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On US Interrogation (sadly I cannot find the SF field manual): http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/18779prs20041207.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/10/torture_as_an_interrogation_te.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212197,00.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/16/washington/16cnd-formica.html http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080305I.shtml http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1227&id=893492006 On the US School of Americas: http://www.soaw.org/ On Secret US Prisons: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1237589,00.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4461470.stm http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/64/22567 Now why is this important? Since the US keeps these prisons in secret locations which are never disclosed, the international red cross is never permitted to inspect them. Therefore, any sort of interrogation and torture technique used is carte blanche.

According to the BBC complaints ruling "two viewers complained". Assuming that one of them was Prof. Repacholi, I must be the other. But then again, I'm probably Spartacus as well.

Since this report was published Panorama was broadcast as usual on Monday night. There was no trailing "we got the wifi program badly wrong" apology, so I've complained again about that - we'll see what happens.

It's worth mentioning that the BBC is going through a sustained period of navel-gazing at the moment, ever since the Hutton Report. Among the items for consideration have been such earth-shattering topics such as the name of the Blue Peter cat http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/09/it_fair_knocks_your_socks.html and whether two pieces of film about an unelected German woman had been reversed between the programme and the trail http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7079070.stm. In among this, ensuring basic scientific accuracy in a flagship current-affairs program clearly isn't very important.

Nah, not science.

He was just trying to get enough Dutch courage to invade Pakistan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7123033,00.html

Golos and its supporters have been maintaining a blog page at LiveJournal. You can read either the actual blog page in Russian or the English translation of the blog page. It contained plenty of damning evidence showing that the Kremlin had manipulated the election.

Then, after the election concluded, a Moscow-based company acquired LiveJournal. Is the timing merely coincidence or is the Kremlin somehow connected to this business deal?

Golos and its supporters have been maintaining a blog page at LiveJournal. You can read either the actual blog page in Russian or the English translation of the blog page. It contained plenty of damning evidence showing that the Kremlin had manipulated the election.

Then, after the election concluded, a Moscow-based company acquired LiveJournal. Is the timing merely coincidence or is the Kremlin somehow connected to this business deal?

Putinist Russia is more than scary, it is downright putrid smelling with state control. The Kremlin have essentially forced EU poll monitors out of Russia. There were far to few to begin with, and now there's no sign of them.

Though I am worried about the future state of Russia, I haven't given up hope on it just yet. There's still a large movement towards democracy and political/market freedom, and many things are still uncertain. What I do know though is its an up hill battle to win.

I blame the editor for quoting the story when I had already bothered to summarize it.

Also, more coverage from the Guardian.

The fact that you even have to ask that question demonstrates the power of long-term propaganda. Growing up knowning nothing but huge, overly complex, insanely powerful government, the average individual can't even imagine that life without the welfare-warfare state is possible. The god-like "right" to choose for another man whether he lives or dies -- an integral part of the welfare-warfare state -- barely raises an eyebrow when it is exercised. Even as airstrikes slaughter women and children in far-away lands, most still cling on to the fairytale that human morality somehow permits one man to choose for another whether he lives or dies.

To even consider that there can be a worse violation of human rights than murder itself just isn't human, if you ask me.

Your Ex-CoWorkers Will Kill Facebook

In former-Soviet Russia, your ex-coworkers kill you!

Oh and eating fish lol.

That depends on where the fish came from.

A few dozen? I don't know about you, but I'm seeing reports like this and this on a weekly basis. I wonder how many go completely unreported in the "western world"?

Torture is still used because it works, and it works because it's still used? That's some nice circular logic there, Lou.

The only reason it's still used because some people are sociopaths who enjoy hurting others (or they are in search of "revenge"). This is why it's generally associated with Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and North Korea. It's a verifiable fact
that
torture
does
not
work
for
the
reasons
I
explained
previously.

There Are Four Lights!

