Slashdot Mirror

Or this:

http://www.copblock.org/858/alaska-troopers-assault-man-with-anti-obama-sign/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6512746

Free speech knows no party affiliation. Free speech suppression is universal by both Donkey and Elephant...

That's not white paint, it's reams of 8.5x14 paper layed end-to end.

Marijuana is illegal for the simple reason that some right wing religious nuts think it's 'bad'.

Also incorrect.

It's the Law "Enforcement" and Incarceration lobbies that want to keep pot illegal; that shit's a cash cow to cops and prison owners.

Imagine what would happen to the budget of police organizations and private prison owners (like Dick Cheney), if suddenly they had to release/stop arresting 1/3 - 1/2 of their "customers?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x110608

each following administration will keep and the build on it to further the totalitarian state they both want.

Amy Mainzer is the hottest scientist I've seen in a while. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6364814&mesg_id=6366161 I'd talk take her out to dinner and talk supernovas and quarks, and then take her home and do the Barbie-Ken thing.

> whats wrong with the real small claims court?


Real small claims court doesn't spend much time on investigating claims. To clear cases quickly the judge quickly weighs up sides and makes a snap decision. Under the adversarial system of justice its not about finding the truth, but about who deciding presents the best arguments. That's easier for the judge, but it shouldn't be confused with justice. In some jurisdictions you can't appeal or even be told the reasons. The judge makes a mistake (they are human so it happens) you won't even know.

Small claims court weren't created because they are better than the bigger courts, but as a way of offering the little people cheaper although less reliable justice. The bigger courts are worse though since they are extremely expensive charging rates that cannot be justified. Whoever has the most money to fund the most appeals and buy the better lawyers wins.

Arbitration is in theory a great idea, but a big problem is that the arbitration system is taken over by judges and lawyers charging the same rates. It's sold as a cheaper alternative, but it has many traps. One problem is a big company who nominates an arbitration company (yes, they are companies) will pick one that gives them favorable results or they won't get repeat business. I loved Erin Brockovich the movie, but the arbitration system they used has been severely critcized by some of their clients. If you loved the movie then don't read this:

http://www.salon.com/2000/04/14/sharp/
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8169252&page=1#.T875jlK6SSo
http://www.givemebackmyrights.com/bma-faq.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-21/consumers-may-see-new-limits-on-mandatory-arbitration
http://www.homeloanbasics.com/articles/FirstTimeHomeBuyers/MandatoryArbitrationClausesStripHomebuyersofSuitableRecourse
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x301912
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/website-aims-to-boost-50m-arbitration-industry-2351246.html

The justice system badly needs reform, but you have many politicians and lawyers doing very well out of the current system who won't give it up.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x195990

the evidence either way is pretty murky. after DC institutes a handgun ban, homicide rates go up and then down and then skyrockets before dropping to the same level as before. but there's a lag of 8 or so years between the ban and rates going way up. but what explains the drop after the peak?

in chicago's case, the ban doesn't seem to affect the homicide increase rate much. homicide rates peak 10 years after the ban and then start dropping.

This is bullshit because THERE WAS NO REASON TO CAUSE THOSE FUCKING DEATHS IN THE FIRST PLACE

Tell it to the Islamists terrorists who killed people in Iraq by the tens of thousands - in fact, who killed the vast majority of the people killed in Iraq.

Fuck you and fuck your stupid war mongering civilian murdering turd of a country

Iraq is free. Saddam will not kill beyond the 2 million he already killed. You would have left him in power to kill, and torture, and steal the food money of the Iraqi people to build even more than the 20 palaces he already built. Your views are ignorant, your values shoddy. You and your country are probably being kept free by men and women better than you.

Rick Santorum was going to make the US a beacon again for the rest of the world.

Santorum complained about the frothy redefinition of his name, which was not intended to please him, but was not directly his doing (even if one considers that it was deserved). However, he actually boasted about his personal creepiness and that he enforced it on his family. It's a bit surprising that this episode received less commentary, as it is indicative of a major character flaw.

As a beacon to the world, the US would be better off squatting on the tower of power than with a weirdo like Santorum as president.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5953630 The US Government is putting it's dollars where it's mouth is on this, but VERY small amounts vs. BIG Fusion. This is $100 million dollar fusion, not multi-billion.

