Slashdot Mirror

But now you can't shop at A&F, go to the hospital, stop at a shelter or vacation in the Hamptons now. Give us some DDT, screw the birds.

I suggest you try being a public skeptic of AGW and see which side really controls the media and squashes dissent. The Independent, a major British newspaper, published a big opinion piece by their columnist Johan Hari, which basically boiled down to "we don't need evidence of AGW because we know it's real and you hate the world and all life upon it if you ask for any". When comments on the story were pointing out flaws in what he said (he's not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination) and politely making intelligent points against AGW, the newspaper deleted everyone's comments. Try being skeptical here on /. about AGW. You'll get a smattering of people that will actually engage what you say and a whole load of downmods, strawmen and personal attacks.

You and others keep saying that proponents of AGW are fighting some battle against media conspiracy and underhand tactics. The reality is that anyone publically skeptical of AGW gets viciously hammered. I might be able to get away with this post because of the irony factor, but the general case is that AGW proponents have an overwhelming influence in the media, in government and in academia. They ain't the underdogs. They're the Establishment.

There were 126 people working on the Deepwater Horizon rig, yet no more than eight of them were BP employees. Some 79 worked for Transocean, the firm that owned and operated the rig. A further 41 worked for contractors such as Anadarko Petroleum Corp, a BP partner on the well. BP had 65 per cent of it, Anadarko 25 per cent and Mitsui Oil Exploration 10 per cent. There was also a firm called M-I Swaco, a contractor providing mud-engineering services on the rig, two of whose workers were among the 11 killed. Halliburton, Dick Cheney's former company, had four staff on the rig, and was responsible for "cementing" on the sea bed. Another firm, ironically called Cameron International, supplied the rig's blowout preventer valves, which, as it happened, prevented no such thing.

Further, the New York Times ran a great story examining the technology at work. It makes for some head-smack-inducing reading. It includes such gems as

blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs had a “failure” rate of 45 percent.

BP and other oil companies helped finance a study early this year arguing that blowout preventer pressure tests conducted every 14 days should be stretched out to every 35 days. The industry estimated the change could save $193 million a year in lost productivity. The study found that blowout preventers almost always passed the required government tests — there were only 62 failures out of nearly 90,000 tests conducted over several years — but it also raised questions about the effectiveness of these tests.

As with BP, the rig’s owner, Transocean, was aware of the vulnerabilities and limitations of blowout preventers. But they were not the only ones. The Minerals Management Service knew the problems, too. In fact, the agency helped pay for many of the studies that warned of their shortcomings, including those in 2002 and 2004 that raised doubts about the ability of blind shear rams to cut pipe under real-world conditions.

approved BP’s permit without requiring proof that its blowout preventer could shear pipe and seal a well 5,000 feet down...Mr. Patton said he had approved hundreds of other well permits in the gulf without requiring this proof, and BP likewise contends that companies have never been asked to furnish this proof on drilling applications.

As part of its assessment of the blowout preventer, Transocean hired West Engineering, which had a checklist of more than 250 components and systems to examine. It did not perform 72 of them, mostly for a simple reason: at the time, the Deepwater Horizon was operating in the Gulf of Mexico, and the blowout preventer was on the seafloor and therefore inaccessible.

According to a West Engineering document, one of those 72 items was verifying that the blowout preventer could shear drill pipe and seal off wells in deepwater. This checkup appears to be the last time an independent expert was asked to perform a comprehensive examination of the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer.

The list goes on and on, a litany of errors from everyone involved.

It's easier to make these things about villians and heros than it is to delve into the sticky and complicated issues as they exist in the real world. Check out this article for some interesting facts about the rig,

There were 126 people working on the Deepwater Horizon rig, yet no more than eight of them were BP employees. Some 79 worked for Transocean, the firm that owned and operated the rig. A further 41 worked for contractors such as Anadarko Petroleum Corp, a BP partner on the well. BP had 65 per cent of it, Anadarko 25 per cent and Mitsui Oil Exploration 10 per cent. There was also a firm called M-I Swaco, a contractor providing mud-engineering services on the rig, two of whose workers were among the 11 killed. Halliburton, Dick Cheney's former company, had four staff on the rig, and was responsible for "cementing" on the sea bed. Another firm, ironically called Cameron International, supplied the rig's blowout preventer valves, which, as it happened, prevented no such thing.

