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You have a very good point. Because, after all, we know that the police would never, say, shoot an innocent person to death on the tube because they thought he might be a terrorist. Would they?

New offence of publishing, possessing or disseminating publications that indirectly incite terrorist acts or are likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing a terrorist act.

Oh come on. Just don't run through the station vaulting over turn-styles a few days after several bomb attacks and I think you'll be ok. More sensationalism.

If you are referring to Menezes, he did nothing of the sort. This was revealed by the police within a couple of days of the shooting.

Before acting superior, take just a few seconds to get your facts correct, or else you just look like a moron.

It already has. A completely innocent man has been murdered in cold blood by government agents. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot 10 times, over a period of 30 seconds. Like the fellow in this article, he was doing nothing but his daily routine.

Count that out. That's 3 seconds inbetween shots:

BANG!.. one.. two.. BANG!... one... two BANG!.. one.. two.. BANG!

And that's just 4 shots, there's no way this was anything but cold blooded murder. WAKE UP PEOPLE! You have more to fear from your own government than from terrorists.

The Author's Guild also was the organization that attacked Amazon for selling used books. (Previously reported by /..)

I know a couple of best-selling authors personally, and none of them have a high opinion of the Author's Guild.

They think that sunspot activity affects the temperature of the Earth more than greenhouse gases. Should work the same way on Mars. The Guardian had a little article on it.

Btw, here's an article that explains which articles of the Geneva convention the US has violated.

They spin laws in their favour. Simply calling them detainees instead of POW's itself is a violation of article 4 of the Geneva convention. After all, the term detainee is nothing more than a euphamism for prisoner anywah.

Many critics also question whether a person already traumatised by facial disfigurement would be equipped to cope. [The] Cleveland Clinic tells prospective recipients ... that the risks are so unknown it does not think informed consent is possible.

"Really? Name one. I'll wait.
Still waiting."

Jesus, give me a chance!

Ok, a quick Google srearch turns up:

How we survived jail hell (Observer, respected, non-tabloid British newspaper)

Britain frees all five former Guantanamo detainees (USA Today)

Returning Afghans Talk of Guantanamo (Washington Post)

British Guantanamo Terror Suspects Released Without Charge (ATSNN (?))

Men Held at Guantánamo Months After Deemed Innocent (New Standard News (?))

Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Complain of A Year Long Torture by US Military (globalpolicy.org (?))

And that was just on the first page.

Do I get my apology now?

"You're not going to get ANYWHERE arguing that individuals who have engaged in covert military action against the US aren't enemy combatants."

No, of course many of them were. However, the correct term for an opposing fighter taken prisoner in a war is "prisoner of war".

Classifying them as "enemy combatants" is a weak legal loophole designed solely to avoid the US's Human Rights obligations under the Geneva Convention.

"The "loophole" you describe has been used by other countries before"

As you said, name one.

You'll also not I'm not automatically assuming you're wrong, merely asking you to prove it. Because I don't know for sure you aren't.

This is careful and rational argument, and not just arrogantly assuming I'm automatically right. We try to do this where I'm from, although I know the US isn't big on it at the moment.

"and quite frankly, the people who are being detained violated the Geneva Conventions themselves by not clearly identifying themselves as combatants. When they did that they forfeited their protections."

I don't recall a passage or clause under the Geneva Accords that says you have to clearly identify yourself as a combatant, but if you show me an excerpt I'll concede this point.

Nevertheless, this is what a trial is for - to establish whether or not the person actually is guilty. If they're all denied a trial, how can the innocent ones be freed?

"C. If they're US citizens, then their first protection should be the CONSTITUTION, not some ridiculously weak loosley related aggreements between previously (and sometimes currently) warring countries."

How many of them are actually US citizens? As a member of "the rest of the world" (you guys remember that place, right?) you can do what you like with your own citizens, but as I recall most US-native citizens captured were dealt with quickly, and there were barely any of them. Likewise, citizens of other western powers had an expedited release or repatriation for judging in their own countries.

The remaining prisoners are mostly Afghani (or other nationalities that the US feels safe in upsetting), and they aren't going anywhere, not even to trial.

Oh, and the Geneva Convention rights aren't "weak" - they state explicitely what's allowed and what isn't. Humiliation, torture and unlawful imprisonment aren't allowed.

