Slashdot Mirror

No one has any problem with the police investigating it.

The problem is when the "investigation" results in totally messing over his life, even when it's now clear it was just a joke, and that he may still be charged for the privilege of it all.

RTFA - unfortunately the Slashdot link contains few details, you have to read The Independent story that it was taken from, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html .

This guy was simply arrested, questioned, and released.

From the original article http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html :

* He's on bail.
* He may be charged with "conspiring to create a bomb hoax".
* He's been suspended from work - apparently we're guilty until proven innocent now.
* They've confiscated "his iPhone, laptop and home computer".

Yep, you left a few things out of your "simply".

Not to mention that these days in the UK, an arrest means your DNA and fingerprints are kept on file, even if you're found innocent or never charged.

I don't see the humor in saying [snip] That's the equivalent of saying [snip]

I didn't quite catch that, could you repeat it please? Something about you making a threat?

The IRA gave coded telephone warnings a few minutes in advance.
This was NOT to allow civilians time to escape, or reduce the number of civilian casualties.

No, since the IRA did bomb and kill civilians and were pretty unrepentant about it. Coded warnings can amplify the effect of an attack - or even make an actual attack unnecessary. Why bother with a real bomb when a simple telephone message can shut down 40 train stations and cause an estimated £34 million damage? For every real bomb you can call in many times that number of coded threats, causing huge economic losses.

They quickly saw there was nothing to it.

Y'all a professional retard, or just a gifted amateur?

He has been bailed until 11 February, when he will be told whether or not he will be charged with conspiring to create a bomb hoax. In the interim, detectives have confiscated his iPhone, laptop and home computer.

Umm, actually, that's not what happened (at least, that's not what was reported). As this news article makes clear, 'On 13 January, after apparently receiving a tip-off from a member of the public, police arrived at Mr Chambers' office.' Although, that doesn't make it any better to know that people have now been so conditioned in the UK that they've become snoops.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/twitter-joke-led-to-terror-act-arrest-and-airport-life-ban-1870913.html

Property searches used to only include checking title, open planning applications and mining. Only last month did the land registry link up with the Environment Agency to provide flood risk information. It is still quite basic, apparently doing no more than linking a postcode to a situation on this map. Few people read (or are even given) the results of searches, they just rely on their lawyer pointing things out.

Many of the major floods seen in the news here in recent years have been extraordinary stuff, which would be classed as low risk category anyway. There's an article on the BBC talks about that in relation to Cockermouth (yes we do have very silly names for places in Britain), while the #1 comment there has a very important point: land use is extremely significant and isn't factored into the flood risk maps. The flooding a couple of years ago in Hull was actually blamed in large part on people paving their driveways, resulting in massive run-off with minimal water soaking away. This is a massive contributor to flooding, to such an extent that "we have identified areas at tops of hills that are at risk of surface water flooding".

For what it's worth you will have increased premiums if you live in a flood plain. That is, if you thought to ask for flooding cover. Usually if there is extensive damage to a flooded property the insurance company won't pay out if it happens a second time, or only above a massive excess. This doesn't seem to cause a problem when it comes to sell property - unlike cars where you are obliged to state if an insurance company has written off the car (though nobody does, which is why you should always get your own insurer to check for you, though no, nobody does that either).

Thames Barrier? Pah. It's already too low. See this article in The Independent

Don't try to play that game. Absence of evidence is not evidence. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary - every single indicted terrorist plotter in the US has been a total incompetent. The JFK bombers, the Sears Tower Plot, etc, etc. If they are so willing to trot out these incompetents and actually take them to trial, you can be pretty sure they would at least charge ONE competent terrorist. But so far, nada.

Those were setups of essentially homeless people by the FBI/CIA. Read about it. Nothing like trumping up some false flag 'attacks' to keep the population thinking something is being done and instilling more fear.

Like what happened during 9/11? Or the underpants bomber? Or the shoe bomber? Perhaps the bali bombers? Only the 9/11 hijackers fit the mold of the experienced terrorists. The others are fairly low grade terrorists with nearly no experience, just given a bomb and told to set it off.

You are proving my point. 9/11 was it. Underpants and shoes didn't work - they weren't good enough. Bali bombers were in their home court they had experience with local society.

