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This is just the U.S. military doing R & D for U.S. companies to be able to deploy cell towers @ 65K feet to cover vast swaths of rural areas for way cheaper than cell towers. Might be great for wireless cable or internet too. Just have a micro-wave link to the ground and a land-line from there. lest you think this preposterous... http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/feature/detail/Mobile_phone_airship_to_conquer_stratosphere.html?siteSect=108&sid=6873540&cKey=1152528169000

Without a strong magnetic field, the solar wind will strip away the atmosphere over time. Lighter elements especially, will be stripped away rapidly.

NASA seems to think that over 1/3 of Mars atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds over the years.

Also, Venus is experiencing the same.

From SwissInfo comes a similar story.

I guess the prime challenge would be to find a non-radiated spot and see if bees there thrive. The problem is, we all wanted 100% coverage so it's going to be hard to find such a place that also appeals to bees..

Having said that, the theory isn't that alien IMHO. A bee doesn't exactly have a large body to dissipate radiation with - as it's smaller it has a larger surface to volume ratio..

So, will there be(e) a market in Faraday hives?

I wonder how much it would cost to build a vaccuum tunnel to run very high speed train in at a fraction of the power required by the TGV...

There was an effort by the Swiss called Swissmetro to create partial vacuum tubes for train speeds of 500mph between major swiss cities.

However, the project appears dead at the moment.

This is not neutrality

KFG

Drilling deep holes can cause earthquakes:

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/detail/Geotherm al_project_shakes_Basel_again.html?siteSect=105&si d=7407138&cKey=1168104002000

And neither is due process it appears. How long will it be before we bring Saddam's methods of running prisons home after giving them a try in Iraq and Cuba?

Yeah, but at least Saddam is allowed a lawyer, or two, or three! Too bad they accidentally keep falling dead.

The three were flush with cash, and moved around constantly between the northern cities of Brescia and Vicenza, the Italian capital, Rome, and the southern city of Naples, police allege. They were also in contact with other terror cells in the northern cities of Venice, Cesena and Milan, as well as the central Italian city of Florence, according to the investigators. They say they also have evidence of the three men being in contact with extremist groups in Norway, France and Britain.

Bourhama is thought to have undergone training at terrorist camps in Chechnya and Georgia and may be capable of making explosive belts used by suicide bombers. He allegedly had in his possession a bottle of "perfume" containing toxic substances, police said.

We've got reports from last year saying the Sun has been brighter recently and we've got higher sunspot activity than we've seen in 1,000 years. linky

My, somewhat ironic, point was that everyone has been so busy pointing fingers at us humans that we forget that we're not the only ones in control of the climate.

Some more details and a pic of (hopefully) the supercomputer can be found on swissinfo.org

This is what happens when systems fail.

Shame on the testers who didn't catch this.

This just appeared online in the past hour or so:
Space Probe Finds Frozen Sea on Mars

I didn't think the article was too good. The following two are better:

Swiss Info

Reuters

And i don't think either it's about protocol costing too much or investing in new technologies. This last point is especially flawed since the last 50 years sure prove that investements in new tech do not naturally go towards ecological improvement unless it's enforced by law and state

All in all, it's the logics of production for profit which is to blame for ecological disaster. And while the world is dying in wars, malaria (heard about novartis not complying with WHO agreement ? see this for a very mild point of view ), working children, et al what exactly is making it all worthwile ? The abillity to drive a S.U.V. fo 1% of the population ? The extra-fat & land-destroying mega burger menu ?

Bah .. i don't even blame the people. I blame the ruling elite. And the banks.

"Let the individual states run the elections if they want, but have the Federal governement set the rules...It works up here in Canada..."

Each state is allowed to run the election its own way, and many other things its own way, so that the states are like laboratories or individual countries where they compete to come up with the best quality of life and the best government policies. Because U.S. citizens can freely and easily move from state-to-state, it's easy for them to "vote with their feet" for the best government solutions. Our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) had faith in the free market's ability to propogate the best quality of life, and they extended that faith in the free market to state governments.

"We have been laughing our asses off at how the US runs an election for the past 4 years, and this time was no exception.'

Well, that's certainly a valuable contribution to this discussion. I'm glad that you have found something to feel smug about. Perhaps this will help lift you out of your inferiority complex. On a more productive note, the fact that the U.S. still gives states so much autonomy reflects our different view of the proper role of federal government. Many countries and cultures believe that if it can be regulated at the federal level, then it should for the sake of consistency. In the U.S., we generally believe that if it can be regulated at the local level, then it should for the sake of flexibility. The Swiss have been having this discussion recently, in regards to their education system. Education in Switzerland is almost entirely regulated by the 26 individual cantons. That kind of local control makes schools more responsive to local needs, but the differences also make it more difficult to move between cantons when you've got school-age children.

"If I mark more then one, it is a spoiled ballot."

