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I thought it was pretty clear they don't consider the registry to be effectively disseminating results: "Data from fewer than one in five research trials are ever published. Findings from the vast majority of human trials become buried for reasons that may never come to light". If blame is to be placed, I agree it's always on the reader -- researchers don't bother publishing failed studies because nobody wants to publish them. They don't sell subscriptions. But that hardly means we can expect doctors to look at everything in the registry, or contact all of the researchers in that field and ask about any pilot studies they've done recently that didn't get published.

A meta-analysis is currently very hard because whoever is doing the meta-analysis has to assign a value for each of those things you mentioned and do it across every single study they examine. If we had a system where we did that as we went, rather than in a giant intimidating chunk (meta-analysis), we would be able to do a sort of meta-analysis on the fly. And maybe the registry in the article is trying to do that (I'm not familiar with it) but I don't think so. If everything that went into the registry was peer reviewed upon entry and values were assigned to those variables, there's no real reason it couldn't work. A strong meta-analysis shouldn't have too many subtle decisions involved. It should start out with clear delineations that multiple raters can agree on. There's no reason we couldn't set guidelines and apply the same logic of crowd wisdom to this that we applied to scanning images for Steve Fossett. There would always be some gray areas in either approach, but the presence of subtle decisions would seem to bolster the case for meta-as-we-go. Difficult yes, impossible no. :)

Have you any idea of the Chinese prison system, and how it operates?

Funny you should use prisons as a point of comparions, since China imprisons far, far fewer people than we do - we have 2.3 million people behind bars, they have 1.6 million. (That doesn't count their "re-education" labor camps, but that doesn't come close to making up the difference - especially when you consider the per capita numbers.)

I wasn't able to turn up stats on whether one is more likely to be raped in an American or in a Chinese prison.

Do they still celebrate Lenin as a hero after the crap they endured because of him and his acolytes?

Yes, yes they (or many of them) do. But the sad part is that now they are trying to pass Stalin as not the monster dictator he was but as a strong ruler who did what had to be done. Check out e.g. this editorial from last year on the Herald: New Russian history.

I'd say Microsoft is in a pretty good position to weather the financial storms:

High-profile exporters dependent on the market logged big losses. Sony plunged 10.7%, to 3,270 yen ($31.28), its lowest point since 2003; rival Nintendo slid by 6.9%, to 43,250 yen Panic Selling Eases By Day's End In Asia [Sept 18]

Microsoft 4th quarter profit soars 42 percent; Office, Windows sales strong [July]

Citation please.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/09/10/us/politics/10fannie.graphic.jpg . That's a graphic showing contributions from the officers of Fannie and Freddie.

And then look at this: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html. Read the comments at the bottom. Several people come up with seemingly plausible and vastly conflicting numbers, using cherry-picked data from the source: http://www.fec.gov/disclosure.shtml.

This from politico is ubiquitous: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11781.html. From July.

International Herald Tribune: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/10/america/lobby.php. Note that several top members of McCain's team were actually real-life lobbyists for Fannie Mae (they've all since found Jesus, of course).

Even after all that, I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

[...] or whatever they are called [...]

Indeed. You should read about them. It sounds like you aren't even sure about what they are.

You probably need to know this, too:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

Your credulity is being cynically taken advantage of. Either that, or you're racking up your McCain points.

Yeah, those bastards in Ohio and Colorado should be more careful.

I'd buy an efficient Diesel in preference to a gas guzzler, and not to do the biodiesel thing, which is a niche since we aren't likely to wolf down enough french fries and fried catfish to make the market for used oil big enough to supply the convertors. And growing food for fuel is still stupid, even if it is diesel. Growing food for fuel is stupid. Eating is non-negotiable. There are plenty of ways to fuel transportation without taking precious farmland and growing stuff to burn.

Diesel is good enough to win at Le Mans. Oughta be a way to make it work on the 101 through Scottsdale, since it works on the Autobahn.

Of course, Mercedes-Benz thinks hybrids should be diesel-electric. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, locomotives. A business sensitive to costs, performance, and reliability.

Until we can go all-electric, we'll need a better battery. Right now, the favorite battery is a gasoline tank. Soon, it might be a diesel tank.

Sad. Maybe instead of trying to make an electric CRX, I oughta make a diesel...?

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange, too.

It uses LSE's trading platform.

http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/09/08/business/OUKBS-UK-LSE.php

This reminded me of a previous slashdot article, which talked about spy satellites with undisclosed orbits. There is an amateur astronomer group that tracks them (and others).

Solar and wind are scams.

I'll let you try to tell it to the Dutch! Or, maybe "scam" is some Russian slang, perhaps for something very advanced, or very successful.

