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They are investing in renewables, and also have 5.6 GWe of nuclear under construction.

At least they are using their oil profits to build out carbon-free energy infrastructure. What others do with purchased oil is not their responsibility. Don't like that it is being burned? Support cheaper forms of energy, like nuclear. Advanced reactors producing high temperature heat will also enable economical synthetic fuels as well as desalination.

If you are only advocating renewables and not nuclear, you are a part of the problem.

I call bullshit on the "two years", it was only four months, during which Obamacare was passed. See http://www.ohio.com/blogs/mass... if you question the time the Democrats had the 60 votes necessary to stop a filibuster.

Oops, I stand corrected! The news reports on the HALE-D in the few days after the crash landing show pictures of it in the treetops, deflated and definitely un-burned... but apparently two days after it crashed, it was burned by "a fire of unknown origin."
http://www.ohio.com/news/top-stories/lockheed-martin-s-prototype-airship-burns-1.227688
According to the dates in the article it was two days after the crash, not the day after, and it's not clear that it had anything to do with the solar panels (although I'd say that an electrical short circuit would be a good guess)

Bullshit. There was a case here locally where a farm that had had fine drinking water for almost 200 years suddenly had flammable water with Benzene levels 5-10x the allowable limit. They have water reports from as little as 2 years before the fracking began because they were contemplating selling the farm (they ended up donating most of the land to the county for a park and taking a 100 year tax abatement on the homestead instead, which is how the land ended up being fracked to begin with, talk about no good deed going unpunished). You can check out the story yourself if you think I'm some fringe lunatic.

Bullshit. Oh, and you forgot Mitt Romney's actions-that-speak-louder-than-lies position on coal plants in your rush to make this a Democrat-only political football.

Coal is taking a hammering because they compete in exactly the same areas a natural gas. Natural Gas is at an all-time low in price and an all-time high in availability.

Two independent financial firms say the Marcellus isnâ(TM)t just the biggest natural gas field in the country â" itâ(TM)s the cheapest place for energy companies to drill.

The Marcellus could contain "almost half of the current proven natural gas reserves in the U.S," a report from Standard & Poorâ(TM)s issued last week said.

http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/reports-marcellus-shale-reserves-larger-and-cheaper-to-develop-1.344086

Geology.com has reports of super-sized fields that are turning up there.

Output from the Marcellus - a rich seam of gas-bearing rock that straddles Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia - has jumped nearly ten fold since 2009, flooding pipelines and playing a central role in pushing futures prices to ten-year lows earlier this year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/15/us-energy-natgas-marcellus-idUSBRE89E12B20121015

Local radio up in the Eastern West Virginia Panhandle has run stories about the switch from coal to natgas and the jobs issue. It starts with people who've been in the coal business for generations complaining about losing jobs -- then finishes with THOSE SAME PEOPLE saying they moved over to natgas jobs that PAY MORE and ARE SAFER. They just had an emotional tie to the coal, which has employed their families for generations which took some getting over.

People may bitch about fracking, but it doesn't hold a candle to the environmental damage caused by mountaintop removal and coal mining. Coal mining is also one of the single most dangerous jobs in the country.

The coal isn't going anywhere. It'll still be there if we ever need it. But pure economics is driving the industry to natural gas and coal is the primary loser -- and rightfully so. It is more expensive to produce, more dangerous to both the producers (miners) and end users (people who breathe), more difficult to transport in quantity (can't use pipelines), cleaner (natgas doesn't leave coal dust messes in homes that use it for heat) and all-around substandard to natural gas.

This is capitalism and the free market at work, baby. Or are you one of those planned-economy socialists longing for the good-old days of Marx, Lenin and Mao?

Given that this is a national election, it's politic to pander to the undecided voters, not the base. Didn't you get the memo?

