Slashdot Mirror

No no no, they need them to blow up Krokodil labs!

Inform yourself.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-there-should-be-no-immunity-for-julian-assange-from-these-allegations-8053869.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2012/08/legal-myths-about-assange-extradition

It starts with Sweden clearing him for travel. And he does so.

You don't need any clearance to travel and Sweden didn't issue any such thing. Unless an arrest warrant is placed on your head you can leave as you please. And Assange did leave.

After his lawyer was notified that an arrest warrant is coming his way

Then, he is called back.

He is not just 'called back'. An arrest warrant was placed on his head. Because he was abroad a European Arrest Warrant was issued and served. Then Assange used every possibility to fight extradition.

He's a suspicious sort, and offers to come back if he gets a guarantee he won't be extradited to the US. Sweden said no. He offers to meet in person, in the UK. But Sweden said no.

Here's where your story really stops adding up. He didn't offer a thing. He fought the arrest the best he could and when he lost he skipped bail and hid in Ecuadorean embassy. Only after that he and Ecuadorian officials started giving interviews and statements where they demanded he'll be given assurances.

Feel free to correct me and show what official way he used to ask to be interviewed on the English soil.

Sweden has not charged him with any crime.

This is the favorite spiel of Assange's lawyer. Yes, he has not been charged. An arrest warrant was issued and under Swedish law he cannot be charged before he is actually arrested.

Why has Sweden said "no" to ever offer?

What offers did he make to 'Sweden'? Through what channels? And when? Citation needed!

I'm not sure on the timeline, but I didn't think that Julian was a criminal at the time Ecuador initially extended the offer for asylum.

Yes, you are clearly not sure on the timeline. But regardless of timelines, I doubt his bail conditions included stepping on Ecuadorian soil.

I didn't think it that unusual, other than the lengths that Sweden has gone to to get Julian back after they told him they would not charge him and he was released and told he could go.

Sweden issued an arrest warrant. Assange escaped Sweden. Then the Swedish prosecutor issued an European Arrest Warrant, sent it to Interpol and requested extradition.

That's it. That's all the length that the prosecutor has gone through. All the rest is Assange's and his lawyers theatrics

You mean the Cavendish banana, that repeatedly comes under fungal and viral attack, that it can't defend itself from due to its lack of genetic diversity? Or the relentlessly inbred pedigree breeds that have defects in their breathing, walking or vision? Genetic engineering is and will be capable of wonders, but we shouldn't blind ourselves to the dangers.

This is way bigger than you think. Big, like in SPACE. To understand, you should first affiliate yourself with the origins of chess, particularly from the view of former President of the Republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

Well, soon you will begin to see what started this whole affair in the first place. The President of the Republic of Kalmykia has powerful friends, and Putin is not at the top amongst them. These friends have spaceships and don't piddle around, especially with chess. In other words, Gary fucked with the Aliens by criticizing their Kalmykian friend, and Putin, the incredibly patient fellow he is, is finally closing in -- in service of the KGB (King's Gambit Bezopasnosti).

Gentlemen, I assure you, chess is far stranger than Go.

I think the fact that the previous record was set in 1936 pretty much disproves your "fact" that the weather is setting records "year after year". "Year after year" to most people means "every year or two", not "every 7 decades or so".

Back in 2009 they were saying the it had been the warmest decade ever recorded, and the years between then and now haven't been any less exceptional either.

So yeah, "setting records year after year" is a pretty accurate good description.

It was Dr David Viner at CRU;

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

"According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said."

People are using the anonymous cover of Twitter to hide behind and post abusive and hateful, even threatening messages. This was highlighted last week by the arrest of a young man in England who posted about Olympic diver Tom Daley. There are increasingly louder calls for Twitter to censor the messages. Excellent article examining recent problem related to the Olympics; http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/pressure-grows-on-twitter-to-curb-abusive-trolls-8007756.html

As much as I hate NBC's coverage. I'm not sure how much lip I would take from a guy who is upset that NBC: admitted that they "haven't heard" of Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who created the internet. (here); Doesn't he know that the internet already has an inventor: Al Gore.

Those product makers might want to research this guy and re-evaluate their business model.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-tampon-king-who-sparked-a-period-of-change-for-indias-women-7897093.html

Yet Summertime is the most covered song from that era.