I think this sums it up best,

Democratic Underground

Oh yes and thank god Ron Paul Mr. Get Govt Out Of Our Lives thinks that it's OK and in fact right to FORCE a woman to undergo an UNEEDED ultrasound before she can have an abortion even if her doctor thinks it's not a good idea for her and even if she doesn't want to. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002161152

Lets get govt off our backs and into our beds, shall we? Vote Ron Paul!

Yeah, I hate to be the one to break this to you but Ron Paul is a total fraud. He wants HIS VERSION of Big Government rammed right up every woman's body.

And of course he's was a massive racist, opposed as he is to the 1964 civil right's legislation that said among other things that blacks could drink out of the same drinking fountains as whites, could marry whites, couldn't be discriminated against in hiring and housing etc etc you know, all the basics of a civil society....

Oh and I think there was something in that legislation that said the government couldn't refer to them in legislation as 40 swiggin' porch monkey niggers who want our white women too.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ron-paul-tells-cnns-candy-crowley-civil-rights-act-destroyed-privacy/

Ron Paul is a

homophobic

, ahref=http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ed-schultz-tears-into-ron-paul-for-anti-gay-stances-after-praising-rick-santorum/rel=url2html-32508http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ed-schultz-tears-into-ron-paul-for-anti-gay-stances-after-praising-rick-santorum/>

racist,

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2011/1229/Racist-newsletter-timeline-What-Ron-Paul-has-said

http://www.towleroad.com/2011/12/ron-pauls-homophobia-in-context.html

sexist

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/275198/20120102/ron-paul-laws-against-sexual-harassment-s.htm

Bible thumping

ahref=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLwrel=url2html-32508http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLw>

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/08/29/ron-paul-doesnt-accept-evolution-as-a-theory/

piece of fucking shit dressed up as "a man of principle" and his schtick is bought only by infinitely gullible, extremely naive people who are too stupid to use Google and, of course, other racist, sexist homophobic Bible thumpers of which there are, it goes without saying, entirely too many .

Oh and one more thing. He's never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to be the President of the United States of America.

So be sure to write-in vote for Ron Paul, because we need as many stupid people to throw away their votes as possible !

When you get enough of the US military to side with you let us know

which presidential candidate do you suppose gets more donations from active duty military personnel than any other?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/8565077-418/israel-could-nuke-iran-with-newly-tested-missile.html http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x304864

He does have a point in that CS is a very small discipline in terms of its body of knowledge (in relation to other STEM fields).

One needs to be careful with this kind of pronouncement. Computer science branches from mathematics in much the same way that chemistry branches from physics. The PC revolution matches the great blossoming of polymer chemistry dollar for dollar, decade for decade.

Just one word: octane.
Just one word: Isoniazid.
Just one word: plastics.
Just one word: lithograhy.
Just one word: Visicalc.
Just one word: infoglut.
Just one word: megadata.
Just one word: entanglement.

In Archimedes' Puzzle, a New Eureka Moment

Since I'm presently under the late-month NYT blackout (the mote in god's eye), here is a refracted redaction, via In Archimedes' Puzzle, a New Eureka Moment:

The Stomachion, concludes the historian, Dr. Reviel Netz, was far ahead of its time: a treatise on combinatorics, a field that did not come into its own until the rise of computer science. ...
"People assumed there wasn't any combinatorics in antiquity," he went on. "So it didn't trigger the observation when Archimedes says there are many arrangements and he will calculate them. But that's what Archimedes did; his introductions are always to the point."

Modern computer science is more about praxis that theory. But then, so is lithography. And music, too. Computer science is what you get if Mahler composed symphony of 100,000 as a jazz improvisation. There is no slight body of work to navigate to work yourself up from cowbells to timpani.

Most "void if broken" seals can be easily replicated. It's just a matter of getting a replacement seal in time. For the most part, people are dumb. If you do a good job of cleaning off the seal, they'd never notice it is missing.