Further, the New York Times ran a great story examining the technology at work. It makes for some head-smack-inducing reading. It includes such gems as
 

blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs had a “failure” rate of 45 percent.

BP and other oil companies helped finance a study early this year arguing that blowout preventer pressure tests conducted every 14 days should be stretched out to every 35 days. The industry estimated the change could save $193 million a year in lost productivity. The study found that blowout preventers almost always passed the required government tests — there were only 62 failures out of nearly 90,000 tests conducted over several years — but it also raised questions about the effectiveness of these tests.

As with BP, the rig’s owner, Transocean, was aware of the vulnerabilities and limitations of blowout preventers.
But they were not the only ones.
The Minerals Management Service knew the problems, too. In fact, the agency helped pay for many of the studies that warned of their shortcomings, including those in 2002 and 2004 that raised doubts about the ability of blind shear rams to cut pipe under real-world conditions.

approved BP’s permit without requiring proof that its blowout preventer could shear pipe and seal a well 5,000 feet down...Mr. Patton said he had approved hundreds of other well permits in the gulf without requiring this proof, and BP likewise contends that companies have never been asked to furnish this proof on drilling applications.

As part of its assessment of the blowout preventer, Transocean hired West Engineering, which had a checklist of more than 250 components and systems to examine. It did not perform 72 of them, mostly for a simple reason: at the time, the Deepwater Horizon was operating in the Gulf of Mexico, and the blowout preventer was on the seafloor and therefore inaccessible.

According to a West Engineering document, one of those 72 items was verifying that the blowout preventer could shear drill pipe and seal off wells in deepwater. This checkup appears to be the last time an independent expert was asked to perform a comprehensive examination of the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer.

The list goes on and on, a litany of errors from everyone involved.

Create a single world bank or supra-national currency, uniform rules and transparent public accounting

Wait, isn't that already in the works? Well, probably not the transparent public accounting, but global currency is definitely on the mind of our global rulers.

Maybe not so new, the old ones will still be in the same place.

There's a UK "fat map" here. The regions are healthcare management areas, some will include cities and countryside, many cities are separate. (full article)

There's a UK "fat map" here. The regions are healthcare management areas, some will include cities and countryside, many cities are separate. (full article)

Very true. Monsanto and friends have bought off the political side [guardian.co.uk] and continue to lobby heavily so that clear labels on GM food are not required [google.com] - preventing consumers from making an informed choice in the free market. Now as part of this broader campaign of voter/consumer deception, they just need to convince all the consumers that are not paying attention that their products are all A-Ok for consumption - so they trot out people like this Jonathan Jones so called "professor" to use his credentials to sway public opinion.

Given this climate, the alternative approach is for companies using non-OGM food sources to label their foods as such.

I did a bit of searching to see what there was in this way and came up with the following links:
  - http://www.non-gmoreport.com/FDA_disallows_GMO-free_label.php
  - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/europe-says-gmfree-food-labels-need-not-tell-truth-737880.html

The only thing I couldn't seem to find is some form of accepted label or logo to indicate GM free food.

That would depend on whether or not I'm telling passers-by that they're schmucks for shopping for food at supermarkets instead of growing their own free food.

Or, better yet, if you were being paid half a million pounds to be the spokesperson for a supermarket but still told passers by that you would never shop there.

Sometimes it's worth paying attention to the people whom you work for, or who work for you.

Just such lovely and caring people

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html

Nothing gets the government scared like a big steam of bad press (which the internet is more than willing to provide).

There was this one hour TV show that I used to watch in the 1970s, it was an era when nobody could get any more than about 12 channels, and only 3 channels had anything anybody seriously wanted to watch, so this show had quite a following. It exposed governments, politicians and corporations that did evil and malicious things. The show was called 60 Minutes, and I figured that with all these big time, bad characters being exposed every week, then in a few years their should be absolutely no corruption whatsoever in government or industry, because these investigative reporters were exposing everything. Now it's a few decades later and this show is STILL exposing corruption in government and industry.

