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You might be up to something. I just heard that al-Qaeda had amazing benefits. Mi-6 might just trying to copy their benefits package
"More proof of its corporate structure: As odd as it sounds, al-Qaida had excellent HR benefits. The seized documents showed that al-Qaida paid an unusual amount of attention to its fighters and their families. Married members were allowed to have seven days of vacation for every three weeks worked. " ( npr)

Life found a way...

I'm doing contract work and earning less take-home pay (after you figure in self-employment taxes) than I did the summer after I graduated from high school.

You're doing the wrong comparison. The relevant comparison is not "with a college degree, now (in a bum economy)" vs. "without a college degree, then (in a good economy)", but "with a college degree, now (in a bum economy)" vs. "without a college degree, now (in a bum economy)". The problem is that without a time machine, we can't do that comparison for your particular case.

But we can look at how people with and without a college degree are doing, and it turns out that unemployment figures for college-educated people are less than half that of those with only a high school diploma.

So if you're doing poorly because you can't find any decent work, even with a college degree, there's a fair probability that you wouldn't have *any* job if all you had was a high school diploma. I have no clue what you were doing the summer after high school, but it's a good bet that whatever it was wouldn't have been sustainable - that is, chances are you couldn't have made it a full time, long term job, or even if you could, you would have been handed a pink slip the moment the economy turned south.

So look at the glass not as three quarters empty, but as a quarter full.

When someone lands at Ben Gurion and then states an intention to speak in Palestine, one typically faces an extensive set of invasive questions - Questions that I suspect someone like Stallman may be unwilling to answer.

Wouldn't those questions be asked when you leave? It's a screening for terrorists on airplanes. Customs want to know very simple things - "What is the purpose of your visit?", "Who invited you?", "Where you are going to stay?" etc. etc. There is zero secret in any of that. Customs officers may not like RMS, his plans, and the PA in general, but what reasons may they legally have to send him back? He'd have to be declared an "undesirable person" in some way, a threat to the country, and I doubt that it can be done just over some discussion about politics. One needs some specific information about intended wrongdoing against the country. UK may be an exception, though.

There are arabs flying into Israel; some of them live in PA. Questioning them is probably far more shocking, and their political views are probably opposite to those of customs officers, for a good reason. Still, it's not a good enough cause to keep them away.

Here's an interview of that article's author on Fresh Air that is free to listen to. It probably isn't as in-depth as the article, but it's easier to get access to =)

NPR did a nice little story about this today. Talks about what the Constitution says vs what it means. http://www.npr.org/2011/05/27/136717719/obama-wields-his-autopen

I mistyped, and meant to ask "why is gold money".

As to that NPR interview, a few issues. For starters, he mentions that "If you expose lithium to air, it will cause a huge fire that can burn through concrete walls"
This is just not true. If lithium is exposed to water, then it will burn with a modest amount of red flame, turning into lithium hydroxide in the process. I do not believe that the flame is particularly hot, either. It possibly could combust in air if it were finely powdered and dispersed into a humid environment, I suppose.

As for the rest of it... "You want the thing you pick to be rare......At the same time, you don't want to pick an element that's too rare. So osmium — which apparently comes to earth via meteorites — gets the axe." Seems pretty arbitrary. For starters, why couldnt pyrite be money? Why does it have to be an element? Why should money even be something that has no use in and of itself-- and if that is a requirement, how does gold possibly fit the bill? That video (assuming this is an accurate transcription) doesnt address why the barter system is insufficient, or how the argument for gold kind of falls apart in societies that are rich in gold and poor in salt, or societies that decided to use other standards.

Plain and simple, using gold as a standard today would be about as arbitrary as anything else; why not osmium (as the article mentioned)? Why is "we dont want it to be too rare" a good argument-- how is that even relative?

History proves me correct, as during any war you could get things for gold, but not for currencies, which immediately became irrelevant.

That is simply because people have historically valued gold and had faith in it. Any "money" that people will trust is a good currency; if people fail to trust it, it is a bad currency.

However gold is actual money - store of value, unit of account, means of trade.

Well, actually I believe it has changed several times in history. Didnt the Chinese start using "flying money" about 1500 years ago? Was it based on any "gold" standard? How does paper money fail to meet your definition of "stored value, unit of account, means of trade"? In fact, gold fails in one important way that paper succeeds-- gold is very heavy and very bulky.

