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Here is an article from the christian science monitor you should read before going on about the sarin. here
here is another one.

In a nutshell. Nobody knows if it's really sarin yet. There is considerable disagreement about how old the shell is. The weapons experts are saying that the sarin produced in the 80s (the supposed age of the shell) would have degraded by now.

Neither Kay, blix, bush, cheney, or rumsfeld claim that it's part of any arsenal.

So don't pin your hopes on this shell.

The war in the middle east is paid out of general governmental revenues. Before the current war, the US squandered 1.2 Trillion in the Middle East. If these costs were factored in, Middle Eastern oil would be seen as VERY expensive. What ought to happen is that the US should start taxing gasoline significantly--and reduce taxes on the general population. US produced goods and services would become less expensive-particularly if they were produced in areas that aren't terribly oil dependent. These wasteful expenditures in the middle east are subsidization of a failed technological policy. The US _can_ be energy independent and at peace with the rest of the world--but there is a need for some serious leadership and innovation.

"Popular but controversial 'open source' computer software, generally contributed on a volunteer basis, is often taken or adapted from material owned by other companies and individuals, a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution finds."

I think the whole point of this was to get out the adjective "but controversial". The adjective was repeated verbatim in the Yahoo article without a quote attribution. That means that everyone who read it on Yahoo thinks that the reporter is making that characterization.

I think MS has a new strategy, one borrowed from the Bush administration: In the run-up to the Iraq war Bush and his cronies would answer every question about Iraq using the words 'war on terrorism' and 'september 11th'. Even though they never once claimed that Iraq was involved in 9-11, just from word association 53% of Americans believe Hussein was personally involved in it and 44% believe that most or some of the hijackers were Iraqis.

I think MS wants to put this word-association strategy to work for itself. By getting attack dog think-tanks to put out press releases connecting Linux with words like 'controversial' or 'unscrupulous' in the first paragraph, MS would be able to damage Linux's credibility without having to put forth an actual argument. If they can get their blurbs read often enough, it might even stick.

One can enumerate the reasons for Iraq's invasion as follows:

• Establishing a precedence for preepmtive war. Now America has bybassed the UN, and global opposition to this unilateral action. If the will to build an empire arises, then it will be done without any regard to what the rest of the world think or say. You can read the following articles too:

  • The True Rationale? It's a Decade Old by James Mann, March 7, 2004

  • PBS had a good program before Iraq was invaded called the War Behind Closed Doors. You can watch the entire program in 30-60 minutes intervals:

  • Specially interesting is this page in the Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles where you can see who signed this document. Interesting to note that all of them are either now in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, ...etc.), or are aids to Cheney (Libby, Abrams, ...etc.)

  • An overview of who is who in the neocons circle of power.

• Securing cheap oil. That is obvious. Bush's family history in oil makes that an easy one to figure.

• Complete Dad's job. The personal desire of G.W. Bush to continue where his father has left, to finish the job, and do better.

• The Israel Factor. Read the Israel connection, and how Zionism influences US foreign policy. If you take a look at the players in the PNAC above, and you will find them all staunch Zionists, whether Jews or Christians.

• Construction Contracts. The Infrastructure contracts for US corporations to rebuild Iraq is a lucrative business. Of course the Halliburton link has been reported several times (Cheney used to be its manager or director). The defence spending, plus the contracts should fuel the US economy for a while, or that is what they thought would happen.

The planning to invade Iraq was done before September 11, 2001 attacks, as ex-secretary Paul O'Neill has revealed

As many would notice, Bush is not running the show. Bush is the ideal front for such an operation. He thinks he is doing the right thing, and that God has to do something with it. You can see this PBS program The Jesus Factor.

There are two factions grappling for Bush's attention. The moderate pragmatics (Powell, Armitage), and the extremist ideologue (Cheney, his subordinates, Rumsfeld, his subordinates). Powell's position is almost identical to Shimon Peres when he was the Foreign Minister in the Sharon government, a rational pragmatic dove amid the ideologue extremist hawks.

What is funny and sad at the same time, is that the US Foreign policy is now crafted by the Pentagon and the Vice President in accordance with neocon think tanks like the PNAC. No role whatsover is given to the Department of State (where it should really belong), and Powell is merely a messenger (go tell the UN we are doing so and so, try to sell it diplomatically, ...etc.). No wonder Powell has said that he will not seek a second term even if Bush gets reelected (and repeated it a few weeks ago). Not nice thing being in his shoes I guess.