One will not be able to fuel a vehicle with them, or with electricity.

You might be right -- about something else.

A battery is worse to the environment than a fossil engine.

Maybe a battery is worse,but not this type of battery. It will even be made in Russia, and other articles show that the design is very viable.

You do not like Putin because he started to tax and control properly oil companies, and oil costs not 7 USD as it used to be, but times higher, but people in Russia like him exactly for this. Because they build road, schools, etc. on this money. They even started to build autobahn from Pacific ocean to the Baltic sea.

I'm glad your gas prices have dropped, but it looks to me like your petroleum industry is holding you hostage, making clear to Russians without ever saying it directly, that if your petroleum industry is not the wealthiest industry in the world, nobody else will build you roads, schools, etc., you will be poor, maybe even starve. Our oil industry tries to do the same thing. In English, the word "scam" refers to something like taxpayers giving billions of $ to Exxon in years when the oil market is a little bit challenging for it, and not getting that money back from Exxon when it's able to succeed a few years later, in a kinder market. Excuse me, I meant to say, "the kindest market any US company has ever enjoyed."

"AMD would lose every single Govt. and Big American company contract the day they do such deal with Chinese govt. Don't forget "AMD gets support from human rights abusers!" trolls too, millions of them, amateur or professional."

Let's then remember that China significantly floats FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC (or, let's make them Frannie Mae/Feddie Mac or Manny Fae, and Meddie Frack...). Now, it seems the South Korea Government will be buying (or is trying to buy/floating the idea that they will buy) Lehman Brothers:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/02/business/lehman.php

If a European bank were floating this idea, there'd be not much of any uproar. If China were trying to buy Lehman, there'd be an uproar. With Korea, it's something in-between. That, well, is paraphrasing what I heard last night on BBC/NPR/PRI about the situation. So, SK is taking things slowly.

Now, if China bought AMD, would China really HAVE to care/worry that the US government would nix projects? Even if the SEC allowed it (after ordering the purging and dual-use/DOD-related files and dies/machinery from the company's assets/possession) China would STILL have a significant windfall. Actually, they may already have that windfall without having to buy the company...

Anyway, given AMD's financial position (depending on what you read into things), it might make an easier buy for China. Even if AMD ends up in China's sights, India may well step into the fray.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/AboutAMD/0,,51_52_484,00.html

On how many prisoners it "creates". (In the US, six times as many per capita than typical developed countries!)

Yes, I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but I'm not sure most people are even aware of this telling disparity.

Actually they're the locked-up-est - about six times as many prisoners per capita than comparable developed nations (the UK, Canada). TEN times more than some countries. What a sick society: Either you're breeding more criminals, or you're locking up more innocent people.

And what's with the 24/7 obsession with crime and violence in all your media? Is there an American movie ever made that doesn't have a gun, a car chase, a beating in it? This is not civilisation. It's the exact opposite.

Yeah, doesn't Chavez have Byrne Convention grounds to go after them?

Sorry, to further the aims of the Bolivarian revolution, the US government will be nationalizing Chavez's email, comrade!

Copyright is "the imperialist false democracy of elites" and is "an old scheme through which some private sectors seize the nation's wealth without a drop of sweat" :)

Considering the number of scandals in which Siemens has been involved in the last few years, I guess
it would be a good idea to use this to spy on it's own employees
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/75295b46-dcc9-11db-a21d-000b5df10621.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/13/business/siemens.php
http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=97185

It would be so much harder to manipulate elections. Then people would be able to think about actual issues instead of electing the Repub^W guy who promises to magically get rid of all the bad people.

Anyway, Americans only need to turn off the TV, and shun Hollywood: That's where crime and violence 24 hours a day (whether news or fiction) is designed to keep you all in a continuous state of fear. And it's working beautifully. In America (and its satellite states), strangers are terrified of each other. That's not true of many other countries and cultures, and we can blame Rupert Murdoch for the global infantilisation and tabloid-isation of media that could be used for intelligent and progressive purposes.

It would be so much harder to manipulate elections. Then people would be able to think about actual issues instead of electing the Repub^W guy who promises to magically get rid of all the bad people.

Anyway, Americans only need to turn off the TV, and shun Hollywood: That's where crime and violence 24 hours a day (whether news or fiction) is designed to keep you all in a continuous state of fear. And it's working beautifully. In America (and its satellite states), strangers are terrified of each other. That's not true of many other countries and cultures, and we can blame Rupert Murdoch for the global infantilisation and tabloid-isation of media that could be used for intelligent and progressive purposes.