To ordinary people the problem with Putin is that his primary and probably the only focus is on the large businesses, which he has explicitly stated during both of his election campaigns. From the outside it may look quite bright: Russia restores its influence in the post-soviet space, certain companies grow rich, military exports are increasing, the space industry survives, as does the nuclear industry, etc. But behind the curtains, there's a lot of internal problems which have received little to no attention during the 8-year presidency of Putin, and neither they did under Eltsin.

A lot of people who is dependent of the state budget (the military, most of medicine and education workers, pensioners) did not get a kopeck of these peak oil prices. It's becoming hopeless to them if Putin's course (or, as we get it from the mass media these days, "The Putin's Plan") doesn't get altered to take into account at least the most basic of their interests. To give you an example, among my relatives, a therapeutist of the highest category (as per the state ranking system) gets $400 a month, and one of the 30 top Russian Space Force officers gets $900 a month. The irony is that these people are treated as dependent and receive direct pressure from the authorities to vote and agitate for Putin's "United Russia" party.

To those who's relatively on their own, it is not much better, too. We have European price levels in Moscow, and the salaries of those who get paid according to the market are about twice as low, and we're glad we have that at least. Granted unaddressed low apartment building rates we've got a never-ending housing bubble all over the country, and to the most of those who do need a place to live in there's no way of buying a simple one-room flat. This is something Puting promised to solve from the very beginning, and has silently failed at. The problems of the "constantly emerging" middle class receive almost no attention, too, and it is effectively suppressed as the result.

From whom I've talked to, most don't treat Putin as an independent figure, but rather like the face of a team which is closely tied to the large businesses, which have evolved naturally from the oligarchy of the 90s and brought Putin to power in the first place. Provided this, there's usually no notion of dictatorship as such, but the analogy goes as far as equating "United Russia" to the CPSU. I've read an article of "The Guardian" recently, which comes surprisingly close to my personal opinion on the upcoming elections, here it is. Honestly, a couple of years ago I couldn't imagine my vote going to either of the parties mentioned there.

And it is reasonable. However note that the previous style of democracy under Yeltsin, in 1990's, was very chaotic and very unpredictable. With Putin at least you know where he stands, and you know that the country is stable. This is quite valuable (unless, of course, it's somehow in your interest to foment unrest in a country which has nuclear weapons.)

The main point, however, is that I would be very concerned about talking with Russian emigrants about their experience under Putin. I would be afraid I might put their lives at risk.

I wouldn't worry about that - as long as they don't seriously work on a violent revolt against the elected government, as Berezovsky does. He is still very much alive, by the way, even though you'd think he would become another Trotsky. And of those who plot to overthrow the government and actually do something bad to that end ... does the name Osama ring a bell? The USA killed a lot of people in many countries recently chasing him, including countries that the USA is not at war with.

I take it you read the news articles about him saying he wanted Sky News to be more like Fox News, then? (Also, he complained about the competition bodies preventing him from buying up the rest of the media, and IIRC also claimed that he had no editorial control over The Times. *snort*)

The stream of "APPLE IS DOOOOMED!!1" stories showed us that proclaiming the death of something makes for easy writing and easy page views. Reality is more mundane; people will continue using a mix of all three, as you said, for years to come.

Did you know that the hardcover book faces imminent doom as well? :P

First of all, I should say that I think you've got it about right that the US has done a generally good job with the internet. However, I think you might be wrong about this:

It's not "people" who don't like US control, it's "people who run oppressive governments"

I think there may be many more 'people' than you realize who worry about the degree of control the US currently exercises over the internet. It's not strictly relevant to this topic, but you may remember this poll from last year where majorities in several countries traditionally allied with the US rated the country as a serious threat to world peace.

Rightly or wrongly, I don't think you can deny that there are a lot of people on the planet who have recently become a lot less likely to simply assume US' benevolence and good intentions, and I don't see that there's any reason to think that that attitude does not apply to this subject.

she should take the fifth and claim she can't remember the keys as she was smoking a lot of dope at the time ...

Animal rights activists are terrorists.

The Conservative MP Michael Fabricant, whose constituency includes the farm, described the protesters as "animal rights terrorists".

Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat science spokesman, called the news "a victory for terrorism and extremism".

My house 3 years ago had a big sign in the entrance warning people to be careful when opening packages after attacks from animal rights activists. They are widely considered to be terrorists in the UK.

See recent uk media reports about the cost for clean up of retired plants, much less waste storage. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1789671,00.html

Remember the teenager repellant http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1888844,00.html ?
Perhaps a clever use of this technology would be to come up with a tire rumble strip pattern to annoy teenagers when they were driving too fast?

As an example, encode the barney song (or some other annoying tune) in a way so that only teenagers would hear it when they travel at high speeds and at low speeds it would sound like noise. Might not be so simple to do, but if you could make it work and you sold this idea to street paving companies, I'll bet there would be demand for putting this in back alleys and parking lots that are used for drag-racing starting starting yesterday...

Glad I dont work for BAE SYSTEMS who require ethics training and pay Saudi prince $1B. http://www.angloarabia.com/bribery/slushfund.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles/story/0,,2097149,00.html

Do they require ethics training at Microsoft?

Folks, don't be surprised. We were told about this back in 2002, when Admiral Poindexter announced the Total Information Awareness program. It was to be a giant database of all electronic records of all Americans -- your credit card records, grocery discount card purchases, phone calls, tax records, internet traffic, bank records, medical records, court records, everything. The logo of the program was the All-Seeing Eye on top of a pyramid, beaming its gaze over the United States. The motto was "Scientia est Poder", "Knowledge is Power". ( Are we to conclude then that total information awareness then means complete and absolute power? )
 
Because of public outcry, the project was supposedly canceled. But in reality, the various functions were just farmed out to different entities -- see the wikipedia article.
 
Now we have a guy testifying before congress that the NSA monitors all internet traffic. The former CEO of Qwest communications testified that the government asked them to monitor all phone calls months before 9/11. Wayne Madsen, former CIA agent, claims that recent theft of personal information from laptops is a black op to populate the TIA database ( he maintains a list of database thefts on the pay section of his site. ) .
 
This is just like when Nazi Germany started keeping records of the entire population so they knew where the Jews were when it came time to round them all up. They were assisted by the lasted record-keeping machinery and techniques from IBM. Now the US government is keeping track of everyone using the latest database technology.
 
Check out the 10 steps to Facism that Naomi Wolf outlined in her book, "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot". This is step #4, "Set up an internal surveillance system". It's disturbing to see how many other steps we can check off in present-day America.

I'd rather we were in Iran than Iraq. Iran actually deserves it.

Based on what, exactly? Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel that were willfully mistranslated by the media? Or his statements on nuclear energy that were willfully mistranslated by the media?

Or because they overthrew our popular, peacefully elected president in 1953 and then backed Iraq when they invaded us, killing a million Americans? Oh, wait, we did that to them.

Wrong.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1868328,00.html

Most people? How many people are "most people?" The general populace in China and India are in worse shape now than they were before the industrial revolution in many ways. Bill Gates, ironically, didn't start to make inroads with his charities until leaving Microsoft.

When you talk about companies, you're right about one thing: "whats more important is reputation." Unfortunately, companies can buy reputations, and not by good works.

Have you boycotted Pepsi yet? They pressured the US into invading a Chilean democracy and replacing it with a US puppet dictatorship.

How about Coke? Fertile farmland has been razed and poisoned to bottle Dasani.

Could it be that Sony is still selling products to you? If the first rootkit didn't convince you, I guess the second wouldn't either.

Of course you've avoided my former employer, General Electric, inheritors of the Love Canal who refused to acknowledge their responsibility for as long as they could possibly get away with it.

Oh yes, and of course accidents happen when you cut corners. We could point to Union Carbide, Dow Corning, and of course, Exxon. Or, you could go for the jugular and mention Monsanto, possibly the most evil corporation on the planet. (and that comes with some pretty prestigious neighbors!)