Here are some references:

From 2009, Obama has four years to save the world.
From 2009, Global Warming is now irreversible
From 2006, the end of the world as we know it
2005, Past the Point of No Return
2004, Damage becoming irreversible
1989, We Have 10 Years.

Personally I think we've missed a huge opportunity to fund fusion research. It wouldn't actually take that much from a global community perspective. If Copenhagen had focused on funding Fusion instead of trying to make transfer payments to 3rd world countries, they could have gotten support and actually accomplished something. It would have been great. Oh well.

'expose and dismantle global criminal networks, which depend on secrecy and discretion in order to function.'

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1227431--hsbc-laundered-billions-of-dollars-for-mexican-drug-cartels-senate-investigation-finds

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/21434-dea-laundered-money-for-colombian-narco.html

At 300 Billion in annual illegal narcotics business? You can bet the real profiters own banks. And won't be targeted by Google's little step into untrustworthyness.

I think you've got a bit confused - John Lewis operates as a partnership. That is, all members of staff (except the cleaners!) are partners and have a say in how the company is run.

That is quite different from investors/early adopters funding a fledgling business.

And in Europe, also. Because of the Euro crisis some elected governments were replaced by unelected technocrats, among them many former bank executives and advisors. Nothing like an exceptional situation to send democracy down the drain.

The unelected prime-minister in Italy is a former GS advisor. The President of the European Central Bank was a prominent GS executive.

We're all being drowned in austerity to keep the parasitical banks afloat. And it's the very bankers leading the process from their government seats.

Think about an isolated hunter gatherer society. They spend all of their time trying to survive.

Huh? Modern (e.g. 1950s) hunter-gatherers, living in lands unsuitable for agriculture, spent around 20 hours per week gathering food. How else would they have had time to develop art, culture & language while colonizing the globe? Agriculture was a huge step down, requiring ~100 hours a week until very recently. Quality of life suffered dramatically, but farming supports far greater populations, so it became dominate through military might (and drunkenness). Here, and here are some interesting articles on the topic.

I recently read an article in a international-edition newspaper (sorry - can't remember which) by an apologist writer for the Chinese government censorship. He claimed that the Chinese government doesn't have an issue with reporting corruption by local government officials - indeed they see this as a useful public service and a vent for the public - and so won't censor these stories, but he did say they will censor stupid rumours (sham cures for radiation) but primarily anything that might cause a public gathering to take place. (After all, that's how revolutions get started! ;-) This project will find a way to verify this, though what happened with T^2 and the blind dissident GC obviously doesn't fit his model.

But don't pretend for a moment we are any better. The news is heavily censored everywhere, even in liberal western democracies:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/google-getting-more-requests-from-democracies-to-censor/

Libel laws are a very effective way to cause self-censorship by the media:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-censorship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-libel-laws-are-stifling-free-speech-says-un-894519.html
http://overland.org.au/blogs/loudspeaker/2012/03/defamation-laws-the-real-threat/
http://www.law.uts.edu.au/comslaw/factsheets/archivedfactsheets/freespeechanddefamationpre2010.html
http://www.studentatlaw.com/articles/130/1/Defamation-and-Freedom-of-Speech/Page1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/12/opinion/self-censorship-at-cbs.html
http://www.japanlaw.info/law2003/2003_LIBEL_LAW_AND_CORRUPTION.html

There's also soft self-censorship too even in the US: "Sure you can print that... if you are prepared for consequences... Ah wonderful. I knew we could find common ground."
http://rt.com/usa/news/editor-at-top-us-newspaper-resigns-over-censorship/
http://cofcc.org/2011/03/new-york-times-editor-confesses-to-censoring-information-about-black-crime/
http://usmediaandisrael.com/intimidation-at-the-new-york-times/
http://omnologos.com/watch-out-for-self-censorship-at-the-new-york-times/

"Tell the truth and run." - Yugoslav proverb

Of course no one would ever predict greater disasters than is justified by evidence.

Now overturned.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/school-dinner-blogger-martha-payne-photo-ban-overturned-7854487.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18454800

This may be helpful:

The blog: http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/

BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18454800

Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/school-dinner-blogger-martha-payne-photo-ban-overturned-7854487.html

Council rebuttal: http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement-school-meals-argyll-and-bute-council

Or here, even better:
What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

Tobacco smoke is far more dangerous than marijuana smoke (yes, really -- marijuana smoke does contain carcinogens, but even heavy marijuana smokers do not show an increased risk of cancer).