There are merits to gold, mainly that it is not a human invention and thus remains static from society to society, but it really is no less arbitrary than some piece of paper with drawings on it.

You are way off base on the number of reasons why gold is money and would have been money if it all had to play out over again

found the full version.

0. It cannot be printed by politicians to buy elections.
1. It's rare, but not too rare.
2. It's easy to test (chemically or with ultrasound for thick bars).
3. It's easily recognizable.
4. It has no major industrial use.
5. It does not change over time, drop it in the ocean, recover it centuries later and it's the same.
6. Easy to work with (easy to split, melt, mint coins, etc.)
7. It's stable, it does not explode, it's not a poison, not radioactive, not a gas, does not corrode, does not decay radioactively.
8. People like it, it looks nice.

Point is those ARE intrinsic values. Saying they are not is like falling into the homunculus theory of mind fallacy, where you expect things to be reduced forever, and this infinite regress would not answer the question of what is really your mind vs what is the observer. We are physical beings, not spirits, we live in physical world, and things we value are physical because they allow us to get things we need for survival.

As fun as slandering people is, two notes should probably be kept in mind. First, the vast majority of the book is about research told to her by multiple sourced first-hand accounts of what was going on at Area 51. As in, non-conspirational yet still interesting stuff. Second, as a commenter above noted, this is not Annie Jacobsen's crazy theory on what was happening. She took special pains to point out that this was a story directly recounted to her from someone who was supposedly directly involved, unfiltered by her bias. In fact, if I recall correctly, she actually says at some point that she thinks the whole story is highly unlikely.

Unfortunately, the media loves a good sensationalist story, so out of the whole book, this is the one extremely minor thing picked out of it to publicize, and people are trying to cast Annie Jacobsen in the light of the crackpot theorist.

How about actually finding out more about her and the book next time before you go maligning people like this? Oh, right. Because the media isn't the only one who loves a good sensationalist story.

She specifically warns the reader that she changed to the first person to give an accurate account from that single source (mentioned in the summary). Since she only had once source for that information, and the information appears to be extreme if even partially true, she told his story in a different way.

The Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/17/136356848/area-51-uncensored-was-it-ufos-or-the-ussr

Listen or Download link is right at the top.

Here's the link to the story:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/25/136656087/what-shape-are-electrons-scientists-try-to-find-out

Did they give you any protective gear? I don't think I want to even get close to it, given the dirty bomb tests which scattered plutonium all over hell. (Re: Plumbbob, pascal-a)

BTW, did you hear the Fresh Air broadcast about it last week? Recommended.

...interested in more about Mr. Coulton, NPR did some pretty coverage on their Planet Money blog:
Internet Rock Start on NPR

The sad thing is some people *are* arranging their finances on such a decision...

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136053462/is-the-end-nigh-well-know-soon-enough (Search for "Martinez", about 1/2 way down)

One additional benefit to (low) inflation - it pulls purchases to the present.

With deflation, you're waiting for prices to drop. So you wait, and sellers make no money, they start to panic, lay people off, sell for cheaper. Fewer purchasers mean prices go down more. Your economy slowly contracts into a deflationary spiral.

With inflation (low levels) you realize prices are going to rise, you buy your thing. Manufacturer has cash to pay employees, they buy your product... etc.

Of course hyper-inflation destroys value quickly, destroying incentive to make long term plans. There was an NPR podcast before on Brazil about high inflation days where they didn't make beer - the months long waiting for brewing destroyed the investment. Interestingly, how did Brazil solve the Inflation Expectation Cycle? Through a virtual currency. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil

One issue with deflation; it helps debtors, but not equally. If you're a debtor, you're probably liquidity constrained. So even though you gain some advantage, it's not all good. Your salary is dropping as well.

Fractional reserve banking doesn't have much to do with inflation. It was 'invented' not even by bankers, but gold smiths in 1500's in England.

Why would Obama want to do anything to hurt his good buddy Bush? In case you haven't noticed, Obama is doing everything almost exactly like Bush, and in some cases much worse: Bush never prosecuted any NSA whistleblowers, while Obama, who on the campaign trail praised whistleblowers, is prosecuting more of them than any administration in history: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/11/136173262/case-against-wikileaks-part-of-broader-campaign

Obama is even worse on the Constitution than Bush was; he's not going to prosecute anyone for that.

