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You mean this dispute in which the WTO ultimately ruled in favor of the US?

It doesn't make the news over there apparently, and why would it if it doesn't involve USA companies?
The largest fine was given only a couple of months ago to elevator companies for setting up price policies and dividing contracts amoung themselves. 992 million fine.
See http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/02/euro pean-commission-sets-record.php

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/04/wto- rules-for-us-in-canada-softwood.php
Googled for this out of interest.
Do you have a more recent story? Because this one from last year contradicts you.

The University of Pittsburgh has a site license for Vista but they won't release it to students, faculty or staff until they can work compatibility problems with networks, vpn and common third party apps.

Nice try, but that website is not reading all of the law as it should be read:

"Bush's margin of victory in Florida is slim enough to trigger an automatic recount under 102.141(4) of the Florida Election Code"

First of all, 102.141(4) deals with when the ballots should be turned over to the state election board. They meant 102.141(6) which deals with automatic recounts. However, this entire law only applies to County Canvassing Boards, and Gore won Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties by a wide margin, not the less than 1/2 of 1% that is required by that law, so the point here is moot. The ballots had to be transfered to the state level and the recount demanded from there:

"The Elections Canvassing Commission is the board responsible for ordering federal, state, and multicounty recounts."

This can not be done until all counties have submitted their formal vote totals.

The second part (the one you site) clearly states that Al Gore's demand for manual recounts was out of order. He did not wait for two recounts, and further, he is not a member of the board responsible for the results. (Emphasis in below text is mine -- ellipsis remove text relevant to judge retention and ballot measures -- full text available on here.)

"If the second set of unofficial returns pursuant to s. 102.141 indicates that a candidate for any office was defeated or eliminated by one-quarter of a percent or less of the votes cast for such office...the board responsible for certifying the results of the vote on such race...shall order a manual recount of the overvotes and undervotes cast in the entire geographic jurisdiction of such office.... A manual recount may not be ordered, however, if the number of overvotes, undervotes, and provisional ballots is fewer than the number of votes needed to change the outcome of the election."

Again -- when we apply this law at the county level -- in none of Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, or Volusia counties was there enough under, over, or provisional votes to overturn the outcome of the election, as Gore had won all of those counties handily. None of these counties should have recounted. His "request" was, therefore, out-of-order and illegal. He is not even granted the right to make such a request under the law.

However, had we applied this law at the state level -- had the vote counts been passed to the state level -- this statute would have immediately compelled a state-wide ("...in the entire geographic jurisdiction of such office...") recount of all the votes. Gore blocked this by focusing on five counties and preventing them from sending formal counts to the state of Florida Election Canvassing Committee.

Finally, the statute 102.112 sets forth a clear and unmutable deadline for counties to report results to the state. Had the counties reported those results to the Elections Canvassing Commission, it would have triggered an automatic state-wide recount. Gore, Valucia county, and Palm Beach county specifically blocked this, basically by taking the Secretary of State to court and claiming that the law, as written, was illegal. They lose the case.

The Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, under 102.112(3), is specifically instructed to ignore late returns, and she indicates she will comply with the law as written. This is when the FSC steps in and prohibits her from certifying the election. Thus blocking the automatic triggering of the state-wide recount.

At the same time, Gore and the Florida Democratic party sue to ensure that 16,000 plus military ballots are invalidated and 16,000 men and women serving in harm's way are disenfranchised because they didn't get a postmark on their ballot, knowing full well that most APO's do not postmark mail.

Finally the FSC sets November 26th as the new deadline for certification. Palm-Beach county says that they can't b

And if you want to be technical about it, the recount in Florida was not stopped illegally, it was started illegally

Hmm, not according to this.
November 9: Manual recounts are requested by or on behalf of the Gore campaign under 102.166 in Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Volusia counties.

But why let the facts obscure the truthiness of your assertions?

