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I'm not of the sky is falling camp, but I can see how you draw that conclusion. The current leaders term will end shortly, and we will begin to argue about a new set of issues for the next 4-8 years. You have a made a fair statement in that for every disempowering agent there is an agent for empowerment. I happen to fall into the empowerment category.

I fully understand the state of affairs here in America, but within the context of the argument I was making I did have to demonstrate a perspective. The Patriot Act may have been dealt with to some degree, but what about the "National ID"? To paraphrase your statement, there is a Yin for every Yang.

I was making an observation on the behavior of our population as a whole. Half the US is just apathetic.

(The reason I'm not worried about progress is that I don't believe there's been any risk of society progressing for a long time. There have been few cultural improvements since the 1700s and the main advances in technology since then have been used more to cripple subsequent advances in culture.)

Gee, I suppose an extra thirty-five to forty years of life expectancy at birth (since 1850!) isn't really an improvement in society. I dunno about you, but I'd rather live in a society where I won't expect to die before I turn forty. Or a society where we don't tend to murder each other quite as much as we did three hundred years ago. (I don't have a copy of Freakonomics handy, but murder rates in Europe are down by something like an order of magnitude since then.)

Are you claiming that running around dying young and being murdered (c. 1700) wasn't really that bad? Or are you complaining that the radio doesn't play music that you like?

It's a common trope to whine that technology never changed basic human nature. It's so common that it's taken for granted. It's also entirely wrong. Technology is the only thing that has ever changed so-called "basic human nature".

These countries have nuclear capabilities.
Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, United States, and I think North Korea as well.

Actually, it was Apple ][s http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872842.html

But I'm sure there were Unix viruses in teh 1970's. Just can't find a link quickly.

Everybody run! The Giant Fungus is rising! It will consume your very soul!

Aaraggghhh!

Ice on land is far more threatening to global sea levels. The effective meltwater contribution from landed ice is 100% by weight, not just a few percent as with floating ice.

Also the water that melted from land ice, glaciers provides people downslope, downstream, with fresh water. I don't recall the name of the city but in Peru one city gets most of it's fresh water from a glacier, which is receding. Glaciers, which are melting, on Mt Kilimonjaro provide freshwater in central Africa. As those glaciers go there goes people's sources of freshwater. The melting of glaciers at a faster rate than that of replenishment is of great concern to those who depend on water. There's also the possibility that a moraine dam can collapse releasing a lake of water causing flooding. Melting of glaciers in the Himalayas is of real concern.

Diseases of heart - Heart Attack
Malignant neoplasms - Cancer
Cerebrovascular diseases - Stroke
Chronic lower respiratory diseases - Lung Disease
Diabetes mellitus - Diabetes

Now, heart attacks are caused almost exclusively bad poor diet (too much fat) and not enough exercise. Cancer has strong links with diet (too much fat) and exposure to chemicals. Strokes are "heart attacks of the brain" in that diet and exercise are major contributing factors here too. A good portion, but not all, cases of lung disease are induced or exacerbated by smoking. And (adult onset) diabetes has been linked to diets high in fats and sugars.

So considering that 66% of male deaths and 63% of female deaths were caused by the above diseases, if you can eliminate the causes of those diseases, you're obviously going to increase your chances for a long and healthy life.

a few millenia, actually http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0802924.html

I've got a map of the Unites STATES of America. You know, that collection of 50 STATES of which people are citizens of. Here, have a map.

Multiplayer games sell more copies.

I'm curious where you get this information from. A quick check of the top ten selling PC games for 2004 paints a different picture.

1. The Sims 2 - Single player.
2. Doom 3 - Primarily single player, with a fairly flat multiplayer component seeming added on as an afterthought.
3. World Of Warcraft - Okay, that's one.
4. Half-Life 2 - Single player. Yeah, it comes with Counter-Strike & Half-Life 2 Deathmatch (which wasn't available or even announced at HL2's launch) but the core game itself is purely single player.
5. The Sims Deluxe - Single player.
6. The Sims 2 Special Edition - Single player.
7. Battlefield Vietnam - That's two. Though it does have single player capability via bots, so it's not purely multiplayer.
8. Call Of Duty - Fifty/fifty, IMO. It has single player, though many (I suspect most) buy it for the multiplayer.
9. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 - Yeah, that's single player too.
10. MS Zoo Tycoon: Complete Collection - Single player.