The only reason you think they're weak is because your government has (illegally and immorally) tried so damn hard to weasel out of them, and nobody else is big enough or brave enough to take on the biggest, most nuked-up, violent and paranoid bully in the world at the moment.

"You're a partisan shill. And the worst part

There was a World Bridge Tournament where a player was stripped of their medal due to pain killers.

Check out the last paragraph here:


http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,975 3,1062486,00.html

You are kidding, right?

So you are saying Osama Bin Laden should be sitting comfortably in his beach house watching the sunset?

No, people dislike USA for good reasons. US government started an illegal war with Iraq based on what? Shabby evidence at best, and various sources are indicating Bush HAD an agenda before 9-11. In fact, Powell claimed that Iraq did not post serious threat to the world right before 9-11. Saddam Hussien is a BAD person, no doubt about that,

How about ignoring the scientific evidence of global warming? Ignoring Kyoto Protocol? How about condemning other countries, such as Iran and N Korea, regarding to nuclear weapon issues, while putting money to make new nuclear weapons? While demonizing Iran, have you ever thought about their energy need as a country? Why is USA helping India with nuclear technology? How about the conditions in the prisons run by US government outside of USA?

How about opposing some democratically elected leaders in other countries while praising democracy is the best and then siding with some dictators? How about funding militia in some other countries?

Want examples? Here is one at http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673 ,1530800,00.htmlP

Do you know why people dislike Bill Gates but have no problem with Warren Buffett? They are both rich, so according to your theory, people should automatically hate both of them, right? Well, not really. Warren Buffett is famous for his ability to invest and manage companies, he does honest business to get to where he is today. Although his charity record is nowhere as stunning as Bill Gate's, but people respect him. On the other hand, Microsoft's business practices are..., lets say too aggressive to some people's liking.

US people are not paying the price for being rich, successful, and free; US people paying for being mean and dangerous.

They've turned the hangar into an indoor resort: http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1 377997,00.html

I think you need a more realistic perspective before you rant like that.

For a start, I challenge your assumption about "most successful people". It's well-documented that working long hours for extended periods provides rapidly diminishing returns, and ultimately becomes counter-productive as the damage caused by mistakes made while tired takes longer to undo later on.

About 35-40 hours is the most productive sustained hourly rate, and it's remarkably consistent across different industries and workers. You can get additional returns up to about 60 hours in short bursts, though they become less the higher the hours get. By about 80 hours, you're back to being only as productive as you were in the first 40 again as they additional 40 have cancelled out.

Go ahead and Google for this, or just try this article for a fairly representative comment. There are plenty of scientifically conducted studies, right back to Ford's observations about the guys building cars in his factory. The five-day working week came about in much the same way, BTW.

Next up, perhaps Mr Seventy Hours will be lazy rich in his 50s and living over there with a big house and car. The difference between us is that I will have lived for 50 years already when I get to my 50th birthday, and I won't die young from burn out.

You don't have to bust your butt to be rich but your damn well going find out it is the faster way of getting there.

Perhaps, but I'll take working smarter over working harder any day, and I bet I get there as fast as the butt-buster.

And I was referring to the morons that stayed behind when they could have ridden free buses out of those areas before the hurricanes hit. Then laid blame on everyone but themselves when they were stranded.

Then you definately got the last laugh today. Just heard in the news that 45 of those morons were found dead in the Memorial Medical Center. Maybe the next group of morons at the next major natural disaster will make sure to use those free buses you speak of instead of waiting for the white refrigerated truck with the police escort that these retards finally caught.

More Bad Science journalism. Scientists aren't superhuman tinkerers, or (as in this case) starry-eyed dreamers.

"George W Bush has decreed that, five days later, on the 16th, there is to be a further day of solemnities on which the nation will pray for the unnumbered victims of Hurricane Katrina. Prayers (like vacations) are the default mode for this president who knows how to chuckle and bow the head in the midst of disaster but not, when it counts, how to govern or to command. If you feel the prickly heat of politics, summon a hymn to make it go away; make accountability seem a blasphemy."

"President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them. But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/

The clue was in TFA: "Every week in Bad Science we either victimise some barking pseudoscientific quack, or a big science story in a national newspaper."

Also now has a blog, but there's this thing called Google, give it a go, you might like it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1476560,00.h tml

The paragraph regarding the 'wife-beater' question is quite illuminating.

