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This finding is just another piece in a century's worth of evidence that drup prohibition just plain does not work. It doesn't reduce drug use, it doesn't reduce addiction rates, it doesn't reduce the harms inflicted on society due to drug abuse, it doesn't protect kids... In short, it doesn't accomplish any of the things it claims to accomplish. It does do an enormous amount of harm.

If these teabaggers actually cared about small government, privacy, individual liberty, government staying out of health care, etc, they should start fighting drug prohibition, asset forfeiture, and all the screwed up big government, big brother crap that comes out of drug prohibition. The reason why they don't is of course obvious: These teabaggers are essentialy modern day brownshirts screwing up democratic processes in an orgy of racism: usually as subtext, but more and more out in the open. The modern system of drug prohibition is of course our strongest form of institutionalized racism. These guys don't mind big government poking around in our private lives, and making decisions about our health, as long as they are targeting hispanics and blacks vastly more than whites.

It is of course an indisputable fact that the first Marijuana laws were nothing more than a legislative method of screwing hispanics in California, but I always figured the racist outcomes of drug prohibition were an accidental by-product of faulty and emotional thinking. Nowadays, when I see the overlap between the hard-line prohibitionists and the teabaggers, I start thinking, yeah, maybe deep down a lot of it is just plain racially motivated. Maybe.

I do regret letting this post devolve into a flaming of tea baggers, but I just can't help myself. I find it awesome that they chose to name themselves after the practice of laying your testicles on something. I always knew all those right wing fundamentalists were total perverts. I don't live in the states, but can I suggest that those of you living there start going to teabagger meeting with large photo collections of your testacles layed out on various things? Start whipping that tea-bag out and laying it on the speaking podium or coffee machine and taking pictures.

Sovereignty? What's that?

I am afraid that the numbers you are looking at are old. Intel is not winning. If you wish to take a snapshot today, AMD has won the desktop war, they easily outsell Intel in the Desktop market, regardless of the Dell's that will only sell Intel. The server market still belongs to Intel, but if you look at the trends, it's difficult to say they are winning when the competition is closing the gap at what should be considered an alarming rate. It the rate AMD is picking up market share in that arena, they will surpass Intel there by the middle of next summer. With re-occuring news that their 64 bit architecture outperforms Intels nearly 2 to 1, it could be even sooner. The number is no where near the 10 to 1 that you claim. To support that arguement, even Microsoft has written their new, soon to be released OSes around the AMD core, not the Intel cores. Sure the Intel cores will be fully supported, but they were not the primary concern for MS.

I would also like to point out that you have made an error in profits by the two companies, Intels margins have fallen over the last 12 months while AMD's have risen.

With all of those facts put together, Intel is losing. They may be ahead right now in the markets that matter the most, servers, but it is quickly fading as far as real numbers are concerned. I would hardly call that winning.

AMD is also winning in the sales game. They have successfully changed the public's perception of clock speeds. That is a war I thought they couldn't win myself. Intel had entrenched it into the public's mind. Those days are over. If AMD can overcome a hurdle like that, I don't question for a second they can overcome any branding issues that may arise.

Second, I doubt that SCO's outcome will adversely any non-manager employee.

Once you've "in," nothing matters anymore. In extreme cases you might get fired and be forced to retire in luxury.

I disagree. Greenland used to be green, and then became cold and icy, prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine and the emisison of 'greenhouse gasses' by human-constructed factories and such.

Or, what if human beings are making a difference, and we're really staving off an ice age.

Or what if global warming is happening, and whether or not we have anything to do with it, we'd see increased crop-yields and all the benefits thereof for the needy and starving of the world?

We don't have enough data, and the scientists are too busy with political posturing and grubbing for grant-money to sit down and do actual science. And when you look at the economic impact of something like the Kyoto Treaty, it becomes apparent that we need to be damned sure, one way or another, before we start making huge policy change which might well prove iatrogenic.

We're talking potentially about the future of the species - we need to get this right. We also need to get into space and start colonizing so that all our eggs aren't in one basket, we need to invest in fusion research and solar-power satellites, and all sorts of things, instead of making pronouncements without a truly scientific basis for doing so.

A recent study suggests that global warming might have saved us from the next ice age.

A recent study suggests that global warming might have saved us from the next ice age.

Surprisingly, some scientists think rather the opposite.

Basically thier theory is that global warming hs averted a catostrophic ice age from hitting us.

More details on the study here.

In my mind, its too early to change policy. First, we need to really understand the nature of climate and the impact of industrial activity. As near as I can tell, we don't yet appreciate the natural variability of climate, much less whether our activity is harmful or not.

I certainly hope that the next ten years doesn't throw the climate into catastrophy because we need that time and more just to make sense of what is happening.

This of course ignores the whole fact that no one agrees that we've actually "turned the burner on" as far as Earth is concerned.

Further we don't know what would happen if we "turned the burner off". This article suggests that we'd get the ice age routine just like in Fallen Angels.

The other article about Global Dimming also would suggest that there are other changes we aren't accounting for.

It's not a binary either-or problem. It's a complex system that is "described" using things like chaos theory.

BTW, statistical analysis against the old "hockey stick" temperature data suggests that the seed data is flawed and will always create a hockey stick shaped graph no matter what data is fed in to it.

Human activities masked another Ice Age. Kind of like the novel, Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn.

You aren't looking very hard. There are plenty: here and here

Bah.. Here's a better link: article

Look at health care in Europe vs. America. Everyone in Europe can afford to have a root canal or an xray should they need one.

On the other hand, if you are convicted of a crime in the UK, then later found innocent and released, you are charged exorbitant fees for your stay in prison.

Britain is also overly concerned with Orwellian surveillance systems that destroy the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

The US certainly fucks up on a lot of things, but Europe doesn't exactly get everything right either.