I think NPR did a story about this a few months back. Basically, it boiled down to gold being really the only choice for a currency (from all of the elements) based on it's physical properties and scarcity. You can read the whole story here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gold-beat-out-lithium-osmium-einsteinium

Early on the Taliban were suppressing the drug trade, but that changed. The Taliban are now allied with the drug lords and deriving a big chunk of their income from it. Now it is NATO and the US that is working to get substitute crops in place and suppress the drug trade. It will be a slow process.

Poppy is a key crop here, and in a way, flowers fuel the fight: The Taliban earn hundreds of millions of dollars from the drug trade, which supplies 90 percent of the world's raw opium used for heroin. Locals rely on the work it generates. But the government wants to end poppy production. So the locals, who need the work, support insurgents who will protect it. It's a deeply ingrained Catch-22. -- In Afghanistan, Flowers Call The Shots

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. - Gideon J. Tucker

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. - Louis Brandeis

I have no use for corrupt politicians, executives, corporations, or advocates.

Salud.

That's like spiders suddenly becoming social animals.

Spiders can be social. See for example http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14094404 about groups of spiders working together to build massive webs.See also http://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10843.full for a take on some of the relevant science.

All good points, DrgnDancer. It may well be that the second broken arm procedure was necessarily more expensive, it may well be that I have two sons requiring teen circumcision. It is also a valid point that in a litigious society that doctors have a very good reason (or excuse) to err on the side of more diagnostic tests and more expensive procedures. I'm unhappy with the complications and skeptical of the justification for the surgery, but it's just a single anecdote.

I found this 2009 NPR story on how a spike in the number of hysterectomies performed in Lewiston, Maine, led to a search for environmental causes http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113571111. After looking at a number of potential toxins or environmental factors, the number of hysterectomies required suddenly fell dramatically. Then the spike resurfaced in another community. The correlation? The doctor prescribing the hysterectomies had moved his practice to the second location.

The moral of the story is not that "doctors are bad" or "lawyers are bad", but that human behaviors tend to be influenced by economics, and that no field should be considered immune from self-interest.

President BARACK OBAMA: I have to say that over the last two and a half years I have watched with bemusement, I've been puzzled, at the degree to which this thing just kept on going.We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.

INSKEEP: Even before he released the certificate, there was plenty of evidence. There was even a contemporary newspaper birth announcement from 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The evidence was overwhelming.

It is pretty hard to go back to 1961 and fake a newspaper birth announcement. The birthers are wacko nut-jobs that watch way too much Faux News. If someone says something enough times, people start to believe it no matter what the facts are.

I'm sorry, if you have definitive intelligence on where this asshat is, you go get him with the best intentions of putting him in ziptie bracelets and throwing him in the back of a helicopter. If he so much as looks in the direction a weapon, you put two hot ones each in him and his friends before he can kill anyone else. NPR reports that one of these cowards used a woman as a human shield during the course of the raid - this isn't the act of a rational person, and rational people don't put down their weapons and give up.

There's no way that guy comes out of there alive - he's responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people through his organization of terror. You think he's gonna wave a white flag and take a trip to the Hague because a SEAL team comes knocking on his door?

Sounds good until you're the one at risk of being shot by a trigger-happy psychopath under protection of the US Government. I don't think any of us are concerned about answering a nastygram about some contrived DMCA violation. We're concerned about having our homes invaded because someone thought it was a good idea to attack non-violent crimes with violent reactions in the USA.

in case you need a refresher: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=135680995

Our ancestors had a less ambiguous case of right and wrong to rally around. Here the waters are clouded by crimes many or most of us generally want to fight, but we don't agree with the methods used to fight them. It's a lot more difficult to rally around my right to leave an open access point in my house without fear of being shot by the police than it is to rally around one's right to equality or relief from a distant oppressive government.

Our wonderful, conservative-activist Supreme Court just ruled today that any company may stick a line in their EULA stating that by using their product, you forfeit the right to sue, and must instead use a private arbiter of the corporation's choice.

Not true, actually. They ruled that customers that have signed a contract with a clause to that effect are bound to it. AFAIK, there is no settled case law saying that a shrinkwrap EULA is equivalent to a valid, signed contract.

If that doesn't have you shaking in your boots our world will be overwhelmed by a legion of killer robots in approximately 48 hours — a time known as Judgment Day

These guys say judgment day is May 21.