It's a shame that most people can't understand or don't care about the advantages of Condorcet voting. That kind of approval voting would fulfill the intent of the Electoral College, without the controversy that the College generates every year.

this is a good one click on "US 2004 Pres Election Flag" banner

Like most dictatorships turn out. Now things are a bit different, now its a democracy.

Afghanistan anyone? Mind you Karzai, a man who those "anti-american islamic fundamentalists" elected, is quite friendly towards the US.

Anyway, even French President Jacques Chirac, along with the Mayor of Paris and other French officials, admit anti-Semitism is an increasing problem (after denying it for 1-2 years). Here are links from a variety of news sources. And note in the following links that all the suspects aren't necessarily North African Muslims but also Neo-Nazis from areas near the German border.

• Neo-Nazis set fire to Jewish center
• Israeli urges the French to fight anti-Semitism
• French government vows to fight against racism
• Mayor of Paris announces concrete measures against anti-Semitism
• France cautious on Jewish centre attack claim

Do we really need this stuff? I could see arguments for more communications hardware up there, but hypervelocity weapons and lasers?

Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, long range missiles, calls the US "The Great Satan," and would no doubt love to nuke, in order: Israel, the US.

Libya had had a secret nuclear weapons program for years, long range missiles, a history of terrorism. It was only the example of Iraq, diplomatic pressure from the US & UK, and Libya's hope to rejoin the civilized world that is causing them to drop it. Will they reverse course? Who knows.

North Korea has had secret nuclear weapons program for years, claims to have nuclear weapons now, has long range missiles that could reach the US. This is also a country with which the US is still technically at war. It has pursued expensive nuclear weapons programs while it let as many as 2,000,000 people starve to death over the last couple of years, conducted experiments with chemical weapons on prisoners, and other atrocities.

Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons, long range missiles, and is in danger of falling under the power of Islamist extremists.

Space based defense probably won't help much against Al Qaida's nuclear weapons, if they really have them, but maybe space based surveillance capability will be useful.

Brazils leftist government has been making anti-American noises and has publicly indicated an interest in nuclear weapons. They already have some of the most advanced capabilities in South America.

There are a number of other countries pursuing nuclear weapons, some of which may be hostile to the US.

What we could put in the field now may be good enough against the wacko nations like North Korea. We've waited long enough.

These type of devices have a long history:
an antique hail gun in Switzerland
(Australia)to combat hail. One such device was the 'hail gun', originating in France . .introduced. .for the 1986-7 season. Certainly not a recent invention
.

It's 2003. So where is he? AI has not seemed to improve much despite ambitious software projects and even games that would seem to require neural networks. Perhaps the most disappointing is the lack of much improvement in VR, with disappointing progress in input devices and 3D and other monitor technology. Voice synthesis has made some improvements though. Not bad, although it's still not HAL quality. Voice recognition seems to have matured quite a bit as well. IMO, the most significant progress has been in graphics cards with processors nearly as impressive as the main CPU. The impact this has had on games cannot be underestimated.

See for example Switzerland's first vote via the Internet passed successfully
and
American expats will be able to vote in the 2004 US election over the Internet following the launch of a new experiment.

The way I like to look at things is that no one source will ever be the actual truth. "Actual truth" probably can't be written down anyways. I will be looking at sites that are at total opposites of the spectrum. Check out the following eclectic list:

Iran
India
Switzerland
Russia
Saudi Arabia

• What ?
  The cantonal government said police reinforcements would be drafted in from all Swiss cantons and neighbouring Liechtenstein for "the biggest challenge" faced by Graubünden police since the force was founded in 1804.
• To which exremity ?
  Local authorities said in a statement released on Wednesday that it would not be possible to seal off Davos.
  Instead, attempts will be made to speak to demonstrators who have threatened to launch protests during the five-day summit, which brings together leading political and business leaders from around the world.
• Why ?
  The cantonal government has already rejected permission for a demonstration by anti-globalisation protestors during the summit.
• Why (2) ?
  Unauthorised protests turned violent last year when President Clinton visited the summit. The demonstrators were, however, prevented from reaching the congress centre where the summit is held.
  The local authorities said the increased police presence was justified by the violent demonstrations during the summit last year, as well as disruption at other international economic meetings over the past year.
• How much ?
  The federal government will pay 80 per cent of the policing costs.
• Conclusion ?
  Sorry, this sound like a good way to protect Davos'inhabitants quietness. They even say who'll pay for this and why they prefer avoiding this as they don't want a similar anterior event to occur again.
  I say "Bravo!"

• Alexandre Julliard directs the Wine Project
• Velcro ("Hook-and-loop fastener", 1948, G. de Mestral)
• High-temperature super-conductors (1986, J. Georg Bednorz - German and Karl A. Muller - Swiss )
• Euler
• Bernouilli
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Paracelsus
• Horace Benedict de Saussure
• Le Corbusier
• Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross
• Carl Gustav Jung

It's worse if you're a foreigner and it's next to impossible to become a Swiss citizen.

And innovative people? Remember Orson Welles' s famous quote that 500 years of Swiss democracy and peace had produced nothing more than the cuckoo clock.