I would not go as far as to say that they intentionally planned and executed the September 11 thing. But the neocons sure did exp

here's my theory...

if it's a location of the holy grail (assuming it's the holy grail) then there has to be numbers, most likley a lagitude and latitude values

so here's the deal...

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
00000000011111111112 222222
12345678901234567890123456

so by getting the numbers of each letter we get the following values

4 15 21 15 19 22 1 22 22 13

so now we will join each latitude/longitude value as in (latitude/longitude)

4/15 connects to 21/15 which connects to 19/22 which connects to 1/22 which connects to 22/13

after connecting these we have a sort of triangule in around central africa, and to add more interest it surrounds the country of CHAD (Map [gesource.ac.uk] and Info [gesource.ac.uk]) which has been in the news a few years ago about a discovery of the oldest skull found that might related to the human being (news [csmonitor.com].

quoting from that news:

What's more, it was found along the shores of a dry lake in the country of Chad, 1,500 miles west of the east African rift valleys often called "the cradle of humankind."

For years, lead researcher Michel Brunet has tilted mostly unsuccessfully against the long-held theory that hominids emerged from the Great Rift Valley around Kenya then spread westward across Africa and into the broader world. Now, in the hominid he has named Toumai, or "hope of life" in the local language, he has proof that the earliest prehumans covered a larger area.

interesting eh?
clepto9@excite.com

here's my theory...

if it's a location of the holy grail (assuming it's the holy grail) then there has to be numbers, most likley a lagitude and latitude values

so here's the deal...

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
00000000011111111112222222
12345678901234567890123456

so by getting the numbers of each letter we get the following values

4 15 21 15 19 22 1 22 22 13

so now we will join each latitude/longitude value as in (latitude/longitude)

4/15 connects to 21/15 which connects to 19/22 which connects to 1/22 which connects to 22/13

after connecting these we have a sort of triangule in around central africa, and to add more interest it surrounds the country of CHAD (Map and Info) which has been in the news a few years ago about a discovery of the oldest skull found that might related to the human being (news.

quoting from that news:

What's more, it was found along the shores of a dry lake in the country of Chad, 1,500 miles west of the east African rift valleys often called "the cradle of humankind."

For years, lead researcher Michel Brunet has tilted mostly unsuccessfully against the long-held theory that hominids emerged from the Great Rift Valley around Kenya then spread westward across Africa and into the broader world. Now, in the hominid he has named Toumai, or "hope of life" in the local language, he has proof that the earliest prehumans covered a larger area.

interesting eh?
clepto9@excite.com

Well, I guess it's a more civilized use of public transit than Japanese subway groping is.

No, the republicans did NOT do the same thing under Clinton. All of the Clinton nominations were brought before a Senate vote, and some were blocked because they didn't have enough votes to be confirmed. This is how it supposed to work.

Bullshit, you ignorant cretin. When Clinton was president and Orrin Hatch was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dozens of nominees were held up by blue slip vetoes, by which a nomination wouldn't make it out of committee unless both of the candidates home state senators approved him. In fact, a Clinton appointee has the record of waiting the longest for a hearing, 4 years, because the Republican senator from her state did not return his slip.

Of course, now that a Republican is in the White House, Republicans don't want that policy anymore. They whine and carry on about constitutionality and obstructionist politics, nevermind that they blocked 10 times as many Clinton appointees using the same means.

GOP=POH: Party of Hypocrites.

Canada lags even further behind in access to high-tech equipment, including machines used for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed axial tomography (CAT) scans. This shortage affects wait time for diagnostic assessments, which in provinces such as Saskatchewan can run well over three months.

Canada again - average wait time up to 16.2 weeks:

Total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, rose from 13.11 weeks in 1999 to 16.2 weeks in 2000-01.

United Kingdom

Under European Community law E112 rule, any EU citizen suffering so-called "undue delays" in receiving treatment in their home country can apply to have the operation in another member state.

Mrs Watts required a hip replacement operation, and was initially told that the wait would be 12 months.

She shortened that time by paying for a private consultation and putting pressure on the hospital to move her up the list, but was still offered an eight month wait.