Listen to the Planet Money podcast on NPR for an interesting story about how Brazil invented a nonexistent currency about 2 decades ago to fix its hyperinflation problem.

Yuri knew full well that he could end up like this, and still went ahead.

Take a look: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html#/president?view=race08 Then look again at the list of cities getting a shuttle. Still surprised Houston wasn't chosen? I'm not normally one to read politics into everything, but this...

I certainly agree that political payback is an ongoing problem but lets look at the locations.

Florida, Kennedy Space Center: The launch site for all US manned missions and NASA's premier tourist attraction.
Virginia, Smithsonian: The county's premier Air and Space museum.
How could shuttles not go to these locations?

Los Angeles: At least one west coast site seems necessary and the shuttle was assembled there.
New York: OK, the east cost is already represented and the central regions of the country have been left out so far. However you could argue that population density suggests the north east over the north west or the center regions. That is as plausible as politics. Now consider that New York City is the most popular tourist destination in the US. Now add that the Sea, Air and Space museum is the WW2 aircraft carrier the USS Intrepid. The Intrepid once fought along side an Enterprise, now she will carry one. I think compelling non-political arguments can be made for NYC/Intrepid.

Take a look: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html#/president?view=race08 Then look again at the list of cities getting a shuttle. Still surprised Houston wasn't chosen?

I'm not normally one to read politics into everything, but this...

Kewl story on the Lost Cosmonauts, thanks for posting.. See also this recent news blurb (and book) about the cosmonaut Vladimir Kamarov, allegedly the cosmonaut that Robert Heinlein heard about during his visit to the USSRin 1960.

Here's an actual article, LESS TWITTER MORE NEWS.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/04/07/135206725/7-4-earthquake-rattles-japan-tsunami-warning-issued

The only specific theory I've heard of how the thousands of tons of highly radioactive water got out of the containment vessel is that it got out via graphite seals in the bottom of the vessel. There are holes there for control rods and the holes are blocked with graphite seals. The seals will fail at high temperatures and melted fuel rods falling to the bottom of the vessel would provide more than enough heat to cause the seals to fail.

Jeeze Louise. On March 15, reactor 2 experienced a hydrogen explosion inside containment which may have cracked the suppression pool. The press was all over that one for a while since it contained the magic words "loss of containment". But now that an even more disastrous scenario has been proposed, they conveniently forget their earlier favorite scenario in order to make the new one seem more likely.

Right now it's impossible to determine with certainty which theory is correct. But given that we know that reactor 2's containment at the suppression pool experienced a pressure drop following a internal hydrogen explosion (which the workers heard so it definitely did happen), Occam's razor would favor the radioactive water coming from a simple crack in or around the suppression pool.

I thought I read an article a while back about a company or some researcher or someone who did non-intrusive laser scans on vinyl record albums and processed the resulting scans to re-create the sound? The intent was to record the sound without harming the physical vinyl.

A quick Google search returns an article about this as well as a "touchless" laser turntable.

Anyone else remember this?

The last news I heard there has been a stop in approving new nuclear installations there, too. As a direct result from Fukushima.

Just where do these kids get outdoors living in a city? Where can they go fishing, or hiking or hunting--like normal kids should? I'd love to see a kid carrying a tackle box and rod/reel on a bus; or how about a bow and some arrows? In the city, you stay locked in your home and play HALO. Bah.. I was raised on a steady diet of 'Go outside and play'; something parents in the large cities can't/don't say. Of course, this goes on in suburbia too; mom and dad won't make the kids go out and play.

Regardless of what 'experts' say Nature Deficit Disorder is real; I encounter it all of the time. At the very least, our 'indoor' life is causing us to get fat and lazy. And living indoors is synonymous with living in the city.

And yes, I'm a geek--and I love to hunt, fish and go outdoors and play. I actually hate video games.

Silver, not so much, but gold is money.

learn something while you are on /.

In any case, any commodity is actually more valuable than the dollar, and the dollar has been on a steady decline since the Fed was created in 1913, as well as the IRS (and the Constitution was subverted for both of those abominations to take place)

The US dollar gained 100% of value over 19 century. It lost 98% of value since 1913. If you think you know what money is, then tell me, what kind of money is that? I'll tell you what kind of money that is - that's the kind of money I do not own.