How about the UK government (and the US) taking "personal responsibility" for creating the jihadi army that is now fighting us? Why does "personal responsiblity" apply only to the minor, inconvenient daily screwups that civilians live with our whole lives? While the people creating these catastrophic errors, that start with killing thousands "for the right reasons", and continue to kill "the wrong people", retire rich, powerful, safe, and crying (through their brainwashed civilian proxies) for more "personal responsibility"?

I don't blame the Romans for the current jihad, but the Romans created their own "German insurgents" by outsourcing jobs in the Roman Legion to Germans. Who took their training and access and turned it against Rome. They destroyed a thousand-year-old civilization in a couple of hundred years. With a rabid Christian Emperor at the helm, I might add. Things move a lot faster now that we've got powered machines, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The British figured out the source of easy power months ago: D-cells. (Via Strange Proportion.

A manned flight to Mars means up to three years of discomfort and isolation - how would the cosmonauts cope?

Can you take apart and modify your own electronic equipment ? in the US you can't

Can you get a fair trial in front of your peers ? in the US you can't

Can you read books in your library without fear of being persecuted ? in the US you can't

Can you report stories as a journalist without fear of revealing your sources and being jailed ? in the US you can't

freedom is a good idea but its not working out very well in USA

The worst part is that the total 11 shots were fired at three second intervals for 30 seconds.
They stood there and shot him in the head for 30 seconds!
It's horrible!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,1 6132,1556856,00.html

Summary with links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_De_Menez es

Care to explain the notion of "correlation vs. causation"?

There's no indication Britain's violent crime wave is a result of its gun laws. Certainly, Canada is not suffering a similar surge in violent crime, despite having quite restrictive firearm (especially handgun) laws. Perhaps some other factor is at play?

> Can you show that banning guns accomplishes anything other then promise criminals saftey?

It removes the ability of suicidal individuals to use an extremely effective means of suicide. Since suicide is by far the leading cause of firearm death in countries like Canada with low firearm violence, banning guns in such countries lowers the number of suicides by virtue of making any attempt at suicide less likely to succeed. (Certainly, some of those people would keep trying until they succeeded, but many would not, and would go on to be healthy and productive members of society.)

> Tell you what if guns are so bad how did socitiy surivie for generations
> with all the fireaarms hung over the door?

Guns were too expensive for most people to own? Death from disease killed people far more frequently than guns do, even in the US? People were more responsible back in the day?

I don't know. Neither do you, though, and we both should admit it.

> Fact in the "Gun Free" slaughter dome in NO they have found 40 people so
> far beaten and stabbed to death includeing a 7year old.

And you think the criminals who did that would have been less murderous if they'd been allowed to bring guns in?

Unlikely.

Also unlikely that you're right about what happened in the Superdome, considering that many of the horror stories appear to be nothing but rumour.

> Use your brains for once.

Yes, please do.

Note that I'm not saying guns are not valuable tools for self-defense in the hands of citizens. I'm just saying that you're spouting nonsense, and making pro-gun people look like fools by association. Big difference.

Is it really wise to turn it over? I mean, everyone is angry (with justification) for 2-3 B$ in kickbacks to Saddam over a decade via Oil For Food (note: not 10-20B - that includes smuggling, which was not related to the 661 (Oil For Food) committee). However, the Iraqi Oil and Defense ministries, largely headed by US administrators, Chalabi and Pals, SCIRI thugs, et al, hemorrhaged 8.8B$ in 14 months ((2) (3). You know, doing things like paying the salaries of 602 guards as 8,250 guards. Enron would have loved these people.

Are these *really* people we want to entrust yet *another* service to? I mean, seriously, that's worse than Nigeria - half the government's entire budget went to embezzling.

Close to the bottom of the page, a conservative figure...

Also here in the first paragraph...from this estimate, 27 years x 365 days = 9,855 times as much energy as we currently use.

Also here, here, and here.

Bottom line is that solar is possible today if we can ever wean ourselves off of oil (and keep the oil dependent businesses from buying off congress). (a lot of tree hugging rhetoric here but they have a point none-the-less...search for "oil lobby" to find relevant comments)

The animators you mentioned may be not be able to use Mickey Mouse, but that just means that they have to create their own character. That's actually forcing innovation.

That's forcing invention, and invention is not required for innovation. For a technical example, Apple did not invent the mp3 player, but they innovated it by using a hard drive and a much faster connection interface.

