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He has a point. I'm neither conservative or liberal, I agree with some of the platforms of both groups.

I have found that my liberal friends tend to be "All In or Nothing'. Either you accept the entire platform or you're the evil enemy, an ignorant hayseed bumpkin Christian Evangelical gun toting redneck. This drives me crazy. Many planks of the liberal platform are myths that simply don't work, have never worked, will never work. My liberal friends tend to cluster around short, emotional sound bytes/talking points - to which I reply "Sounds great but does it actually work?"

My conservative friends are slightly more tolerant, but only a little, and they react in horror at the thought that liberals do have some good ideas. My conservative friends are full of "facts and figures" - to which I reply "Sounds great but anyone can lie with statistics"

The Internet has, of course, widened this divide more than anyone ever imagined it would. That's the part I don't get... When did Common Sense die?

http://rense.com/general92/dea...

Actually there have been cases of people with hydroencephaly who have practically no brain, yet can still score 120 in an IQ test. See here

What happened to hiring the best person for the job?

The problem with that is if you are Jessie Jackson and the best people for the job are Asian and not black, you will look like a fool. Rather than trying to get your race to pull up its pants and go to school, you want free handouts while the Asians are working their asses off for those Google jobs.

It is really sad that 1% of their workforce is black. That tells me that Bill Cosby said it right: it is a cultural problem and he is right to be ashamed of it. There should be more black Google employees because more blacks should aspire to be engineers, physicians, scientists: not rappers or basketball players. Yes there are successful blacks in this country and plenty of them: but historically there have also been a lot of unsuccessful ones. Today in 2014 there is no excuse for that. Jim Crow is ancient history. Segregation is ancient history.

I would really be curious to know how many Asians they have, because of the positive stereotype of Asians working their asses off to succeed: and Latinos, which are now the #2 demographic in the U.S. behind whites.

Huge, huge, HUGE difference that I will point out, please pay attention:

What Snowden did is illegal because the government made it illegal to call out the bad behavior of government.

The Iraq Invasion was illegal because there was 100% no purpose to it other than to spread unwanted economic influence into a region that had already been battered previously by us. Did you know that Bush and his administration are STILL wanted for war crimes in most of the world?

Switzerland
Canada
Belgium
Malaysia

I would say that none of the gun control laws in Chicago are working, full stop. Those laws don't prevent ANYTHING. Those laws only permit law enforcement and prosecutors to take draconian actions against gun owners and/or people who use guns after the fact. The laws do not have the intended results to back them up. It is that plain and simple.

Some cities and states have results to back up the intended consequences of authorizing people to own and use weapons.
http://rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm

Some minds are easily boggled. Please read http://rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm

You're right, crime is a socioeconomic problem. When society coddles criminals, then criminals feel justified in what they do. When society takes a stand, and informs criminals that they will die as a result of certain actions, criminals take notice. Either they become better criminals, or they die, or they change their ways.

Permitting and/or requiring heads of households to own weapons, and to use those weapons to defend themselves and their homes does address an underlying root cause of crime.

Royal Rife".

Yours In Peace,
Kilgore Trout, M.D.

For the top of the learning curve, see the Coral Castle.

The Radiation Poisoning Of America. Pretty horrific read.

Tell that to these folks whose lives were ruined by the Nazi "doctors" working for the CIA.

http://www.rense.com/general69/mind.htm

just google things like: electro shock mkultra
to find tons of stories that will move any decent human.

One lady in Canada was given electroshock by her CIA "doctor" every day for months trying to erase her memories and personality to re-program her. She originally sought help for postpartum depression.

CIA, FBI, NSA, police in general, etc. are all a bunch of sadistic fuckers who should be eliminated. And, would be eliminated by any decent society. These folks should be in prison, not in positions of power.

... so how do your comments square with the following?