So, only one game in the top ten last year was a pure multiplayer game, with two more that are a mix of single/multi leaning towards multi. The other seven were primarily single player games, five of which have no multiplayer capability at all.

Note that I've only looked at PC games, as this game is only officially announced for the PC. They say they want to port to next-gen consoles, but it doesn't sound like they've even begun working on that. So, for now, it's just a PC game and I want to compare apples to apples.

If the place is profitable, more will sprout up like crazy...

Well, here is a list of the world's top 14 oil producers, which are, in order: Saudi Arabia (10.4 bbl/day), Russia, the US, Iran, Mexico, China, Norway, Canada, Venezuela, the UAE, Kuwait, Nigeria, the UK, and Iraq (2.03 bbl/day). Covering the First World (Norway) to the Third (Nigeria), Western democracy (Canada) to Islamic theocracy (Iran) to the Worker's Paradise (China), and five of the seven continents, that seems pretty widely distributed to me!

I realize the Saudis are a pain, and Venezuela has that nutcase Chavez at the reins (for now), but we get along OK with Russia and Mexico and Norway et cetera. It seems a little hard to credit that our relationship with all of the major oil producers is going to go belly up at once.

What you've also got to remember is that economic dependency is a two-way street. It would certainly hurt the US if, say, the Saudis stopped selling oil to us -- but what do you think it would do to the Saudis? What else have they got to sell but oil? How are they going to keep their economy going?

We're talking about oil prices doubling soon, and tripling and quadrupling after that, on to a price point of infinity because there WILL BE NO MORE OIL...

I don't think so. You are assuming that consumption rates will not change with price, but that is silly. Raise the price, and people start to economize and find alternatives. Raise the price a lot, and people flock to the alternatives and consumption plummets. And as I said, there are many alternative sources of energy. They're not used as much as oil now only because oil is cheap. If oil becomes expensive, they will be.

In a decade at most the American military will be taking oil from around the world at gunpoint.

This is a total red herring, but I can't resist saying (just to pull your chain) that this would be fine with me. Life is struggle for survival, my friend. Get used to it or join the dinosaurs.

NO. You won't have a job, and neither will I.

Speak for yourself. I believe I've got the skills that would let me find a niche in any society at all. If the US collapses into the equivalent of 14th century Spain, look for me to be one of those bastards with an ostrich feather in my enormous hat, whose dozens of beefy retainers will proceed in front of me at a respectful distance to thrust commoners into the gutter and out of my way. Bwa ha ha ha!

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/censusandstatistics/ a/paygapgrows.htm Pretty recent US Gov't info on this subject

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193820.html Info please stats on women's wages in general

And there are many other studies to back the validity of the claim that women get paid quite a bit less than men in most areas.

I just thought this might be more informative than the "Rush Limbaugh" approach of the above post.

Note to parent poster: Personal observation and allegorical arguments aren't anywhere close to being valid representations of statistics.

North Korea is not a corrupt state

I call North Korea, Cuba, and Iran corrupt states because the leaders of these countries siphon off tremendous amounts of wealth for themselves, much like leaders such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. There is also significant structural corruption by officials of all levels within those countries as well. The fact that they happen to have different political or formal economic systems makes no difference.

Most of Chinese are as poor as ever

No, most Chinese are much less poor than they were 20 years ago. And there are few starvation deaths, unlike the late 1950's in China. They may still be poor, but are getting less poor every year.

In 1950, Chinese income per capita was similar to that of OECD nations in 1500 AD, today it is similar to that of OECD nations in 1917 (good link here)

I certainly would not like to be a worker in the USA in 1917 if I could avoid it, but would prefer it to being a peasant in England in 1500.

the only not corrupted system is USA

Here is the list from Transparency International. There are 18 countries less corrupt than the US (such as Finland, New Zealand, and Denmark).

My question has always been "Why stop science because a bunch of people don't like it?". Science is science is science and will always be science. The Germans, though misguided in their science, were leaps and bounds ahead of us during World War 2, discovering new things at an astounding rate simply because they told their scientists that they didn't care, they just wanted it done, and they wanted it done yesterday.

Some of those scientific discoveries were made by use of human subjects. So is it OK for science to start experimenting on "the aged, insane, incurably ill, or deformed children" just because it is science? I mean, our knowledge of disease would be greatly advanced if we just bypassed the animal expermiments and went straight to humans. How about making people suffer through Syphilis while telling them they are treating them all the while just letting them die and observing the progression of the disease.