When she applied for authorisation to go abroad for treatment under the European Community rule, Bedford Primary Care Trust told her it was not necessary because it was meeting the Government's then target waiting time of 15 months for in-patient treatment.

It was at this point that she decided to book the operation abroad in a hospital in Abbeville, northern France.

Following this decision, the trust reviewed her case, decided it was more urgent and offered to carry out Mrs Watts' hip replacement within three to four months, despite a general in-patient waiting list of 12 months.

The UK again...

Health authorities have been ordered to cut waiting lists

Some patients in England are having to wait up to four years for an outpatient appointment in hospital, according to new research.

A study has shown that waiting times after referral by a GP are up to four years - or 208 weeks - for one orthopaedic surgeon.

The research by the charity, the College of Health, also shows patients are waiting 147 weeks and 145 weeks to see foot specialists in two separate hospitals.

The worst waiting time for an out-patient appointment in neurology was 126 weeks, with one example of a 95-week wait to see an eye specialist, the study showed.

The UK has some long wait times, alrighty...

Friday, 28 June 2002 15:28
Edinburgh Evening News www.edinburghnews.com
'FOUR-YEAR WAIT' FOR MS DIAGNOSIS

A single mother crippled by multiple sclerosis claims it took Edinburgh doctors four years to tell her she had the illness because of an "unacceptable" breakdown in communications.

Rebecca Jones, 32, underwent an MRI scan at the Western General Hospital in 1997 after suffering a series of inexplicable collapses and blinding headaches.

But although the scan revealed signs that she could have MS she was not informed of the results.

Doctors conducted further tests over the next few years as her condition fluctuated and eventually diagnosed MS in 2001.

But Ms Jones was still not told immediately because a letter she should have received was not sent out at the time, further delaying much-needed treatment for the now unemployed mother, who has a nine-year-old daughter, Natasha.

To add insult to injury, when Ms Jones complained about her treatment to hospit

Wasnt rumsfeld invited to baghdad too? Or was it cheney.

OMG they were in it with saddam!

Oh shit.. they actually were, weren't they ;-)

The Telegraph (or torygraph as we call it) was one of the news outlets along with the christian monitor that falsely alleged george galloway UK MP was being paid off by Saddam.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0620/p01s03-woiq.htm l

Christian monitor (hey thats like trusting news from Islamic Jihad!) now say
"An extensive Monitor investigation has subsequently determined that the six papers detailed in the April 25 piece are, in fact, almost certainly forgeries."

There goes your credibility USAPatriot (hmm... nice nick!).

"Do you belong to any student activist organizations?"

"Have you ever thought of joining any student activist organizations, like UT Watch?"

To correct your typos: We had these machines called Zeppelins. They were big, full of hydrogen, and generally were most spiffy and never blew up except when they were painted with rocket fuel

slightly OT, but there's so much grumbling on slashdot about not enough jobs for IT people...

I remember reading somewhere that there was a high demand for IT guys in the automotive industry... lemme google...

ah, there it is

New Cars getting too expensive to fix

The interesting paragraphs are near the bottom:

"There's no shortage of general technicians, but there is a big shortage of qualified people to work on drivability and emissions issues," says Robert Rodriguez of Automotive Service Excellence. The Leesburg, Va., organization certifies repair shops and technicians.

These specialist technicians need advanced reading, problem-solving, and basic electronics skills, he says. "The best people to find are those who have worked in the IT [information technology] industry," he says.

That's just one more reason this is a great story for slashdot. It's about a girl who's fairly cute , seems to be left leaning politically, is involved with computers, and owns a apple laptop . If only there was some way to tie in Linux...

While I agree it is a bit expensive for my consumption, I don't doubt that it will get used. I'd be far more likely to pay a buck to know a song I really like than I would be to have a cheesy midi ring tone, and those took in $56.8 million in US revenue in 2003.

Luckily, we are building more coal plants.

I don't see what politics have to do with what you say.

Of course for your argument you are going to use a reference provided by the military, which will show no toxicity whatsoever. Perhaps the military has a vested interest in showing those results, same as they've denied for years the gulf war syndrome in veterans.

In fact there is research in the toxicity in DU and there exist guidelines for exposure.

DU is at least as toxic as lead (that much is obvious), with the added problem that unlike lead, Uranium oxidizes very easily upon impact and becomes a fine dust which is breathable. So DU is not very toxic in unexploded ammo, because it is not in dust form. However after use it turns into dust which is quite toxic. Also it can pass into drinking water and become toxic there. As a heavy metal it can concentrate in the body (it is not excreted) and the chemical and radioactive components do have a cumulative effect.