I find it ironic that the article claims the police made "a costly" mistake, because this huge multimillion dollar organization was fined 3,500 pounds. And no police officers were fired, jailed, or otherwise punished. In the mean time a chilling effect has been felt by photographers everywhere because they know they can get harassed by police officers anytime and anywhere; and have to spend time and money and energy filing a complaint and going to court with a good possibility that they will lose the case unless somebody happens to have HIDDEN camera evidence.

officers were advised that Section 44 powers [anti-terror laws] should not be used unnecessarily against photographers.

Ref: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-uturn-on-photographers-and-antiterror-laws-1834626.html The bolding was mine. It's all very pathetic that this case is somehow framed to make it look like a victory for freedom.

TIGA [trade organization] estimated that the tax benefits would have cost the Government £192m over five years, bringing £415m to the Treasury in tax receipts alone.

Perhaps it was simply felt that there was better bang for buck elsewhere?

Anyway the underlying logic in the claim is a little confusing. How would the UK be accused of unfair competition if Canada offers the same kind of deal?

who actually know something about earthquakes as opposed to the fuckwits who want to sue.

This is not suing someone, this is criminal prosecution. They're very different things.

Basically, they're saying that, due to incompetence, the scientists caused the deaths of those people by not giving sufficient warning -- which, as you point out, so far can't be accurately predicted with any reliability.

Criminal charges for this demonstrates that the prosecutor doesn't understand science, and is looking for a scapegoat.

Although, from the linked article on The Independent, this seem to be coming from pressure from citizens. I'm sure if the warning had been raised, and it didn't happen, they'd be looking to sue for that too.

From the UK in 2000:

------

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/were-worth-more-than-2p-a-read-say-authors-710006.html

The writers are asking that the Public Lending Right, which rewards authors when their books are borrowed from public libraries, be increased from £5m to £7m a year. Thefund, which brings authors some two pence per loan, has not been changed greatly for seven years.

------

Nice when everything's so clear cut, isn't it? I don't think you get how big this is: and this is just a UK-centric viewpoint:
http://www.independent.co.uk/money/pensions/bp-share-price-slide-hits-uk-pension-funds-1989503.html

"The steep slide in BP's share price is bad news for UK pension funds - the vast majority of which will hold a stake in the company.
Defined benefit pension schemes are typically thought to have around 1.5% of their assets invested directly in BP, accounting for around 6% of all the money they hold in UK equities
But some funds may hold considerably more, for example a pension scheme that tries to replicate the performance of the FTSE 100 would have around 6% of its total assets invested in the company.

BP's share price has now fallen by around a third since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank on April 20, killing 11 workers.
It is difficult to put a figure on exactly how much this will have wiped off the value of pension schemes, but it is thought to be hundreds of millions of pounds, if not billions of pounds, once the impact on defined contribution schemes and personal pensions is also factored in.

Laith Khalaf, pensions analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "The poor performance of a big stock like BP can have a disproportionate impact on funds.
"There have also been other falls in the stock market as well. If the market had been doing well in recent months, it might not have been such a big issue."
David Paterson, head of corporate governance at the National Association of Pension Funds, said around 1.5% of a typical defined benefit pension scheme's assets would be held in BP shares.
But he said: "The vast majority of pension schemes will have diversified portfolios, so the impact of either good news or bad news is quite diluted when you adjust it for the size of the holding."
Another concern for pension schemes is whether BP's generous dividend will come under threat as a result of the oil spill.
Last year BP paid out £10 billion in dividends, accounting for £1 out of every £7 paid out in dividends by FTSE 100 companies.
The high yield has made the stock particularly popular with pension funds, as it means investors benefit from a strong annual income, as well as any long-term growth in the share price.
The group has not announced any plans to reduce its dividend, but there are fears that the growing cost of the disaster, which had reached 990 million US dollars (£682.3 million) by yesterday, excluding the impact on BP's share price, will force it to cut the pay-out.