I was surprised to see the TSA's full-body screening systems didn't make the list ... until I saw the reports of how much radiation it exposes us to. I'm using data from NPR's Scientists Question Safety Of New Airport Scanners (2010-05-17) and TSA's X-ray Screening Technology Safety Reports (date unknown, cited on the TSA Blog 2011-03-12).

Note, to compare with XKCD's chart, both TSA and NPR state that a standard chest x-ray is 100 uSv rather than this XKCD's 20 uSv. NPR puts a mammogram at 700 uSv while XKCD holds it as 3000 uSv.

The stated radiation from these backscatter scanners is 0.05 uSv (TSA, reported as 0.005 mrem) to 0.2 uSv (UCSF via NPR) per usage. UCSF suggests that measuring this radiation on the skin would result in a larger value. The TSA report includes a disclaimer that they are re-testing these numbers and should have results around the end of this month. Another post here noted 0.09 uSv but had no source (reported as "0.09 Sv" because Slashdot eats the Greek letter mu).

The real danger with respect to the backscatter scanners was to the TSA workers (who had zero protection) and others who work in airports. The NPR piece also cites David Brenner, head of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research, saying that 5% of the population is especially sensitive to radiation and that "we don't really have a quick and easy test to find those individuals." Fortunately, these machines are not in use any more, though that might change if the TSA's new report doesn't increase those numbers (or it gets trumped by fearmongering on behalf of some news outlet or politician).

This wouldn't solve the problem mentioned in the article however. Again having a national power grid is an obvious solution. It's a tiny country FFS, this stuff is really basic. My opinion of Japanese engineers has lowered significantly after this debarcle.

But they do have a single national power grid. It just turns out that they have two major sections with limited capacity between them -- just like how the USA is broken into 3 major grids with limited capacity between them:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

It's not a huge engineering feat to add more capacity between grids - high capacity DC lines are quite common in the world, and with a DC line it doesn't matter what frequency is on the other end.

Of course, having a well connected grid doesn't ensure that unusual conditions can't trigger power problems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003

My opinion of Japanese engineers has lowered significantly after this debacle.

You realize, of course, that engineers don't make funding decisions? Moving the country to one frequency standard would be hugely expensive, but not a big engineering feat. Nor would increasing transmission capacity between grids.

If you want to be disappointed in engineering, then you need look no farther than the West Coast of the USA - at their two California coastal plants, one had seismic reinforcements installed backwards and one had an entire reactor vessel installed backwards. Those are mistakes that *can* be blamed on engineers - either in design, drawings, or the on-site engineers that oversaw the projects. The engineers of Fukushima designed a nuclear power plant 40 years ago that largely stayed intact after an earthquake 30 times larger than it was designed to withstand - if the generators hadn't failed, then it's likely that there would have been no problems.

It remains to be seen why the generators failed - whether due to a tsunami greater than the reactor complex was designed for, a design failure, or some hardware or system failure.

The US has mostly unconnected power grids too.
Two major and three minor grids, the grid I'm on, Alaska isn't connected to anything else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection - has more information

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

But theres a plan to connect the Eastern and Western Interconnections at Clovis NM in the next couple years.

Slashdot reported last summer that the US grid is not ready to accept "green power" sources (wind/solar) and redistribute to consumers. The Slashdot story stated that wind energy created surges (gusts?) on the grid, especially when the wind was blowing too hard. The grid was designed for point source generation, not distributed generation.

Luckily, I see this story is still online. Check the interactive graphic of the US grid.

Isn't the fact that it's "good, free, and open" the exact reasons the publishers wouldn't use it? It kinda flies in the face of them being tyrannical mongrels controlling the media distribution if customers can actually meaningfully use it.

From the publisher's point of view, MP3 is as free and open as FLAC is. That's why a lot of them do sell FLAC. Like the Beatles (before they were even in the Apple store), the Rolling Stones and even Metallica.

Really? I did not know the aluminium was that thin on the MacBook Air. Good to know.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=107010828

I wonder how much of the power capacity issues is due to Japan using a combination of 50Hz and 60Hz power preventing them from easily sending power between the two systems?