Not true of other countries? Like Mexico? RTFA

It would be so much harder to manipulate elections. Then people would be able to think about actual issues instead of electing the Repub^W guy who promises to magically get rid of all the bad people.

Anyway, Americans only need to turn off the TV, and shun Hollywood: That's where crime and violence 24 hours a day (whether news or fiction) is designed to keep you all in a continuous state of fear. And it's working beautifully. In America (and its satellite states), strangers are terrified of each other. That's not true of many other countries and cultures, and we can blame Rupert Murdoch for the global infantilisation and tabloid-isation of media that could be used for intelligent and progressive purposes.

It would be so much harder to manipulate elections. Then people would be able to think about actual issues instead of electing the Repub^W guy who promises to magically get rid of all the bad people.

Anyway, Americans only need to turn off the TV, and shun Hollywood: That's where crime and violence 24 hours a day (whether news or fiction) is designed to keep you all in a continuous state of fear. And it's working beautifully. In America (and its satellite states), strangers are terrified of each other. That's not true of many other countries and cultures, and we can blame Rupert Murdoch for the global infantilisation and tabloid-isation of media that could be used for intelligent and progressive purposes.

Not true of other countries? Like Mexico? RTFA

It would be so much harder to manipulate elections. Then people would be able to think about actual issues instead of electing the Repub^W guy who promises to magically get rid of all the bad people.

Anyway, Americans only need to turn off the TV, and shun Hollywood: That's where crime and violence 24 hours a day (whether news or fiction) is designed to keep you all in a continuous state of fear. And it's working beautifully. In America (and its satellite states), strangers are terrified of each other. That's not true of many other countries and cultures, and we can blame Rupert Murdoch for the global infantilisation and tabloid-isation of media that could be used for intelligent and progressive purposes.

And one of the fascinating aspects is translating certain rules, laws, customs, etc into space. Presumably Iran, as an Islamic republic, will send devout Muslims into space and will have to answer some interesting questions.

Already considered, with a Malaysian astronaut a few years ago.

I don't think any devout Jews have ever been in space, though rabbis have considered the issues on a theoretical level.

So God only knows what we should do about the USA then.

The US for instance is currently ruled by representatives of Big Oil and private military corporations

If US is truely ruled by the Big Oil Company and Private Military Corporation, Democratic congressional leaders would not be in the Congress and the Senate. Obama will have zero chance getting elected being the next president. Also you would most likely not be alived since the private "big brothers" is praying on you!

Don't believe me? See what the Chinese govt. did to the protestors and those petition to protest in the Olympic. Private corporation would have even less restrain than the Chinese govt. You should be glad that they do not actually rule US, only having significant influences.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/20/asia/protest.php/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7567703.stm/

In all fairness, that $439.3 billion in 2007 went largely to ensure the stability of the entire western world. Lets face it, the European governments, as much as their sheeple love to hate the "evil Americans", rely almost entirely on the United States military to ensure international stability.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/22/europe/defense.php

If your not convinced how heavily the EU relies on the US, take a look at whats happening in Georgia. Europe is waiting for a country nearly 5,000 miles away to do "something" to make the Russians play nice. Lets not forget the whole "cold war" thing where the US placed nearly a "million" men in Europe to deter soviet aggression. Of course thats forgotten.. silly me.

There is ALOT of national interest tied to what the US military does for the US, as opposed to the advantages provided by NASA. One can speculate all day long what NASA "might" achieve with significant advances in funding, but history has shown time and time again what happens when a nation reduces its military capacity ala funding.

Of course, comparing military spending to space spending is an irrational argument anyway. Of course we should increase our funding for space exploration and the advancement of science and technology. However, the question is how to best get our tax dollars worth out of it. Is NASA really the only way to go?

That and he has incredibly large lungs that were acquired from being trained like a thoroughbred. Though I find the most amusing part of this post is that it has switched away from the main topic of Margaret Hoelzer. :)

The US has nothing to offer us that we don't already have.

Hold up a second! You forgot to mention of our special relations:
1. Trade. Canada is the largest trading partner of the US.
2. Food. You don't get all your food from the great plains of your country. Otherwise you would have yearly fall harvests.

a low crime rate
What about the ethnic tensions you country refuses to admit? http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/11/america/montreal.php

I'm hoping you'd reply by saying "that's another part of Canada". That'll make us sound even more similar. =)

Putin is Russia. Putin does not appear to concerned with modernizing his country nearly as much as he is with controlling the media(2004!), or markets, or government, or... oh I give up. In Soviet Russia, the people control Putin.

And as we well know, the terrorists would never think of driving.

Threat averted! It's Miller Time, people!

Chicago is putting in water purifying concrete.