So it somewhat safe to handle but not good for you to visit a battlefield where DU has been used and much less to drink the water there.

Other references: here, here, or here .

I have here a list of the names of 207 jews
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz

I have here a list of the names of 207 negroes
Colin Powell
Condi Rice

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumericans
Bush
US Constitution

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumerican opinions
support for nazi-style invasion

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
versus
Censorship
more Censorship

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
versus
Murder
Gangster justice

Maybe the Iraqis are merely exercising their "Right to bear Arms" in their own country against a foreign invader.

The 7.6% figure is for Global music sales. The article states that "Global compact disc sales -- the most often cited figure in discussing the health of the industry -- fell 9.1 percent in value in 2003, the IFPI said."

(Of personal interest to me, since I've <shameless plug>just released single on vinyl</shameless plug>: "Total sales of singles, including cassettes and vinyl, which have dipped significantly since the Internet file-sharing and CD-burning craze began in the late 1990s, fell 18.7 percent in value terms between 2002 and 2003." It should be noted, though, that quite probably the majority of independent record labels ' sales aren't included in these numbers: IFPI-related releases compete, possibly increasingly, with small independent labels.)

Howevere - what would be really intresting to know is how the independent artist and/or labels are affected by the p2p filesharing. I believe p2p filesharing of music helps people discover new and different music - which, more often than not, come from independent artists/labels.
According to this article: What record industry slump? Independent labels say business has never been better.

"plenty of evidence exists linking Libya's capitulation to overtures made by the previous administration."

Please provide some sources to support your claim.

Oh no, a homework assignment! I'll give you the very first hit in the first Google search I tried. It is a story from the Christian Science Monitor, dated September 13, 1999, discussing Libya's attempts to shed its pariah status and the diplomatic overtures that were then taking place between the U.S. and Libya. Looks good enough for you. If you want more, there are additional links in that Google search results page that I didn't look at.

I might ask you for some sources to support the claim that we have the Iraq War to thank for Libya's concessions.

Yeah, but why do I have to pay for all of YOUR problems with MY money?

I get affordable health care by shopping around and letting them be competative, not letting the government write blank checks to businesses a la medicare. I get quality education for my children by choosing my living in a good neighborhood, where teachers can get tested for good quality (but no, the unions fight that one, I wonder why). I want a sustained social security fund that will let me invest my own money into my own account, not that I'm supporting people who never worked.

I don't understand how doing things for oneselves (individualism) has somehow become un-American, but I guess if you let the media tell you how things should be run for 30 years, and you turn your life over to the nanny-state, that's what you get.

Right you are brother! Do not believe this propaganda!

Also:

Reports of Iraqi economic growth by Agence France Presse - LIES!

Reports of a "big rebound in business" (noting a lack of oil shipments through the north, which resumed since the article went to print) by Christian Science Monitor - LIES!

"Business is phenomenal," an Iraq in Baghdad tells Reuters - LIES!

Of course, we all know that Capitalism is evil and they should be starving under a totalitarian dictator, but alas, the world is not perfect :(

Bread and circuses, comrade!

(Now back to important things, like the Sims election! I eagerly await the next /. American Idol thread too!)

A low credit score can mean many things.

It may mean that you are an unreliable and irresponsible person and therefore the unelected-yet-very-powerful credit reporting agencies have determined that you are not to be trusted with loans of large sums of money.

It's far more likely, though, that it means you simply don't have large sums of money at your disposal, and therefore the almighty CRAs are simply noting that you would not have the means to repay such loans.

The former is a matter of character. The latter is a matter of circumstance. Credit scores are not designed to distinguish between the two, yet increasingly they are being used as though they were solely a measure of character...

Part of what's going on here seems to be what Alfred North Whitehead called the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Your credit score is just that -- a score, a number, a measurable quantity. If you present people with a precise enough figure, based on complicated and precise calculations, they think that you're offering something with the kind of mathematical, empirical-law-of-nature authority that physicists used to claim. ... To a certain kind of person -- the kind of person who is intimidated by the authority of math and science, but doesn't really understand them -- the quantitative data provided by a credit score seems rock solid.