The point isn't these companies, and it's not even anti-globalisation. Fundamentally, I'm anti-people and anti-humanity. We have never, as a species (NOT considering individual exceptions here, because there are always those), shown that we can do anything good unless it's for short-term, personal gain. The only thing that capitalism and the free market economy bring to the table is power and efficiency. They make it easier for psychopaths to be rich, powerful, and immoral.

Fundamentally, humanity sucks. Capitalism allows the worst of it to seize control. That's about all we've accomplished in the five thousand-plus years since we started herding cows.

A higher punishment is required for deterrent.

While it is reasonable to assume that the very existence of the criminal justice system has some deterrent value, there is little evidence to support the view that increasing the level of sentences will deter the individual offender or would-be offenders in general. [...] One of the difficulties with deterrent sentencing is that there are numerous potential influences on offending behaviour, and these will vary between individuals. Even if the potential for conviction and sentencing acts as a general deterrent, this does not necessarily mean that an increased level of sentence will be a greater deterrent.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/11/05/study_filesharing_increases_cd_sales.html

Ok, I've learnt not to hit "Submit" when I'm about to leave the house in a hurry.

I found an article called Britons named world's biggest emitters of CO2 from air travel. (I've already written to my MP [Member of Parliament] opposing the expansion of London Heathrow Airport, which is the busiest in terms of some statistic in the world.) At the bottom it says "But overall, US adults have the biggest annual travel carbon footprint in the world at 7.8 tonnes, more than double France's 3.7 tonnes, which comes in at number two. Third on the list, at 3.1 tonnes, is Britain." -- the USA is a big jump ahead of France there! I know you have sparse settlements (I have been to the USA, I liked some things, disliked others), but I really hope you find some solution to that. For instance, "If one in 10 Americans used public transportation regularly, U.S. reliance on foreign oil could be cut by more than 40 percent--the amount we import from Saudi Arabia each year." (source). This notes that public transport use in America has now got back to the level it was at 50 years ago -- I don't know how much settlement density has changed in that time, maybe people have left cities a lot (?), but if it used to be possible, why isn't it possible any more?

This region is already completely ignorant about HIV/AIDS and how to have safe sex (thanks in part to the Catholic church sucessfully spreading the baseless belief that condoms have tiny holes in them that let HIV pass through).

Now they are being told that circumcision will help protect them against AIDS. These newly-circumcised people will likely be less afraid to have sex with random individuals, and won't bother using condoms (after all, their safety is questionable!). And how long will it be until their education gets distorted to the point that they believe circumcision stops AIDS altogether?

These researchers seem to be completely ignorant of the consequences of their actions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4398507,00.html Now that they have admitted to these tests it makes me wonder to what else they did and haven't owned up to.

I understand your point of view, and greatly respect the way the British have dealt with IRA thugs and other assorted murderous loonies. In that context, let me make two points.

1. If this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_the_United_Kingdom is accurate, the most deaths from a single terrorist attack were 270 from the Lockerbie plane bombing. If you can remember back to that instance, you remember the consternation, chaos and grief that caused. Now, to put it in perspective, imagine 10 or 11 of those bombings happening at once in the skies over Britain. Oh, also, the two tallest buildings in London, which happen to be at or near the center of your economic infrastructure, are demolished.

2. Relative to the U.S., residents of Great Britain are more able to "live [their lives] as normal" because Great Britain *already accepts* a greater level of government intrusion as "normal". In the U.S., we don't have videocameras everywhere (not yet, anyway). The question of whether or not the state has the ability to tell us we can't own firearm in our own homes is a matter of great debate, not a settled question. Etc. etc. etc.

3. Finally, a related point: What you present as a fact -- i.e., the UK has gone about it's business as usual -- would be hotly disputed by many of your own countrymen. Articles like this http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1759344,00.html and this http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1129827.ece suggest that this is a matter of some dispute.