I would rather have a legal, regulated chemical plant producing methamphetamine for people to buy over the counter than the system we have today.

Maybe so, but wait till you legalize marijuana and Philip Morris and friends get their hands on it.

1) Go compare what's in tobacco and what's in cigarettes: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3990-crack-nicotine-in-cigarettes-varies-widely.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16728749
2) Industrially farmed tobacco typically is grown from phosphate fertilizers. That results in higher amounts of polonium in the tobacco. Yes there's plenty of other toxic stuff in cigarette smoke that can increase your odds of getting cancer but polonium certainly doesn't help. Anyone going to bet that industrially farmed marijuana won't concentrate polonium?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-kept-quiet-on--polonium-role-in-cigarettes-907194.html/01proctor.html

Not saying marijuana shouldn't be legalized, but that you shouldn't be too optimistic about the results.

You sir are living in cloud cuckoo land. Hunters care about game, not wildlife.

here are the main tactics used by professional deniers- people paid by the post to show up on board and sprout bullshit to weigh down the conversation or distract the direction of the conversation (for instance, we'll all talking about seal level changes when in the same time frame we'll talking about, we already know the earth will be uninhabitable, making sea level rise and any discussion about it moot.)

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/world-on-course-for-catastrophic-6deg-rise-reveal-scientists-1822396.html

âoeNo proofâ strategy: science is uncertain

Argue over significance of facts (we can adapt)

Argue against credibility of environmentalists Hysterical (Chicken Little)

Communists (âoeWatermelonsâ, George Will: âoeGreen trees with red rootsâ)

Anti-Christian

Argue whether facts are facts

Supply alternative facts

How many of these has the present denier used in this thread?

From The Independent a UK newspaper.

Hardcore, hard-wired: How the prevalence of porn is changing our everyday lives: It's everywhere – from pop videos to fashion magazines to the theatrical stage. But is the creeping ubiquity of pornography in our popular culture changing the way we behave towards each other?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/sex-industry/hardcore-hardwired-how-the-prevalence-of-porn-is-changing-our-everyday-lives-7782421.html

...

"Gallop, who is a 52-year-old former executive at the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, has spent the past decade casually and recreationally dating lots of different men in their twenties. As such, she is particularly well placed to witness first-hand the impact this pornography binge is having on our youth."

"I am, if you like, my own research material," she says. "This is an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I hadn't encountered it very directly through having sex with these men. I realised the ubiquity of online porn and its ease of access is having a huge impact on our sex lives." ...

"And Gallop has seen first-hand what too much porn can do. "When you are watching, say, five or six hours a day or night and you are masturbating ferociously all the way through you can become sensitised to the way you handle yourself," she says. "I've encountered this myself. I dated one guy who had begun watching porn at the age of 12 and had lost his virginity at the age of 18. So for six or so years he'd been watching vast amounts of porn. He's now 23 and there is nothing that any real-life woman can do for him. It's a syndrome called idiosyncratic masturbatory syndrome."

Of course this only works if you trust those who control it.

Yes I meant the British government. CSA springs to mind wasting £539M, along with the Fire Services failure costing another £500M. Apparently the last Labour government managed to waste £26bn in botched projects and 7/10 UK government projects are failures.

The Brits in the private sector are quite excellent. However they are rarely used with government contracts outsourced abroad (usually EDS).

Phillip.

As a scientist, I'm frustrated by the apparent fact that most people don't care about the science.

The best remedy for this situation would be a record of successful predictions made by climate models. So far, there haven't been very many successful, substantial predictions that you can point to when people question the science.

As a result, statements like 50 feet higher is what will happen if we burn all the Canadian oil sands don't really help your cause. They're reminiscent of bullshit like this, which "deniers" will cheerfully throw in your face for the next 100 years. When the battle is fought between breathless hyperbole and proudly-borne ignorance, the truth will suffer all the collateral damage.

So you need to make fewer sweeping pronunciations like that, and more like, In 19xx we predicted that X would happen in 20xx if Y was done (or not done). X was, in fact, the outcome.