Uh, according to food suppliers, the actual population of the UK (3 years ago) was closer to 80 million than the 67 million official figure.

That does rather explain why house prices keep on rising far beyond wages, even in a recession.

'I'd have expected you'd have had to apply, and it would have been posted to you on a stack of DVDs.'

They tried that previously, but ran into some minor difficulties:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lost-in-the-post-the-personal-details-of-25-million-people-758867.html

It is, of course, a complete coincidence that this data, which naturally only covers the expenditure of the previous government, is now being released by the new government just as it starts to slash public spending by several billion pounds. Somehow I suspect the 'cloak of secrecy' hasn't been sent to Oxfam, but is neatly folded in a cupboard at 10 Downing St ready for future use.

Why the cheap shot against the "left"? You could say I'm a "leftie" (especially by US standards), and I'm pissed off by this.

Because there has been an internal division among the left (of which I consider myself a proud member) about the limits of free speech. Some openly deride the value of free speech in favor of hate speech laws, campus/employer speech codes[3][5], laws prohibiting "defaming or insulting religion"[6]. Outside the US, there appears to be no limit to prosecutions for even trivial insults against Christianity[1] or Islam[2]. In a most bizarre ruling from Canada, apparently you can be sued for libel for calling someone an 'enemy of free speech' in response the plaintiff's initiation of various cases before the CHRC that were, in fact, attacks on speech[4].

Slashdot has a particular brand of leftism that is largely against these attacks on free speech but it would be silly to think that this represents a worldwide view. There are significant attacks on free speech from the left (and, as always, from the right as well on different issues) and it would behoove us to pay attention and confront our fellow lefties that are clamoring for European-style (or even Canadian-style) regulations of 'hate speech' and the like.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/atheist-given-asbo-for-leaflets-mocking-jesus-1952985.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Geert_Wilders
[3] http://volokh.com/tag/rodriguez-v-maricopa/
[4] http://www.nelligan.ca/e/PDF/Warman_Court_Decision.pdf
[5] http://www.tuftsdaily.com/2.5511/csl-hearing-turns-spotlight-on-controversial-source-pieces-1.590986
[6] http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/combating_defamation_of_religions/

What made me laugh was the report that David Blunkett (the Labour Home Secretary that gave birth to the scheme) wants to sue the Government for the thirty quid that the card cost him: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/i-might-sue-over-scrapped-id-card-says-blunkett-1985447.html Oh, and it's worth remembering that the Tories wanted to introduce an ID card system (sans database) back in the 90's.

You mean he didn't claim it on expenses! Well I am surprised.

What made me laugh was the report that David Blunkett (the Labour Home Secretary that gave birth to the scheme) wants to sue the Government for the thirty quid that the card cost him: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/i-might-sue-over-scrapped-id-card-says-blunkett-1985447.html Oh, and it's worth remembering that the Tories wanted to introduce an ID card system (sans database) back in the 90's.

UK Newspaper Web Sites To Become Nearly Invisible

Given that we are talking about one Rupert Murdoch web site, this title is bad even for slashdot. The Times of London used to be an important paper, comparable to the New York Times. Then Rupert Murdoch bought it, and it rapidly ceased to be significant. (As far as I can tell, any news organization taken over by Murdoch rapidly ceases to become a significant news organization.) To say that this is all of the British press going silent is simply ridiculous. Try reading the Independent or the Guardian if you want a taste of the British news that is not going silent.

And I hope there are many interesting results, other than buncha nerdy half-assed bullshit software projects. There are a lot more out there in life in need and want. Build a better water pump. Build a better wiring harness. Things people in need can use.

Like this pump?

Here's an excerpt:

For 15 years, Kevin Costner has been overseeing the construction of oil separation machines to prepare for the possibility of another disaster of the magnitude of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

Disturbed by the effects of the Valdez spill in Alaska, Mr. Costner bought the nascent technology from the government in 1995 and put $24 million of his own money into developing it for the private sector.

Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn't have separation technology, said John Houghtaling, Mr. Costner's lawyer and business partner as chief executive with Ocean Therapy Solutions, which developed the technology.