Science should exist for the benefit of man, not man for the benefit of science. Science should not be worshipped like a religion where the ultimate goal of man is its advancement. That is why it is political issue.

Feh, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Feh is originally a Yiddish expression. For all I know, it could be a Japanese word too, but it doesn't seem likely. If anything, Inuyasha's use of the word is based on Yiddish.

Last time I checked Canada was about as high up on the lists of priorities as the IAFC. Not to sound like a bad neighbor... but really... If Canadiens don't like early daylight savings time, don't observe it. If you do like early daylight savings time, then observe it.
Try moving to Indiana - then you will realize WTF daylight savings time is all about. Durring the last vote, the major reason was that the farmers said it would mess up the cows... Think about this for a second.... 'mess up the cows.' Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-OVER. Last time I checked the Cow's didn't wear watches. Pigs do; but they don't like the cows, so they won't tell them what's up. Additionally Wisconsin has about 50x as many cows as Indiana and they still observe DST.
Everyone here is about down the middle - 50/50 (and most are very adiment about their opinion). I personally set my clocks ahead anyway. But I just know that people close an hour earlier than they say they will. I also respond with the added bonus 'your time' when someone asks me the time - that makes it fun when I tell them I am from the same place as them, but I choose to observe daylight savings time.

read this article - 2 paragraphs - starting about the second one down. DST - WTF All I have to say is that the reason companies don't come here is not because companies are confused by times, it's because it's f@#k'n Indiana and there is jack squat else here... (Indianapolis is OK)

last, but not least -- the failure to account for WMDs? The burden of proof was on Iraq, remember?

I can't believe you brought this up. They "proved" it. Go take a look at what the UN inspection team found. For that matter, take a look at what the troops found (or didn't find, rather).

Jan. 27, 2003 The UN's formal report on Iraqi inspections is highly critical, though not damning, with chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix stating that "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it."

Iraq's army was fourth largest in the world (after China, Russia, and US). You were saying?..

Where did you get this? Do you mean before 1991? Since they lost the war, their army was completely decimated. Also note that they had no air force to speak of.

The key units Iraq depended on to stop the Coalition were six Republican Guard divisions (strength: 85,000), two Special Republican Guard brigades, two Special Forces brigades (strength: 15,000), and internal security forces. The Iraqi Army was 300,000 strong.

Illegal? Well, this one will be the easiest for you to prove -- no need to argue about politics. Just quote me the UN Security Council resolution condemning our invasion as "illegal".... Thanks!

Would you accept draft resolutions? Those that didn't pass because the US vetoed them?

We can blame God for all kinds of things like hurricanes and Godzilla but it's a safe bet that we brought THAT scourge upon ourselves.

According to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0196589.html

"Tomoyuki Tanaka
Godzilla creator

Tanaka created Godzilla in 1954 in an effort to illlustrate the terror Japanese felt after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

I never knew God liked to come down and create Japanese Monster films. The things one learns on slashdot.

it's a hangover from the French imports into English, see http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0907036.html

I'd guess that it's the amount of (destructive) power that differentiates between the two.

F0 light 40-72 mph
F1 moderate 73-112 mph
F2 significant 113-157 mph
F3 severe 158-206 mph
F4 devastating 207-260 mph
F5 incredible 261-318 mph

You need to look at crime statistics for the 50's they had much less crime in back then. Now, if you were talking about the late 80's/early 90's, then yes we are safer today. Here is the homicide rate:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html

* Weapons of mass destruction inspections? What do you know, they were right!

Jan. 27, 2003 The UN's formal report on Iraqi inspections is highly critical, though not damning, with chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix stating that "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it."

But of course mileage is a pointless benchmark for shuttle fatalities, because we don't use the shuttle for travel. Actually, comparing the fatality rate at all is pretty useless; cars and shuttles are different entities entirely. It's like asking, "Which is more dangerous, using a digital camera or being a giant tortoise?"

"And most of the poor people in this country happen to be guess what! NOT WHITE."

From 2003 census data:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov2 .html

Poverty percentages by race
white 10.5
black 24.5
hispanic 22.5
asian 10.2

And from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762156.html

Total Population 290,809,777
by race
White 234,196,357
Black 37,098,946
Hispanic 39,898,889
Asian 11,924,912

So the number in poverty by race:
White 24,590,617
Black 9,089,242
Hispanic 8,977,250
Asian 1,216,341

So, you are wrong. The majority of poor people in this country are without a doubt white.