The alternate theory is that the election turns on getting your base to show up and vote while actively discouraging the other guy's base from voting. So in that kind of environment, you'd pander to the frothing morons in your party, and disenfranchise the other party's voters by:
- passing laws requiring them to travel hundreds of miles and pay a fee to get an ID needed to vote,
- putting up billboards in neighborhoods that tend to vote for the other guy reminding them that attempted voter fraud will result in 3 years of jail time, or
- organizing groups of volunteers to stand around the precincts where these voters (who all seem to be a particular color, for some reason) are likely to be and challenge anyone they think is fraudulent.

Of course, to actually do any of those things would be un-American, so I'm sure no major political group would do that.

Here are a few citations:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php
http://politics.ohio.com/2010/10/osu-study-suggests-misinformation-and-fox-news-are-linked/
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/08/19/4431138-first-thoughts-obamas-good-bad-news

I know I read one a few years ago that I couldn't seem to find from a quick Googling...anyway, the trend is significant and has been going on for quite some time.

Message deletion consisted of a little "hunting accident" on the family ranch.

Meh. Pigeons or Planes, no difference...
  http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/36482529.html

A federal judge in Ohio recently ruled that speeding in a school zone is civil, not criminal, in nature. Therefore, car owners aren't entitled to constitutional protection that comes from being charged with a crime.

http://www.ohio.com/news/35850589.html

Can we expect anyone who followed a warrantless wiretap from the Bush administration to also be fired then? I mean, they violated our privacy as well.

As far as is known, they have only listened on some international calls. With the vast majority of Americans never calling into the suspicious hot-spots, their privacy was never threatened. But very little is known — one side wants things to be kept secret, understandably, and the other does not care to separate known facts from the darkest what-if-suspicions...

Who should be demanding justice, is Joe the Plumber whose records (and not just the measly phone-calls, but serious things) were improperly accessed as a result of his sudden fame. Even if one buys the bureaucrat's line, that the searches were justified by the "what if he owes child support?" considerations, there is absolutely no justification for sharing the dirt with newspapers.

(While searching for the links, I found the following gem: "He is also not registered to operate as a plumber in Ohio, which means he's not a plumber." Wow... I must not be a software engineer, and Picasso must not have been an artist... Absolutely not...)

If it was only the homeless, then fine. But you have Acorn all over the place paying people to vote with the only requirement to vote being your name and last 4 digits of your social.
Add to that the top Ohio elections official who doesn't want to verify the identity of new voters. http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/31101144.html
You end up with dead people voting and all kinds of fraud.
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/17859950/detail.html?rss=nn5&psp=news

The green and libertarian parties requested and then paid for a recount in Ohio. There have been a couple of convictions so far stemming from this: http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/1 6536269.htm. Now, since the recount was done fraudulently, are not these parties owed a refund?

If the recount was fraudulent, what about the original vote? Why the attempted cover-up? This news http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/20 07/2553 gives greater weight to the idea the election was stolen. If the greens and libertarians don't get a refund, at least I hope they'll get a little credit if this turns out to be proven. To me, democrats have put up weak candidates in the last two elections, Gore's Rose Garden speech basically shut out any competition after the impeachment but he wasn't ready to run. Kerry's reporting for duty speech set the tone for his campaign and Bush Lite was a brand that was already taken. Still, it may be some comfort to know that America chose not to elect Bush even with this poor alternative if, as now seems likely, the evidence comes out clearly that theft occured.

Your data on SUV sales is utterly incorrect. The data (with links):

Ford SUV sales lead to loss: "7/21/2006 - Ford Motor Co. reported an unexpected quarterly loss Thursday as sales of sport-utility vehicles plunged amid rising gasoline prices. The loss threatened Chief Executive Officer William Clay Ford Jr.'s plan to revive the No. 2 U.S. automaker."

Chrysler has slower truck and SUV sales: "9/18/2006 - DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group said at the weekend it could lose about $US1.27 billion this year, a much deeper loss than it forecast in July because of mounting inventory and slower truck and SUV sales."

German premium car makers hit by slump in SUV sales: "9/13/2006 - Germany's premium car makers are feeling the pinch as consumers in the United States, the world's biggest car market, are turning their backs on fuel-guzzling SUVs."