From Chemical and Engineering news -

Reagan’s economic programs, so controversial then and now, generally supported federal science programs... As Reagan’s term went on, however, the rising federal deficits and lower revenues that were the result of a recession took their toll on R&D budgets. Soon, agencies such as the Energy Department, the National Bureau of Standards, and even the National Institutes of Health were looking at budget cuts.

Further, from "The Revolution that Killed Society", we read...

The Regan Revolution went much further than to just corrupt previously publicly owned companies: they mandated that every service that had begun with ownership by the public needed to be privatized; because only the private corporate-world could make money with things like public services, that up until then had been "a drain" on the public purse. 'Privatization would bring an economic windfall from the drudgery and incompetence of publicly owned services. The justification by the Regan Revolution was that Everything Must Earn a Profit, or it should be terminated: The entire idea of society providing anything for its citizens was heresy to any True-Capitalist.

The result was 'The Revolution That Killed Society'. Everything from the buses and the trains, to electricity, natural gas and heating oil, public hospitals, and public health: indeed everything except possibly firefighters and police have been privatized: and now even those two "services" are experimenting with the idea of privatization as well.

The size of government actually increased under Reagan. This has to stand in stark contrast with his stated goals of downsizing government. From the Reagan Budget, we learn that "People around the country seem to understand what no one in Washington will admit: The budget is out of control. The growth of government is out of control...

Lastly, I take no position on Right vs Left in American politics, except to note that neither party works for We the People. Both parties work hard for the monied class. Hence my belief that America has a one party system. It's called the Business Party and it has two factions that conveniently distract America's citizens by providing great theater as they fight amongst themselves. "Liberals" in the US look better than "Conservatives" only in that they don't say stupid things quite as often as the Rabid Right. Neither faction has any idea how to govern for We the People.

To start, the US de-funded scientific research. It had to, in part, because Ronald Raygun privatized many government functions.

Nice theory, but doesn't agree with reality...

By ratio, it is a slaughter. 2,290 American soldiers died in Iraq. Compared to:

Documented Iraqi civilian war fatalities:
  115,713 [low end] - 126,337 [high end], mostly women and children.
Unofficial war dead count: 350,000
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Estimated deaths caused by depleted uranium radiation poisoning from DU munitions: ~1,000,000.
http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm

American soldiers who received lethal doses of radiation from DU munitions: 11,000 as of 2005 (possibly as high as 50,000 now). http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_death_toll.html

In fact, this newspaper has even been found guilty by a French court for "racist defamation" against Israel and the Jewish people in the past.

Sources:
http://rense.com/general65/aanit.htm
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000375.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1415355/posts

As a poster below pointed out, the NSA practically confessed to the spying:

The American authorities noted that the activities of the intelligence service "were carried out according to law."

And the documents in the article stated that the NSA said it wasn't a joint operation with the Israelis. The Israeli prime minister's office made an official statement claiming they were not involved.

All evidence points to the NSA with no Israeli involvement.

This article is nothing but antisemitism and has no place on Slashdot.

My understanding was based on articles like this one. Can you point me to evidence that the Moskit's can be destroyed by this ships anti-missile defences?

Type 2 diabetes is well supported by the FDA through their revolving door policy with Monsanto, ensuring that RoundUp and GMO crops are beyond legislation control, corn farmers get their subsidy, HFCS is so cheap that it's in all processed food, type 2 diabetes blooms across the whole population, the "health" industry reaps rich rewards, medical insurance skyrockets, disposable income for good food plummets, and the population eats more cheap delicious sugar-laden junk in a self-reinforcing cycle.

Everyone is happy, what's not to like?

Some of the comments on here by Americans mocking the Indians are pretty rich coming from a country that fought the Battle of Los Angeles

Simply take all the words on this list: http://rense.com/general66/scgh.htm ...and insert them into each and every email message you send. I send them coded as white-on-white in html formatted messages so they aren't readily visible.