Could you please provide a reference for how the names ought to be pronounced? Every single pronunciation guide I could find on-line said, to the last one, that the pronunciation of "Zeus" is [ZOOS]. I've had an interest in Greek Mythology for some time, and I've never come across any other pronunciation. If there actually is a pronunciation that is more correct than that, I am very curious to know what it is.

Here are a few references I found when attempting to find a pronunciation guide:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=Zeus&x=0&y=0
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/z/zeus.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0853377.htm l
http://library.thinkquest.org/J002110/zeus.htm
http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/z/z0012500.html
http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/Z/Zeus. html
http://www.gods-heros-myth.com/godpages/zeus.html
http://www.hyperdic.net/dic/zeus.htm
http://www.uwf.edu/english/lanier/Pronunc.html

An American government full of neo-cons was elected, and further re-elected, by a majority of Americans. That, in itself, is damning enough of a majority of a people.

There is effectively a problem in the USA with the way the elections are conducted, that encourages the existence of only two parties. That is, there is no real choice.

Just compare :

France 2002 1st turn

US 2004 candidates and results

Almost a half of the population didn't vote for one of the three leaders on the first turn in France.

It doesn't happen in the US because it's just wasting your voice...
And it doesn't work since, huh, about 1876 if you look at it...

28 US school shooting incidents in last 10 years vs. ~1000 cases of people being killed by lightning...

So I think calling this a "trend" is a bit of a stretch. Don't let media hysteria throw off your empirical, data-based decision making processes.

Maybe, but it would be highly inaccurate since Oceania is the continent that Australia is part of.

Steve.

Your comment is completely off base on multiple counts. Instead of merely ranting let's participate in a more rational, useful diologue...

It's not a black and white question of life or death we're dealing with here. Increased airport screening doesn't actually increase your life expectancy very directly. It might (but might not) decrease the chance of attacks. However, that's not an easy game; society is large and there are a multitude of ways in which to be disruptive! Just because it's marginally harder to sneak certain items on a plane (and quite frankly checks are already quite thorough) doesn't magically prevent loss of life. These measures don't save thousands of lives, they shift some probabilities - perhaps - away from this particular means of death. Now isn't that great.

However, you're far more likely to die of a heart attack than a terrorist attack. As it so happens, getting so worked up isn't going to help your chances with the first killer, and probably won't help very much with the second. Stressing out the entire country with this huge paranoia isn't the solution. It's not that he current administration's efforts to save their populace are illegitimate, rather, they're misguided. You may sneer at various mundane causes of death, and trumpet bravery; but bravery's place is in a real war in which war's violence is a great threat.

Is your bravery going to help your neighbors?

In our hollywood-ized, fast-action, 3-2-1 cut to commercials world it's no surprise terrorism, and fear thereof sells so well. It's a fast killer after all, and although slow killers are slightly more effective (Top 15 Leading Causes of Death in the U.S., 2001), they're just so boring.

But please; let's not get carried away with this fast action addiction. In reality, you're more likely to kill yourself than you are to be killed by others.

Quality of life is an important thing too. We should concentrate on building a nation on trust, comeraderie, and good sense instead of paranoia.

I was going more with the Most and Least Livable Countries: UN Human Development Index.

Actually the Right to Privacy does exist in the United States. It was established as a penumbra from the rights guranteed by the US Constitution by The US Supreme Count in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965).

Sorry; no strategy like "stop after the first boy" can affect the sex ratio of births.

Explain this. The difference between the ratio of whites and blacks presumably is that whites have smaller families and blacks have larger ones, thereby reducing the effect of stopping after the first boy.

Consider the following cases: family A has 1 boy and stops. Family B has a girl, then a boy and stops. Results for small families that practice this strategy: two boys, one girl. In the large picture: birth rate of 1.05 boys per girl.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108121.html

Please, tell me the literacy rate of all of India? Don't lie, and expect others to not double-check your "facts".

Misinterpretation of statistics. GDP per capita in India is $3,100 but what is the standard deviation? Here's a badly formatted PDF with more detailed numbers. You can see that roughly 30 million households have an income of $5000 or more. If they all bought pc's it would more than double the penetration in India.

Not to mention that PC penetration here did not occur last week, when computers were 1/20th of income. Penetration in the U.S. happened more than 10 years ago, when PC's were $3-4k and GDP was ~$25k.

