming has a role to play here since such a large chunk of the gaming audience is that same young adult demographic. Two years ago television executives puzzled over substantial declines in TV viewing among younger males. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1107/p16s02-altv.htm l What they found were substantial increases in video gaming and Internet usage in this demographic category.

So I wouldn't be surprised to discover that declining theater-going stems as much from people, especially younger people, replacing "traditional" TV viewing and movie-going with gaming and surfing. Unfortunately if that's true, it may not be much of an incentive for improving the content of the movies and television programs being produced.

"Not "in shambles".

There is comedy in the fact that you are comparing todays production against prewar production when Iraqi oil was embargoed, the U.N. was messing in it with Oil for food, and sanctions made fixing infrastructure difficult at best. Iraqi oil production was in a shambles before the war and its still in a shambles after the war. You can blame the prewar situation on Saddam but it was more due to U.S. and U.N. sanctions. The before situation certainly originated with George H.W. Bush and the after originated with George W. Bush though Clinton contributed in the middle.

Also quoting the number for ONE good month and declaring victory is silly since Iraqi production gyrates wildly month to month based on the success of sabotage and insurgent attacks.

Its a simple fact the U.S. isn't going to double Iraqi oil production in the current climate like Cheney was telling everyone they would.

"Contrary to common misbelief, the US did not invade Iraq to steal their oil."

Well in the short term the coalition provisional authority did in fact steal it. They took the money from oil sales and transfered it in to the pockets of American contractors and Bush adminsitration cronies like Halliburton. Here is just one of many examples write up. Here is another article on rampant fraud under the CPA and its puppet government under Allawi.

That said I'm sure all the war profiteering was just a side show.

I'm more inclined to think rather than "steal" Iraqi oil the U.S. was seeking more to "control" Iraqi oil and further completely dominate militarily the worlds biggest oil producing region Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran.

Control comes in three forms and always has EVERY time the U.S. and Britain have intervened in an oil producing country in the last century, Iran in the 50's was another classic example of the tactics I describe below:

A. Topple a hostile government and install a friendly puppet government you can manipulate. The Iraqi government is completely dependent on the U.S. to stay in power so the U.S. can dictate and manipulate it at will.

B. Maintain military bases in the dominated country so if it strays to far out of line you can threaten and if necessary topple the government again and install a new and better puppet.

C. Insure U.S. and British oil companies and even more important oil field service companies like Halliburton are given the inside track for the contracts to service the oil fields and produce and sell the oil. If you have U.S. companies on the ground in the oil fields the U.S. controls and profits from the oil. You need enough blackmail influence to insure they don't give the contracts to anyone else.

Its always been the U.S. objective to insure they have enough military bases in the region that they can intimidate the governments there and block any strategic movies in to the region by Russia and China. Saudi bases didn't work well because the Saudi's put to many restrictions on them. The current bases in Iraq are much better since the weak Iraqi government can't dictate to the U.S. what it does there. They are also better suited to intimidate and attack the next two targets on the list Syria and Iran.

Iran in the 50's is a great historical reference to see exactly how this policy works. U.S. overthrew a sovereign government, installed the despotic Shah, and insured U.S. oil companies were given the contracts to control Iran's oil production. Prior to this the oil fields were in British hands and they were taking the lions share of the profits. The Iranians got fed up with the Brisish taking all the profits and nationalized them. The CIA, with British prodding, toppled the government, and then the oil contracts went in to U.S. hands and the British were ticked. Google search for TPAJAX which is the CIA codeword for one of the other grand schemes for taking

world's #1 greenhouse gas polluter continues to belch out 25% of the world's CO2

That's 25% of the man-made CO2. Since anthrogenic CO2 is only 3% of the total you should have said, "the world's #1 greenhouse gas polluter continues to belch out 0.75% of the world's CO2".

Why do people keep saying thingA like this?

Because even if everyone else met the Kyoto target reduction 500M tons by 2012 (they won't), in 2012 China and India will start coal fired electric generation plants that will add 2700M tons.

wow.. i've never seen such militance

Wow, I've never seen such 1) exaggeration, 2) misunderstanding of the word "militance"

Before they can go into contract talks with a major label, they must sign another contract

So, so not true. There's a saying among musicians (in Nashville, for example): "Say yes to everything, and sign nothing." The days of Billy Joel being so naive that he loses the income from the first third of his career are over. Musicians have never (thanks to industry message boards, "how not to get screwed" books written by experienced artists, and so on) had more resources than they do today to do two things: strike a smart deal with a publisher, and/or avoid traditional publishers. Think how many times you hear about artists starting their own label so that they can run things the way they want.