This article http://www.espionageinfo.com/Ul-Vo/United-Kingdom-Counter-Terrorism-Policy.html also seems to dispute your contention. Excerpts: "Parliament ... responded to the rise of fundamentalist religious terrorist groups by passing the Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act in 2001, an action that was criticized by many civilrights groups ... After bombs exploded in two pubs in Birmingham ... Parliament passed the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1974. The act allowed authorities to arrest suspected terrorists without a warrant and detain them for up to a week without filing charges against them. Suspected terrorists could also be deported from England to Northern Ireland. The policy of internment raised international criticism, as did the practice of "hooding," in which detainees would be isolated and forced to wear hoods over their heads. After an investigation by the European Commission of Human Rights in 1976, the practices of food and sleep deprivation, noise bombardment, forced standing at attention, and hooding were condemned by the body. Despite the commission's decision, the practices continued." etc.

Not trying to start a flame war. I just think the situation's more nuanced than you describe.

    - Alaska Jack

At 44MT, the FOAB would have been the second most powerful bomb ever detonated, coming in just after the Tsar Bomba. However, it's not quite that powerful. Not by an order of magnitude or six.

The American-made MOAB (Mother of all Bombs, or the more boring official Massive Ordnance Air Blast) weighs in at 11 tons TNT, and the Russian-made FOAB (Father of all Bombs, no official name given) weighs in at a whopping 44 tons of TNT. No, that's not kilotons or even megatons like the previous poster wrote, just plain tons. Not even close to even a puny nuclear weapon like the Hiroshima bomb (about 13 kilotons TNT). Not that I'd like to be in the neighborhood when either one of these babies goes off, though.

Here's some linkies for your clickification:
Mother of all bombs (GBU-43/B): wikipedia, Global Security, Discovery Channel snippet
Father of all bombs: wikipedia, the Guardian article, YouTube

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/oct/29/tvnews.internationalnews

It's not unheard of...

I wonder if Ubuntu will replace Microsoft on school computers.

I just saw that Tesco UK is selling Ubuntu PCs as well! This is a first in England.

For those that don't live here Microsoft is the computer. For about 10 years I have never heard of anyone else using Linux in the UK (I mean walking around or in real life. Not over the internet), then this year suddenly walking around the university everyone's laptops have Ubuntu or Fedora or SUSE. Even my university has SUSE in one of their labs. Now that is a first!

There was a piece from 2005 in which it talks about the government seriously thinking of switching all its software to open source.

Medical care under Saddam was good enough that Iraq didn't have cholera epidemics. They have them now, thanks to you. Cholera is an unbelievably infectious and deadly disease; there is no telling how many hundreds of thousands of people will die from it. And you are responsible.

Yes, I mean you personally: anybody who starts a war is responsible for all the ensuing blood and disease; this principle was established at the Nuremberg Trials. And because you live in a democracy and therefore have the sovereign power of the vote, you are personally responsible for whatever your country does. You are to blame for all the death, torture, and disease. No excuses.

Calories is a stupid measure. How about protein/acre?

Calories is a stupid measure, yes. While protein/acre would be better it still leaves out vitamins and minerals. However whereas modern conventional western agriculture depends on a monoculture organic farming as well as permaculture best uses a mix of plants or produce. Instead of growing just say corn, strawberries can be grown on the same land. And/or squash. In temperate zones where citrus will grow, underneath the orange trees other fruits and veggies can be grown. The same with other fruit trees. Using companion planting one crops' pest can be repelled by other plants. For instance marigolds repels aphids which feed on other plants. Or plants that attract Coccinellidae, or ladybugs can be used, aphids are natural prey of ladybugs. At the same tyme ladybugs control pests they also pollinate the crop.

We can play the "point to studies game" if you want. Here's a British study from 2007.

I noted the last paragraph has this to say, with no rebuttal:

Patrick Holden of the Soil Association, which promotes organic farming, said "business as usual" intensive farming would not be possible in future because of the fossil fuel costs and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with nitrogen fertilisers. Organic farming could equal and sometimes even exceed the yields of chemical intensive farming systems. "The challenge that global agriculture confronts today is to research and develop these systems, because we are on the threshold of a post-fossil fuel era."