"George Walker Bush

Born: 7/6/1946
Birthplace: New Haven, Conn.
George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Conn., the first child of future president George H. W. Bush. In 1948, the family moved to Odessa, Tex., where the senior Bush went to work in the oil business. George W. grew up mainly in Midland, Tex., and Houston, and later attended two of his father's alma maters, Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and Yale."

Yes, he was born in New Haven. So what? He moved to Texas when he was two years old, and grew up in Midland and Houston. IMHO his first two years aren't as important as the 58 which have followed them. If you'd prefer to say that he's 3.3% Connectican and 96.7% Texan, that's fine with me.

I didn't realize that Kerry had grown up in Texas. You got documentation for that?

"George Walker Bush

Born: 7/6/1946
Birthplace: New Haven, Conn.
George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Conn., the first child of future president George H. W. Bush. In 1948, the family moved to Odessa, Tex., where the senior Bush went to work in the oil business. George W. grew up mainly in Midland, Tex., and Houston, and later attended two of his father's alma maters, Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and Yale."

Yes, he was born in New Haven. So what? He moved to Texas when he was two years old, and grew up in Midland and Houston. IMHO his first two years aren't as important as the 58 which have followed them. If you'd prefer to say that he's 3.3% Connectican and 96.7% Texan, that's fine with me.

Bah, yourself.

Plenty of orbiting satellites up there. What's amazing is this comes from a country with an average literacy rate of 52% (compared to 97% for the U.S.).

48% of their citizens can't read or write, but they're funding a space program to the equivalent of a few billion U.S. dollars. Amazing. I can only imagine what taxes must be like in India to pay for something so expensive when the per capita income is so low.

By that logic, Gore should have wone the 2000 elections, you moron.

Check your friggin' facts before you mouth off. Amazing how population increases and voter turnout increases cause the raw number of votes to go up.

Just FYI, the population of the US around the time General George Washington was elected president was about 2,205,000 people. The population of the US during the time of Abraham Lincoln was about 31,443,000. The population around the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt (World War II) was about 151,326,000.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

I'm absolutely sure that all three of these men garnered fewer votes than George W. Bush. The Electoral College vote counts for George Washington on the election of 1789 records President Washington getting only 40% of the votes. Roughly, 40% of the population (voting and non-voting) in 1789 would be 1,571,700. Ralph Nader got more votes in the 2004 election than Washington got in the 1789 election. Are you implying because GWB had massively more votes than George Washington that GWB is a better president? For that matter, Ralph Nader?

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

Get a brain. Stop repeating what pundits and political hacks are feeding you. Grow a set of huevos and think for yourself.

62,028,772 = Bush
59,026,150 = Kerry

(56.2% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922901.html

50,999,897 = Gore
50,456,002 = Bush
2,882,955 = Nader

(51.3% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html

Mark

By that logic, Gore should have wone the 2000 elections, you moron.

Check your friggin' facts before you mouth off. Amazing how population increases and voter turnout increases cause the raw number of votes to go up.

Just FYI, the population of the US around the time General George Washington was elected president was about 2,205,000 people. The population of the US during the time of Abraham Lincoln was about 31,443,000. The population around the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt (World War II) was about 151,326,000.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

I'm absolutely sure that all three of these men garnered fewer votes than George W. Bush. The Electoral College vote counts for George Washington on the election of 1789 records President Washington getting only 40% of the votes. Roughly, 40% of the population (voting and non-voting) in 1789 would be 1,571,700. Ralph Nader got more votes in the 2004 election than Washington got in the 1789 election. Are you implying because GWB had massively more votes than George Washington that GWB is a better president? For that matter, Ralph Nader?

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

Get a brain. Stop repeating what pundits and political hacks are feeding you. Grow a set of huevos and think for yourself.

62,028,772 = Bush
59,026,150 = Kerry

(56.2% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922901.html

50,999,897 = Gore
50,456,002 = Bush
2,882,955 = Nader

(51.3% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html

Mark

And meanwhile almost 100% of electricity here comes from coal...

• Oil 39%
• Natural gas 24%
• Coal 23%
• Nuclear 8%
• Hydropower 3%
• Other 3%

To stick to the theme: *BZZT* Wrong yet again

Solar eclipses ARE more common. Lunar eclipses do happen as many as three times a year, but solar eclipses happen up to five times a year.

You've got it backwards. Take a look at the numbers. The maximum possible number of lunar eclipses per year is three.