This is not an unusual or exceptional burden to place on your shoulders -- it's merely the standard that the rest of us have to meet in our day-to-day work.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/london-olympics-air-traffic-control-chief-outlines-challenges-7668801.html

Simply put, it only takes £250,000 to bribe the prime minister. Somebody start a collection!

They fired a black man for claiming a correlation between race in IQ???

Back in the Kyoto talks, we were TOLD that if no action was taken, then the point of no return was something like 2007. Well? Based on that "science", nothing we do can help anyway.

We get predictions like that all the time. If there's anything we learned from the climategate emails, it's that a lot of the scientists working on this problem are not working in good faith.

The solution, I think, is to work on things that will help us anyway, even if AGW turns out to not be a problem. For example, improving electric car technology will be good for America, whether AGW is a big ball of hype, or whether it's real. Same with fusion electricity. We can work on those things.

Piracy arose as a response by local fishermen from littoral towns such as Eyl, Kismayo and Harardhere to illegal fishing by foreign trawlers.[97][98][99] An upsurge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean has also been attributed to the effects of the December 26, 2004 tsunami that devastated local fishing fleets and washed ashore containers filled with toxic waste that had been dumped by European fishing vessels.[99][100]--Somalia

"What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor."--You are being lied to about pirates

Lol. Bet you think the Falklands belong to Argentina too.

Go back to China Chavez.

And I say that as someone who is probably more liberal than you.

Piracy arose as a response by local fishermen from littoral towns such as Eyl, Kismayo and Harardhere to illegal fishing by foreign trawlers.[97][98][99] An upsurge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean has also been attributed to the effects of the December 26, 2004 tsunami that devastated local fishing fleets and washed ashore containers filled with toxic waste that had been dumped by European fishing vessels.[99][100]--Somalia

"What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor."--You are being lied to about pirates

Occupy Toronto – Foot sniffer arrested

Seriously?

Occupy OKC – Young man with history of drug abuse found dead

Seriously?

Occupy Oakland – Yelling and nonsense at Burger King

As someone said, considering the number of people that gathered, and how long it lasted this list is not surprising or even high crime rate. I am pretty sure most of these things happen at music festivals( example ), or gun shows (search for gun show accidents provides a nice list) or sport events. Parent's post just gives data, which is not same as information. So instead of informative, it should be tagged as data...ful

could it be? piracy drives music sales up?!?!?!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/illegal-downloaders-spend-the-most-on-music-says-poll-1812776.html

let's also ignore increase in concert/merchandise revenue from new fans who didn't pay for the music they tried out. i'm not sure that money even goes to the labels.

These passengers are flying to the US, regardless of their final destination. As such they will likely be in a plane full of US citizens, over US cities. I suspect that in all these cases the plane will land in the US before continuing to their destination.

Direct flights that do not enter US Airspace would not be affected.

Are you sure?; the article

New rules require British Airways and other airlines flying to certain airports outside America to submit passengers' personal data to US authorities. The information is checked against a "No Fly" list containing tens of thousands of names. Even if the flight plan steers well clear of US territory, travellers whom the Americans regard as suspicious will be denied boarding. Planning a trip to Canada or the Caribbean? US Immigration may have other ideas...

doesn't seem to back that up. It's highly possible the a liberal British tabloid might be sensationalize something more reasonable, or at least making one of the TSAs outrageous intrusive hare-brained ideas even more outrageous and intrusive than it is.

By the year 2005, young children won't even know what snow is. (It's funny how all these dire warnings from the UN and other nation-level climate bureaus never seem to come true. - ed.) BTW the rate-of-rise of sealevel on these island nations is only two-thousandths of an inch per year. Hardly a great tragedy.

LINK Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

LINK # 2 http://www.uncommondescent.com/science/no-more-snow-in-england-say-global-warmists/

EU subsidies deny Africa's farmers of their livelihood. This has to stop NOW, Africa has enough potential for food production and doesn't need our junk subsidized by EU taxpayers. If we cared about them, we'd invest that money in African companies so they can get off the ground faster, but what we do is exactly the opposite. The EU agricultural policy is borderline criminal in many aspects.