Chrysler slashes production of trucks, SUVs: "9/19/2006 - In the meantime, the company plans to significantly scale back on truck and SUV output due to a decline in sales of such vehicles. Trucks and SUVs, which historically represent about three-quarters of Chrysler's volume and return generous profits, have been under pressure in the U.S. due to high gasoline prices, [DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter] Zetsche said."

That doesn't surprise me quite as much as you might think. NYC is actually a bit of an exception. They have some of the best tap water in the country, because it all comes down from tightly-controlled reservoirs in the Catskills, via a large aqueduct. (Maybe more than one, these days.) I'm not sure whether or not it's chlorinated and if so how much, but I can personally attest that it's some of the best-tasting municipal water around. Perhaps the volume and headend quality is high enough that they don't have to chlorinate like other places out in the 'burbs do.

It's no secret that some bottled waters are really nothing but "tap water," either before a lot of junk is added into it, or after it's been run through some filtering to take most of it back out. I'm pretty sure Dasani falls into this category.

I can only assume there are ways that municipalities can meet water quality requirements, and that there are ways that don't involve chlorine. But I have been to quite a few places (including where I live right now) where you can literally smell the chlorine by putting your nose a few inches from the top of a glass, or when you turn on a shower or large faucet. In other places I've lived, this hasn't been true. (Apparently the Santa Clara Valley in CA is heavily chlorinated as well, see this article. And Akron, OH's water sounds downright disgusting.)

It would be interesting to see how much (in ppm) chlorine is in various municipal water supplies, and what the best and worst ones are in taste tests. I know I'll never move to another house/apartment without tasting the water first, at the very least so as to avoid any nasty surprises later. About the only good thing I can say about chlorine is that if you leave a pitcher of water out for a few hours, it dissipates. (Activated charcoal filters also work.)

What's also interesting to note is how long negative public perception of a particular water source lingers. The article on Santa Clara talks about negative perceptions as a result of contamination that occured in the 80s, and I suspect that there will be people in Akron drinking bottled water long after they remedy whatever the problem is with their system. So even if every place in the country had great-tasting tap water, it would take a long time for people to be willing to switch back. And it only takes one bad experience with tap water to make people drink something else, even if it costs more.

Yeah, Uniontown PD takes bad behavior in others very seriously. They're a little fuzzy on their own behavior, though. They were recently fined $400,000 for an astonishing string of events, including

[Police Chief] Wolf swore at [their only female officer] in public, including one incident Feb. 27 in which he pulled into a gas station in a ``sweat suit and slippers, (and) began to scream profanities at [the officer] while spitting in her face.''

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/2005/12/17/news/13429 761.htm

Actually the sales tax rate in Summit county is 6 1/4 percent.

However, It may soon rise to 6 3/4 percent.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/13440622.htm (annoying registration required)

I don't know what you think No Child Left Behind actually does,... but there were virtually no critics of the law until the run-up to this last election.

Granted, some portions of the law might do good things, or at least attempt to do good things. Additional testing isn't one of them. This is yet another issue that has been needlessly federalized. The Federal Government really has no business telling my local school district how to operate itself. School boards exist because local control works best: if there are actually teachers or administrators who are underperforming, the local school board can take care of the problem.

At any rate, mark my words: Politicians want to kill public education. In my state, the state legislators have been at it for well over a few decades by underfunding the system so badly it'll collapse and they get to look like heroes "saving the taxpayers money" by eliminating the system altogether. Now the Federal government is trying to privatize the whole damn system by undermining public confidence in the system. ("Your child's school isn't meeting [our unrealistic] AYP!") But does the Federal Government's desire to privatize education surprise you considering BushCo wants to privatize everything else?

Basically, it comes down the rich lining their pockets at our expense. And guess what? (Get ready for this one...) Privatized schools don't actually work! Read this great editorial:

The buzzword throughout public education is accountability, the state's primary and secondary schools rigorously scrutinized on how much they spend and how well students score. In that kind of atmosphere, the rapid growth of charter schools is all the more remarkable. Charter schools cost the state more and more money, yet they produce test scores no better than public schools.