I didnt realise you work for the CIA or the DHS to know about every foiled attack or plot to say that attacks have been near-zero. Just because you dont see the attacks being foiled, doesnt mean they arent happening.

Don't try to play that game. Absence of evidence is not evidence. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary - every single indicted terrorist plotter in the US has been a total incompetent. The JFK bombers, the Sears Tower Plot, etc, etc. If they are so willing to trot out these incompetents and actually take them to trial, you can be pretty sure they would at least charge ONE competent terrorist. But so far, nada.

Israel succeeds more often, as they are attacked far, far more often than the US.

TADA! Glad you see my point. Now I just don't understand why you thought you had to argue with me in the first place.

I've looked up his paper. Whatever mr "Global warming" states it does indeed say that global warming may be stopped for anywhere from a few years to a few decades by the ocean's heat transfer.

He does say that the models have the ocean heat transfer wrong for the 21st century. The ocean is not currently eating up heat like the models predict, it is adding heat to the athmosphere, and he warns that this effect is about to reverse and might turn out to be quite a big effect. That was in 2008.

And about the accuracy of the IPCC 2000-2010 predictions one can be short - and funny !

Do tell, btw, if a scientific theory or model makes a totally wrong prediction, what, exactly, should be done to said theory ?

Jewelry industry veterans in China say cadmium has been used in domestic products there for years.

And we know the Chinese don't give a damn about poisoning their backyard or themselves.

We'll all pay for this unforgivable, mindless destruction eventually.

Jewelry industry veterans in China say cadmium has been used in domestic products there for years.

And we know the Chinese don't give a damn about poisoning their backyard or themselves.

We'll all pay for this unforgivable, mindless destruction eventually.

Jewelry industry veterans in China say cadmium has been used in domestic products there for years.

And we know the Chinese don't give a damn about poisoning their backyard or themselves.

We'll all pay for this unforgivable, mindless destruction eventually.

Sorry, this is commonly said, but in my humble opinion it is BS. I certainly expect privacy when I am out and about. I expect, for example, that TeraHz waves will not be used to look through my clothing, and that microphones will not be synced together to capture my every word. If, say, Walmart, does these things, and I will find out about it, I will sue.

This is from discussion about a letter sent from a lawyer of the Queen of England (Elizebeth II) to the press :

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-queen-writes-to-editors-over-paparazzi-1835247.html

"Members of the royal family feel they have a right to privacy when they are going about everyday, private activities," said Paddy Harverson, spokesman for the queen's son Prince Charles.”

Note that the Queen is referring to activities that are visible in public, by the public. I am an American. If it is a right for the Queen of England, it is a right for me.

Too bad it was built with slavery...

Well THAT was a rather intense over-reaction. Deep breath and count to ten? Do you see what the other poster did? He asked a question in order to find clarification. That's a noble quality.

You do realize how crazy you sound, right? You sound like you're supposing that the Dollhouse sends out incompetent terrorists to scare the public into supporting restrictive government policies and persecuting "geeks", "misfits" and engineers. Note that this requires presupposing the existence of a Dollhouse or similar organization.

So you've basically never done an inch of research on this subject, have you?

People are constantly functioning under conditions of mind-control. Everybody from the housewife who feels dirty when she doesn't shave her armpits, all the way to cult victims. Heck, when I was a kid I learned that I could convince people to do stupid things just with words. (Luckily for the world, I quickly realized that manipulation is a violation of Free Will, and therefore Evil and felt due shame. I'll debate with people on any number of subjects, but I won't try to abridge their Free Will.)

In any case, when you apply drugs and abuse and forced confinement to the equation, you can very easily produce assembly-line agents. If you don't realize this, then it simply means you've never bothered to study the whole (very) ugly subject. --But it is necessary to know this stuff if you want to protect yourself against manipulators and propaganda. Very simply, if you force a person to dissociate, (it works best at a young age when it happens naturally as a defense mechanism to trauma), then you can deliberately split the personality and program people like computers. But even if you don't know what you are doing, you can convince a person to do something stupid if you hammer at them long enough and restrict contact with rational people.

Every now and again on those occasions when suicide bombers or whoever are caught when their explosive device failed and they didn't terminate, you'll see it reported that they are taken away with what is described as a confused, glazed or drugged look in their faces. In fact, this burning pants guy from a few days ago is just such an example. . . The guy who tackled him had this to say. . .