First of all, characters like Cinderella are public domain, and have been used in productions such as "Into the Woods" without reprecussions as far as I know.

Yes, you can do stories based off the old fabels, but you can't do stories based off additions to the fabels. For example, you could write your own book or make your own movie on Dorothy Gale and her adventures in OZ, because the copyrights on the books have expired. But if you want to use the Ruby Slippers, which MGM added to the 1939 movie to show off the new technicolor process, you have to walk over to MGM's office to get permission, and you better be carrying a fat checkbook.

Another reason to be concerned about perpetual copyrights is because one already exists: Peter Pan. The profits go to a children's hospital, and there isn't a politician in the world who would go against funding it. It looks like the only thing that's going to stop Disney, a purely commercial interest, from having copyrights as long as the GOSH hospital is a ruling by the Supreme Court. But the current court has already ruled in favor of extentions, and with two business friendly nominees on the way, I wouldn't count on these ludicrous extentions to end for a few decades.

there are quite a few cases where foreign copyrights were not respected across the international border, particularly in the United States up to about 1960

What's funny is that the major "intellectual property" industries were themselves founded on ripping people off. Aside from the nice weather, Hollywood ended up in California to get away from Thomas Edison's patents on cameras. The radio and recording industries used loopholes to avoid paying royalties to musicians and song writers. The real problem with P2P isn't that it fails to pay out royalties, it's that it puts control in the hand of the end user, rather than a giant corporation out to make insane amounts of money.

I once saw a sensible suggestion from a Slashdot poster. Go ahead and have endless copyrights, but start charging the copyright holder fees after a certain period, let's say 50 years for an individual, and 25 for a corporation. The fee would probably have to start off flat to avoid Hollywood accounting, and it would increase by a percentage every year. Say the fee starts at $500, and increases by 5% a year, all the way up to 100%. After 5 years you'd be paying $800, in 20 it would be $80,000 a year, and at 30 years, $80 million. This would give the public something back for having to put up with long copyrights, while the holder could maintain his monopoly, though it would be unfeasible to do it forever.

It's quite common for parasites to change a host's behaviour. There are parasites which change the behaviour of their human hosts.

e.g.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12 977,1048642,00.html

There are others.

Basically, a parasite in cats passes to humans and a research study revealed that...
"...women infected with toxoplasma spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. "We found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked," he said. "However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men." "By contrast, the infected men appeared to suffer from the "alley cat" effect: becoming less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight. They were more likely to be suspicious and jealous. "They tended to dislike following rules," Flegr said."
Here's the first link I could find that refers to the story I first read in the UK Times a while back (the link to the Times in the blog is broken but the best bit of the Times story was some suggestion that this parasite might explain the behaviour of the cat-loving French): http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/06/have-cats-aff ected-your-brain-yet.html
and another to the Guardian (UK) on a similar vein: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12 977,1048642,00.html
CATS MUST BE STOPPED!

You can't really make the argument against ID plainer than this. I highly recommend everyone to read it, whatever you believe:

Guardian article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5 247845,00.html

The people who really need their viewpoint adjusted are the looters, especially the ones shooting at rescue helicopters. If they weren't doing that then it wouldn't be necessary to bother with them at this point.

I give a fuck. Apparently shooting looters is more important than saving people's lives. Someone needs to get their viewpoint adjusted:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5 247845,00.html

Vik :v)

The enhanced strength of Katrina has been attributed to the 90+ temperatures in in the gulf at present which are supposedly up significantly compared to recent times. Do wonder what the temps were way back in 1988 for Gilbert at 175 mph with gusts over 200, and just how strong it might've been today.

Chris Mooney's War on Science might provide some additional perspective.

No

Wal-Mart

From the wikipedia article you linked to:

"Possibly the first use of the term podcasting was as a synonym for audioblogging or weblog-based amateur radio in an article by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian on February 12, 2004." Adam Curry didn't event the word, but he did help popularize it.

What's interesting in light of all the talk these days over the term "podcast" is that many of the people who were doing it back in 2004 resisted people calling it "podcasting"! In fact there was an ongoing bet between the original hosts of the Engadget podcast as to whether or not the word "podcast" would stick or not. Well. The rest is history.

AJAX anyone?

You forget that piracy groups have recently been associated with terrorist groups.