I went to Turkey several times and indeed have Turkish friends. There are certain things you have to understand:

a) As a tourist you will not be directed to the reality of Turkey and even if you travel alone, which is very easy and not a problem at all, you will most likely pick places that are developed. The majority of the country however lives in poverty. I have traveled in places that people are desperate, very poor and almost totally uneducated. By going to Istanbul, Izmir or lets say super-touristic Antalya you do not see the majority but the minority. It used to be much much worse though a decade ago, so I tend to be optimistic.

b) The Turkish people are raised and taught to pay respect to their ancestors and there should be no problem with that, most countries do the same. History, when interpreted is like a coin, it depends on which side you want to look at. The problem I always had with this when talking to Turkish friends is that they are also very suppressed, most that voice a different opinion and exercise criticism are subject to penalties according to state law. You may look at people like Orhan Pamuk http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/jurist_search.php?q=pam uk, who if he was not a Nobel prize winner and less famous would be thrown in jail.

c) Turks are so biased by the state propaganda that they refuse to see alternative views in topics like the "Kurdish problem", the various pending issues with Greece and Cyprus, the Armenian Genocide and others. I had specifically two conversations with Turks, who apparently are friends, on these topics and in both cases I was refused to make an elaborate discussion, given that I have different opinion from those the Turkish state advocates. Since then, I found out that these topics are taboos and it is better to avoid bringing them up if you are not fancy to pick a verbal fight.

d) Women in any other places of Turkey, but the big cities that are rather modernized, will mostly look to the ground never in the eye. They are usually accompanied by other family members and in general follow all older traditional customs that propose suppression than freedom. You cannot regard a state as democratic, or of exercising free speech when people at the level of the family are not. Family is the unit of democracy, if there is failure there, it will propagate to society as a whole.

It is not the fault of the Turkish people, it is largely the state's responsibility to educate properly and modernize their people to come up to the standards of the rest of the western world. Just like the Germans recognized their atrocities and had the nerve to publicly admit it and are ashamed about their grandpa's, the Turkish state must do the same. To do so, the military has to pick their fingers out of politics, it is no longer possible to exercise the diplomacy the way the Ottoman empire did with fire and steel.

Good reference! Here's the case you're referring to: Sherwood v. Walker, Michigan 1887. The lesson here was that if there is a "mistake of fact" concerning what it is that's being sold, then there is no real agreement on the deal, hence the contract isn't binding. I think the general rule is that taking advantage of the other side's ignorance or mistake is not usually acceptable, eg. buying a gem that the seller thinks is fake but that's actually real, unless the seller is the sort of person who really ought to know better, eg. a jeweler. There's also a famous case about two ships called Peerless bringing cotton from India during the American Civil War (when prices were fluctuating severely). Ironically, the two sides got confused as to which Peerless was meant, and because they traveled months apart, there was a major difference between the two loads of cotton, hence no contract or obligation for the buyer to accept the later delivery.

1. Write to the customer, apologising for the problem, and asking them to either (a) pay for the item or (b) fill in a simple form so that Amazon can arrange a convenient time for them to send somebody around to collect the unwanted item, at Amazon's own expense, and with a minimum of inconvenience to the customer.
2. When, inevitably, large numbers of people do neither of these things, send them an invoice.
3. When, inevitably, large numbers of people do not pay the invoice, send a notice of recovery of debt in a court of law.
4. When, inevitably, large numbers of people ignore this letter, take one of them to court, and ask a court whether it believes the money can legally be recovered. If it can, then take the rest to court.
5. 
   
   
   How this is different from what Amazon are doing:
   
   
   1. People who have honestly made a mistake, and cannot afford the items they have purchased, should be allowed to return them. The mistake is Amazon's, so it should not inconvenience these people. Amazon are not allowing returns of opened packages, and are not making it as easy as possible for people to return the packages. They should be doing both of these things.
   2. Unexpectedly putting a charge on somebody's credit card could cause them all kinds of hassle, additional charges for going over credit limits, etc. They may not have received the correspondence from Amazon for a variety of reasons, or may just have discarded it as junk mail. These people shouldn't be penalised for Amazon's mistake.
   3. The legal situation is far from clear. As I see it, it may well be that Amazon cannot legally recover this money. For them to use some dubious method to do so anyway would be extremely bad.
   
   
   Now, IANAL, but I have read many times on slashdot about cases such as the one with the animal (I forgot, was it cow or horse or sth?) that was cheap for meat but was not sterile after all so the court annuled the low price contract.
   
   You're probably talking about Sherwood v Walker. Note this text:

   Soon after, the plaintiff tendered to Hiram Walker, one of the defendants, $80, and demanded the cow. Walker refused to take the money or deliver the cow.