What Would Jesus Think Was Unreasonable?

Purely a guess: getting nailed to a log just for suggesting that people should try to be a little bit nicer to each other.

Oh yeah, and claiming to be the bastard child of a peasant woman and the supreme deity of a large chunk of the population.

Quite possibly -- he never claimed that, as far as we can tell (others did, later). He does seem to have taken a line of playing the government's game but subverting it (rather than directly opposing it). There's a history of subverting such rules, such as the way PGP got around encryption export regulations by giving the option of the US-produced encryption engine or the compatible scandinavian-produced encryption engine, so that one never had to take the technology across the US border. I can easily see an increase in use of encryption as people become more aware of the issue of the possibility of data interception by governments en-route. Or maybe not -- industial espionage is hardly new (http://www.iht.com/articles/1991/09/14/spy_.php) but I suspect many organisations are still lax.

no, [the Vatican] don't have billions in capital at their disposal. Their annual budget is less than that of Harvard University.

I call bullshit. The Vatican gets at least 0.5% of Italy's tax revenue through the Otto per mille, a way to publicly finance religion in Italy. Through that channel alone, the Vatican got one billion euros (not dollars) last year. That's one tax, for each year, in one country, and that's even a legitimate channel; illegal channels include tax breaks on commercial activities operated by the church, which are granted by my country's government, headed by a "legitimate businessman", in spite of European rules, and financing of religious private schools, forbidden as explicitly as possible by the Constitution of Italy, article 33, which however politicians use as toilet paper; In case you did not know how schools work in Italy, private schools are basically diploma mills for stupid or lazy sons of rich people who can't handle public school, where your professor can flunk you without fear of making the school lose its money.

Read on about cardinal Marcinkus and the IOR to know more about the greed of the Vatican.

... and, by the way, Harvard university's budget is in the range of billions of dollars [pdf], 2.6 in 2005 to be precise.

I'm alarmed whenever extremists of any religion or political viewpoint start to flex their political muscle. I'll be watching them closely and advocating for my own political positions but beyond that what else can you do? We have freedom of speech and assembly in this country for a reason.

Not if some groups have their way:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/01/news/UN-GEN-UN-Free-Speech.php

I agree. To be honest, I think this is perfect example of Avon and Somerset Police demonstrating that public sector organisations fail to understand the needs of the people they serve, and then "punish" them if they exhibit the "wrong" behaviour. You couldn't imagine Tesco behaving in this way. It's clear from watching the clips that many of these calls are made simply because people trust the police to solve every problem (who said authority figures were dead in modern society?) and know of only one way to get hold of them: 999. The fixes would work rather better if they focused on ensuring everyone knows that another number besides 999 and knows that it's the best number to call to get stuff sorted -- and then for that number to be staffed by people empowered to connect callers with the services they need (animal health, social services, the health service etc etc).

I think they'd be far better off calling Val Curtis and asking her how she went to consumer goods companies for advice on how to persuade people in developing countries to change their habits. By respecting the undeniable truth about how people behaved in response to the messages they received, she helped craft the right kinds of messages to encourage soap-washing and is on track to save millions of lives.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/13/business/13habit.php

(None of this is to deny that a few callers were idiotic, but others were simply confused or scared. )

Producers are taking steps to hide the imperfections. Some shots are lit differently, while some actors simply are not shot at certain angles, or are getting cosmetic surgery, or seeking expert grooming. "The biggest problem is razor burn," said Stormy Daniels, an actress, writer and director. "I'm not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD."

I could cite my brother, who is studying medicine and genetic engineering, but this being the web, I'll just grab a few headlines from Google, post them, and get back to work.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthetic_genome

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/science/05angi.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/29/news/genome.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6733797.stm

And, like Hollywood, They stole the ending from an earlier work

That's because "non-lethal" is a fallacy. Anything can be used to kill if you use it in a certain way. Why, "water" is just another word for "less-lethal acid".

My favorite is the coral reef some geniuses made out of... used tires.

Its now considered an ecological disaster.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/18/news/tires.php

not to be in the US.

Oh, please. Australia banning Fallout 3, Canadian judge overruling a parent's normal punishment, and Britain is officially insane.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/11/america/hate.php
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=6aaf855a-47e3-4e3f-8709-5b53dcfffff0
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nbaby.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nchild.xml

I'll stick with the imperfect USA.

Canada, being so close to the US, still appears to have a little sense:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080628/steyn_commission_080628/20080628?hub=TopStories

...how will you justify killing more than half a million people (according to the Johns Hopkins university)

That's over a million by now. There have been two Johns Hopkins studies published in The Lancet, of which you seem to be referring to the first. There is also a substantial time lag (years) between events and the publication of such studies. The 2004 study referred to deaths up to 2003, and the 2006 one brought the figures up to 2005. That's three years ago now.