Read these documents.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_displ ay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000528473

http://news.com.com/Terrorist+link+to+copyright+pi racy+alleged/2100-1028_3-5722835.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,126 0047,00.html

The latter even implies piracy gives terrorists more money than drug sales!

Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda will do more than bust your knee caps. They'll fly a plane into your skyscraper.

Also, piracy is or will soon be a big staple in Mafia fundraising. See this:

http://www.grayzone.com/ifpi4899.htm

The danger in this is that Governments will soon be interested in alleging Al Qaeda or Mafia ties every time they bust an organized piracy group of any sort. Thus, they can justify punishing piracy with much harsher methods in the future.

Who'd have thought in the past that a single charge of mp3 piracy could land you in prison for as long as a charge of forcible rape?

The original Guardian story claims it cost 1.5 Trillion British pounds!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv_and_radio/story/0,,15 58354,00.html

What about the storage media itself? I believe that the latest technology used in long-term durable media, in an easy-to-read format (at least for the moment), is quite old.

The Spanish restaurant you are probably thinking of is El Bulli, north of Barcelona. Here's a Guardian article about it from a few years ago: http://travel.guardian.co.uk/activities/food/story /0,7447,819330,00.html

See also this non-invasive heartbeat-analysis test:

BSE breakthrough as heartbeat test reveals first symptoms

"When an animal is infected with prions, its heart rate becomes more variable. All you have to do is take five minutes' worth of electrocardiograms and feed these into a laptop computer fitted with special software. Within seconds, it can tell you if you are dealing with an infected animal or not.'"

"There is not an iota of evidence that reducing carbon emissions would lead to a depression."

See late 1970s stag-flation in the United States.

Wikipedia will help you understand:

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

Oil, like food and land, is a critical component of today's economy.

It's less critical than it was (as measured by carbon intensity), but it's still important.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/trends.html

That's not to say that we can't do more to reduce carbon emissions, but with temperatures falling in some places, there is still some wiggle room vis-a-vis global warming and human causation:

http://michiganimc.org/usermedia/image/2/large/Cli mateGraphAnnArborSourceStateOfFearByMichealChricht on.jpg

But, given that many in the international community want more action from the United States on this issue, and in general there is distaste everywhere for dumping tons of waste into the atmosphere, there is some room for hope, including the North Eastern United States pact on emissions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/nyregion/25air.h tml

As well as a similar plan for the Pacific costal states of California, Oregon, and Washington also in the works.

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=116 &subsecID=900039&contentID=252175

In general, there is a self righteous feeling amongst non-Americans (especially from pro Kyoto treaty Europeans), but keep in mind please that very few European nations are even meeting their Kyoto targets:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,1098635,00.html

Those nations that are meeting the targets are in deep recessions (including Russia):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3702640.stm

Kyoto is a 'first step', but many nations supporting that first step aren't actually taking it, making it "a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." [Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5]

The real key is reducing our economic carbon intensity (generating more money with fewer carbon emissions). We in the United States are already doing that quite well.

Can we move faster? Yes. And we will, if by hook and crook, including regional emissions limitations, higher international oil prices, and a general shift in our economy away from manufacturing and oil consumption.

But arrogant attitudes about 'excuses and misinformation' miss the real point.

if global warming continues to melt major ice sheets, [Britain's] supply of warm air could come to an abrupt end, according to a number of experts.

The Gulf Stream relies on a sensitive "conveyer belt" action, which could be "switched off" - quite suddenly - if it becomes diluted by fresh water from the melting ice-sheets, they claim.

Dr Terry Joyce, an oceanographer from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, US, believes there is a 50% chance of a sudden climate change happening in the next 100 years.

"It will be quick," he says. "Suddenly one decade we're warm, and the next decade we're in the coldest winter we've experienced in the last 100 years, but we're in it for a 100 years."

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

A senior White House official accused of doctoring government reports on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming has taken a job with ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company.

Philip Cooney, who resigned as chief of staff of the White House council on environment quality at the weekend, will begin work at the oil giant in the autumn.

but the fact that you can't change them just plain sucks. To this day, I can't figure out why they did that.

It is interesting to note that many legendary leaders in Ireland were women, and the most popular of modern politicians in Ireland was Mo Mowlam. (For that matter, England is no different - from the legend of Boudicca to the very real history of Margret Thatcher. Hey, I despised Thatcher's politics, but there's no questioning the fact that she was intelligent.)