   
   
   The vendor decided to cancel the contract before taking payment, not afterwards. This makes a substantial difference.

http://lawschool.mikeshecket.com/contracts/sherwoo dvwalker.htm [mikeshecket.com] http://www.law.pitt.edu/madison/contracts/suppleme nt/sherwood_v_walker.htm [pitt.edu] a cow was sold as being sterile, when in fact was gestant. the seller went to court over this, and won being an idiot is a god given right, and is strongly protected by law in america

I didn't mean to suggest that Einstein didn't think about these problems while completing his formal education, but wanted to emphasize that Einstein's academic background was a good conventional education in the physics of his day. I perhaps mis-read your post as suggesting that Einstein was primarily self-taught in physics, whereas nothing could be further from the truth.

It is further worth emphasizing that his now-famous thought-experiment is not quite so transparent as it might seem to the non-physicist.

A more useful summary of the Hamdi saga can be found at:

Hamdi to be sent to Saudi Arabia, renouncing US citizenship

Hamdi Returned to Saudi Arabia

A discussion of the Hamdi ruling: Harmful Rulings - Enemy combatants and an irresponsible Court.

As for lawyers and national security: Sheik's U.S. Lawyer Convicted Of Aiding Terrorist Activity .

Is that why all the investigators with a grudge against Bush have found money trails from the administration to the Associated Press, Reuters, the New York Times, and other such renowned Bush supporters? Presumably if they support his consolidation of power agenda, rather than (say) merely reporting the news as they see it, they're doing it for a reason. I would be interested in any evidence that the corporate sponsors -- although it would be difficult to call either the AP or the Times "corporate" in the sense of "owned by big business" -- actually have some reason to back terror scares.

I suppose you could argue that Bush is big-business-friendly, but that doesn't have anything to do with his terrorism plans. And many major news outlets are not owned by big businesses. You could certainly argue that sensationalism is good for journalists, and I'd heartily agree, but that's not much of the "selected by the media barons"-type plot you allege, is it?

Now, let's see. Why is it you refer to the news sources as "taken" by the scare-quoted "liquid bomb plot"? Because a Pakistani court decided that Rashid Rauf was innocent of terrorism charges, while still trying him for forgery and possession of explosives? I suppose he was doing that forging and explosives-possession for some reason totally unrelated to blowing up planes. Probably trying out some interior decorating, or something. And of course, Pakistani courts are entirely independent of Musharraf, just like most courts under dictators who have overthrown the last government in a military coup. I mean, they were only required to agree to never rule against Musharraf or any of his agents, and to swear an oath of loyalty to the decree that put him in power. Musharraf surely has nothing to hold against the United States or Britain, it goes without saying. I'm sure that if a Pakistani citizen were sentenced to death for terrorism against such beloved allies of the Pakistani people, the citizenry would turn out in the streets to cheer the government.

Then again, we might want to take a look at some other court systems, e.g., the British court system. Funnily enough, that's not in the habit of rendering verdicts within a few months, possibly because it takes longer than that to assemble actual evidence and an actual case. Oh well, let's just ignore them for the sake of attacking the Bush administration.

I'd argue that the relativity of simultaneity is a special case of time dilation; they go together. Take the Michelson-Morley experiment, for instance. In a frame in which the Earth is stationary, two photons reach two mirrors simultaneously. In a frame in which the Earth is moving, the photon heading 'backwards' hits the mirror before the photon heading 'forwards' does so. That's relativity of simultaneity right there.

I imagine it would be possible to devise a direct observation of the phenomenon using atomic clocks aboard widely separated spacecraft, but also very expensive... Can't find much on the issue of direct observations of relativity of simultaneity, but I did find this argument to the effect that stellar aberration is a result of relativity of simultaneity, and might well have been what led Einstein onto the idea in the first place.

This JURIST article:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/11/fede ral-judge-rules-us-currency.php

has some primary sources readily available...

This JURIST article:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/11/fede ral-judge-rules-us-currency.php

has some primary sources readily available...

Yes, because it's not like she's made any bad decisions recently or anything.....

I'm a CS student at the University of Pittsburgh and we don't have to take DiffEQ. Just Calc I and II, along with a Calc-based statistics course.

They may not have had satellite imagery, but many artists and painters were hired to draw maps and paintings of the city to precise scale in perspective view.

Here is a supersized scan of a medieval map of London from the 1600's. Using some projective texture mapping/morphing, it should be possible to place this map on top of the Google maps of London.