On Wednesday, BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said that the company had approved six of Ocean Therapy's 32 machines for testing. All boast centrifuge processing technology giant vacuum-like machines that suck oil from water, separate the oil, store it in a tanker and send the water, 99.9 percent purified, back into the gulf.

The technology was available for use 10 years ago, Mr. Houghtaling said. "These machines have been very robust, but nobody's been interested in them until now," he added.

He said that the largest four machines have the capability of separating 210,000 gallons of oil from water a day, 200 gallons a minute.

Sounds like the quintessential hacker.

And for god's sake, stop wasting your good brains cooking up another social network bullshit. You young people can do way way better than that.

Kostner's efforts are the product of fifteen years work and $24 spare cash. And on a somewhat related note, the special submarines that James Cameron wants to contribute, those were financed courtesy of the movie studios. The point here is that it's hard to avoid the fact that the alternative (working on some possibly useless social networking thing) looks a lot more attractive. And do-able.

ISPAK announced they noticed a decrease in internet traffic by approximately 20-25% after the ban

Perhaps the most mouthy is Daniel Hannan, other prominent examples being the likes of Philip Hollobone and Douglas Carswell, but certainly even people in the cabinet like William Hague, and Liam Fox have some quite xenophobic, and overly patriotic views, although both have been toned down under Cameron's leadership.

Oh, and 30 years? I assume you slept through the 90s, where the Tories managed to rip their entire party apart because of the division amonst the party between those who were a little more forward thinking, and those who were still living in the past with dreams of Britain not needing to be anything to do with Europe and fantasies of it being a superpower still.

It's also no coincidence that quite a few MPs in UKIP are ex-Tory.

There's certainly a movement in the Conservatives nowadays to move away from this viewpoint for sure, but to pretend there aren't still quite a lot of Tory MPs who still maintain that old fashioned viewpoint and who still wield a fair amount of influence? That takes an impressive amount of either political ignorance, or political bias coupled with perhaps a hint of xenophobia in ones self to not even be able to notice it.

But if you care to try and find a bit more about it, a good place to look nowadays tends to be in the Tory euro-sceptic circles, that's mostly where they are focussing their attention currently. If you really paid attention to British politics and really knew what you were on about, you might have encountered in the news the kind of not so pretty events that occur every now and again when the old school mindset clashes with the more progressive folk in the Conservative party:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/tory-mep-defiant-after-losing-expulsion-appeal-1868230.html

If you only consider Labour and the Conservatives to be major parties then it is a fact, they might consider cooperating on individual pieces of legislation, but they won't consider working as a coalition government.

Although I'm not sure being at a stage where no legislation is being passed is a bad thing, referencing this article from 2006 Labour then, had created 3000 new criminal offences. That's far too many. If this means we get less stupid new laws passed, helping turn everybody into criminals, then I don't think it is a bad thing.

The Greek economy has been a minor player in the EU, but a reasonably good one, up until recent years

Bullshit. They were admitted based on lies, reneged on a previous austerity agreement once they had their hands on the cash and there's zero reason to believe they've mended their ways.

Yes, it is. "PR" refers to many systems of voting, including the one the OP was discussing. And, since the issue if the Lib Dems, let's see what they're proposing:

"In Parliament, introducing a "single transferable vote" system of proportional representation, where candidates are ranked in order of preference."

Would you like to try again?

Everyone else covered up sexual abuse as well: governments, families schools. Here is one example I happen to have read about before

The main difference between the church and other organisations that have done the same seem to be:

1) The press are more interested in covering church scandals.
2) The people responsible for the cover-ups by the church are made to resign when caught, those in government get away with it.

If it's done properly, it's not a threat to liberty - require a warrant, etc. It's well-established, whether we like it or not, that our use of the roads by default gives up a bunch of rights - so it's not like this is anything new.

The issue here is that it's not going to be done properly. The British government is *very* willing to give police powers without warrants. For instance, their police can already get CCTV footage or hack into personal computers without a warrant.

Frankly, if they're already allowing that, it would be downright bizarre to deny police warantless access to licence plate tracking information. This is only, relatively speaking, a small incursion into citizen's liberties, but the British government seems to be engaged in a systematic plan of small incursions into the people's liberties, and it makes me glad I don't live there.