One of the youngest students ever admitted to Oxford University for a degree program (mathematics) was Sufiah Yusof at the age of 13. Ruth Lawrence had actually achieved a starred First Class honors degree in maths by the time she reached age 13, had a degree in physics a year later and a PhD in mathematics by the time she was 16.

"These are the exceptions", you might say. That might well be the case, but exceptions are falsifications. If you have to add a whole bunch of exceptions to a theory, in order for it to work, then the theory is wrong.

But even the "exceptions" claim is suspicious. Girls generally out-perform boys in maths and science, up to the early teens. After that, western culture often requires them to be stupid. As such, any observations above that age need to be treated with caution. (You notice how the two prodigies I mentioned fit inside the age bracket I outlined.)

Actually, boys are often expected to be more interested in sports and social stuff (such as the Cub Scouts) than education, so it's actually very hard to know if earlier comparisons are any fairer - again because of cultural expectations. You'll notice how boys who are "geeky" are invariably described as "loners" and "anti-social".

My suspicion is that if we stop telling kids what they can't do, they'd start discovering what they CAN do. Actually, it's less of a suspicion and more of an observed fact (although the rock school mentioned in the article didn't seem to have many women). As such, I simply cannot see any merit to the study.

It is interesting to note that many legendary leaders in Ireland were women, and the most popular of modern politicians in Ireland was Mo Mowlam. (For that matter, England is no different - from the legend of Boudicca to the very real history of Margret Thatcher. Hey, I despised Thatcher's politics, but there's no questioning the fact that she was intelligent.)

One of the youngest students ever admitted to Oxford University for a degree program (mathematics) was Sufiah Yusof at the age of 13. Ruth Lawrence had actually achieved a starred First Class honors degree in maths by the time she reached age 13, had a degree in physics a year later and a PhD in mathematics by the time she was 16.

"These are the exceptions", you might say. That might well be the case, but exceptions are falsifications. If you have to add a whole bunch of exceptions to a theory, in order for it to work, then the theory is wrong.

But even the "exceptions" claim is suspicious. Girls generally out-perform boys in maths and science, up to the early teens. After that, western culture often requires them to be stupid. As such, any observations above that age need to be treated with caution. (You notice how the two prodigies I mentioned fit inside the age bracket I outlined.)

Actually, boys are often expected to be more interested in sports and social stuff (such as the Cub Scouts) than education, so it's actually very hard to know if earlier comparisons are any fairer - again because of cultural expectations. You'll notice how boys who are "geeky" are invariably described as "loners" and "anti-social".

My suspicion is that if we stop telling kids what they can't do, they'd start discovering what they CAN do. Actually, it's less of a suspicion and more of an observed fact (although the rock school mentioned in the article didn't seem to have many women). As such, I simply cannot see any merit to the study.

Funny thing is, exactly ten years later, the German conservative leader Angela Merkel picked another Stones song, Angie, to boost her campaign for the upcoming general elections. Just like MS, she apparentely failed to check out the lyrics first, too. "All the dreams we held so close seemed to all go up in smoke, Angie, you're beautiful, but ain't it time we said goodbye"

Why would Google buy Skype when according to this they already use the same codec?

So that he could be identified, since being anonymous doesn't help the cause, or maybe they didn't mean to be suicide bombers but expected to leave the bombs to explode after they had left, but a jewish consipracy decided otherwise. Having ID also makes it less likely for things to go horribly wrong when you get asked for it somewhere (and being asked for it goes hand in hand with random searches and video cameras watching your every move)...

Well, as large as your knowledge of what bombs do to identifications might be, in the case of the London bombings various forms of identification were found at the scenes. Which makes sense to me, bombs aren't going to do much damage to a thin piece of plastic other than move it around. People die because their organs don't cope well with shockwaves and debris - but small pieces of plastic don't have organs. Buses get shreded because their structure tries to resit the shockwave, and fails - but small pieces of plastic don't attempt to contain the blast and hence don't get ripped to shreds. Heat does bad things to small pieces of plastic but unless the explosions results in a fire which isn't extinguished quickly there isn't enough heat for enough time.

But of course my small amount of common sense will have to give in to you unbacked up assertions. You are an export in explosions, right?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2005/08 /23/saturday_night_tv_is_dead_is_this_the_replacem ent.html

The Guardian has a blurbish article including a quote from a Google exec on the new service. The article mentions that Talk isn't just IM; it also includes Internet telephony.