"Human beings are never going to get outside the solar system, the distance is just too great" - coastwalker 2013

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." --Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." --Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." --Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

http://rense.com/general81/dw.htm

http://rense.com/general72/cellcook.htm

Truth serum does not fucking work, period, at all. This has been known for many decades now. If it worked, we would've been using it against Bad Guys in Secret Prisons, and we're not. We're not because it doesn't fucking work and everyone knows that.

Except apparently the people in this court room.

Actually, there is one compound that might be considered effective as a "truth serum", and that's scopolamine. Read up on the way it has been used by criminals, for instance this link:

http://digitaljournal.com/article/324779 or this one: http://rense.com/general38/frug.htm or just google it.

I have personal experience with this drug, having been involuntarily dosed with it once, and it's effects were scary indeed, in a way no other substance has ever come close to matching. Essentially it wipes out your short-term memory completely, and I do mean completely. You start to say something but by the end of the sentence you literally can't remember what it was you were trying to say. You have no idea where you are or how you got there, and you tend to believe whatever you're told if there's someone there to "helpfully" fill in the blanks. People empty their bank account to strangers, give up passwords and PIN numbers, it's crazy. The thing is, it's only short-term memory that's affected, everything else is still there. So I don't see any reason why you couldn't be questioned about past criminal behavior as easily as your financial secrets. Having experienced this stuff first hand, I have no doubt it could be used as a truth drug, given the right setting and an experienced interrogator. That said, I'm absolutely against the whole idea and believe this is a treacherous road for the legal system to be going down. Voluntarily or otherwise, chemical interrogation has no place in American courtrooms.

Somebody spends too much time studying at the feet of Master Jeff Rense.

Pointing out that a politician is sounding like a fascist is not an ad hominem, it is a perfectly valid political argument.

Not really, because "fascist" is used by most people as a vague term of abuse, especially on the internet where "liberal" can mean anything from "classical laissez faire capitalist" to "extreme left wing revolutionary" depending on who's using it.

Fascism in the proper Franco/Mussolini sense has fairly specific characteristics, e.g. see here for a quickly googled list which looks about right.

Simply approving of a partial restriction on absolute freedom of speech and action does not make you a fascist, although the slippery slope libertarians would disagree.

Let me say this another way. Germany and Italy didn't go into the shit can overnight. In the beginning Fascism is a great way to jump start a stagnant economy, and sure enough it yanked Germany and Italy from deep depressions and at least in the beginning the majority of their citizens loved it. Its all the nasty things that happen after the fact that catch up with you sooner of later. So when I say we live in a fascist state.you need to look first at what that means, for instance by looking at the definition, then at the telltale signs.

You do that honestly, hold America up to the light of truth and tell me we aren't living in a fascist state, and darling, I'll have to say either, you're in denial, ignorant of the facts or obfuscating the truth. We touch all the base, Home-run. So, the fact that American culture is diverse, rich, and that our founding fathers hamstrung the crap out of our legislatures means we still have a functional country when other less robust nations sucked a gasket and folded. It also means we have a better than even shot at taking back what is rightfully ours, but you have to get clear headed and deadly honest first. We're in trouble, and the facists have been calling the shots now for most of 30 years and if we don't get our heads screwed on straight and take it back soon, then that little bit of levity you have about yelling out a window could sure enough come back to haunt you.

George Carlin on religion: When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy shit !

http://rense.com/general69/obj.htm

no, he wasn't. because until one of these systems gets to 100% (and by 100%, I mean 100%) then any strategist would tell you the natural reaction would simply be to lob more nukes. it actually results in INCREASED proliferation of nuclear weapons, and makes the world a less safe place.

and if one of them does get to 100%, they'll do what the russians threatened to do over the most recent european missile defence shield — just build missiles that the systems can't get a fix on: http://rense.com/general69/tiddosdzdd27makes.htm

I believe it's more effective if you milk the poppies and burn the latex, unless you're trying to make something a bit more potent.

Eh, maybe the Brits are just trying to hide the fact that today's vets are spilling their blood to protect the poppies for somebody's profit. The symbolism seems kind of ironic.