"He was shaking. He didn't resist anything. It's just hard to believe that he was trying to blow up this plane. He was in a trance. He was very afraid."

Joss Whedon's Doll House is a giant, over-the-top metaphor, but it's a good one. It talks about things nobody wants to hear.

Do you have any idea how many engineers, scientists, and other "geeks" are just normal people with some more intelligence and curiosity added on?

I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make with this. Sure, geeks are people too. They just happen to be the people who become engineers and scientists, who are responsible for all the countless systems which keep you and me and our entire society alive and functioning.

If your bizzaro worldview was correct, I'd have to ask why the bloody hell geeks aren't systematic killers. In your world we've certainly got the right to liberation and retribution for the "Pavlovian programming" and "mind-control patsies".

This is what I've been saying for years. Minus the violence. Violence is bad for the Karma. There are other ways of resisting. Like everybody deciding all at the same time to not pay taxes. The French do massive, country-wide strikes which seem to be quite effective.

Except that we're not dealing with a fascist system. It was in danger of going fascist for a while, but now society has managed to get itself back onto track: a technologically-advanced material-rich capitalist society collapsing into corporate feudalism.

Ha ha. You're as optimistic as

No, your statistics are measuring web traffic to certain mobile websites, including those that provide J2ME apps - which would be significantly biased towards J2ME-only phones and biased towards phones with J2ME capability.

Nokia is actually losing market share, both overall and in the smartphone market. RIM and Apple's sales are growing in the smartphone market, but Apple is really close to RIM (see the third link). Nokia is losing low-end market share to Korean manufacturers in particular (Samsung and LG).

As far as I recall, that law was the reason the Ploughshares Four were acquitted.

The BBC has had 845 people jailed last year alone. In Ireland, 220 were jailed over the last 5 years.

Phillip

Don't be too sure about that! President Sarkozy just got his third strike as a party to copyright infringement!

So we have a giant asshole who has no trouble with letting his party infringe upon the copyrights of others, while pushing 3-strikes laws for everyone else. If he wants us to go along with that, he should ban his own political party from the internet on principle.

It isn't that simplistic. A lot of the developing world agriculture goes to make foreign exchange hard currency to support the local warlord/junta and wall street fatcats and the IMF, the food production there goes to the developed world instead of feeding the local population *first*. There's much less need for "food aid" when the local agriculture has as a priority a diverse system dedicated at the first level to feeding their own people, rather than vast monoculture farms dedicated to overseas exports.

So it is actually the reverse in a lot of cases from this often alleged "common knowledge", the local population could probably live on their food production even with a lot of kids, if it stayed there more in the first place, whereas in the heavily developed nations, even with fewer kids, they would be hard pressed to feed themselves (and a lot of other basic life's necessities sustainability issues) without truly massive imports of food and energy and the still continuing "soft" exploitation going on with the connivance of their political and economic leaders.

If it isn't discussed, it must not happen or "see no evil" and get to pontificate on how superior one way is over the other. See, them dumb natives have too many kids and can't take care of themselves"! gloating. Then you look at it closer, they have been getting shafted for decades/generations and are stuck in a never ending cradle to grave foreign "debt" situation which was imposed on the bulk of the people there rather shadily in the first place.

Here is an example of one situation, the African nation of Malawi. When they used to follow the wall street/IMF western "developed nation" advice and way of doing business and running their agriculture, their nation starved constantly, using exported ag resources all the time for making money rather than first feeding their people. When they switched back to putting their own nation first-adopting those often criticized "protectionist" principles, plus just a scosh more education into some alternative ways of farming-they went back to self sufficiency a long way and built themselves back to being more diversified in ag and feeding their people a lot better. And it can change fast with actually rather simple economic and educational policy changes.

It isn't perfect, they can still have and do have problems, but they become "wealthier" faster once some priorities get shifted around back to the actual people as a whole inside some area and not focused on making the top 1% there and wall street, etc. even richer.

refs:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/malawis-farming-revolution-sets-the-pace-in-africa-821135.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7683748.stm

And just a further notation, speaking as a farmer. I will guarantee you, with 100% certainty, if *ever* there is a fast rising shortage of diesel to the "developed" world, that lasts longer than a couple weeks or months, even with "fewer kids", etc, you will see near famine or outright famine. Your best case scenario will be much less variety of foods in the stores at multiples of the current prices.