"The problem, experts say, is that many factors that can affect a credit report have nothing to with an individual's character. "It's going to reflect things like divorce, sickness, loss of one's job, possibly even identity theft ... so as a measure of conscientiousness or attention to detail, it's not very good," says Jerry Palmer, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond.

Dr. Palmer should know. Recent research he conducted with colleague Laura Koppes tested whether there is any correlation between employees' credit reports and job performance. Though the study was limited to one industry - financial services - the answer they got was a resounding "no." "

The Apache is a mixed bag. It was sent but never got operational in Kosovo, then did fine in Afghanistan, which is nice except I don't think the Taliban had any weapons besides AK-47 and RPGs. It's a lethal platform but it crashes a lot and takes a lot of maintainence, and isn't that tolerant of dusty environs. It's also vulnerable, even to small-arms fire (the Apache in this photo was later bombed into oblivion by one of our own fighter jets). The Apache's performance in Iraq wasn't all that stellar, but of course it will depend alot on whom you ask, and the articles I'm linking aren't presenting the glamorous side. The Apache had a lot of kills in Gulf War I.

Or, from this article linked to in this slashdot story

Over the long term, he continues, countries recognize that their economic progress depends on their mastery of information technologies. Open-source software, with its global, free-wheeling, "stone soup" development approach, allows these countries to potentially shave 10 to 15 years off the time it would take them to nurture their own IT sectors at home. The reason: They have a world of expertise freely available.

Output from coal is harmful to the environment but is hardly radioactive.

You might want to recheck that.

I know they've made major improvements in fission reactors. Unfortunately some of the improvements were due to be brought forth about the time the Three Mile Island fiasco happened, which pretty much killed nulear energy in the US.

The ironic part is that TMI worked exactly as it was supposed to. It shut down, and that was that. When talking about high energy densities like nuclear, there's no such thing as too safe. But to penalize a system for working right? That's just wrong.

As for the other stuff you claim about a small amount of waste, you either know more about it than I do or you're pulling it out of your ass. I'll give you the benefit of doubt and assume the former :-)

Why thank you. :-) I'm too tired to pull up a bunch of links, but here's bunch of stuff for you to research:

- "Breeder" reactors are used in Europe. They reprocess the "waste" into hotter radioisotopes that can be reused. They were outlawed in the US for fear that they would make it easier for terrorists to obtain fissionable materials.

- Uranium is one of the most common substances on Earth.

- Coal burning throws out tons of uranium into the atmosphere every year.

- Coal burning kills thousands every year. In 1952, 3500 London residents were killed by a coal plant in one week.

Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, Plutonium is an alpha emitter. For the most part, the radiation can't penetrate your skin. Still, Ralph Nader is a pansy ass when it comes to the stuff.

I think in this day and age where everyone is worried (justly or not) about terrorism and dirty bombs, vastly increasing the amount of fissionable material circulating "out in the wild" to power these reactors isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Dirty bombs are a dud. Nearly all the radiation from the blast would be shielded by the common building materials used today. It might increase the death rate near the blast, but it certainly wouldn't do much to make a city uninhabitable.

Speaking of fissionable material, I remember hearing once that there is only about a 10 or 20 year supply of fissionable uranium available if we were to start using it as a primary energy source.

Bah. Probably existing energy companies trying to scare people. Uranium is tremendously common and has been dropping in price. Most Uranium used today is coming from mines in Canada. As I said, I'm pretty tired so you'll have to do some digging for yourself. Check Wikipedia for a good overview.

For that matter, I remember all those environmental doomsday things they used to make us read in school in the 70's said we were supposed to be out of oil sometime in the 90's (and New York City was supposed to be 10 feet under water because of the melted ice caps), so I sort of doubt those kinds of long term predictions anyway.

Good lad. Don't believe everything you hear. Yes, fossil fuels are a problem. But they aren't quite exhausted yet. When they are, they'll be supplanted by a new technology. Nuclear seems to be the best way to build the necessary infrastructure for a chemical energy storage technology.

Why is that great?

would you want to live in the world with the same freedoms of uncivilized times?

9/10/2001 was uncivilized times? In that case, yes! The only way to ensure democracy is transparency in the government, not in the citizenry. I would consider this age of secret trials, secret military tribunals, and illegal captivity without due process to be uncivilized.

I'm still miffed that I lost my freedom to dump toxic waste in drinking water.