Yeah, like you never get extremism with Christianity, do you? If you want to be a bigot, fine, knock yourself out, but don't try to dress it up as anything other than bigotry.

Christian anti-abortionist sets off nail bomb

Repent Amarillo - fundamentalist intimidation

Wikipedia: Northern Ireland conflict

Not usefully. This research, on the other hand...

this -> "The European Union has a population larger than the United States and yet it manages just fine."..past history man, I'm talking about going forward. I really suggest you take the blinders off and LOOK at some in depth economic analysis, get beyond the headlines and read some contrarian economists. Oh heck, here's one, the darlingest of your ultra far left rich dudes, soros, argue with him why doncha about the future status of your dream welfare union.. the EU is right behind the US with the debt bomb realities. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-09/soros-says-greece-needs-cheaper-loans-to-avoid-death-circle-.html

More recent events and analysis

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/markets-rally-as-greek-debt-crisis-eases-1943155.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7583304/Euphoria-over-Greek-rescue-fades-as-first-cracks-appear.html

Here is a short overview of the US debt situation as it is today

Let this one sink in a bit...

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article18393.html

These are the outright thieves "in charge" of our economic situation

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32906678/looting_main_street/print

really, ^^^^ those dudes right there run things. In and out of government, the musical chairs with thieves and liars in government, in the Fed, back to their Wall Street gangster lairs, lather rinse repeat, and it hasn't mattered a whit which imperial leader or group of goofballs in our congress we have had, D or R next to their name, it's those same dudes always *really* in charge behind the scenes....

Now see why we aren't going to be having any welfare state here, or even a credible economy soon? The system is already broken, we've been "corporate raided" on a huge scale, and even the "change" government is just more of the same tired old BS.

Your central banker pigs are just as much thieves as ours have been, you'll see... just wait. Your welfare states are going to be crumbling because you don't understand simple basic math, plus time travel, you can't live in the past and expect that to be the future or..along those lines, ain't happening. What was then, was then, in the future.....? I am old enough to remember when the US had a very decent real economy, we were the largest creditor nation, not the biggest borrower, and healthcare was cheap, affordable for most people. Even the crappiest jobs had free or cheap coverage, or you could buy it on the side for cheap. But then the corporate looting really began, along with the ludicrous expansion of government based on lying promises of something for nothing...now 35 years later, poofed, gone, we are sunk without borrowing money all the time, and we have no credible plans to pay back what we have already borrowed.

You have to make money to spend it, FIRST, on welfare or whatever, and no, running printing presses is not making money. You can't keep pouring six gallons of stuff from a five gallon bucket, and accounting and bookkeeping tricks only work so long. You don't make money by exporting jobs, them other fellas make the money then. And you certainly don't make money by letting your central casino bankers run rampant and steal everything that ain't nailed down, and especially when you run those thieves in and out of official government positions where they get to *set policy*.

Now some of the nations there in the EU just might squeak by over the

Violent crime, and murders are on a long term decline in the UK.

Are you sure about that?

The handgun ban is irrelevance, as before the ban hardly anyone had a handgun other than enthusiasts. It's not like the entire population was walking around like John Wayne.

But the whole point of the ban was to reduce the availability of handguns to criminals... If the ban was irrelevant and ineffective, then why limit the freedom of the law-abiding enthusiast?

You'll find that socio-economic factors have more to do with crime than anything else, and they can't be solved by yet more expensive technology.

On that we certainly agree. It's the motivation to do violence that's the primary issue, not the availability of tools with which to do it (especially since there's no eliminating them), nor the means used to identify, apprehend and punish the doers.

the games in question must promote Britishness

So ...