I'll go you one further--I seriously doubt that "void if broken" seals would even be honored! If they were, any griefer with an axe to grind could quietly slice a "void if broken" seal and arguably void (nullify) any votes cast on that box up until the point that broken seal is noticed -- possibly all day. Unless (of course) the seals are visually checked in between each voter, right? So next time you go to the polls, watch how the lines move, and see if you think everything is visually inspected and verified between each voter.

And if this sort of vandalism did happen, what would you bet that the votes up till then wouldn't be nullified regardless of the state of the tamper seals? What makes you think that this sort of thing hasn't already happened? In past election, seals have been found missing/cut on machines, it's been reported, and it's been ignored and the votes counted regardless, e.g. as reported here. Nice.

This.

I mean, the OP couldn't have been bothered to put any context in? And by the way, a one line/link post makes it to FP? Smells like freeping to me.

The DoE never expected 100% of the companies taking out loan guarantees to make it. It's like farming. Not every seed sprouts, but you throw them all out in the field anyway.

Oh, and this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x123885

Now, if anyone can point to a company that didn't get finance from the DoE but had an obviously better prospective, or golf junkets with Solyndra Lobbyists, THEN there's something to wail about.

Give the communities the mineral rights to the spent fuel.

It's more than a source of nuclear fuel (and I don't necessarily mean plutonium: only a small fraction of the U-235 gets used up in a thermal reactor, and the other transuranics are burnable in a fast-flux reactor). There are billions of dollars worth of rhodium, which is in a stable isotope. Rhodium is more valuable than gold even at today's gold price.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=46164&mesg_id=46304

Why not just pencil in an X next to the candidate's name like they do in other countries?

Because that wouldn't produce income for the top people in the companies that make the electronic voting equipment. And, of course, those are people who have contributed to the re-election campaigns of the legislators who have promised to push electronic voting.

Also, it's pretty well understood that secret, verifiable elections aren't exactly popular with "incumbent" legislators.

Here in the US, we had that amusing case a couple of elections ago, where the CEO of Diebold (one of the main makers of electronic voting equipment) promised the Republicans in Ohio in writing that he would deliver Ohio to the Republicans in the next election. He delivered, too.

Actually, I think the best comment on this issue was this story. (For the benefit of the whoosh-impaired, I'll point out that this is a satirical site. ;-)

From TFA: "For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy"

Burson-Marsteller, Burson-Marsteller... Why does that name sound so familiar? Oh yeah. They were slinging anti-Google propaganda for ICOMP (Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace), which (scroll down to the very bottom) is a lobbying arm of Microsoft.

BM has claimed that the smear job for Facebook "was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies", but it seems to me that it's just business as usual for them. The last time they did this, pitching to business executives that time, they also didn't disclose who hired them ("Others suggested that by not disclosing who Burson-Marsteller was representing, the firm was breaking the spirit of political lobby firms' code of conduct.").

Not only that, but BM also hired Eric Schmidt's ex mistress/fiancée, presumably connected with their ongoing anti-Google efforts. And they were behind the National Smokers Alliance campaign back in the mid '90s. Plus, if this post is to be believed, they were also involved with a number of other very dubious organizations (I didn't have time to run them all down, but the ones I did check into seem true).


The whole "Facebook and Google are having a spat" thing isn't really news, but I find it interesting how such a scummy company can be considered "one of the top international PR firms out there". Also, I regret that I didn't find this Slate article until after typing this post. It backs up the list of clients in the forum post above (but in case you don't want to follow either link: the Argentine junta, the Nigerian junta, Union Carbide, Blackwater, and Nicolae Ceausescu are among the undeniably bad/evil ones).

That's all? So TEPCO did not falsify safety inspection records, cover-up a defective reactor, use the yakuza to get expendable workers, continue on with a foreign journalist QA session even without the foreign journalists, or make numerous blunders immediately after the tsunami to put us into the current situation ?

What a relief . . . here I was thinking TEPCO would become the poster child of the part of Japanese society that remains corrupt, arrogant, and incompetent. Good thing they have apologists like yourself . . .

I think the future of nuclear power has been considered to be small reactors that will not suffer from this problem since sometime in the late 1970s. Apart from a pebble bed prototype it hasn't arrived yet.

It's not here yet because the powers that be build the current, shitty reactors.

[...] will have effects spanning billions of years.