Scientific American

Organic or Conventional? For Wheat, It Might Not Matter
...Although some organic crops have proved more nourishing than their conventional counterparts, wheat--one of the world's biggest cereal crops--shows no difference, according to the results of a new study.

Organic Farming Generates Longer-Lived Plants
When Mary was asked How does your garden grow, she didn't compare the relative merits of conventional versus organic farming. But results published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest that her silver bells and cockleshells could have lived longer and better under sustainable agriculture techniques.

Organic Farms More Fertile, Study Finds
Organic farms are more efficient than their conventional cousins and leave soils far healthier, researchers report today in the journal Science. In a long-term study comparing productivity, environmental health, biodiversity and energy consumption of organic cultivation to conventional methods, Paul Mder of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland and his colleagues discovered that the organic approach used significantly less energy to produce the same quantity of crop. Although organic farms typically produce lower overall yields than common plots do, their ecological benefits are greater--a larger number of pest-eating creatures and other advantageous organisms live in soil farmed organically, and decomposition occurs more efficiently on these lands, releasing much needed nutrients into the soil.

Analysis Finds Greater Profits from Organic Farming
Doing the right thing can be profitable after allat least when it comes to g

The studies that you linked all would require that we change our eating habits. They also completely ignore things like labor and dollar cost. In particular, the last story measured productivity by using "calories". Well, yeah... I mean the cassava (yucca) is the highest yielding plant in the world if you count calories/acre. And guess who grows it? Yup, the developing world.

Of course, you can eat 2000 calories of cassava/day and still suffer from protein deficiency. That is, if you can afford to eat 2000 calories of cassava. It also requires a tremendous amount of labor. And few in the West eats cassava (though I love the stuff).

Calories is a stupid measure. How about protein/acre? I'd wager that it doesn't fare quite as well. Plus there is the small issue of where all of this organic compost is going to come from.

We can play the "point to studies game" if you want. Here's a British study from 2007.

I can't possibly hope to become an expert and sort it all out. I instead rely on balanced reporting from sources like Scientific American, who have a nice skeptical attitude on most subjects. My opinion largely mirrors theirs. Going to anti-GMO websites is not likely to get a balanced view.

Go look in a mirror. Explain to me why you have traits of both of your parents.

Is this not descent with modification? What exactly do you think evolution is?

A change in allele frequency over time. If that isn't what you thought evolution is then you can now stand corrected.

Evolution is the fact that offspring get traits from both parents. Natural selection explains why this offspring will be successful in reproducing or not.

It's really very simple.

Here are some links:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4161281,00.html

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/uor-nsf061203.php

Ever wonder why your physician demands that you finish off all the antibiotics he is prescribing? That's right, evolution. You see, the drugs will first kill the weakest of the bacteria infecting you. If you stop, the strongest, least effected will survive and reproduce passing on this ability to withstand the drugs. Next thing you know we have antibiotic resistant bacteria. Evolution via natural selection. It's really very simple, isn't it?

another link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistance

To point out an error in your post. Evolution says nothing about life originating, that is abiogenisis. Evolution is what has been happening since life appeared.

if you linked to the actual interview rather than a quick blog quote from the interview.

A link to the real article from The Guardian would have been much nicer.

Good, we won't be waiting much longer for your agreement.

The US is apparently NOT "By far" the biggest source of CO2.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews

If you build it, NASA will not only come, it'll give you $2 million dollars for you troubles. The space agency today said it will offer $2 million in prizes if competing teams can successfully build a lunar lander at the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at Holloman Air Force Base, in Alamogordo, N.M. Oct. 27 and 28th.

Will they let the chinese show up? Or maybe the Japanese?

And will they get extra credit for video/photo/3D telemetry? How about spectrography gear and other testing equipment? Because they've got all that. On the way to the moon or already there.

I'm so tired of my tax dollars being wasted on international dick-waving contests like this. I wish NASA et al would just whip out the rulers- it'd be cheaper. Then again, it wouldn't feed the defense contractors, now would it?