Insulted because someone doesn't believe in your version of reality... Sounds like you both believe in a religion to me. Next time you might be better off with a well reasoned response.

Atheism is no more a religion than naked is a brand of clothing.
(note the lowercase 'n' in naked)

Although the prior post was unnecessarily aggressive, it does bring up the valid point of religious belief sets, especially in the US are typically lumped in a package deal together political beliefs and a lack of trust in the world wide scientific community, typically manipulated with falsified information such as this.
I've actually had some wild unemployed troll telling me he would rather die of some dreaded but easily curable disease than accept 'faggoty european commie free health care'. ( I couldn't find the original link he sent me about oil wells magically refilling but it was a huge url with 'wall-street-journal' written near the end of it).

Does these holy books really have such a level of control over these kinds of people or is it just some innate brainwashed gullibility that they will aggressively defend?

Lack of debris ? Moreso lack of research on your part. Debris photos are easy to find, and many parts were clearly identifiable and were all consistent.

Yes but how prevalent are they?
Just because they've had them doesn't mean anyone has used them.
I also don't see anything about GPS on it, the ones in Korea all have GPS so the parents can track the kids.

http://rense.com/general54/cellp.htm
Korea had them with GPS in 2004.

But in addition to having them earlier, they are also everywhere. As in they're standard issue for kids in Grade 1.

IIRC the last time the US Navy performed a wargame exercise against a hypothetical Iranian force led by a guy who knew what he was doing, the US fleet was sent straight to the bottom in half a day, with the loss of 19 warships and 20,000 men.

See "Millennium Challenge"

http://rense.com/general64/fore.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

The problem is that there were a number of case of extraordinary rendition where innocent people were kidnapped by the U.S. Government, taken to the middle east where they were tortured then eventually dumped someplace else or in some cases died of the torture process. One of the more popular cases was that of Maher Arar, a Canadian telecommunications engineer with dual citizenship in Canada and Syria whose only mistake was landing in the U.S. for a flight layover on his way back home. What followed would have made a great situation comedy if torture hadn't been involved. The U.S. is stonewalling these cases to this day. There are so many horror stories the case of Aafia Siddiqui is so terrible, it made me nauseous reading it. I think the person the GP may be speaking of was the subject of a 60 Minutes segment. He was a University Professor (and was himself an immigrant from the Middle East) at a major school in New England and had posted flyer to get students together to discuss what the Government was doing and whether it served our culture to abandon the Geneva Convention. The result is that he himself was kidnapped and in an act of extraordinary rendition spent the next 18 months as a guest of the U.S. Government seeing a number of fascinating torture facilities in the middle east. His abuse was severe and the damage to his body and his mind permanent. Eventually he was dumped naked and found his way to Canada where he and his family now live. The US claims no knowledge of what happened to him.

There's a great book about rendition by a former CIA agent, and what he says basically is that the people who pushed this insanity through knew nothing about interrogation or intelligence, and that their choice to ignore the Geneva Convention damaged us far more than any attack from the outside ever could.

I think people like you need to learn the definition of words like "slave" that you throw around so easily.

There is actually a silver lining to this story.

Threatening to chop off the heads of generals on a private Facebook page seems to be much more effective at getting yourself mental health services than telling everyone who would listen that you're just going to kill yourself.

"'The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it.'"

It seems to me like he was wildly optimistic in his paranoia. Most paranoids would have just said: "The government is coming for me. Men will be a my door soon to pick me up to take me away. "

Permeant peace is an unachievable dream since every State has their own goals and many of those goals go against another States goals.

along with all the other succesful predictions

Hello, Creationist here, Oil fields could well be geological in nature and not from dead corpses as commonly believed..
here and here from a quick google.