Explain. I was of the impression that isotopes with half-lives in the range of billions of years (K-40, U-238, Th-232) can only be considered "technically radioactive" since they're just too damn stable to give off much of any radiation. Keep in mind 99.3% of all naturally occurring Uranium is U-238 and Potassium-40 is contained not just in nuclear reactors, but bananas and brazil nuts.

The increase in background radiation [...]

During the Chernobyl disaster, an estimated 50-80 million (Russian authorities), 1 billion (Time magazine; optimistic estimate) to 9 billion (whole core; pessimistic estimate) curies were blown into the atmosphere (source). Reasonable estimates vary around 3 to 4.5 billion, or a third to half of the core. A 2006 UN report figures an average lifetime dose throughout Europe of around 1 mSv or some three to four months of (global) background radiation.

[...]people who voluntarily and knowingly engage in such employment

And people living near coal mines or plants, breathing the exhaust air from coal plants, living near hydroelectic dams, living near windmills...

Solar, wind, and hydrothermal are much safer.

Nuclear: You're the expert, please provide numbers.
Hydroelectric: Quick Googlage reveals tens of thousands evacuated and >100 casualties 2009-2011.
Wind: Old data mentions rates between 0.1 and 0.4 casualties per TWh, about twenty deaths in NAM from mid-nineties through 2011. Some more googling finds interesting data.
Geothermal: Seems safe but may cause earthquakes. Some pollution issues are to be worked out, but after that we might have ourselves a real contender.
Solar: Apparently more dangerous than wind and hydroelectricity. Who knew.

The problem is as I see it, the same claims of safety were made about the existing reactors.

I don't think that's accurate. Nobody in the west have claimed that RBMK reactors like the one in Chernobyl were safe -- many Soviet reactors were markedly unsafe. They were designed to be cheap and make plutonium for bombs. In Soviet Union reactor safety is number three priority.

So then you have US reactors -- and by what metric are they not safe? Newer reactors may be safer, but how about some reality -- deaths attributed to the industry by terrawatt-hour produced:
Wind power: 0.15
Nuclear power: 0.0009 (including TMI and Chernobyl)

I'll give you that Bush was more tolerant than Mugabe, for whatever that is worth. But if you think there were "no consequences" and nobody got arrested you're mistaken.

http://www.mountainx.com/news/2007/activist_arrested_after_displaying_impeach_bush_cheney_sign_on_overpass

http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=9167

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2927369

http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx081607

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6702

http://warisacrime.org/node/30068

So behave yourselves -- you won't see us coming if we don't want you to...

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/international/americas/02CANA.html?ex=1070946000&en=37b83e09654ed443&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Non-paywall:

http://forum.grasscity.com/general-marijuana-news-around-world/31035-canada-steers-closer-europe-than-u-s.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x248028

it's coming from the Fox News right.

Yes, because we never heard this kind of rhetoric when a Republican was in power.

Thank goodness we have those paragons of honesty on MSNBC!

"They [laws] ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." -James Madison http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2939630

[ But, in countries like china, other places, your free speech DIRECTLY has an effect. everything hinges on opinions of people -> not the money people has to exercise their freedoms. You can reach anyone, and you can change minds, if you are let speak freely. ]

Good luck voicing your opinion in China....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704444304575628410670226430.html

The US is better than china, anyone can be free to twitter and tweet and post on facebook etc..., in china you bad mouth the government and you have to go to a "reeducation through hard labor camp".

http://worldjournalism.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/1-tweet-1-year-of-jail-time-in-china/

Here are two sites where people can bad mouth the government in the USA, not shut down yet...nor should they ever be.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/

As for your Money=Free Speech in America argument, are you talking about Talk Radio and TV?

Do you think anyone should be able to have their own talk radio station who has an opinion? I don't see any private or public talk radio stations in china airing anti-chinese government opinion, do you? Do you think everyone has a "right" to use a government provided photocopier so you can publish anti government flyers everywhere? Who pays for the toner, the paper?

The internet is a new vast and wild frontier where people can post their opinions to be picked up my Millions of citizens, be it either youtube, twitter, facebook or your own website.

Even the poorest individual in the USA can go into a public library and post things that can potentially be read by millions if not billions of internet citizens.