Congress cannot by law take a power of another branch of the government thats guaranteed by the constitution. If so they could make a law with a rider that the courts cannot consider the constitutionality of it.

This is true, but it didn't stop them from trying to do exactly what you suggest. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 which was pushed through with the Defense Appropriations Act, 2006, tried to take powers that were reserved for the Judicial branch and hand them over to the Executive. For one thing, although the Constitution gives the President the power to make treaties, the power to interpret them lies with the Supreme Court. Both the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 make the claim that the President appoints a group to decide if someone is an unlawful enemy combatant and thus capable of receiving Geneva Conventions protections. It is the role of the courts to decide this, not the President. If you read the MCA, the definition of enemy combatant basically says an unlawful enemy combatant is someone who is normally defined as an unlawful enemy combatant, or is deemed one by a tribunal authorized by the president. It then goes on to say that these people can not challenge their captivity by revoking habeas corpus. This is clearly not a power that the President has been given in the Constitution, nor is it the right of Congress to decide what the Judiciary can decide.

So the answer is yes, in peace times wiretapping most citizens under most circumstances are illegal. Of course there are provisions that allow it to happen without a warrant but certain other procedures need to follow. Now as the president claims, according to the constitution, he has broader powers when the country is under threat and those powers allow him to bypass a law that congress wrote.

The constitution does give Congress the right to make laws--even laws that apply to the President. There are provisions for when the President, through the Attorney General, can obtain electronic surveillance in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--specifically this section which states that the electronic surveillance should be limited to communications exclusively between or among foreign powers and that "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is party." This section specifically allows the President to gather electronic surveillance without a court order "for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress." Of course, congress has not made a declaration of war since WW2.

I suggest reading the constitution very carefully looking for anything that gives the President any extra powers during wartime. You won't find anything because it isn't there. The U.S. Constitution contains no "emergency power" clauses for the President.

Again- vongress [sic] cannot make a law that limits the constitutional power of another branch of government. If what the president says is true, then no law was broken.

As I've shown above, the Constitution gives the power to Congress to make laws (which with FISA they did), and gives the President no special powers in time of war to break those laws, therefore if the President is saying otherwise, it is incorrect and the law was broken.

No, the constitution -the same thing giving congress powers to make the laws you think the preside

Still, it has apparently been established, or at least upheld, before a civi court

source one. source two. source three. source four. source five.

You could start with aggression. Aggression is defined as invading another country. Interestingly enough, the United States signed on to the acceptence of the World Court after filing an objection that it could not be prosecuted for aggression. Yet, the United States dropped out of the World Court once it became clear that it would be held accountable for our actions in Nicaragua that were lesser charges than aggression.

George Bush's handling of the International Criminal Court is also instructive. Standards created by the Nuremberg trials certainly indicate that the invasion should come before an international court of some sort.

Even if you believe that there should be no check on U.S. sovereignty, I think you could make good arguments that the war on Iraq broke many U.S. laws - the Constitution (declaration of war by congress and the questionable nature of the blank check written by Congress with the AUMF), the War Crimes Act, etc.

The proceedings being taken to impose victors' justice on the Iraqi people, including their former President Saddam Hussein, are nothing more than another example of the United States' unfortunate disregard for international law.

The carefully edited pictures of the trial that are allowed to be broadcast and printed show few Americans in the Courtroom, but behind every door and more disturbingly behind almost every action there are Americans pulling the strings.

Why is this so disturbing? Shouldn't Americans be proud that they are putting the Iraqi regime that they hate so much on trial? The answer is unfortunately a resounding no. In fact the trial has become such an embarrassment to the United States that the American puppeteers are likely committing war crimes themselves.

For a) I note that the Belgian Data Privacy Commissioner felt that transferring this data without alerting national governments or ensuring compliance with the higher data privacy standards of the EU was a violation of data privacy legislation. PDF link. The Swiss Federal Data Protection Commissioner agrees.

For b), terrorist attacks can be done cheaply. For example, London's July 2005 bombings were estimated to have cost several hundred pounds. Oversight of such small transfers would be costly, and terrorists could use informal hawala networks of money dealers who do not report transactions to the authorities.

For c), I agree that it was secret. It was even secret from EU governments! I hope you'll agree that if the UK were to ask for financial details of US citizes, the US government would make sure that US privacy laws and US oversight were applied.