As for coal seams, the creationist believe is that the Earth had a much greater environment at creation. The creationist believe that there might of been a canopy of water over the earth before the flood which 1 - reduced X rays, 2 created greater pressure in the atmosphere. This greater pressure would make the entire earth into a hyperbolic chamber. A scientist decided to grow a tomato in a hyperbolic chamber and the tomato plant grew 14 ft high and produce 15000 tomatos which instead of being miniature where "full" size. The moved the tomato tree into a shopping center.
This perfect environment meant that there was alot more vegataion on earth. Alot more. The increase pressure also meant more water vapor which and as a hot house gas meant more heat on earth, which is why you get 300ft trees burried under 1000ft of permafrost ground in Alaska.
quick google again

I dare say in tongue and check why we hasn't done flood geology mining is we gave our money to the poor. :-P
Also I have no interest in drilling.
Also please explain what makes Flood geology good or bad about drilling? It doesn't say anything about where to drill. But I am not a geologist so I can't comment.

Yeah. Here's one stunning example of that, civilized, liberal love.

Don't bet on it.

A military exercise in 2002 shows a tin pot dictator could send most of the US fleet to the bottom of the sea. In fact, they had to change the rules of the exercise to stack it in the US's favour for them to win.

http://www.rense.com/general64/fore.htm

fascism. yeah, read this and tell me it doesn't sound familiar: http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm

I agreed to everything you said until you mentioned fascism. I thought, things are bad in the US, but surely they can't be that bad, the US are nothing like Nazi Germany, right? So I googled for a fascism checklist and found this: The 14 defining characteristics of fascism:

• Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - check
• Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - check
• Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - check
• Supremacy of the Military - check
• Rampant Sexism - check
• Controlled Mass Media - check
• Obsession with National Security - check
• Religion and Government are Intertwined - check
• Corporate Power is Protected - check
• Labor Power is Suppressed - check
• Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - check
• Obsession with Crime and Punishment - check
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - check
• Fraudulent Elections - check

This is scary.

I think it might be a bit hyperbolic to start checking everything off as present so quickly. Most of those metrics, as presented, are subjective at best. I'm not going to get into all of them, but as a single example "Religion and Government are Intertwined" could hardly be considered "checked". If you seriously believe that to be the case, I invite you review 17th century European history. Now THAT was an intertwining of government and religion. Our current situation could be more accurately viewed, historically, as a possible accidental bumping of elbows in a crowded hallway, followed by a curt "excuse me, passing through."

Thats not to say these things don't exist in the micro, or aren't even commonplace among fragmented demographics within the US. But there is hardly uniformity at the national level, especially among political ideologies.

I agreed to everything you said until you mentioned fascism. I thought, things are bad in the US, but surely they can't be that bad, the US are nothing like Nazi Germany, right? So I googled for a fascism checklist and found this: The 14 defining characteristics of fascism:

• Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - check
• Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - check
• Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - check
• Supremacy of the Military - check
• Rampant Sexism - check
• Controlled Mass Media - check
• Obsession with National Security - check
• Religion and Government are Intertwined - check
• Corporate Power is Protected - check
• Labor Power is Suppressed - check
• Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - check
• Obsession with Crime and Punishment - check
• Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - check
• Fraudulent Elections - check

This is scary.

Friend, a whore is a whore. Our government has been whoring for a very long time. The whole point to the checks and balances was to create an effective zero sum game pitting branches against one another and preventing any one branch from becoming too powerful. Since 1980, our government has been under attack by vested corporate interests bent on making the government a facade for promoting the wants and needs of corporations. As those corporations became multinational, those needs no longer included the welfare of the American people or the continuance of anything resembling a representative government. The courts are stuffed, the executive is a government unto itself, and the legislature is a masturbatory exercise in two party lock-up.