The following links are useful for rapidly getting an overview of the issues. The third link points to a more recent report that brings the total (as of 2007) above 1 million excess deaths - that is, deaths that would not have happened without the invasion.

http://www.counterpunch.com/andrew01092006.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/26/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Iraq-Death-Toll.php
http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=88

Clever use of the "Poisoning the well" logical fallacy. Your Marketing professor would be proud of you.

There are very valid reasons to be suspicious of Gates' new-found generosity. And there are certainly very valid reasons to be wary of the path the Gates Foundation is taking to world health.

Their close financial ties to large pharmaceutical companies is another example.

According to a report published January 7 in the Los Angeles Times, the Gates foundation invests its assets in companies whose operations induce some of the health problems it seeks to combat.

According to this article the North Pole has already been without ice a few years ago:

"In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half of
the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. Moscow sought to bolster
its claim by sending a research ship north to gather geographical
data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an
icebreaker - the first surface ship ever to do so."

Not a comprehensive list, but it does include some of the cities you mentioned.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/15/news/pollute.php

"The dirtiest of the major cities, ranked by micrograms of particles of pollution dust per cubic meter, was Beijing, at 142. By comparison, Paris averages around 22 micrograms, London 24 and New York 27. The WHO guideline is 20."

To reply to myself: I stand corrected.

Well wow, that's just dumb. Didn't they read that smokers and fat people cost the government less thank skinny people?. The study was done by the Dutch, and their healthcare is mandatory private (like people are talking about for the US) supplemented by socialized healthcare for people who are elderly or unable to otherwise function, so I'd think they'd have a pretty good idea of what the costs are.
_
Sure, the smokers and fat people have more health problems, but they have the decency to drop dead and not linger on the government dime, senile and incontinent, for a few extra decades.
_
I try to keep healthy, but when I hit the point where I'm not enjoying life much any more, I'm eating whatever the hell I want, taking up heroin. I'll be mainlining viagra II, and having sex with the kind of scary women that'd have sex with me! You see these articles coming out of Florida about old guys getting arrested for trying to buy drugs, just for the hell of it, and I don't understand what the problem is. This society is so fricking weird; god forbid you threaten your own ability to live to 110.
_
Life is one of those things where it's really about quality, not quantity. //Sorry about the stupid dashes. Goddamn system isn't taking my paragraph breaks.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/22/business/net23.php?page=2

(Tangent: I use Yarssr [for *nix/GNOME] to organize my feeds. Lives in the GNOME panel notification area as a pop-up menu.)

Slashdot
Various Associated Press news wires
BBC News
CNN
Daily Kos
Several local news feeds from my local newspaper
Multiple single-topic feeds from ESPN
The International Herald Tribune
A custom feed from Careerbuilder
The Top Stories and In Depth feeds from Reuters
My regional surf reports from Surfline
Politics coverage from The Hill

This happens when my phone rings with the vibrator turned on. What about yours?

It might be where you are from (UK maybe?) Im in Canada, and it works fine, and I would assume that in the US it does aswell...

You could try...
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/17/healthscience/17mund.php

same article.

A recent psychological study testing the taste of wine based on price has shown that if people are told that they are drinking a more expensive wine, they get more pleasure from the experience, even though it was the same wine.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/15/america/wine.php

I imagine that the reason why people think these cables sound better is for the same reason. So, it is likely that the people who think that the cables are better will derive more pleasure from listening to music using them. The cables may actually work better, just not for any technical reason.

Counter-Counter Example The same story (expanded a bit more than the article you posted) with credit given at the bottom. Interesting example, I had to check several media outlets before I could find a credit. It would appear that outlets getting AP stories aren't required to publish the credit. I guess that's something I've never noticed having usually always seen the story from the source. Very interesting discovery.

Nice claim, seems like I read that before. I will draw on sources that I can find on the internet, rather than what's in my library because my library is harder to share with you, of course you'll just refute these anyway, but it's a good exercise for me:

Here is one that gives the tax rate for the oil industry as of 1998.
Here is one that demonstrates the House wanting to end the tax breaks that you claim don't exist. Of course with the political state of affairs here I wouldn't put it past congress to waste time with useless regulation, but that is another discussion.
Here is one analyzing the oil industries tax breaks as compared to ethanol. Note that I am not a proponent of ethanol and that this information is solely to demonstrate the tax breaks given to oil companies.
Here is a bill from 2005 doing more of the same.
Enjoy.