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity — myself especially — are in a state of shocked disbelief.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/quotes-of-2008-we-are-in-a-state-of-shocked-disbelief-1220057.html

In fairness, there are genuine improvements coming down the line. (Sorry...) These are at least partly driven by a desire not to look like idiots when a few million extra people are around for the Olympics later this year.

New trains with air-conditioning and a walk-through design, as used in underground networks such as those in Paris and Rome, have been rolling out for a year or so. They are replacing one line at a time and due to cover 40% of the network by 2015.

Also, a deal was announced just last week for Virgin Media to provide WiFi access on the London Underground during the 2012 Olympics, though it only covers station areas and not the trains themselves while they are in the tunnels. Its stated goal is to allow travellers to respond more quickly to disruption and avoid the busiest areas (which are almost certainly going to be flooded far beyond capacity at peak times during the Olympics, whatever happens).

The system is still nowhere near the level of, for example, the other European capitals I mentioned, though, and won't get there any time soon.

  Kittinger did several flights of this sort. Manhigh I and Excelsior I, II, III. There may have been others. I'm not that well versed on old USAF projects.

  As I recall from interviews I've read regarding the 1st flight, Kittinger was flying blind for a good bit of the ascent. His visor frosted over, so he couldn't see anything, including his altimeter. On the 3rd flight, his right glove leaked, causing his hand to swell. There was no permanent injury from that though.

    While not mentioned in the summary, it's in the story that Kittinger is consulting on Baumgartner's jumps. He's also been planning it for a while. Here's a 2010 story on it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/faster-than-the-speed-of-sound-the-man-who-falls-to-earth-1877875.html

    As far as I know, there were no failed attempts of this sort. Well, not that resulted in the person not surviving, despite the blurb at the end of the summary. Well, it fails twice in that Kettinger did break the speed of sound.

GE crops have LOWER yields than traditional ones. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html If we switch to GE grains en mass it will lead to food shortages and higher food prices, like we're starting to see now. A second point: raising more foods always ends up with more humans, leading to starvation. The only limit on human population is food, so growing more just delays the trouble.

We haven't been screaming for people to take care of the soil, flora and fauna for nothing. But carry on.

Taking care of the soil isn't going to prevent changes in the the tilt of the earth's axis.

I wouldn't say that Labour kept the ball rolling, I'd say they did everything in their power to go far beyond what Thatcher started:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blairs-frenzied-law-making--a-new-offence-for-every-day-spent-in-office-412072.html

I'm looking forward to Scottish independence, no really I am. I'm Irish, but living in England, if the majority of the country want to be independent, then they should be. The benefit for England will be that they won't have a bunch of MPs voting on things that will never affect their own constituents.

Quote from last link:

ICELAND pursued better policies than Ireland or Latvia when the three countries' economies collapsed in 2007 because the Reykjavik government allowed banks to fail, according to a new report by the influential Bruegel think tank." ... "The experience with the collapse of the gigantic Icelandic banking system suggests that letting banks fail when they had a faulty business model can be the right choice," the report notes.

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

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/yuri-gagarin-the-man-who-fell-to-earth-2257505.html

Best thing that ever happened to American science education.

Yep. Many have been prosecuted, many goods seized. Usually, it's someone like Mubarak, declaring working items "toxic waste". But it just takes a few seizures to put the chill on would be resellers and donors. In the UK, they take nice looking electronics, sabotage them, sell them to the Nigerians as "working", then bust the Nigerians for exporting waste. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/man-held-after-tonnes-of-illegal-ewaste-are-exported-to-africa-1816570.html This week a study showed 85% of the ones imported into Ghana and Nigeria were working, and the material at the dump in Nigeria (described in the Guardian) was generated by Africans after years of use. A lot of innocent people are getting screwed. I realize it's a niche issue for many here. But go ahead and read the Guardian article, then read the /. report on the Basel study last weekend.

How can you be correct when you don't even know how fraccing works? How is the method inherently a scorched earth tactic?

I've linked this article elsewhere, but it does seem to directly answer your second question. Personally I'd call causing earthquakes somewhat of a scorched earth tactic...

Fracking can never be done safe, at least not with today's technology. You are drilling russian roulette mode, sometimes it's safe but mostly it's not.

A case in point. It's nice to know that companies can, literally, sweep the earth from under our feet, and there's nothing we can do about it...