...

Once the profit motive was introduced to education, the obvious should have been anticipated. To follow charter schools means following the money.

Should it be a surprise that online charter schools, with drastically lower overhead costs, now enroll about one-fourth of all charter-school children? Or that the number of special education students in charter schools, bringing in more state money per pupil, has increased?

I don't know what you think No Child Left Behind actually does,... but there were virtually no critics of the law until the run-up to this last election.

Granted, some portions of the law might do good things, or at least attempt to do good things. Additional testing isn't one of them. This is yet another issue that has been needlessly federalized. The Federal Government really has no business telling my local school district how to operate itself. School boards exist because local control works best: if there are actually teachers or administrators who are underperforming, the local school board can take care of the problem.

At any rate, mark my words: Politicians want to kill public education. In my state, the state legislators have been at it for well over a few decades by underfunding the system so badly it'll collapse and they get to look like heroes "saving the taxpayers money" by eliminating the system altogether. Now the Federal government is trying to privatize the whole damn system by undermining public confidence in the system. ("Your child's school isn't meeting [our unrealistic] AYP!") But does the Federal Government's desire to privatize education surprise you considering BushCo wants to privatize everything else?

Basically, it comes down the rich lining their pockets at our expense. And guess what? (Get ready for this one...) Privatized schools don't actually work! Read this great editorial:

The buzzword throughout public education is accountability, the state's primary and secondary schools rigorously scrutinized on how much they spend and how well students score. In that kind of atmosphere, the rapid growth of charter schools is all the more remarkable. Charter schools cost the state more and more money, yet they produce test scores no better than public schools.

...

Once the profit motive was introduced to education, the obvious should have been anticipated. To follow charter schools means following the money.

Should it be a surprise that online charter schools, with drastically lower overhead costs, now enroll about one-fourth of all charter-school children? Or that the number of special education students in charter schools, bringing in more state money per pupil, has increased?

Given that there will never be another time in human history when no one has a gun, would you rather that only the people most likely to shoot you with their gun were able to carry?

My immediate family?

More seriously, with gun control, I can see merits on both sides of the arguement. Gun control legislation will never remove all of the guns from the violent criminals on the streets. On the other hand, this doesn't mean that no regulation should be attempted, as regulation may at least make it more difficult for criminals to obtain guns. On the gripping hand, any such regulation should bear in mind the US tradition (enshrined in the 2nd and 10th Amendments) of maintain final authority and the means to enforce it in the hands of the American people, and consider the balance the social gain of regulation with the social harm of erosion of this authority.

Getting back to the original topic, this proposed legislation appears far stupider than most gun control proposals. With most gun control laws it's clear that they will reduce the number of guns in criminal circulation over time. With this law, it's not clear that it will have any impact on those who commit E-bay fraud, and may be prohibitively inconvenient for the bulk of ordinary sellers.

We have the worst governor in the country. Gray Davis has nothing on Bob Taft.

Just recently he's imposed a new tax that will require everyone to pay to use state parks. As taxpayers, aren't they our parks to begin with? He wants to take money away from schools that are already some of the worst in the country. The largest county in the state is down to one of the smallest sheriff departments due to cuts. Yet he spent $2 million on a bicentennial party?

He's got two years left to pulverize the economy and the rest of the taxpayers.

The issue of election integrity is bigger than the Kerry Bush race. For the first time in the history of this democracy, we are trusting electronic tabulating machines to count votes in a presidential race. Machines which reknown computer scientists and cryptologists have proven to be insecure and untrustworthy.