Without cheap diesel, you just ain't eating. You can ride some subway or bicycle all day long, wall off huge areas to protect the three eyed flying newt, and that isn't going to feed you. That's the *best* case with a fast loss of diesel situation, or fast rising prices of diesel due to any other reason, such as rampant uncontrolled or unregulated market speculation like we had a small taste of recently last year.

This also warrants a rather severe look at this huge push for an emergency "war on carbon" without any credible alternatives in place, in advance. Margins are really lean now with farming for a lot of places, and this is during good supp

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/26/us/texas-candidate-s-comment-about-rape-causes-a-furor.html

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/14/mccain-cancels-event-with-fundraiser-who-compared-rape-to-the-weather/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rape-joke-returns-to-torment-mccain-campaign-848499.html

Welcome to the Internet. Enjoy your stay.

"You require a visa for Syria. Whether or not you have a visa you should be aware that if your passport contains an Israeli stamp or stamps from other countries' border crossing points with Israel, you will be refused entry to Syria."

I would guess that stems from the fact that Syria is still technically at war with Israel, and that Israel bombs Syria once in a while.

Also, as the whole story happened in a country were medical assistance is available

It is available in theory. In practice, multiple reports suggest, the availability is shoddy... And not just for maternity...

That's National Health Service (a.k.a. "single-payer")...

Ice bubbles reveal biggest rise in CO2 for 800,000 years

Zynga's Cafe World and Playfish's Restaurant City (the two most popular Facebook games).

This article would beg to differ that they are the two most popular. However, the top two (FarmVille and Cafe World) do have clones (Farm Town and Restaurant City) at 8th and 9th places.

But can you blame them? FarmVille had 65.6 million active users in one month, I think a lot of devs would be just fine with only 1% of that, and a clone might be a simple way to get it.

Are you sure? The UK has created a new law every day for the last nine years. Even if you're not in the UK, do you check every law your country passes to make sure you're not doing something newly illegal?

There's a few sad exceptions I know of - all to do with the British arms industry. Last year, BAE was being investigated for bribery to a Saudi Prince (well known corrupt tosser Prince Bandar, but the British Government intervened directly to halt the investigation. Everybody and their dog knows that BAE are guilty - and the bribes amount to US$2bn. TheNew Labour government would eat poo if BAE Systems told them to. They have no pride where that company is concerned.

The UK just had the Queen's speech, which was widely regarded as full of things that will never come to pass, as this government most likely has only a few months to live. Even the Queen seemed dubious.

Can someone who is actually plugged into UK politics tell us the likelihood that this would be passed by the current lame-duck government ?

Erm, the press did name and shame the judge, it's been pretty high profile.

Why do you think the pirate party has two members of the European parliament when Sweden only gets a total of 12 members? The Swedish people were so outraged they were willing to place their vote on it.

At least have a clue about what you're talking about before making such ignorant assumptions please. Really, it'd only take a quick Google search to find out that your suggestion that this hasn't been discussed in mainstream media - national and international is false.

Oh, and stop misrepresenting the link you posted- it's the corruption perceptions index, not the corruption index. Perception and reality are not always the same thing so please don't try and sell them as so. Here, enjoy some facts:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/retrial-threatened-as-judge-denies-conflict-of-interest-in-pirate-bay-trial-1673261.html

http://www.thelocal.se/22602/20091012/

Perhaps the most damning though, is this:

http://torrentfreak.com//images/pirate_mpa.pdf

The letter was followed by a police raid against The Pirate Bay, after which eventually no criminal charges were brought and equipment eventually returned to them.

Bear in mind also, that the judgement against the pirate bay folks was even known by the MPAA and so forth and leaked to them before the judge had formally announced the decision in court, where the decision is supposed to be announced also.

I'm sorry if it hurts your false illusion of Sweden as a nation that's immune from corruption. If anything though, it should illustrate to you how bad corruption is internationally, the fact that even some of the better countries in the world are still corrupt to the core, it's an illustration of the sad state of affairs today.

Not anymore, we just have to fibanserinate the water:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/consummation/antidepressant-hailed-as-viagra-for-women-1821576.html

99.9% of them are people who want to play free games

Yes, they're largely pirates. But in the music industry at least, the more you pirate, the more you buy. In my experience this holds true for gamers as well. You don't bother modding your console unless you really love games. If you really love games, you'll be spending lots of money on them whether you have a modded console or not. Eliminate the pirates, and you eliminate that cash with them.