[this is the recent data about situation in usa. 80% of population only get 15% of income. basically, 80% of 300 million, basically 240 million people, are not in a position to exercise their freedoms. had it been possible, there would be at least any kind of different political or social situation due to these people 'becoming rich' and practicing their freedoms. ]

How many people in the above have internet access or easy access to it?

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/05/14/18-of-us-households-have-no-internet-access

Only 18% of households in the USA don't have internet, most of those are older people who don't care to have it in the first place. And last i heard you cannot be turned away from a public library for being "too poor".

What is the wealth distribution in China? China does have a growing Middle Class, but it is no where nearly as big percentage wise as the US.

I don't know what school pays teachers 80k but for that kind of money I'd become a teacher my damn self. I don't believe you.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7830541

Average pay is actually just over $80K if you include longevity, union steward bonuses, sports, and 'masters+' credits on top of base pay. Also, you get top-of-the-line health care ($14,000) and a 66% pension after 27 years or so, so you can 'retire' at 52 making $52K/year with free health care for life. Over seven percent (!) of the teachers are out on 'long-term leave' (that number at my work is about 1%), and another 14% of the teachers have been classified as unfit to teach.

It's a pretty good gig, if you ask me.

You're kind of agreeing with me -and- making my point at the same time. We need to reform the system so that people who work do better in life than those who don't, otherwise nobody is going to work! At the same time, I want to make sure that people who don't work aren't in bad enough situations where they're unhealthy, cold, or hungry. I think we can both agree that it would be in everyone's interest to rebalance the scales in favor of the middle class.

Welfare recipients still live in poverty and live cheaper than prisoners.

Totally agreed. I get yelled at in Republican blogs for defending public education and welfare for these precise reasons. There are plenty of folks who actually want to -get rid of- public schools, welfare, public health care, and social security. I just think they need major reforms. I don't want to live in a world where I get to keep $6,000 more a year, but come home to find vagrants sleeping on my couch to avoid frostbite.

Do you want to pay $30,000 a year to keep them housed in prison

Them's some cheap prisons! Ours cost $45K-ish per-prisoner per-year. Actually, our womens' prison is the most expensive in the nation, at $70K a head per year. Guess what the conditions are like? It's one of the worst womens' prisons in the country. Again, all the money is diverted from the core mission right into corrections workers' pockets. They enjoy similar deals as the teachers I pointed out:

The mean average pay, including overtime, for the 866 rank-and-file correctional officers last year was $59,668.19. With benefits, federal taxes and retirement thrown in, the average cost to the state was $82,444.98.

--projo.com

If you don't believe ADHD is a disability shouldn't you complain about the doctors who said it was for the last 20 or 30 years?

If you don't believe depression is a disability once again it's the doctors you should be mad at.

Sure, there are a few people with ADHD, depression, and neck pain that are so bad that they can't work. I know people who are legitimately disabled by depression. But there are also plenty of people who shop around for a diagnosis and never work a day in their life again, or work under the table on top of their disability.

It would be fun to have coffee (or beer) with you some time. :-)

so? i'm glad. but why then is Obama so concerned about protecting Bush? why has Holder promised not to prosecute Bush-Cheney war crimes? Answer: he doesn't want to be prosecuted for his own, whatever they may be.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3839080

True, I've always thought this guy was a steaming ball of yum. Or the man with the eyebrows that just don't stop, or you can always count on this guy for a great expression.

Seriously, if you see them on TV, the soft lighting and makeup does wonders, but in real life........lets hope they don't find a jury.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x266988

Within Seattle it is popular knowledge that Seattle cops are abusive and corrupt. [1] [2] [3] There will be no charges because this is business as usual.

"First off, the Army gets to be pretty picky about who it lets in."

WHAT!? They are letting in convicted felons, non U.S. citizens, gang bangers, all kinds of malcontents these days just to get BODIES to go fight in Afganistan and Iraq. I know - I have friends and family SERVING in the Army right now (no none of them are in the above list - they know people who are though). We have PYCHOS's in the Army killing kids FOR FUN, killing dogs FOR FUN, killing reporters and kids FOR FUN! Read the news watch the videos WIkileaks released!