they have no other way because their industry is under the vicelike grip of a cartel

How? What is actually stopping artists from starting their own labels? In fact, I'm sure that these people would be very surprised to hear that they're part of an evil cartel. And the people running smaller, independent labels that have been surprised at how much business they're doing probably aren't paying their cartel dues, despite what you say.

denies kids their futures and sometimes their meals by sueing them and their families for a few measly songs which they could easily record off the radio to the same effect

And this is because these kid's parents weren't intelligent enough to remind kids not to take stuff they're not entitled to, or because the kids you're referring to are totally aware that what they're doing is illegal, and are just deciding to take the chance they won't get caught? Whether they can or cannot "just get it off the radio" isn't germaine. Using P2P systems, we're talking about spreading around bit-for-bit exact copies of the product that the artist wants to sell, and deliberately avoiding paying for it. It's simple: people say they like the musician, they want the music, and despite the fact that the musician is set up to sell their work, some of their "fans" decide to just rip it off and save a couple of bucks. Part of that deal is the risk that someone may actually call them on it, and even prosecute.

They don't show integrity

What are you talking about? They couldn't be simpler, or more honest. They say: "Here, enjoy the music that I spent the last year of my life making. It will cost you a dollar. If that's too much, then please go find a musician that doesn't want to charge you." How much simpler could that be?

treat me like a thief

Do you think that a pizza shop is treating you like a thief when they have you pay before they serve you your pizza? Does a gas station treat you like a thief when they ask you to use your PIN when paying at the pump? Is a movie theater treating you like a thief when they have you buy and show a ticket before you sit down in front in front of their big screen? Is a retailer that keeps their MP3 players in a locked case treating you like a thief? No, these people are all reacting to the reality that there really are thieves, and lots of them. So they have to react to that reality. Do you leave your car unlocked when you park it downtown? Fair use, by the way, doesn't mean that the person who creates the material in quesiton is under any obligation to make it easy for people to create bit-for-bit copies of their work without their support. If you really must have a perfect copy of something for a project that cannot exist without getting around such DRM as may be involved, then get the artist you're copying from involved. But we both know you're not talking about fair use. You're talking about "sharing" the file in an unlimited way, and about your own inabilit

Let congress make it a law, bush won't veto it

Another reason why the gov't shouldn't be left in control of the internets

Yet I saw Putin say

Look, I've provided two links from reputable sources on what the Russian intelligence agencies thought. The count is 2 me, 0 you. Time for you to catch up, instead of saying "I saw Putin say...".

The US and British were falsely accused of this

Falsely? Time after time they spouted bogus information, and were told by the rest of the world that it was nonsense. And in most cases, it comes out that a good portion of our intelligence community thought it was bogus as well (for example, this - a must read; here's another which describes how the aluminum tubes claim really came from a small handful of analysts who were hotly disputed by the DOE, let alone the IAEA and Europe). And yet, the administration went on TV every day and made these claims, referred to rock-solid sources, claimed that there was no other explanation, and rewrote report after report to remove conditional and couched statements.

It's not "falsely accused". You seriously need to read how each of the claims got started, and how each of the reports got rewritten. They *deliberately* did this. It's not singly Bush's fault, mind you. It's the fact that he pack each agency's top with people who believed as he did, and each step that information took along its way, the originally plentiful caveats and doubts were dropped. Then the administration took those reports, and played them up still further to the public, who had no grip on the basics of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

By the way, I assume that you accept by now the fact that German intelligence tried to warn the US off bogus information several times, only to have the US not only use it, but proclaim it as coming from rock-solid sources and be nails in the coffin for their case for war.

This displays the quintessential revolutionist attitude

How the heck can you possibly claim that I'm revising my own beliefs, when you don't even know me? If you doubt me, check my website, and look at the news page for Iraq. Also check out this particular page, section 7. The site has hardly been updated since the war, so it's pretty much a time capsule. Note that this was from 2002; my views, as with those of Europe, further solidified as time went on and the war approached.

In short, quit calling me a revisionist historian when you don't even know what the heck I believed at the time. I damn well know what I believed, and have documentation to prove it. These viewpoints, while rare in the US due to the god-awful job of the US media, were incredibly common in Europe; the editorials and letters to the editor in European papers from the time easily hold this out (need cites?).

How the heck can you even dream of calling this "revisionist history"? Have you never heard the name "Scott Ritter"? Did you completely forget what he was saying, and how Europe and America's antiwar population wholeheartedly agreed with him? Did you never read IAEA and UNMOVIC reports (as opposed to a US media summary of them, which were horribly cherry picked and distorted)? I'll cite plenty for you if you'd like.