In addition to being insecure and untrustworthy these machines left no "paper trail", no way of verifying the machine's count in a recount. When you have no paper trail, the only tool to investigate the integrity of a machine count is that of statistics, as Berkeley researchers were forced to rely upon when they concluded that voting irregularities lead them to believe 260,000 votes were invalidly awarded to Bush. In fact when 4,258 votes were awarded by a Diebold machine to Bush in Franklin County, Ohio we only knew that result had to be wrong because only 638 voters had casted ballots. Unfortunately this wasn't an isolated event as Diebold has stirred a string of such voting irregularities. According to Bob Fitrakis:

Due to computer flaws and vote shifting, there were numerous reports across Ohio of extremely troublesome electronic errors during the voting process and in the counting. In Youngstown, there were more than two-dozen Election Day reports of machines that switched or shifted on-screen displays of a vote for Kerry to a vote for Bush. In Cleveland, there were three precincts in which minor third-party candidates received 86, 92 and 98 percent of the vote respectively, an outcome completely out of synch with the rest of the state (a similar thing occurred during the contested election in Florida, 2000). This class of error points to more than machine malfunction, suggesting instead that votes are being electronically shifted from one candidate to another in the voting and counting stage.

All reported errors favored Bush over Kerry.

Which leads us to question the integrity of the election especially when the exit polls were so clearly in favor of Kerry.

The CEO of Diebold has made no attempt to hide his support for Bush. Ironically, he has publically stated that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year". Later he stated it was a mistake to have said that, he meant it as an American, not as the CEO of a corporation that was contracted to count votes in Ohio. The CEO however isn't the only one to be painted with a big brush of suspicious, as at least five convicted felons secured management positions in his company. One of which served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."

In my response I have analyzed the integrity of the Ohio election through the prisim of electronic voting, others have made other arguments regarding why they think an investigation is warranted as I can assure you the problems with Diebold is not limited to Ohio nor is electronic voting the only "irregularity" in Ohio [1] [2]

Oops http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/10528536.htm

There are news bites coming out about Firefox everywhere you could possibly imagine.

Thanks, but we've already heard about Google News.

Genovese faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000

Something is wrong here yesterday a Judge in Ohio sentenced someone to 5 years in prison after he was convicted of killing two twins while driving drunk.

And this guy gets 10 years(max)?

So - sourcecode is worth more than someone's life?

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/10150180.htm

(registration required for above link)

With 1,000 or more channels, you'd think they can find room to put my damn Trio back on?

"Sorry to interrupt you, Alex, but the contestant was actually correct!"

In all seriousness, though, your very cropped quote is quite disingenuous, given the important omission of the following:

Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives, raising the specter of possible civil rights violations that they said took place in Florida and elsewhere in the 2000 election, wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July, asking him to send observers.

Furthermore, I see no political slander anywhere, neither in the grandparent post nor in the article itself. I assume what you must be talking about would be this:

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California agreed.

"This represents a step in the right direction toward ensuring that this year's elections are fair and transparent," she said.

"I am pleased that the State Department responded by acting on this need for international monitors. We sincerely hope that the presence of the monitors will make certain that every person's voice is heard, every person's vote is counted."

If we as a nation truly have nothing to hide, this will be a nice vindication of our way of doing things. On the other hand, if there are real issues, best to find them and deal with them.

The head of a company [Diebold] vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

That's a link to the whole story. Or, if you prefer, this one has that quote in it as well. I think the Flamebait rating of the parent was a little harsh. There are lots of reasons to be suspicious of e-voting machines, this one just happens to be a glaring one. (IMHO) This would also serve as proof of sorts that the "general public" that was interviewed for this study probably didn't read this article (and probably doesn't read nearly as many articles about this type of issue as /. people do).

If the operators at TMI had known about the Davis-Besse incident they might have recognized the situation and let the plant take care of itself.

Which Davis-Besse incident are you referring to? The stuck valve incident? The corrosion incident? Or the Slammer incident? Is there a lemon law for nuclear reactors? How about for energy companies?

:w

"Wonder how much it would cost to just fix the problems?"

The problem is that Americans will dump Bush. To fix the election, $500K:m is just soft money on top of the $180M Bush raised to deliver the rest of the electoral college, regardless of the will of the people.

What would you consider to be fair compensation then? Lawyers in class action suits generally don't get the same percentage that lawyers in regular civil suits get. You can find information on the subject here.