I'm not up for bashing America, or Americans. I have American friends, enjoy American films/books/food/television. I just think that going after a wasp's nest with a baseball bat is unwise. There are better methods for preventing terrorism than gathering enormous amounts of data and then trying to deal with all the false positives.

And about the Muhammad cartoons - I agree that the whole thing was ludicrous. The newspaper had a right to publish them, bad taste though they were. Muslims had a right to protest peacefully, but burning churches in response to an allegation that your faith is violent....

Tom

Don't be disappointed, disappearances are coming soon to the US.

How about learning some science. Much of what we call intelligence is highly malleable. There is a growing body of research that shows that talent doesn't really exist. Smart, talented people are made, not born. Even athletic prowess has been shown to be environmentally determined.

Here's a paper that shows that musical talent is mostly a matter of practice. http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice (PsychologicalReview).pdf

Here's link to some papers that show that athletic prowess is mostly determined by the month you were born. http://www.socialproblemindex.ualberta.ca/relage.h tm

Here's a link to Lauren Resnick. http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/media.htm She points out that iq can be changed.

Beauty? Check this out. http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home_films_ev olution_v2.swf

What you are spouting is popular prejudice not science.

Radiation isn't really that bad for you. It takes a hell of a lot of radiation to do any real damage to you. That's why we don't see mutant super humans popping out of hiroshima like popcorn. Here is a good source of non FUD on radiation and nuclear stuff.

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/index.html

It was Sherwood v. Walker

http://lawschool.mikeshecket.com/contracts/sherwoo dvwalker.htm
http://www.law.pitt.edu/madison/contracts/suppleme nt/sherwood_v_walker.htm

There is some more discussion of the topic in general at:

http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayres/mutual.htm

Nothing against Jennifer Ferris, the author of the Virginia Tech "article," but she was an undergraduate student in an honors seminar. Note the URL. Hardly a credible source. Several years ago I e-mailed her professor to try to get in touch with her, but never got a response.

This 1997 Nurseweek/Healthweek article (http://www.nurseweek.com/features/97-8/iadct.html ) does a very good job tracing the origin of the term "Internet Addition Disorder," which explains the term originated with a joke post (http://web.urz.uni-heidelberg.de/Netzdienste/anle itung/wwwtips/8/addict.html) by psychologist Ivan Goldberg, who was trying to point out that it's too easy to call anthing an addiction. According to the Nurseweek article: "I don't think Internet addiction disorder exists any more than tennis addictive disorder, bingo addictive disorder, and TV addictive disorder exist. People can overdo anything. To call it a disorder is an error," Goldberg said.

One of the earliest proponents of Internet Addiction Disorder is Dr. Kimberly Young, whose website, netaddiction.com, will be happy to sell you books and tapes to cure you of this malady. Until recently, her academic home page at http://www.pitt.edu/~ksy/ used to forward people directly to netaddiction.com. (Now it gives an error message, but you can see for yourself what the Wayback Machine has in its archives. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.pitt.edu/~ ksy/ )

Now, just becuase Dr. Goldberg made a joke about Internet Addiction Disorder doesn't mean that such a thing doesn't exist, and just because Dr. Young wants to sell books and tapes about the malady she discovered doesn't mean she's doing anything wrong, but if Ms. Ferriss's undergraduate honors paper (published on the chemistry department's website) is the best resource a Slashdot post can come up with to support an alleged psychological problem, then this issue is more than controversial.

It seems to me that some of the people who're writing about this issue probably haven't spent enough time on the internet yet.

5) What measures do you recommend in the different areas described below, and why? By whom should they be implemented?
5a) Classification of commercial content.
5b) Opt-in /opt out. Should the Opt-in (where the user has to explicitly request access to adult content rather by accessing it by default) approach be applied in all EU countries?
5c) Age verification: should Mobile network operators implement face to face identity check to determine the age of the user? Should this process also be applied when a customer buys a pre-paid card?
5d) Filtering and blocking systems. Should filtering systems be installed by default when the subscription allows internet access?
5e) Chat rooms. Should chat rooms accessible by children be moderated (in an automatic way or by a person)?
5f) Raising awareness among parents and children
5g) Dedicated mobile phone packs for children, for which age group?

... a potential high-level worker pool.

You have no idea that an outsourced Indian 'Mike' you talk on the phone is from a royal caste, literally. Only the cream of the cream of the elite get to qualify for the outsourced jobs. There is no hope for the rest!