That said, these people should have known better than to try to use Xbox live with a modded console. This is a predictable consequence.

Sure, so long as you're not the poor bastard who has to come up with $250k to stay out of jail (and probably still loses all his neighbor friends). I know I couldn't pull that kind of cash out of my ass - can you?

What's the difference between someone falsely accused because of this trojan and someone falsely accused like Commodore White?

So in a fake court which doesn't have many basic due process rights?

Or small claims court. I've gotten out of tickets, and I've known other people who have too. The fact of the matter is that a huge court case shouldn't be required for smaller crimes. Though, I can see the strategic utility of pirates trying to push it to the two extremes (no court case, a full-blown costly court case).

Disconnecting one's internet can cause tens of thousands of dollars of damage to some people.

Yeah, I guess they'd better watch it if they run a business out of their home and they've already gotten 2 warnings.

And I can't think of anything that can replace the ability to look anything up on Wikipedia in 5 seconds.

I think part of the problem here (including Doctorow's argument) is that people suddenly decide that the internet is so important for everything. Nevermind the fact that lots of people don't have it at home. I have to wonder: why haven't we made it a basic human right and pay for universal internet access for everyone from their home? Because that seems like the logical conclusion of all these "the internet is deathly important, I can't live without it" types of arguments.

requires a serious offense confirmed in an actual court of law.

No it doesn't. It requires 12 points on your license. Those points can be from anything - even a series of small speeding tickets. For example, this website [http://transportation.ky.gov/drlic/license/point.htm] has a long list of offenses that will get you points on your license. Here's some of them:
6 Points - Failure to Stop for School or Church Bus
4 Points - Failure to Yield to Emergency Vehicle
3 Points - Wrong Way on One-Way Street
3 Points - Too Slow for Conditions
3 Points - Failure to Dim Headlights
3 Points - Failure to yield right-of-way to Funeral Procession

And to back up my earlier comment about pirates being worries about having their internet cut-off: "The poll suggested the Government's plan to disconnect illegal downloaders if they ignore official warning letters could deter people from internet piracy, with 61 per cent of illegal downloaders surveyed admitting they would be put off downloading music illegally by the threat of having their internet service cut off for a month." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/illegal-downloaders-spend-the-most-on-music-says-poll-1812776.html

"Unelected yet holding a raft of political positions, including that of cabinet minister, Mandelson is the TV executive who learned to play both the Labour party and the UK system. Previously forced out of Blair's cabinet office twice, once for mortgage fraud and once for abusing his power to help chums get passports, Blair nevertheless then gifted Mandelson the job of Britain's European Commissioner for Trade in 2004 where he hob nobbed on yachts with Microsoft executives and Russian oligarths wanting favours, and then inexplicably returned to the UK in 2008 a very rich man.... Who says the public sector doesn't pay?!! Even the UK citizenship of Mandelson's Brazilian boyfriend stinks of favourtism and misconduct. Reinaldo Avila da Silva came to Britain in 1996 aged 22 on a student visa and was picked up by the then 43 year old Mandelson pretty much on his first night out. Da Silva had no right to British citizenship in 2005, indeed it was apparent that he had overstayed his visa and as such was an illegal immigrant. No worries, a few phone calls from Mandelson and da Silva was safely clutching a shiny new British passport. "

"That's a peculiar comment from a country where the official government and the opposition do little for workers rights, while bailing large banks for whatever they ask. In the 70's the unions had too much power, not now."

You're making a common mistake, you're assuming in the 70s all unions were weakened, this is not the case, public sector unions were left largely untouched and as such public sector unions still have the same situation of too much power as in the 70s. The CWU is a remnant of these public sector unions that were never castrated as required.

"As for thinking that a union (a political organisation) has no place commenting on politics, I can't see your logic"

Commenting is fine, bombarding members with propaganda through the post every month like "Don't vote for X, vote for Y" is a step too far.

"RM lost the Amazon contract because they have repeatedly provided bad service. The irony is that RM have consistently moaned about the internet killing their business, while ignoring the boom in home shopping. Maybe it's time for a complete change of management."