Here is just a few for you:

Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack
"Footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security"

Wikileak'd video shows U.S. troops firing on Reuters reporters and Iraqi children
http://www.infowars.com/wikileakd-video-shows-eager-to-kill-troops-firing-on-reuters-reporters-and-children/

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Neo-Cons Defend Massacre Of Iraqi Journalists, Children
http://www.infowars.com/neo-cons-defend-massacre-of-iraqi-journalists-children/

Wikileaks leaked video of Civilians killed in Baghdad -- Full video
http://www.infowars.com/wikileaks-leaked-video-of-civilians-killed-in-baghdad-full-video/

Wikileaks Video Exposes Apache Murders of Journalists, Children In Iraq
http://www.prisonplanet.com/wikileaks-video-exposes-apache-murders-of-journalists-children-in-iraq.html

Alex Jones Covers the WikiLeaks Pentagon Snuff Video
http://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-covers-the-wikileaks-pentagon-snuff-video/

WikiLeaks VIDEO Exposes 2007 'Collateral Murder' In Iraq
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-exposes-video-o_n_525569.html

Mainstream media ignores Wikileaks video and pays more attention to Tiger Woods
http://snardfarker.ning.com/group/MainstreamMediaAndMindControl/forum/topics/rt-video-mainstream-media?commentId=2649739%3AComment%3A167787&xg_source=activity&groupId=2649739%3AGroup%3A134445

Wikileaks Iraq Video Authenticated By Senior Military Officer
http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/04/06/wikileaks-iraq-video-authenticated-by-senior-military-officer/

Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6344FW20100406?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

36 Still Images - WikiLeaks Iraq Video (Dial-Up Warning and UPDATE from Wikileaks
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8095770

Violence in Video Games and the Baghdad Massacre

Whatever.

As a member of the local Corvette Owners Club, I imagine the subject in question had a fair understanding of cars in general.

Because, see: One might own a Corvette because they look nice. One might own a Corvette because they're fast. But only car-lovers do one of those and join the local Corvette Owners Club, let alone wear the jacket.

Or maybe someday Canada? :-)
http://www.biophagepharma.net/

But thanks for the insight on the regulatory aspect. I had not known that.

Related:
"Choosing to let patients with superbug infections die rather than phage them?"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x338050
http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_pkdkso_080212_choosing_to_let_pati.htm
"""
In Canada the official body counters tell us that "an estimated 220,000 patients who walk through the doors of hospitals each year suffer the unintended and often devastating consequences of an infection" and they also estimate that 8,000 to 12,000 Canadian patients die annually from such infections and I have read claims that a similar number of limb amputations are done to cure such infections. That means as many as 30 Canadians become victims of superbug infections each day.
In the USA the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus seriously sickened more than 94,000 Americans in 2005 and almost 19,000 died, more than the 17,000 Americans who died of AIDS-related causes.
Yet the French-Canadian microbiologist, Felix d'Herelle, while working at the Institute Pasteur in Paris in 1917 discovered phage therapy which uses highly specific viruses, bacteriophages, which have been observed to be harmless for humans, to treat bacterial infections, including infections caused by superbugs. While there is considerable expertise on phage therapy in Canada and the USA at the research level medical phage therapy is not currently approved or practised in Canada; however, according to a letter signed by the former federal health minister phage therapy can be made available legally to Canadian patients under the Special Access Program of our Food & Drugs Act! Additionally, there are moral and ethical reasons for making phage therapy available in countries that are members of The World Medical Association which states: "In the treatment of a patient, where proven prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic methods do not exist or have been ineffective, the physician, with informed consent from the patient, must be free to use unproven or new prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic measures, if in the physician's judgement it offers hope of saving life." ...
Further, the phage therapy file has dramatically changed because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has amended the US food additive regulations to provide for the safe use of a bacteriophage preparation on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products as an antimicrobial agent against Listeria monocytogenes (see http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/02f-0316-nfr0001.pdf ). An enlightening FDA questions-and-answers document can be found at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/opabacqa.html . Listeria causes an estimated 2,500 cases of mainly food borne infections in the USA annually and as many as 500 deaths; however, they ideas that ready-to-eat meat can be treated if contaminated with Listeria bacteria while a doctor could not get a pharmaceutical grade phage therapy product when faced with a patient suffering listeriosis strikes this author as absurd. Superbugs are everybody's business because sooner or later everybody will be faced with an infection or know a relative or friend who will be suffering or dying with one. Withholding such treatment from patients when antibiotics are failing ought to be a crime; however, those who have the money, knowledge and time to travel when faced with an infection where antibiotics are failing may b