I can't believe you really did that. If you did, and when you say "I lost my freedom", I hope that means you're in jail for violating the rights of others. But, what I don't understand is how that relates to the State monitoring your every move in public, and after that's allowed who knows how much longer before they do it in private?

Why can't I take guns on airlines?

Because, unlike guarding your privacy from intrusive government, carrying a lethal weapon can be contributive to intentionally lethal acts? Couple that with the ease in which a single bullet could quickly wipe-out hundreds of lives, on the plane and on the ground, made the argument for a gun-ban on planes that much easier to swallow. Mass murder, as it happens, was illegal pre-9/11.

Why can't I have the freedom to molest young children?

Because you would be violating their rights?

This cameras sounds like a good one. Do people really have an expectation of privacy when they're on public streets?

Not from each other, but from a government proven to abuse the power granted to it by the people at every opportunity. Your unreasonable fear of everything in life (from sudden heart-attacks to skidding in the rain), and incessant need for safety, encroaches upon my liberty to enjoy life without intrusive government. Just behave sensibly and you'll survive as your forefathers did across millions of years simply to produce the unique individual known as *you*. There's no government-monitored camera on you right now, and look you're still breathing!!

I'd love to see national ID's, I don't even understand the privacy argument against it.

The reluctance you don't understand stems from years of documented abuse by what at first appeared to be reasonable (to the population at the time) requests and benign acts by various governments to keep order. The arguments are always the same, as are the results. I don't have to name recent government abuses to you, you know them. We won't even go into the governmental abuses throughout history. To ignore the lessons from the past and think that they won't be repeated is naive. People haven't changed, and it's people in government who abuse their responsibilities and their authority. Most do so without penalty.

It's simple the government needs a way to identify it's citizens.

How does it do it now? Have

Why is that great?

would you want to live in the world with the same freedoms of uncivilized times?

9/10/2001 was uncivilized times? In that case, yes! The only way to ensure democracy is transparency in the government, not in the citizenry. I would consider this age of secret trials, secret military tribunals, and illegal captivity without due process to be uncivilized.

I'm still miffed that I lost my freedom to dump toxic waste in drinking water.

I can't believe you really did that. If you did, and when you say "I lost my freedom", I hope that means you're in jail for violating the rights of others. But, what I don't understand is how that relates to the State monitoring your every move in public, and after that's allowed who knows how much longer before they do it in private?

Why can't I take guns on airlines?

Because, unlike guarding your privacy from intrusive government, carrying a lethal weapon can be contributive to intentionally lethal acts? Couple that with the ease in which a single bullet could quickly wipe-out hundreds of lives, on the plane and on the ground, made the argument for a gun-ban on planes that much easier to swallow. Mass murder, as it happens, was illegal pre-9/11.

Why can't I have the freedom to molest young children?

Because you would be violating their rights?

This cameras sounds like a good one. Do people really have an expectation of privacy when they're on public streets?

Not from each other, but from a government proven to abuse the power granted to it by the people at every opportunity. Your unreasonable fear of everything in life (from sudden heart-attacks to skidding in the rain), and incessant need for safety, encroaches upon my liberty to enjoy life without intrusive government. Just behave sensibly and you'll survive as your forefathers did across millions of years simply to produce the unique individual known as *you*. There's no government-monitored camera on you right now, and look you're still breathing!!

I'd love to see national ID's, I don't even understand the privacy argument against it.

The reluctance you don't understand stems from years of documented abuse by what at first appeared to be reasonable (to the population at the time) requests and benign acts by various governments to keep order. The arguments are always the same, as are the results. I don't have to name recent government abuses to you, you know them. We won't even go into the governmental abuses throughout history. To ignore the lessons from the past and think that they won't be repeated is naive. People haven't changed, and it's people in government who abuse their responsibilities and their authority. Most do so without penalty.

It's simple the government needs a way to identify it's citizens.

How does it do it now? Have

The kind of Christian's we need to watch for are the variety found in Georgia who want to purge the word "evolution" from the curriculum.

And I take it the Department of Elections is overseen by Joe the toothless guy. I guess, he, not Harris should have certified the results? Or, am I wrong here to? (Like I have to ask in order to get someone to tell me.

In Florida, just like other states, elections are supervised by the local county elections division. Each county has the responsibility of maintaining the voter registration, administering the vote, and of counting the vote results. You are correct, though, that the Department of State certifies the results reported by each county.