• Most characters must have bad teeth
• Must like warm beer and bad cooking
• Must have characters who can't understand each other because they all speak different dialects of "The Queen's English"
• You're automatically a "terr'rist"
• "Hot Coffee" features Welshmen and sheep

Yeah, it's ridiculous isn't it. Whilst I think raising the age for actual child porn to 18 was stupid, one can still make some kind of argument about protecting the participants, but obviously any law on fictional characters can't be about that. The usual argument for fictional images is "But these images will make people want to do it in real life". Even if we agreed with this dubious claim, I'm struggling to see why making people want to have sex with 16-17 year olds is a bad thing. Indeed, surely we should be glad if actual pedophiles were looking at these images, and should perhaps even be flooding the Internet with them, so that - if their claims about images affecting people were really true - they would instead end having sex with adults, not children.

The law is part of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, btw. It's sad that there's hardly been any coverage or debate, apart from a brief amount of coverage last year. But then the Government already got away with criminalising (even fictional) adult images, despite attempts to opposte it, so I guess laws on images of so-called "children" have no chance being stopped.

Welcome to the 21st century. *cough*

Or perhaps the BBC's right-wing bias?

The BBC is everyone's scape goat; they're left wing, they're right wing, they're a government mouthpiece, they're too critical of the government, they spend too much on "high-brow elitist" programming, they're dumbing down too much, they waste too much money on sports rights, they don't have enough decent sports coverage. You name it, someone will be accusing the BBC of it.

After Somalia's former government collapsed, it didn't take long for warlords to consolidate power

sigh. You do realize that the worlds biggest warlord was behind the Somali gov "collapse" and for several years now has been illegally invading the country on the sly.

At first glance you may think that the US invasion will be a good thing for Somalia... but then the horrific details of the methods used might give pause to that romanticized "It'll be good for 'em" notion of war and invasion.

. Of course, It's all about oil, again. Won't someone invent a replacement already.

if you invest in solar panels that generate 10 kWh of electricity on a bright shiny day when they are installed, they will probably only generate 8 kWh after 20 years.

New Jersey Offers Fastest Payback for Solar Systems. "In New Jersey, that wait time is 1.5 years for residential systems. New York and Delaware are next in line with payback in 3-6 years, and California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Wisconsin all tied for fourth at seven years."

Using 7 years, you can almost buy 3 new panel arrays in 20 years. Or using 13 years you'll be on your second set of panels in 20 years.

Falcon

So let me get this straight, you're saying I know nothing about Italy, and the way things work there and yet you're completely ignoring the fact that Italy is perhaps the most corrupt nation in the Western world?

You're correct that many members of the judiciary have been out for Berlusconi, but not all judges follow that agenda.

If Berlusconi wanted to influence judges with the amount of money he has, and with the amount of corruption in Italy, then that would be an extremely trivial task for him.

Are you even aware that a particularly significant portion of the hatred by some judges against Berlusconi is actually down to bribing judges in the first place?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5720385/Silvio-Berlusconi-dines-with-judge-who-is-to-rule-on-immunity-law.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/berlusconi-censured-by-un-over-bribes-case-597998.html

The rest just get harassed instead:

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/54904,people,news,anger-as-berlusconis-tv-channel-canale-5-films-judge-raimondo-mesiano-who-fined-him

If you're going to so arrogantly infer that someone is wrong, it might be a good idea to at least check your facts to ensure you're correct first, because clearly, in this case, you are not.

A POW status would state how you may and may not treat them.

as does the protected civilian status, there are rules, and human rights

I agree that we (USA) should not treat non-POWs without basic human rights and without dignity.

Good, and those things are meant to be ensured by the fourth geneva convention, which the US blindly ignores by claiming to invent their own new status.

But what really pisses me off is how our new administration wishes to grant these terrorists with the same constitutional protections they (Al-Qaeda) wish we never had.

But if you were to not treat them fairly according to your laws, would that not speak volumes about the US as a country, violating your own principles is a lot worse than anything al-qaeda could do to you, you become the monster.

In my opinion the terrorists succeeded, but only because of the US government terrifying it's own people for it's own ends.

Hell they could have had osama back in 2001 if they had just stopped bombing the crap out of afghanistan.

"I ask America not to kill us," pleaded Hussain Khan, who said he had lost four children in the raid.

To which bush simply said, no negotiations, we're doing it anyway. If you can actually support that kind of crap, you are more callous than I.