Our government used to whore for the American people. Now it whores for Corporate finance and influence. We are now officially a fascist state. So the government you are so contemptuous of is also the very corporations you so love... you deal with the ideological conflict of love and hate, its not my problem. If you have any doubt, please refer to the 14 defining characteristics of a Fascist State, to remedy that doubt. I don't love our government as it currently exists. The Democrats are now moderate conservatives. The Republicans have been hijacked by... I don't even know what to call them, insane? Look at Rick Santorum. Wow! What a whack job! Tell me he's not a burger shy a Happy Meal? Both sides are suckling the corporate teat. Both sides are rubber stamps for insane spending. The Dems try to pump money into social programs and the Reps try to pump money into the pockets of wealthy corporate interests. Neither is taking care of building a viable national economy, maintaining the nations infrastructure, protecting the middle class from a predatory upper class or providing a level of support that even hints at a sustainable future for the middle class let alone the physical environment. Have you not been reading the news. The ENTIRE body of government finance regulators are men who came straight from Wallstreet and go back and forth to banks and investment firms as freely as your or I cross the street. When I verbally ham-fist corporations, I gleefully pimp slap Government with the back of the same hand, because I can't see any dividing line between the players any more. So don't tell me I absolve government for its part in the crime of the century. I'm just saying you can't tell what team the players are on any more, I just know that they're not playing for you or me.

Religious/Social Conservatives will likely not believe anything they are told that is contrary to what the bible tells them. Conservatives who are big proponents of big oil are likely to not believe or will discredit what climatologists say, if it hurts THEIR (big oil) interests. Then their are conservatives with the ignorant, biased view that scientists are all a bunch liberal elites who think they are better than everyone else because they have PhDs and grad degrees.

What we REALLY need to investigate is;
How the Hell did Big Oil get social/religious Conservatives to tie Big Oil interests to their religion?
Why is it the person screaming about "life at ejaculation" is also the same person ranting; "LOL, it was a cool day today" as a proof of some trend?

I think a survey would show that all these people have a hatred for Unions. A disgust for compassion. A mistrust in science.

What would really CLEAR THIS UP, is to recognize that a "Social Conservative" in the US today, mostly fits the following 14 characteristics -- see if you can find Herman Cain, Newt, Romney or Santorum here -- heck, I'd be surprised if they don't nail at least 10 traits;
The 14 Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism.

I just saw a picture of the concrete dome built over a Cactus Crater recently ( this is a different picture). That dome is 107m (390 feet) in diameter. The Castle Bravo test left a crater over a mile (2000 meters) in diameter and 250 feet (75 meters) deep. I also found this article that notes that some of the nuclear tests caused tsunamis hundreds of miles away on Christmas and Pitcairn islands. Some of those tests were as 'small' as 16 kilotons. But a 1996 analysis said that tsunamis from underwater explosions were likely to largely dissipate upon reaching a continental shelf.

So I would argue for at least a distinct 'maybe' on the tsunami, depending on various factors - impact speed, distance from shore, etc.

Certainly a larger one, impacting at 40,000 km/hour (12 km/sec), would essentially go through the entire ocean depth in a smallish fraction of a second - really before it noticed the ocean was there. That would leave a hollow steam-filled column behind it much bigger in diameter than the asteroid (like the cavitation trail behind a bullet, or a supercavitating torpedo). If the hollow column is, say, 100 meters in diameter and the ocean at that point is 2000 meters, that would be 31,415*2000=62,830,000 cubic meters of water that have to go somewhere in a hurry. That somewhere would be two waves - the first from the initial push outwards, the second from the shock of the collapse of the column. And maybe a third from the water thrown into the air that comes back down shortly thereafter. Let's assume a ring 10 km in diameter giving a circumference of 62.83 km. Then there are 10,000 cubic meters of water to be accounted for in each km of ring, or 10 cubic meters per meter of circumference. That looks to me like a significant sploosh. Of course I'm just making this all up, and I have no idea what size asteroid it would take to do that. :)

Try looking at Canada on a map sometime. Canada is the second largest producer of oil in the world, only next to Saudi Arabia.

http://www.rense.com/general37/petrol.htm

http://www.rense.com/general41/lost.htm

2.5 Trillion In Lost 1930's
US Treasury Notes?
Naive Scam - Or Secret CIA Counterfeits?
By Tim Luckhurst
The Scotsman - UK
9-20-3

I've been interested in all things 'space' since I was a young kid and consider myself reasonably knowledgeable about the universe, galaxies, star systems, etc, but I still get blown away when thinking about the scale of things some times.