No, RM originally gained the contract from Amazon by realising the boom in home shopping was one way to save their business. Amazon only a few weeks ago dropped the contract because of the threat of strikes (after RM strikes caused them harm last year). It was not sustainable for Amazon to use RM if they can't ensure reliability. See the following, I include a selection of sources whether you're right wing, centrist, left wing or whatever, it's fact not political biased propaganda:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/07/royal-mail-amazon-postal-strikes

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-cancels-royal-mail-contract-over-strike-fears-1799381.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218937/Amazon-desert-Royal-Mail-strike-fears-leading-Christmas.html

Note also the reference to eBay, many of whose members indeed rely on Royal Mail. Royal Mail management has made strides to support the home shopping revolution- you realise you can even pay for and print of postage barcodes rather than rely on Paypal now right? The problem is all this is useless if it can't guarantee it's workers are going to show up to work to perform the actual deliveries. The Royal Mail has far from moaned about the internet killing their business, it's often been pointed out that it's a problem for them but they've always worked hard to work around the rise of e-mail rather than just moan about it as you seem to be incorrectly suggesting they do.

This is an old idea.

Over 15 years ago, a consortium of European car manufacturers worked on Prometheus. Its goal was to improve efficiency and safety. The Joystick control for cars was one part of the project. 1993 article.

I've been thinking a lot about this since I got inspired by SAAB
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/motoring/motoring-will-the-joystick-take-the-joy-out-of-driving-roger-bell-surveys-an-initiative-designed-to-take-motoring-into-the-21st-century-1482588.html

in 1993.

1993.

Might I not suggest teak. whilst I agree its a beautiful wood, its also somewhat dodgy to come by. From the Independant:

TEAK

ORIGIN: Burma and Africa

USES: Construction and furniture

SUSTAINABILITY: Environmentally sound teak is hard to come by. Burma is the only country that still exports teak from natural forests, mostly illegally. Buying anything from Burma provides its brutal military dictatorship with foreign currency. African teak is at risk of becoming endangered

ALTERNATIVES: For Burmese teak try FSC teak, or Jatoba in some cases. Good substitutes for African teak are FSC Favinha, Guariuba and Tatajuba

Largest insolvent economy. Worthless army. Will they invade China? No. Northcom will, instead, be used to suppress revolt at home as the shit comes down and the birds come home to roost.

Everybody who is really concerned with the matter knows that in 36 months - or less - there will be NO ability by the US to pay. Empty promise on worthless paper.

Hence, the unprecedented activity of the past week:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8289302.stm

The insolvency of the principal banking houses happened 25 years ago - and was hidden behind successive speculative bubbles. The kind that say 1 share of Google is worth 475 USD of trade in real goods and services.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/10/real-reason-giant-insolvent-banks-arent.html

Sorry Israel is not a secular democracy. It still has religious courts, and preferential legal status for certain religions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel#Religion_and_citizenship
Further Israel has passed laws that prevent Palestinians who marry Israeli's from living within Israel: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-imposes-racist-marriage-law-588637.html
None of this meets my definition of secular. Genocidal? I would not call the Israeli occupation of Palestine genocide (yet). I would call it apartheid.

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, ...

Palin: Iraq is a task 'from God.'

Sarah Palin (R-AK) addressed the graduating class of commission students at the Wasilla Assembly of God church. During that address, Palin portrayed the Iraq was as a quest decreed by God, and said that U.S. soldiers were carrying out "God's plan"

I'm sure we could find the same kind of thing for every country you listed, these were just the ones I could remember from the top of my head

There have been many calls for jury trials for complex cases to be dismissed. The problem is that there is no perfect solution. You just end up put the finding of guilt in to the hands of one or more chosen people, rather than a random set of people. As to the complexity of modern trials, The Times had an interesting article about this recently - Does the jury system still work? The comments by QCs and Judges there suggest that it is the job of the court to distill the argument into normal English and make it understandable to the jury. From this perspective, it is a failure of a specific court trial if this doesn't happen, rather than a failure of the system as a whole. As for the prospect of professional judges trying dependents in juryless trials, there is the worrying and high profile case of Al Megrahi, who was convicted in a jury-less trial by three professional judges based upon the flimsiest of evidence.