We have essentially 3 separate grids in the US, roughly East, West, and Texas. (Most of Texas is pretty much on its own.) Plus we have some long-distance high-voltage DC runs, both from Canada and up one down through Central California. NPR has a nice graphic, but in Flash: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

The 50/60 Hz 100/90v division line in Japan dates to the year 1600 and the battle of Seki-ga-hara

Jeez. Just look at this journalist. He reports an explosion at a power plant, and rushes to assure his audience that it wasn't a nuclear blast. I'm just speechless. It is utterly and completely impossible for a nuclear power plant to explode like a nuclear bomb, but this guy evidently has no idea. "NPR's Jon Hamilton tells us was NOT a nuclear explosion." Thanks, moron. Nuclear plant trouble is scary enough without intentionally lying to the public.

Mod parent up -- where's an insightful tag when you need it? The corn lobby (pops) will never allow this to take root (pun intended), and the US government will bend over backwards (or for that manner, in any other direction they're told) to appease them.

Totally. I'm sick of atheists and their "logic" and "rationality". They're clearly worse than people blowing themselves up in the name of religion.

You mean the likes of the secular Marxist Tamil TIgers?

Tamil Tigers: Suicide Bombing Innovators

Prof. PAPE: No. Actually, the Tamil Tigers are a purely secular suicide terrorist group. They're not a group that most of the listeners will have heard too much about because even though they're actually the world leader in suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003, carrying out more suicide attacks than Hamas or Islamic Jihad, they're not attacking us and they're not attacking our allies.

And so, even though they've done really quite tremendously spectacular suicide attacks - for instance, in 1993, it's the Tamil Tigers who assassinated - with the suicide assassination a sitting president, Premadasa, a president of Sri Lanka. That's the only time that a suicide attack has actually assassinated a sitting president.

And then just a few years before that, Rajiv Gandhi, when he was running for prime minister in 1991, a Tamil suicide attacker, this time a woman by the name of Dhanu assassinated him. And so, despite the fact there have been these spectacular attacks, they have been occurring not against us or against our allies, and so many folks won't really have been as familiar with them.

But they are not religious. They're not Islamic. They're a Hindu group. They're a Marxist group. They're actually anti-religious. They are building the concept of martyrdom around a secular idea of individuals essentially altruistically sacrificing for the good of the local community.

The militantly atheist communists were, and are, one of the most dangerous threats to humanity.

The Black Book of Communism

I'm not so sure of that. I've read a lot of the complaints that purport to come from researchers "in the field", and while they are in fact from researchers and even from researchers in related fields, they usually aren't really from researchers in the field. More to the point, though (since oncologists are reasonably allowed to have opinions about radiation devices), they seem to be written by researchers who either are ignorant of the facts or intentionally ignore the facts

Then how about 4 UCSF professors are are: an imaging expert and professor of biochemistry and biophysics, a world renown cancer expert, and x-ray crytrallographers and imaging experts? Surely one of those guys knows a thing or two about x-ray imaging and have a valid reason for concern?

http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf

Those are some pretty big if's:

1. The safety of the machines hasn't been proven, they haven't been out long enough to compile long term statistics on their safety to the public and to the people running the scanners. Xrays are ionizing radiation, and even if they don't penetrate the skin I can't imagine that messing around with skin cell DNA molecules is healthy for anyone and there are some real questions about the effects of the machines. What safeguards are in the machine to monitor X-ray levels and prevent overdosing? Everyone here knows that even if there are safeguards in place, they are not foolproof.

2. The security of the scanners is quite another unknown - who will be viewing the images? What precautions are taking to protect the privacy of the virtually naked pictures of an unsuspecting public?

And the biggest "if": Have the machines proven to be effective? Some researchers have already found trivial ways to bypass the scanners (hiding contraband in a body cavity is the obvious hole (no pun intended), but they also found that you can tape high explosives to your body to conceal it. And a typical bus station or stadium has more security holes than an airport (which have already been shown to have a porous perimeter despite the security screenings), so why should we think that scanning the public will enhance security at all?

Al-Qaida in Yemen. Actually, how the leaked cables can aid the enemy has been documented by NPR. In a Morning Edition story from Dec 02, 2010, NPR revealed that Al-Qaida in Yemen could use the cables as a recruiting tool in the rural areas of Yemen. In good journalistic style, NPR talks about what could happen rather than what has happened, presumably because interviewing someone in Al-Qaida and getting them to admit this would be very difficult. Nonetheless, it is easy to see how this would aid the enemy.

WikiLeaks Yemen Cables Could Embolden Al-Qaida

Don't worry. The Supreme Court will be back to their old tricks again in Al Kidd v Ashcroft. They may throw us a bone once in a while, but don't think for a second that they are on our side.