What you're thinking is that when there is an eclipse, it's visible everywhere on earth, I think. Solar eclipses are only visible in certain places.

The alternative is that you're thinking of solar eclipses, and just completely wrong. The maximum possible number of solar eclipses visible from ANYWHERE on earth in the same year is five (also worth noting that if there are five solar eclipses, there can only be two lunar eclipses).

Furthurmore, of those maximum of three eclipses per year, not all of them are total. The north or south pole sometimes escapes them. If the north rim of the moon is visible, then the north pole station will remain lit.

Now, when there is a lunar eclipse, the maximum length is two hours for a partial eclipse, and 1 hour 42 minutes for a total eclipse.

In the worst possible case scenario, a north polar base on the moon will have to run without solar power for a total of six hours a year, broken into three two-hour blocks.

First off, I take offence to those who see Canada as a country that is full of corruption. I teach English here in Berlin and try and bring discussion topics to class which can cause some kind of discussion (ok, for my more advanced students who already speak quite good English) and I brought this topic up in class a few weeks ago the week that Chrétien gave his testimony. The general consensus was that this scandal isn't really that huge. As usual, I searched for a web page which ranked countries by corruption, and I found this http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html At the end of 2004, long after Sheila Fraser released her report and the inquiry started (it's actually mentioned in their "Country Report" somewhere) and lo-and-behold, Canada is ranked 12th, above such notables as Germany, France and the USA. In reality, perception hasn't really changed that much in Canada about what went on, but we just want the details.

Which comes to my next point: details. What the Gomery Inquiry will get is a lot of testimony from a lot of different people. As has been noted above, once a person is called to testify, they can't refuse, and they can't "take the 5th" as we have no such thing. There is no such thing as someone getting up in front of the stand and saying that they won't testify, it simply isn't allowed. In other words, we end up getting information from everyone (although sometimes it's useless) and a better picture of the truth comes out.

But there is a trade-off. In Canada, we believe the rights of the individual is more important that the rights of the whole in many ways (in other ways not), and one of those ways is the right to a fair trial. The concept is that when you have a jury, you want to have the best people on the jury, so they will have the intelligence to make a good decision based on the facts. The problem is, those people are usually also the best informed outside of courthouse, which means reading newspapers, watching the news, etc.

Now, I've seen arguments on here that suggest that an intelligent person won't be swayed by the news in the end, but we've seen in history, especially in the 20th C. and more recently in the 21st C. that well educated countries are completely sucked in by socialization and slanted news coverage. Owe, and if you think the media doesn't slant things these days, here is a little article posted last year about Fox News http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,123 9094,00.html The most telling sentence from it is "Fox News could justifiably claim to have achieved a level of accuracy and impartiality that was appropriate to its audience in the US, where different rules apply."

Next, to those who think there will be a snap election called because of this don't really understand Canadian politics at the moment. Those who have saying that there might be a snap election are those who have the most to gain by creating a bit more FUD in Canada's political system - the opposition. There is no way, the the governing party would try and call an election right now. Any party worthy of being in Parliament (and I even include the NDP in this) would hammer them so hard and so fast on trying to cover up the testimony that the current leader wouldn't have a chance.

Talking about the current leader, although he was a member of cabinet during the years in question, there has been no linkage between him and the scandal. As far as I've read, there has been attempts, but not one witness so far has come out and said he was involved. He was the that set up the commission in the fist place and has to live with its results (most previous PM's might not have done that - for those who don't know, he had a majority government at the time and could ha

The subway ridership in Tokyo is about twice that of New York, not the 9 times you seem to imply http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762446.html . If that 27 million number is for total mass transit ridership and you want to compare apples to apples, you'd need to include New York's four commuter rail systems (LIRR, Metro-North, NJ Transit, PATH), two municipal bus systems (MTA, NJ Transit) and the Staten Island Ferry.

Well, the amount of solar energy hitting us is around 1.5 kilowatts per square meter at our distance, that would be when the sun is directly overhead (and through the atmosphere). That drops off as a cos of the angle away from the point facing the sun. So if the sun passed directly overhead at noon, at 9:00 am and 3:00 pm (45 degrees away) we would be getting about 70.71% of the energy, or about 1 kilowatt. At 30 degrees lattitude, we would still be getting 75% of the maximum energy as early as 10:00 am and as late as 2:00 pm. So let's say we have 35% cloud cover (some areas could be much more sunny), that should account about for the rest of the hours in the day if we ignore them, but let us go ahead and take an hour off our peak time. So we'd have just three hours of sunlight at 80% (on average lets say) of 1.5 kilowatts, or 3.6 kilowatt hours per square meter per day. let's assume a solar cell that is 20% efficient, so we only get 0.72 kilowatt-hours per square meter per day.