I'm glad so many American soldiers died in World War II to bring true prosperity and freedom to the German people... bwahha. Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face. My nuts to Angela Merkel and her repressive fascist government. If I were a German, I'd keep a Nazi flag in my window for the sole purpose of causing trouble, not because I agree with it or anything. Freedom of speech is for EVERYBODY, not just upper middle class suburbanites without a single contrarian opinion or brain in their heads. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dogs-nazi-salute-lands-owner-in-jail-for-five-months-766438.html Heil-ing dog owner gets five years in jail. What a waste of taxpayer money. What are the chances of this dude being LESS Nazi-loving when he gets out of jail? Now he's a persecuted minority.

.

Whether people think they're rational doesn't make their acts rational. Professors Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith challenged the old Libertarian thought that people act in their own self-interest. "human decisions, rather than being based on a full analysis of the situation, often rely on shortcuts or rules of thumb. The studies developed the idea of representativeness, in which people are too quick to see patterns in data that are actually random."

.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/irrational-studies-lead-to-nobel-prize-for-us-economists-613675.html

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They won a Nobel prize in economics for this.

If someone believes that it is in their best interests to sell their stock it would be irrational of them to just sit there and watch their wealth erode away... but it would also mean that if they did sell their stock under incomplete information conditions the entire system becomes comparatively irrational... Again, no. Your premise is wrong that they are acting in their own self-interest, your premise is also wrong that they are acting rationally, and your presumption that the entire system becomes irrational because people act on incomplete information is... well, incomplete. This is behavioral finance.

Is that how it works?

first of all, i'd like to apologise for "grammar", and for derailing the discussion. this should really be about stabbing weapons and not about gays.

"how it works" is I was trying to make a deft parallel between this shortsighted knife policy by one Scouts organisation with a shortsighted sexual orientation policy by another Scouts organisation. partly tongue in cheek, and partly to show that these organisations have done some pretty backwards things before. Unfortunately, the discussion turned into mostly knee jerk reactions about how I am such a "hate monger". dont' shoot the messenger; i figured it was covered so extensively that it would be a short stretch for most to make the connection. i know that most of my gay friends would have, and chuckled.

Feel free to pick out all of my grammatical errors; they are legion, and it appears to calm some down.

Now where near analogous.

Families in Iraq named children after George Bush when Saddam was first ousted. I think that tells a lot about who wanted what. Shesh, I'm sure even Uday's friends wanted he and his family out of there.

That war has granted previously unknown freedom to millions of Iraqis: those billions are well spent.

What about it?

That article is pure speculation. And it definitely doesn't exist in the wild at the moment.

I'd be more impressed if we weren't fighting over net neutrality right now. The internet is not sufficiently inherently peer to peer.

If you'll allow an analogy, the Library at Alexandria, if it existed at all, was no less impressive for having been burned.

In which we take dirty water from a river, clean it, shit in it, half-clean it, and put it back in the river for the next city to clean and drink and shit in and put back in the river?

Uh, no. Or at least, not entirely. Sanitation as in washing our hands before performing surgery, using septic tanks and sewers instead of dumping waste on the streets, animal control, food safety regulations, and so forth. The development of sanitation is one of the greatest achievements of medicine, surpassing antibiotics or anesthesia in terms of increased life expectancy.

What? We don't even need this. Just stop preserving so many throwbacks and the genetics will improve on their own. Allowing throwbacks to breed is a massive failure of our society.

Yeah, animals like Stephen Hawking shouldn't've been allowed to breed.

I think the crowning achievement of humanity to date has been the fact that we're not extinct.

That's... a good point.

I agreed with everything you said up to this point. What about the elimination of smallpox?

What about it?

The Internet?

I'd be more impressed if we weren't fighting over net neutrality right now. The internet is not sufficiently inherently peer to peer.

Sanitation?

In which we take dirty water from a river, clean it, shit in it, half-clean it, and put it back in the river for the next city to clean and drink and shit in and put back in the river? Not working out so well in the USA right now. More and more people are finding their tapwater unsafe to drink and having to resort to bottled water.

Prenatal genetic testing?

What? We don't even need this. Just stop preserving so many throwbacks and the genetics will improve on their own. Allowing throwbacks to breed is a massive failure of our society. I understand the slippery slope reasons why we can't regulate it, of course.

I think the crowning achievement of humanity to date has been the fact that we're not extinct. We do seem to be working on rectifying that situation by making our habitat less livable, though.