One of the main things I try to put across to people when I talk about space, is just how big it is. Sometimes people can't get their head around the numbers, which is quite understandable seeing as we typically don't have much experience dealing with these kind of measurements, so if I have the chance I will point them to the following links containing fantastic visualisations of such scales. They cover the very big and the very small equally well I think, and are simple and engaging enough for kids to follow too.

Powers of Ten - very interesting short video commissioned by IBM back in 1968.

The Scale of The Universe - interactive flash applet that allows you to zoom in and out of the universe (an updated version of one done a year or two back by the same authors).

Relative size of stars and planets - I have no idea who originally made this set of images but they have propogated around the web over the years and this just happens to be first link to it I found in Google results.

If there's one thing in the second and third links that I think will surprise a lot of people, it's how insanely large the biggest stars are compared to our Sun (in diameter, not necessarily in mass).

At least one corporate security chiefs predicted such a scenario and prepared for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla#WTC_risk_assessment

To me there are many strange things about 9/11. The Israeli white van incident for instance:
http://rense.com/general44/those.htm

AGW science uses sophisticated computer modelling to show that the Earth's climate is driven by the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere...the 'forcing function'. The nuclear core theory provides for a nuclear reactor generating 4 terawatts of heat that must be continuously radiated into space. Moreover, the nuclear reactor output varies over time from full production to zero production to full production.

http://www.rense.com/general25/vore.htm

  Such variation obviously has never happened or we would have seen major changes in the long-term climate. Therefore, the AGW science has thoroughly discredited the nuclear core science since there are obviously thousands of scientists who believe the AGW science versus only one or a handful who believe in nuclear core science and we have to give the verdict to the majority opinion. That's how we do science in the 21st century... As for TFA, is the Earth gaining or losing mass? Duh! + 40000 + 160 -15 = a whole lot of gain. There...solved that question too.

List of supposed trigger words as of @ 2005

http://www.rense.com/general66/scgh.htm

Well then, let me just target myself by creating a story from choice words on that list... bolded for your convenience.

--------
"MITM won't work, they have firewalls", the portly nerd stated flatly, "Only way in is SSH over SSL, but brute forcing the RSA key may take eons."

"Let me try," said Skully as she sat at the terminal displaying the remote supercomputer's login prompt.

Despite entering many spook words, the correct phrase remained an enigma; They had all been incorrect passwords and the secure shell remained so.

The Infowar program's conspiracy theories blabbed over the radio. Posters on the wall proved the basement dwelling nerd who summoned her clearly had a fetish for redheads and Skully became uncomfortably aware of him now staring at her rack.

"Do we have to listen to this crap, Bubba?" said Skully in an effort to divert the nerd's attention from her.

The radio clicked off, and Bubba adjusted an old TV's UHF dial, past Bugs Bunny and paused momentarily on a news broadcast:

Police say the hacker group Anonymous ran into a speedbump of sorts after targeting a Unix Security Firm--

"Lame," remarked Bubba as he resumed his search, "Pseudonyms should be cool or at least ironic... like Verisign ."

Bubba chortled gelatinously as he arrived at his favorite show and said, "Firefly is great, ever seen it? Used to be on another Chan..."

Skully wasn't listening, she was intently staring at the debugging output on one of the various screens. Surrounded by miscellaneous glyphs and hexadecimal numbers was a single coherent word, "sardine".

Skully attempted the password, and immediately gained access. "That executive's fish breath wasn't exactly top secret."
--------

I hope the spooks find it an entertaining read.

List of supposed trigger words as of @ 2005

http://www.rense.com/general66/scgh.htm

Was it the wrong turn at Albuquerque that got Bugs Bunny on the list?

List of supposed trigger words as of @ 2005

http://www.rense.com/general66/scgh.htm