No laptops, no business. 60% of grownups in India cannot read

In a country whose No. 1 public health goal is halfing public defecation by 2012 (a real problem since over 20% of the population are infected by hookworms: http://www.publichealth.pitt.edu/supercourse/Super coursePPT/18011-19001/18811.ppt )

No, giving them laptops is not the answer. Providing children with reading lessons, antibiotics, electricity, and lightbulbs is the first step.

The real issue is the method in which the numbers were obtained. They were gathered without warrents or court orders, i.e. they were illegally obtained.

This bad is because 1) the President/gov't is *not* suppose to be above the law, 2) any evidence obtained from this ill gotten booty would not be usable in court, this in turn makes convicting the terrorist that much more difficult and 3) the harm done out weighs the benefits.

Wouldn't the right of free assembly(1st amendment) and the right against unreasonable searches(4th amendment) come into play when tracking calls? It's ok for the gov't to disregard those rights in the pursuit of ______?

The Constitution was written as an attempt to prevent tyranny, by chipping away at the Bill of Rights and increasing the Executive branch's power(back-boor vetos) US citizens continue to lose legal means of protecting themselves from a tyrannical government.

Here is some reading material for you:
Bruce Schenier on NSA & Bush's illegal wiretaps
Bush blocks internal probe into illegal wiretaps
An Imminent Threat (to the Constitution)

There is more involved than just tracking who you are calling. That's just the cover story to distract you while the power grab is going on.

What has been your experience with Apple's XServe Clusters ?

But regareding your hard facts and your experience, what do you know that the technicians who built the following systems don't?

• The Virginia Tech Terascale Computing Facility containing 1100 Xserve G5 cluster nodes running OS X Panther
• The Human Genetics Grid Cluster with 250 PPC G5's running OS X
• The COLSA MACH 5 Cluster using 1566 cluster nodes, which should be running OS X as well. More info here .
• Additionally, the following people using OS X clusters to do biomedical research, and having won awards from Apple. But of course Apple wouldn't be unbiased in their opinions of OS X.

So can you describe your experience with Xgrid and why you think it's so bad. And regarding software, what problems do you see with the following software packages, or have you not used any?

• iNquiry bioinformatics
• grid Mathematica
• MATLAB's Distributed Computing Engine

This is all a moot point anyway because our president himself said that they were going to investigate whomever leaked the Plame information and fire them. So, any day now the president will fire the guy who authorized it. And apparently we have learned that the president himself knows exactly who authorized it. Just wait, he'll fire the scoundral (unless he was lying, of course).

Between you and the FISA court set up to determine the legality of said wiretaps I'll have to side with the judges of FISA and according to them, Bush was fully within the recognized powers of the Presidency to authorize the NSA taps.

One of the FISC Judges reportedly resigned in protest. I don't think this is really as cut and dried an issue was you suggest. The FISC is also not really charged with finding this program legal or not.

Most presidents do. You may wish to read this before whining about Clinton. Further:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardon ed_by_Bill_Clinton
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardon ed_by_George_W._Bush

• misapplication of mortgage funds
• embezzlement of US Postal Service funds
• income tax evasion
• transmission of wagering information
• money laundering
• mail fraud
• failure to report monetary instruments
• false statement on a loan application
• illegal gambling business
• conspiracy to file false tax returns
• aiding and abetting a false statement on a loan application

and wish we had moved to it in a big way the way France has, but this Moore fellow is an easily discredited shill for industry. He's not the representative we want to advance our cause. Richard Rhodes, James Lovelock, and Bernard Cohen have a hell of a lot better credibility.

In point of fact, most of the detainees were simply purchased by the military -- not captured as Bush has repeatedly lied. 5% were captured by the military, 86% were turned over by foreign entities in exchange for money.

Why not get the facts (you'll have to look at the PDF) from someone who is in't a bald faced liar.

Other initiatives by the company include efforts to teach consumers about what to do with spam when they do receive it.

Here is an idea:

THREE BEAN SALAD w/SPAM!