Sorry,I read the linked page and I couldn't find where they were addressing the points made by BadAnalogyGuy. How about this if anthropgenic CO2 is responsible for significant global warming, then why after the CO2 levels have still been rising, there has been No Significant Global Warming for 15 years?

"We don't do this, under any circumstances"

Oh, you mean like torture?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7156753

Well. Not the "failure to perform according to specs directly", but the results that may cause.

I did program PLCs for a while, and if I messed up the emergency stop procedure in an obvious way, and someone would have died as a result, I might have faced jail time for reckless homicide or involuntary manslaughter. Although I have heard only a few cases where there where actual convictions, and most of those were placed on probation instead of actually going to jail, like in the case of this electrician.

In the case of the Therac-25 incidents, there were too many contributing factors to really pin down the problem to one person. The person who originally wrote the software wrote it for the Therac-20, where it didn't cause any problems because of additional hardware interlocks, so technically the software worked on the "machine" it was written for. So the cause for the incident was not an obvious one, like using a not suitable language for the task.

Dennis Kucinich called for TRIPLING the NASA budget, far better than anything that Clinton proposed:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x446335

"Solar isn't going to help much, even if we paved all of Arizona, Nevada and Southeast California with silicon."

Not true.

Fact check: A 100x100 mile area in the southwest could supply all current electricity needs in the USA. Actually, a plot of that total size in arizona with mainstream 12% efficiency panels, would supply twice the kilowatt-hours per day than the current daily demand.

But of course, most large-scale solar will probably be solar thermal, not photovoltaic, because for that some very efficient storage techniques are being developed to match plant output with demand fluctuations (and to fill the 'night gap')...

References:

http://www.environmentflorida.org/newsroom/energy/energy-program-news/large-scale-solar-power-plants-could-power-nation-combat-global-warming-and-create-thousands-of-jobs

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x203056

http://www.physorg.com/news176632405.html

LBJ knew it was the Poppy-Bush crew that whacked JFK. He just didn't know if they'd stop there - or go all-the-way to the overt coup.

That's what made him fall apart, and gives us the creeps.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5456280

http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/FbiMemoPhotoLinkBushJfk.htm

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8127

What reports of sexism have there been? Are you raising the subject of sexism just based on the fact that only 1.5% of FOSS developers are women?

For decades, it has been accepted, that statistics is evidence. Recognizing, that there can be legitimate differences in inclinations towards certain activities among genders is a big no-no. The only exception is made for negative inclinations — such as increased aggressiveness — among males, or positive — such as attention to detail — among females, err, scratch that — "female" has a "male" in it — the proper term is womyns.

That the same testosterone (or whatever it really is), that makes males more aggressive on average may also make them more determined scientists or more involved FOSS-developers, is not mentioned... Or, perhaps, one needs to have been nerdy and suffer from bullying — something girls rarely have to go through — in school to look for a recreational outlet online.

Whatever the real reasons for disparity, claiming "sexism" in FOSS — the activity, that's done almost exclusively via Internet, where nobody knows your real gender (nor race, for that matter, nor even species!), is beyond stupid, of course. But by pointing this out, a person — myself included after I typed the previous sentence — automatically becomes a "sexist in denial". I guess, I need therapy now...

Lastly, the 1.5% is not bad — among FreeBSD-project, for example, there were 0 (zero!) females, last time I checked. The situation only "improved" a little bit, when one guy (from San Francisco, of all places), announced his gender- (and name-) change...

here and here?

They're a hell of a lot more trustworthy and reliable than Pakistan is.

I'm not so sure at all... USSR/Russia and India go way back — during the Ghandi times, KGB's influence over Indian politicians was near-complete. The success of penetrating India was an example, that KGB studied and thought to repeat in other countries. Most of those politicians are still alive and still busy — there was no clean-up, unlike, say, in Germany, which exposed Stazi agents. Kinda...