Statistics show that hte US used 94.27 quadrillion BTUs of energy from all sources in 1998. From the conversion factors, that comes out to 27 trillion kilowatt hours. Divide by 365 and that's 74 billion kilowatt hours per day that we need. So we end up needing 103 billion square meters at 30 degrees lattitude to power the entire U.S. That's an area 320.5 kilometers to a side, about 1/7th the size of Texas.

And that's using conservative estimates. Plug in 30% efficency for solar cells, take into account the whole day and not just three hours like I did, and that area will shrink considerably.

I think it has to do with the people who say non-white people are inheritly inferior and need government assistance. You know, the Democrats.

Maybe you're talking about equal opportunity. Nobody needs that, because everybody knows that even if you're born into a poor family and attend crappy schools, you've got just as much chance of getting good SAT scores and those scholorships as anybody else... so laws to level the field aren't needed.

And, heck... just because women are still earning only 76 cents for every dollar a man makes in the same job, they don't need equal opportunity laws either. The market will settle down to equality (at the current rate, in another 30 years).

The party of old money

and actors.

--- SER

What the USA currently gets from Iraq is irrelevant. What matters is that Iraq is number 2 on the list of the countries with the largest total oil reserves, with No. 1 (Saudi Arabia) being already firmly bought by the US, and No. 3 (Iran) being the next on the list to be "liberated".

However, y'all never tire of telling us how you live in the greatest democracy on earth, so, why do you all vote republicrat? or not vote at all?

The people here who object to these kinds of stupid laws probably aren't the same people who claim the US is the greatest democracy on earth; a substantial number would even point out that we don't live in a democracy at all.

I don't know about the congressional elections but in the last two presidential elections the public has NOT elected the Bush regime. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote by 543987 votes, not even counting vote tampering, yet won the electoral vote. In the 2004 election, there is considerable evidence of tampering and exit polls show that kerry was the real winner of the election.

As much as I would prefer to vote for an independent candidate, such votes are unfortunately entirely thrown away except in elections that are not remotely close. In the 2000 election, Gore would probably have had enough electoral votes to win if those people who voted for Nader (all of who would have prefered Gore over Bush) had not wasted their votes on Nader or if we had a statistically valid method of voting such as instant runoff voting . Our existing method of counting votes (even when the votes are actually counted in compliance with the law and without the electoral college fiasco) is inherently inaccurate when there are more than two parties.

Before I knew about instant runoff elections, I had a different proposal that was better than the current system but not as good as instant runoff. Instead of giving each person a single vote for a candidate, give them one vote for or against. I.E. Instead of voting for Kerry, you could vote against Bush. Which far more accurately reflects what many people are trying to do in the voting booths - we vote against the most evil candidate not for the best one. This system, however, does have the possibility of electing spurious independent candidates. Imagine Dubya getting negative ten million votes, Kerry getting negative 5 million votes, the green party getting negative 1 million votes, and write in candidate Bob Nobody winning the election with positive 3 votes. The book Archimedes' Revenge has an interesting chapter on game theory and voting as well as the Alabama Paradox .

What we need in this country for the presidential elections is

• Instant runoff elections
• It most be provable whether or not votes are counted correctly. Electronic voting machines that give a receipt for every vote. Each receipt would have a unique (but not sequential or tied to voter identity) serial number. When the election results are tallied, the serial numbers of every vote counted would be listed in a file availible for public download. Watchdog organizations would let people log into their websites and check that their vote was counted. Ideally, the receipt would be printed in triplicate (with the ability to identify which copy was which) in human and machine readable form. The first copy stays on a roll inside the voting machine for recounts. The voter takes home the second copy. And the voter takes the third copy and drops it anonymously in the box maintained outside the polling place by the Watchdog group of their choice. If voters are worried about being accosted by thugs outside the poling place, they can discard both of their receipts into the trash or watchdog bins. David Chaum's cryptographically obfuscated receipt system provides more security against people seeing your receipt but is more confusing overall.
• Eliminate the electoral college.

As for co

I dunno, but here's where your worldview ends...