That's not entirely true - otherwise we wouldn't have any use for ECC or parity. Computers can make "mistakes" in as much as data can be corrupted by physical processes that having nothing to do with the intended or programmed operation.

Technicalities aside, none of the election problems are about counting accuracy, neither human, nor mechanical, nor electronic. That's not the point. All measurements have an associated accuracy. It's how we deal with it that counts. If the margin of the election is of a size that given the error rate of the system there's a "reasonable" probability that the outcome is in error (1 sigma, 13% probability of error, say, given the error rate of the technology used) then a run-off election should be automatic, even if there's only two candidates in both elections. No matter what the voting technology. A 5% threashold would be statistically supportable.

All sampling systems have a margin of error. It's a 9th grade science mistake to get an F for submitting a graph of plant growth or whatever without any error bars. We seem to suffer from cognitive dissonance in refusing to admit there's an inescapable margin of error, and thereby not accommodating for it.

In 2000, FL and several other states should have held run-off elections between W and G after the first election found them at a "statistical tie". It's not clear which way it would have gone after that, but whoever thereby won would actually have been a democratically elected president, rather than one technically appointed by a divisive judicial coup.

Anyway, the critical failure regarding DREs is the lack of recognition that they are fallible. How do we deal with critical systems that might fail? We create an audit trail so if something goes wrong, we have a chance of undoing the error, or at least figuring out what failed and fixing it, and at the very least knowing that something did in fact go wrong so we can try again.

The systems shipped by Diebold and ESS etc are both intrinsically fallible and intrinsically inauditable, which is intolerable. Further, if a voter has reason to doubt the impartiality of a company that has, for example, pledged to deliver it's electoral votes to the republican in the next election to be run on it's own vote counting equipment, they might have some reason to doubt the veracity of the black-box tallying process and that undermines the authority of democracy. It is important, therefore, even if it were proven technically unnecessary, to provide voters with the familiar indicator of fairness provided by a human-readable, authoritative, tangible ballot.

We've gone through a lot of effort convincing ourselves, and by force much of the world, that having a brainwashed electorate choose one or the other corporate flack as titular head of the country is the best and fairest form of government on the planet (and it may well be, alas); at the very least we can apply basic 9th grade science to finding out whether tweedle dee or tweedle dum won the popularity contest.

As an investor with a well diversified portfolio, bad news about Microsoft doesn't bother me. I get dividends from Microsoft ...

That is a curious statement considering that Microsoft has only paid 2 dividends in its history.

Given that Microsoft has been, and still seems to be, very reticent to pay dividends, I would think that anything that affects stock price would be the primary interest of its investors. If Microsoft loses its overseas growth markets, a large cash buffer will only serve to stave off the reaper.

While I agree that Microsoft should not be underestimated, industry dominating companies have blown it before and, as nothing last forever, it is only a matter before Microsoft follows in their footsteps. Traditionally, it has been anti-trust actions that have brought down the mightiest (Standard Oil, AT&T) but, in the current pro-corporate political climate, this time the (beginning of the) end may come from other quarters.

Is there any way to independently validate the system, in a way that prevents tampering on election day? Please don't forget that Diebold's CEO is the one whose been shmoozing with the Republican aristocracy at $1000 / plate dinners and promised that his company was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year".

Bill Joy does not work for Sun anymore too. :)

now let's talk conspiracy theories

Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., told Republicans in an Aug. 14 fund-raising letter that he is ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

Another story from The Guardian here ...And if your interested in another or Darpa's projects which might fall under the YRO category: here

The armed response units are what I was referring to... also, are you certain that some supervisors are not carrying weapons in their vehicles? I do recall reading that... I'll try to get you a reference.

It does seem, however, that some units are starting to carry firearms on patrol as late as last year.

Sign of the times.