For all we know, there are, very likely, still people in various Indian ministries (including, no doubt, the Defense), who either never got off Russian payroll, or can be blackmailed by the new Russian agents.

Pakistan's military (rather than the entire country) was, probably, a better ally throughout, even if they aren't without problems of their own...

and observe how, unfortunately, XP consistently outperforms Linux :(

I went through the first 10 entries which support both OS's and found 8 were exactly the same and two were longer under Windows XP. Is that what you call "Consistently outperforming"?

I take you know what they say about half truths. But just in case you're interested in the whole truth, then here it is:

Out of the 28 machines that are listed in http://event.asus.com/eeepc/comparison/eeepc_comparison.htm, there are exactly 22 that have both a Linux and XP configuration; the remaining 6 machines are either exclusively Linux, or exclusively XP, which means their battery life under the two OSes can't be compared.

From within the 22 machines that can be compared, 11 (=50%) have longer battery life under XP, and 11 have exactly the same battery life under both OSes.

So yes. This is what I call consistently outperforming.

Don't be afraid of the Phoenix Police. Be afraid of the imposters.

In Phoenix, you stand a good change of being the victim of a home invasion staged by Mexican Army Regulars...

Or Mexicans in Phoenix police drag, fulfilling their contracts...

Or Phoenix Police whose chief and the Phoenix mayor just can't take much criticism.

Try and discredit the reports based on the sources I use. Not working. The incidents did happen. Police officers were calling into local radio shows and confirming the reports.

It seems most home invasions in Phoenix are carried out by those who attack drop houses the 'coyotes' use to stage illegal immigrants on their way to other cities. Taking some hostage and making a quick buck is the motive. Posing as police works very well until the real police show up. then, hope the bad guys run out of bullets, which they often do.

Our mayor, Phil Gordon, is death against enforcing immigration law, as is our former Governor and now head of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. It's so bad the Feds are demanding that local law enforcement accept a new policy that pretty much prevents them from enforcing the law. That's the 287(g) program that apparently is too successful.

Sherrif Joe also has tangled with the local alternative paper, which published his and other officials home addresses and apparently violated grand jury statutes. It's only an arcane law when it is applied to you.

Sherrif Joe has his view of law enforcement. It enrages many of the liberal intelligensia around here, who would rather we put the illegals up in the Phoenician and give them a chance.

Me? I back Sherrif Joe, knowing full well he can get carried away. The alternative is to have everything not nailed down stolen by the illegals as they stream through here on their way to a better life.

At least he doesn't PRETEND to be doing his job.

You ought to live here. Then you would grasp a little more of the nuance. Much too easy to take things at face value. 4 years here has taught me that we have a serious illegal immigration problem. How to solve it is unfortunately simple - clean house, starting with the House of Reperesentatives. Our government has too many conflicts of interest, business sees illegals as cheap labor, Democrats see them as new voters, and regular citizens have no one on their side. But I'm not hopeful.

Why the focus on illegal immigration? That's the crux of the trouble over Sherrif Joe. That's all it is.

Bring it on.

It certainly is possible for someone who does not believe in global warming to be a useful adviser in this circumstance, but it would require them to put aside their beliefs and advise based on the data, not their ideology. If the Governor doesn't feel that he can trust the advice, it is both his right and his responsibility to find someone who's advice can be trusted.

But after doing some more reading this morning, the situation is even more simple. Mr. Taylor wasn't fired from the position of "state climatologist," because that position has not existed since the 1980's. The entire uproar is because Governor Kulongowski asked Mr. Taylor to stop using the fake title to lend credence to his work. Just like I can't just start calling myself 'Dr. Ibbey' without someone else bestowing that title on me, Mr. Taylor can't call himself "George Taylor, Oregon State Climatologist" just because he wants to.

So who, pray tell, wants to be toting around freakin' bricks of gold?! People get killed for their freakin' shoes, yet somebody thinks it's a good idea to carry around bricks of gold?

And they're going to charge 30% more than current market value?!?

I'm sorry, but this sounds like the most asinine idea ever.