7-oz can SPAM, cubed 1/2"
1/3 cup choppd onion
16-oz can cut green beans, drained 1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup cooking oil
16-oz can yellow wax beans, drained
1/3 cup cider vinegar
1/4 tsp pepper
16-oz can kidney beans, drained
1 tbsp stone ground mustard

In medium bowl combine SPAM, green beans, wax beans, kidney beans and onion. In small bowl combine remaining ingredients; pour over SPAM mixture. Stir gently, mixing thoroughly. Cover; refrigerate 2 to 3 hours or until serving time. Yield: 6 servings.

> Anyone remember reading about this in Tom Clancey's book "Rainbow Six"???

Clancy based those devices (which were heartbeat sensors, if I recall correctly) on the DKL LifeGuard, which Sandia Labs proved to be pretty much an expensive box of useless electronic components.

Yes, they have the Stasi^WFBI. The next step is to build a wall:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/11/us-r epublicans-propose-mexican-border.php

Sig Heil!

Things may not be as black and white as you say. We are essentially debating philosophy here (cause honestly, where are the facts and the data?

the facts and data are that mutations happen, and natural selection happens. chemicals mix about in the atmosphere, particularly in ware (e.g. the ocean). there is at least some realistic probability that these random natural processes brought about life as we see it. combine that with the fact that all life can be hierarchically arranged at the phenotypic and genotypic level (hierarchical, as in like a tree branching down without violating that pattern), as well as ages of genetic divergence congruently supported by both fossils and genetic data, and this explanation becomes far more than plausible.

now compare this to the odds that an intelligent entity created it. we don't know of any intelligent entities that would have been any more likely to have made it than these random processes, much more can explain the hierarchical structure of life or any other features of it (this is called falsifiability). this means that the evolutionary explanation is infinitely more likely than any intelligent explanations, because there are no intelligent explanations at all! so it is indeed that black and white.

A series of selection events to be sure, but stating that those events prove the entire evolutionary theory is a bit of an oversimplification.

no it's not. it's a matter of weighing the relative probabilities of all known potiental explanations. the only known potential explanation is natural unintelligent phenomena, as we do not know of any intelligent entities which could have, even in theory, caused the formation of life on earth.

Mutation events yes, but a new life form did not result. All of that is anecdotal evidence that does not prove evolution as a vehicle for life as we know it.

the thing that causes you to be different from a bird, is the particular sequence of dna rungs that were once in the fertilized egg that was you. were a particular series of mutations to have taken place at that time, you could have become an elephant, or a giraffe. there is a low, but greater-than-zero, probability that this could happen. it is a fact that genetic mutations can lead to a "new" life form, meaning simply a life form that is genetically different enough to be reproductively incompatible with another specified organism in its family tree.

this isn't "anectdotal" evidence. this fact.

If you can use those, then I can provide things that run contrary to natural selection and yet exist (man's morals*

morality has very well analyzed and publicized roots in natural selection. genes which cause an organism to help others around it, can be beneficial to their own perpetuation, because other organisms in proximity to the specified host will be likely to also carry that gene. this is especially true if the gene produces some sort of detectable feature, and tends to cause the behavior toward other members who also exhibit that feature. also, if you have two groups, x and y, and x has a gene that causes cooperative and altruistic behavior, whereas y causes directly selfish behavior, x will likely fare better than y. natural selection can select on the level of entire populations. you might be surprised to learn that darwin had already tackled this issue in the late 1800's: source

even if there were no conceivable means by which selective pressure would tend to select genes for altruism (or "morality" as you can generically refer to it), that wouldn't be a problem for modern evolutionary theory, as a series of mutations causing feelings of altruism could happen entirely at random, without "intermediate" selected steps. your problem here is that you, like so many i've debated for years and years online, have horrendous

So Marlene went to him and said, "Brother, give me the apple." But he was silent, so she gave him one on the ear, and his head fell off. Marlene was terrified, and began crying and screaming, and ran to her mother, and said, "Oh, mother, I have knocked my brother's head off," and she cried and cried and could not be comforted.

"Marlene," said the mother, "what have you done? Be quiet and don't let anyone know about it. It cannot be helped now. We will cook him into stew."

Then the mother took the little boy and chopped him in pieces, put him into the pot, and cooked him into stew. But Marlene stood by crying and crying, and all her tears fell into the pot, and they did not need any salt.

Then the father came home, and sat down at the table and said, "Where is my son?" And the mother served up a large, large dish of stew, and Marlene cried and could not stop.