I was using a stat that about 90% where up there wrongly or about 51,000 voters.

I'm curious how you get such a huge percentage of false positives. Even the US Comission on Civil Rights (which was very critical of the Florida 2000 election) estimated that only 14% of the names on the list were inaccurate.

It wasn't just the fellons on the list, but people who shared the same name as the fellons, the same last name as the fellons, and had the same birthday as the fellons. Then there where was that guy who was convicted of a felony in 2010 and his companions. But, no, no mistakes. Just white out those dates and every thing's ok.

Nobody is disputing that there were false-positives on this list. When DBT/ChoicePoint was comissioned, they were instructed to cast as wide a net as possible to make sure no names would slip through the cracks. Why? Because the Democrats pushed for it after irregularities in the 1997 Miami Mayoral runoff election. Some people even argued that the new election law didn't go far enough to stop widespread voter fraud (like dead people voting).

Oh, and that same Florida Law (section 98.093) says those local election boards are required to automatically purge people on the list provided to them.

No, no. You are looking at the wrong law dealing with a different list. Section 98.093 deals with the monthly updating of the voter registration by the county health department (to remove people that deceased in the last month), and the court clerks (to remove people who were convicted of a felony int he last month). It makes sense that those people should be automatically purged as they become ineligible.

The law in question is 98.0977, which deals with the statewide voter registration maintenance. This has no such requirement, in fact section 3d - 3f clearly indicate that each name must be manually verified before it is removed from the voter registration rolls, and those affected have a clearly defined process of appeal.

This is not my area of expertise, but we're now doing "active optics" for parabolic radio antennas.

CS Monitor Link

Sorry I could find a better link about this active correction for dishes business. But the CS article made me think. If we have a big array of smaller dishes to do astronomy instead of big dishes like the DSN uses, the system would be more flexible. Surely part of the big array of small dishes could be broken away to control space craft, and when that's done we could turn it back to other projects or science. i'm mostly guessing here!

I have seen a guy build TV satellite downlink dishes using a bicycle powered brake. His machine was set up in a dirt yard in some part of Zambia. At the low end, this isn't exactly precision work. At the high end, maybe it is.

You're right. 12 years of diplomacy isn't enough. Yeah right.

There were very many links to terrorists, you just refuse to believe them, not the least the fact he had for years been paying the families of suicide bombers $10K-$25K each. Also Saddam did have WMDs and programs, try reading the Kay report for a change.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2003/04/27/walq27.xml

http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/military/ terrorism/raid_ansar_al-qaida.htm

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/27/iraq/mai n551246.shtml

http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0402/p01s03-wome.htm l

http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/iraq.html

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/cfr/stories/iraq/

http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/text2003 /0430trrpt.htm

Yes, since I happen to live there. And the answer, in case anyone was wondering, is "Not particularly long".

Oh, really?

Rob

Amir Lieberman, the developer of the system, is also responsible for the previous rash of questionable truth detector software, which happens to be still available. It did recommend training, and it was widely sold for its ability to work over the phone. It even has a sequal. (warning, Not compatible with Opera. Probably not Mozilla.)

Namesysco doesn't claim very high accuracy for the Truster software. "The voice analyst achieved an overall accuracy rate of 78% for truthful subjects and 61% for deceptive subjects." In other words, only 10% more liars were caught than flipping a coin, while 22% of innocent subjects were considered lying.

The American Polygraph Society does not have a much rosier view of the situation. They have concluded that Computerized Voice Stress Analysis, and specifically the Truster software, has only a "chance-level detection of deception,"

And actually, the dead giveaway to the scam should be from the lion's mouth himself. "Our products were originally for law enforcement use ? we get all our technology from Nemesys-co ? but we need more development time [for that application]" In other words, "our products don't work and can't be sold unless you slap a 'for entertainment purposes only' label upon them. Our products are to 'entertain' airport security."

Good catch.

Amazingly enough, he's right.

The Bush administration doesn't give a damn about public comments. In fact they despise all input from the "little guy". When they started getting too much negative email about the invasion, they made it so you had to jump through many hoops to send a comment, and then you could only comment on their "approved topics". Not only do they not want to listen to you, they won't tell you who they are listening to.

They're not conservatives. They're plutocrats.