Adapting an old Mig, with the aid of duct tape

No, no, no. Not "adapting an old Mig". The entire plane's structure was like something a teenager would build for a hobby. They have a picture - check it out!. This was the device that Bush tried to convince Americans was going to cross the ocean and spray deadly gas on us. Lets give some of its finer points, shall we?

* Wings made of plyboard
* Body made from an old fuel tank
* Propeller made of wood
* Held together with foil and duct tape

I'd argue the following are provable examples of the U.S. government abridging Constitutionally protected free speech:

1. DMCA protection of algorithims used in commercial DRM encryption code.

Information here: http://www.legal.wao.com/decss.html

Computer code is copyrightable. In that sense, it is equivalent to speech; the government should not be able to arbitrarily repress it. However, the code for DeCSS, which does not violate either patent or copyright restrictions, is, according to the DMCA, illegal to reproduce or posses, since it is a circumvention mechanism. This is strange, since the DeCSS code is merely speech, you can reproduce it verbally, as a set of sentances describing it out loud, or on a teeshirt, in a few lines or perl code. This is odd; arguably, anything that is copyrightable *is* constitutionally protected speech.

There are more examples of this kind of nonsense here: http://www.chillingeffects.org/

This is stuff that according to copyright qualifies as speech; why isn't it protected by the 1st amendment? It's not copyrighted by the media cartels or by inventors; this is new, original, non-patent-encumbered code.

2. You make exceptions for 'terrorist' subjects, but how far does this extend? Should all court cases regarding terrorists have absolutely no public record?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1030/p01s02-usju.htm l
I find this appaling. We need more transparency, not secrecy. I find it *very* difficult to believe that these minor cases contained such earth shattering material regarding national security that the public can never know what happened. If anyone 'leaked' anything that occured at these hearings, you can damn well bet they'd be thrown away for good.

Even the defendant, who is unable to explain to anyone, including family members, just why they are in jail. What the heck?

The U.S., as a whole, has enough strength to give up some advantages to the 'terrorists' regarding secrecy. I'm not asking for terror-speach to be permitted. But it disturbs me when the government conducts all its operations in secrecy.

"Remember that such a resolution would impede the company's ability to do business in the single fastest growing tech market in the world."

Its interesting in the 1930's you could said exactly the same thing about Nazi Germany. It was the world's booming economy during a time that much of the world was languishing in depression, they were pushing tech frontiers too. During this period Germany was the must invest place for many affluent American's, including the Bush family. George W's grandfather Prescott was a principle at Union Banking in New York and one of his biggest clients was the Thyssen family, one of Germany's richest industrial dynasties. Fritz Thyssen bank rolled Hitler's rise to power and help consolidate German industrialists behind the Nazi's at a key juncture, something they came to very much regret. He wrote a dull book about it "I Paid Hitler". Union Banking's assets were siezed when the U.S. entered the war much to the embarrassment of the Bush family. They weren't alone though, MANY wealthy Americans, Brits and major corporations were heavily invested in Nazi Germany in the 30's. They too saw profit potential, a booming ecomony while the rest of the west was languishing, and chose to disregard the realities of a regime with an appalling human rights record.

In many respects China might be a mirror image. China has in recent years jumped from a supposed Communist state to very much a Fascist one. In the communist state the state owned everything. In the Fascist state there are corporations and private ownership, but party members have a huge head start in every business venture thanks to massive state intervention and backing on their behalf, just like Nazi Germany. A brief article on how heavily China's big new corporations are infused with Communist party members, family members of high ranking members, and state ownership and backing. For example Haier their big name in appliances which recently tried a bid for Maytag:

"Haier's longtime chief executive, Zhang Ruimin, likes to call himself the "Chinese Jack Welch" after the famous American business icon and former head of GE. But Jack Welch was never a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party."

When China was a communist state, with state ownership the West would have nothing to do with it. Nothing has really changed on its repression or human rights front, but as soon as it jumped to a Fascist state which allowed private ownership, investment and profit, it suddently became a darling of Western businessmen and politicians, just as Nazi Germany was.

I think this is a place where the addage applies that people who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In the rush for profit, as in the 1930's in Nazi Germany, are western businessmen accellerating the rise of an economic and military power that might seek to dominate the world and spread its brand of repression across the globe. Historians will contend China has never really sought to project its power outward, but then China has never been a fascist power in a globalized world, riding a rising ride of wealth, military power and technical prowess that will soon make it possible for it to achieve global superpower status. The big question then is will it be benign or will it follow in the footsteps of its Fascist forebearers and seek to dominate the world militarily, and inflicts it repression on the rest of the world in the process.