So Marlene went to him and said, "Brother, give me the apple." But he was silent, so she gave him one on the ear, and his head fell off. Marlene was terrified, and began crying and screaming, and ran to her mother, and said, "Oh, mother, I have knocked my brother's head off," and she cried and cried and could not be comforted.

"Marlene," said the mother, "what have you done? Be quiet and don't let anyone know about it. It cannot be helped now. We will cook him into stew."

Then the mother took the little boy and chopped him in pieces, put him into the pot, and cooked him into stew. But Marlene stood by crying and crying, and all her tears fell into the pot, and they did not need any salt.

Then the father came home, and sat down at the table and said, "Where is my son?" And the mother served up a large, large dish of stew, and Marlene cried and could not stop.

Here is an example of what's supposed to happen to your fingerprints. I live in NY, where state law states that fingerprint records shouldn't be kept for those not convicted of a misdemeanor or felony.

Now, there's plenty of reasons why I don't want my DNA recorded in a central database. They include:
- Police suppression of political activists, even those engaging in completely legal actions, is distressingly common. Google "surveillance colorado quakers" for an example. Wouldn't it be convenient if they could take a swab and know the identity of everyone who showed up at a meeting?

- It is notoriously easy for a P.I. to get a fingerprint search run. What if I'm organizing a boycott that's causing trouble for, say, Coca-Cola? Do I want them to have access to the power of the state? They have it in Colombia, and look what happened there.

It's not just the leftists who need to be concerned - by making these searches possible, you're enabling the work of anyone who can pay $500 to a P.I.. That includes the mob, abusive spouses, anyone.

Like you, I've been arrested - fortunately, my fingerprints have been destroyed each time. Thank goodness for that. Sadly, none of my examples (except the mob) are abstract cases to me and those I care about.

I personally believe that a solar/hydrogen combination is what will save us from ourselves. Clean solar to capture the energy of the sun and some hydrogen based technology to store it for use. Unfortunately, neither technology is there today to be used on a massive scale.

As a counterpoint, I would encourage you to read Chapter 11. A very strong case is made scientifically about the much-exagerrated risks of high-level nuclear waste if handled properly. And yes, there lies the problem.

Still, if France can get 70%+ of their energy from nuclear with no catastrophic incidents, I see no reason why the rest of the West can't. We'll have to take the "psycho factor" one situation at a time.

Skepticism is a rational approach to anything. Baseless fear is not.

The University of Pittsburgh put out an excellent free book on the "Nuclear Energy Option". It not only gives an excellent breakdown of the risk and benefits of nuclear power from a scientific standpoint, but it does an excellent comparison against other (heavily-used) technologies. It can be found here here

The most interesting chapter does a direct comparison of risk from high-level nuclear waste against other toxins introduced to the environment by manufacturing. Quote:

If nuclear power was used to the fullest practical extent in the United States, we would need about 300 power plants of the type now in use. The waste produced each year would then be enough to kill (300 x 50 million =) over 10 billion people. I have authored over 250 scientific papers over the past 35 years presenting tens of thousands of pieces of data, but that "over lO billion" number is the one most frequently quoted. Rarely quoted, however, are the other numbers given along with it11: we produce enough chlorine gas each year to kill 400 trillion people, enough phosgene to kill 20 trillion, enough ammonia and hydrogen cyanide to kill 6 trillion with each, enough barium to kill 100 billion, and enough arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion. All of these numbers are calculated, as for the radioactive waste, on the assumption that all of it gets into people. I hope these comparisons dissolve the fear that, in generating nuclear electricity, we are producing unprecedented quantities of toxic materials.

Although I would be one of the first in line to adopt solar, hydro or hydrogen energy approaches, none are feasible on a global scale. My belief is that nuclear is the best choice if we can just get beyond everyone's fear of it.

...got a glorious last-minute presidential pardon...

Hmmm... Seems to be a fairly common practice on both sides. Here's an interesting one:Aslam P. Adam (Bush, 1993; clemency for heroin trafficking) Lest you think that one side is actually better than the other. Not that I want to harsh your high or anything.

Most people don't vote their conscience. They vote their wallet and against their neighbor.

Well, a lot of people didn't like the policies of the last administration, either, and voted (rather than paid for) a change in orientation on that front.

There has been no change. It's business, and war as usual. In fact, it has been this way for at least 50-60 years. And as long as either of the major parties retain their power, there will be no change. They are two versions of the same agenda.