"It was not a matter of just knocking down buildings but hitting us hard with our economy & striking fear in its citizens. Killing all those innocent people was an added bonus for them."

Well, we've certainly paid them back, and in spades. We've knocked down a heck of a lot more than two buildings in Iraq, and we've killed 5000-10000 of their civilians, way way more than died in 9-11. Of course, it'd be cool if we could actually prove that Iraq had something to do with 9-11, but you know, details, details. We had to make up for only nailing ~1,800 civilians in Afghanistan, that didn't quite draw us even.

--

Actually, there were conspirators armed with weapons of mass destruction arrested in Texas...

... but they weren't foreign-looking so it's not a news story. :)

Why is that surprising when less than 50% of eligible voters actually bother to vote. From that link: In a global context, the average US voter turnout in the post-World War II era ranks below 137 other nations in elections for heads of state. . Why blame democracy and the legislators when less than half the population bothers to vote?

Last month, an east Texas man pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Inside the home and storage facilities of William Krar, investigators found a sodium-cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands, more than a hundred explosives, half a million rounds of ammunition, dozens of illegal weapons, and a mound of white-supremacist and antigovernment literature.

"Without question, it ranks at the very top of all domestic terrorist arrests in the past 20 years in terms of the lethality of the arsenal," says Daniel Levitas, author of "The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right."

israel is a "world power" because it is completely propped up with american handouts. the state of israel is the single biggest recipient of american foreign aid. thrity per cent of all u.s. foreign aid money goes there. thirty percent! that's $3billion a year.

not hard to be a "world power" with those kinds of freebies.

oh yeah, here's my source... and here and here

Please, your ignorance is a liability.

Washington Post - Feb 2003 - "Iraq: Declassified Documents of U.S. Support for Hussein,"

Christian Science Monitor - So many governments to overthrow, so little time

Oh, and the phrase "democratically elected democracies" was redundant until Bush invoke the world's first ever court appointed democracy.

Finally, an article that challenges me technically

Dude, the Christian Science Monitor is a general interest newspaper. What's more, it is of very high quality, and extremely cheap. Even though it is published by a church, the "Christian" part is negligible (and I'm not Christian). They have a fascinating history. You will be enlightened reading CSMonitor instead of USA today or other tabloid mass market crap.

I'm not so concerned with the global warming/cooling. I think that all sane people will agree that it is now cooler than when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, warmer than the mini-ice age.

What I am concerned about, however, are things like mercury in fish, which acts as a neurotoxin in humans that eat it.

The electoral college of course cast the votes. However given the situation in Florida it can be questioned whether the electors from Florida truly represented the wishes of the voters of that State.

In any case as I said. I don't think on matters like this there is much difference between the two parties, and that is the real problem.

Christian Science Monitor - the last one.

And, of course, we all know the best way for a corporation to maximize its profits and to grow its business is to totally disregard the health, happiness and welfare of its customers.

Is that a joke? You're not really serious are you? Well, just in case you are...Yes, that's exactly how it works. Haven't you been paying attention? That's how a great many corporations operate, and they profit handsomely in the process. You'd have to be a blind stooge not to be able to see that happening in modern corporate behavior.

Let me give you a news flash. Corporate abuses always occur through the arm of government.

...because corporations can't exist without the blessing of government. Damn, you're simple-minded.

A corporation cannot force you to sell your land. Only a government can do that. Look up eminent domain abuses. The government is always involved.

Duh! Eminent domain is, by definition, a government action. That's like saying, "Look up bad judicial rulings. The government is always involved." Yes, the government is always involved in government actions. But I took you up on your offer to look up eminent domain abuse. Well, look what I found Private interests manipulating the people's government to take land away from individual home-owners and give it to them for their private profit. How about that.

Governments are a necessary evil, and will ALWAYS gravitate toward tyranny unless checked on ALL fronts, including regulation of business.

I have no argument with that. But you are ignoring the other side of that coin...Corporations will also gravitate toward tyranny and twist the people's government into an entity that furthers their profit at the expense of the people as a whole (except for the lucky few at the top of the corporations). Private entities (corporations) must also be held in check. Open your mind to all sides of the argument.

You want to know why Corporate America is so heavily involved in Government? It's because government is so heavily involved in regulating and controlling business.

Circular argument, dude. A does B because B does A because A does B because B does A, etc., etc., etc. Unconvincing.