Oh, for crying out loud. Have you read anything about Nancy "N.K." Stouffer's books or, for that matter, anything having to do with how plagiarism is defined by law? To extend your analogy, if the "Jawas" of your example were a race of godlike beings who wore skimpy togas and led exemplary lives of self-actualization, rather than furtive cloaked second-hand droid dealers, and that "jawa" has been part of the English language for centuries... that would kind of take the wind out of your sails, wouldn't it? At any rate, plagiarism consists of more than a few similar names and commonly-used themes; you have to show that the bulk of the later work--plot, dialogue, descriptions of characters and scenes, etc.--is lifted verbatim from the earlier work, and not even Stouffer herself is claiming that. Even her lawyer has dropped her.Don't you think that it's high time you dropped this, as well?

I trust that not all American ex-servicemen still believe:

"After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 brought the US into World War II,
(...)"

or rather, if they do, then I hope that other Americans can look beyond this myth. You have to go back another hundred years to find the first angry shot fired between the two nations, but more about that later.

The recent release of "'Pearl Harbour' as approved by the US Military" alienated non-US audiences (the Limeys hated it!), and media outlets reported on the relationship between Hollywood and the military.

Even John Wayne knew Uncle Sam had played a few hands before December - or have you forgotten his performance in Flying Tigers?

The following is from p. 93 of "Higher than Heaven, Japan, war, and everything", by Barrel & Tanaka (1995 Private Guy International):

-----
Up the Tigers
The Flying Tigers started arriving in China in mid-1938 and took part in the battle of Hankow. They were strictly mercenaries paid by results: a monthly wage of $US600 and a bonus of $US500 every time they downed a Japanese plane. Even though the USA wasn't fighting Japan yet, in April 1941 President Roosevelt signed an order which allowed regular US servicemen to resign and join the Tigers. The P-40 Tomahawks were dubbed 'Tigers' by the media, because they each had a double row of shark's teeth painted on their nose.
(Former aerial circus star Lt.Col. Claire) Chennault's first serious deployment was in the battle for Burma where he devised a special 'tag' technique to allow the somewhat obsolete planes to fly in pairs and protect each other while dealing with the faster Japanese aircraft. In 1942 the Tigers grew to become the USAAF's Fourteenth Air Force.
-----

SVG veterans themselves proudly declare their involvement, and ten years ago the US Government recognised them as having been on "active duty" from December 1941 to July 1942, and as a result were eligible for veterans' benefits.

Now go back a hundred years to July 1853 to find the US Navy and Commodore Perry, with full 'discretionary powers' from President Fillmore, anchoring his 'black ships' (or 'Kuro fune', a term coined for fear of any threat from outside) for a few days in Tokyo Bay, then marching 300 armed sailors ashore to drive the point home.

What did the US want? To open shipping routes, and for whalers and other merchant vessels to stop and refuel. Ironically, it was American whale hunters who developed the local Japanese appetite for whales into a national taste - now defended as an ancient cultural rite that can't be disturbed.

-----
Perry's Pacific ideas and adventures were savoured with enthusiasm by American admirals and generals. The Japanese also remembered Perry's offensive attitude. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku described his attach on Hawaii's Pearl Harbour in December 1941 as the 'return of Perry's visit'. When the Japanese signed the surrender on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, the US flag that was displayed was the one that flapped on the stern of Perry's steam frigate the USS Mississippi.
-----
(viz., p37)

Some good examples here of the adage 'you reap what you sow'. I wonder what the two seeds that were sown in August 1945 could grow into, with the proper attention.

(Australian Coward)

At least the digitaldiva! story. Here is another case just like etoy vs. etoys, where two parties are doing an entirely different thing, and one of them can't stand it and sues over trademark.

Of course it was an evil frivolous lawsuit back when a "performance art" group was being threatened but if it's someone in the employ of the evil empire I guess it's a different story, regardless of how usefulupset that Stacy doesn't present herself as a know-it all and that's what this really is all about.


Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

Is this a bad thing? I don't know. The Mellon Institute was involved in the development of many consumer products, including cornflakes and innerspring mattresses, as well as the GR-S synthetic rubber formula that helped win World War II.