The number of innocent civilians killed by bush's wars is insane, makes 911 look like a drop in the bucket. But nobody cares, because it isn't them.

For those against the war in Afghanistan I always love to hear what other options we had or have.

A few options spring to mind.
A bunch of Saudi Arabians attacked so perhaps Saudi Arabia should of been attacked? This has the advantage of bringing regime change to a very repressive government.
Also perhaps all the Saudi Arabians shouldn't of been allowed to fly home so quick (first planes to fly after 9/11 were all Saudi bound).
Of course the obvious one was to accept the Taliban's offer to turn over Osama Bin Laden to a neutral third party/government for trial. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bush-rejects-taliban-offer-to-surrender-bin-laden-631436.html .

Neither does Al Gore.

Neither, apparently, does the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction.

Whoops! Another CRU member...

I think it reasonable to expect taxpayers to get something back from it

You mean like the computer you wrote your post on? The medicine that has roughly doubled life expectancy in the developed world in the past few hundred years or so? What you seem to be advocating is akin to the recent UK government plans to assess potential economic benefits of research before granting funding which has met with considerable opposition. Private enterprise is certainly well-equipped enough to make a profit for the economy by applying the findings of fundamental research. Take the iPod for example. This needed research into materials, solid state physics, batteries etc, much of which would have been done at a government subsidised university/insitution. Private enterprise stands on the shoulders of giants and provides the economic benefit that easily justifies subsidising pure research.

"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."

-George Washington (address to Congress, 8 January, 1790)

Actually, scientists are not yet sure that leukemia clusters are caused by radiation exposure:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/raw-sewage-may-be-to-blame-for-sellafield-leukaemia-cases-1344410.html And we can build safer reprocessing plants now.

And frankly, a slight increase in leukemia cases near some reprocessing plants is a smaller price to pay than leukemia increases from coal ash. We don't have 'perfect' technologies which can solve energy problems.

Good. Raising children is the job of parents, not the Government, and it should be perfectly ok for parents to opt out of the school system if it doesn't suit them for any reason. Fascistic governments hate the idea that parents have the freedom to teach their children whatever they want. In Britain we have seen the Government attempting to smear home educators by getting their mouthpieces to spread fear about unchecked child abuse. The pieces are being put into place for an outright ban, and the sad thing is that so-called "liberals" will probably support it on the grounds that it will stop "the children" being "brainwashed" about Jesus, not realising that they are undermining their own freedom to oppose the Government.

Absorbing all of that is what killed your economy.

The German economy is far from dead. Germany is the world's second largest exporter (or possibly third) and was one of the first nations to exit the global recession way back in q2 2009. Germany has 7.7% unemployment. United states has 10% unemployment.

When did real terrorist ever issue a bomb threat (and had a real bomb)? They simply blow things up. They don't want people to be able to react. "Dear unbelievers, we spent months planning a dangerous and tricky plot to smuggle a bomb on an airplane. Now that we've succeeded, here's how you can find and disarm it before anything happens: [...]"?

Link Link Link Link

Given that there's at least some chance that a bomb threat involves an actual bomb, does this affect your opinion at all?

I have no problem with bomb threats being illegal. There's a lot of time and expense involved in evacuating people, tracking down if there is a bomb, time lost (for business/school/whatever), etc. My problem comes when the "bomb threat" is a single tweet that a person makes undirected at anyone.

Of course, they needed to investigate it, but all they needed to have done was read the rest of his tweets to see whether or not there was any pattern. Checking his Twitter page ( http://twitter.com/pauljchambers ), I see it is protected. He likely did this after the arrest, but if it was this was before the arrest, they could have come in and had him show them his Twitter page.

Unfortunately, they didn't seem to know anything about Twitter. From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html:

"I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they'd never heard of it," he said.

Now, I know some here don't have a high opinion of Twitter, but I think most folks have heard of it and have a general inkling of what it is. If the police department doesn't have anyone that knows what Twitter is, perhaps they need to hire some more Internet-savvy officers to help them in cases like this one. This should have been looked into, quickly determined to have been a joke, and then dropped (with a warning if it'd make the police feel better) for more important cases.