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I'm a major fan of the Voyager project and remember vividly the pictures of Saturn when I was in high school. The engineering involved is impressive, in any context. I'd just like to point out that depending on the definition of space, solar system or which of the two Voyagers we are talking about, this event has occurred quite a few times now in the press. A quick Google search of news reveals at least this many announcements about reaching the "edge of space."

2008: http://www.space.com/5586-voyager-spacecraft-reveals-solar-system-edge.html

2009: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/12/29/near-the-edge-of-the-solar-system-voyager-2-finds-magnetic-fluff/

2010: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8201280/Voyager-1-reaches-edge-of-solar-system.html

'In China, we will have a debt crisis — a high-speed rail debt crisis,' says Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and longtime critic of high-speed rail who worries that the cost of the project might have created a hidden debt bomb that threatens China's banking system. 'I think it is more serious than your subprime mortgage crisis. You can always leave a house or use it. The rail system is there. It's a burden. You must operate the rail system, and when you operate it, the cost is very high.'"

Unfortunately, that apparently isn't the only bubble in China:

How Big Is the Chinese Property Bubble?

In times of crisis alternative economic models become more appealing. Since the USA, the beacon of capitalism was the epicentre for the current crisis and the Chinese economy escaped relatively unharmed, there is a certain logic in asserting that the central planners in China have the right economic prescription.

But as James Chanos and others have pointed out, centrally planned economies lead to malinvestment and nowhere is that malinvestment more manifest than in China’s Property market. Consider John Mauldin’s November 24th, Outside the box interview with Vitaliy Katsenelson. Katsenelson compares Japan’s property bubble of the late 1980s to modern day China and the results aren’t pretty.....

China's credit bubble on borrowed time as inflation bites

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to take out protection against the risk of a sovereign default by China as one of its top trade trades for 2011. This is a new twist.

It warns that the Communist Party will have to puncture the credit bubble before inflation reaches levels that threaten social stability. This in turn may open a can of worms.

"Many see China’s monetary tightening as a pre-emptive tap on the brakes, a warning shot across the proverbial economic bows. We see it as a potentially more malevolent reactive day of reckoning," said Tim Ash, the bank’s emerging markets chief.

Officially, inflation was 4.4pc in October, and may reach 5pc in November, but it is to hard find anybody in China who believes it is that low. Vegetables have risen 20pc in a month.

China: the coming costs of a superbubble

China may seem to have defied the recession and the laws of economics. It hasn't. When China's bubble bursts, the global impact will be severe, spiking US interest rates.

The world looks at China with envy. China’s economy grew 8.7 percent last year, while the world economy contracted by 2.2 percent. It seems that Chinese “Confucian capitalism” – a market economy powered by 1.3 billion people and guided by an authoritarian regime that can pull levers at will – is superior to our touchy-feely democracy and capitalism. But the grass on China’s side of the fence is not as green as it appears.

In fact, China’s defiance of the global recession is not a miracle – it’s a superbubble. When it deflates, it will spell big trouble for all of us.

It seems likely that the world has a few more financial tremors coming.

Two. David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, and leader of the Conservative Party.

> It is still exceedingly unlikely that even *one* extra cancer death will be attributable to Fukushima.

Especially, if the accident report is published before the deaths have a chance to take place and ignore other health effects. Cancer is not only effect of radiation posioning.

> To the best of my understanding there are habitable towns throughout the world whose background radiation levels

A meaningless comparison. People living in the exclusion zone are at risk from ingesting radioactive caesium and iodine, not from external radiation.
Indeed, radioactive iodine-131 has already been found in the breast milk of several women living in areas around Fukushima:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8465248/Radioactive-iodine-found-in-breast-milk-of-Japanese-mothers.html

I think the _older_ diesel engines could take more crap than the petrol ones. So maybe that's why they did it that way.

The new diesel engines can't :).

And you may not even have to start the car to cause damage: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/2737057/A-costly-mistake.html

But if a motorist who has used petrol all his or her life buys or borrows a new diesel car then uses the wrong nozzle at the filling station, costly damage can be done even before the ignition key has been inserted, because unlocking the doors also energises a diesel's fuel pump.

That puts the fuel under pressure, ready for instant injection into the engine, which is why modern diesels start so quickly. The old-fashioned waiting time for preliminary ignition "warm-up" might appear to have been eliminated, but in reality it has simply been electronically absorbed into pre-driving procedures. It is a clever and convenient development but it comes at a price for the absent-minded.

Anybody remember this video?

Does that bike look like it's going 2x the speed of the cars? It doesn't to me. Interesting to note, though, that the tops of his tyres are travelling 2x as fast as the vehicle itself. As I remember the story, he just left his ex-wife with his son on the back, I'd bet he was upset, I'd bet he _has_ taken his bike up to 122mph on many occasions, and I'd bet when they showed him the video with the little number on it, he just assumed that he had gunned it, maybe he had even gunned it somewhere else on that ride. Anyway, he pleaded guilty, spent time in jail and probably had lots of other major repercussions based on "video evidence" that doesn't really seem to back up the number generated by the lidar computer.

I don't know how that all turned out, I do remember the video going viral and lots of people commenting that he looks more like he's going 61mph than 122.

Perhaps they are just rehiring the contract workers these companies shed when the financial crisis hit ? You know, the ones without all the glitzy stock options and employee benefits that you never here about.

Real Agents use Semen.

See, this is exactly what Apple was talking about. This is why Apple had to sue Samsung... these things are copying Apple!

That's a good question, and one suspects the answer is that they ask security consultants and companies, who have a stake in hyping up these costs, to pull figures out of the air. Googling gives for example this article, quote

"In order to figure out the financial losses businesses incurred during 2009, Symantec asked companies to look at a range of factors which negatively impacted them as a result of cyber crime – such as lost revenue, loss of customer relationships and damage to their firm’s brand. This came out at a mean average of £1.2 million per company. "

Putting a dollar value on "loss of customer relationships", "damage to the firms brand" etc is not even guesswork, it really is just pick-a-number. If the firm wasn't lax in it's security, there shouldn't be any significant damage to the brand. Losses directly due to downtime could be established meaningfully, but overall I think the figures are pretty much as meaningless as the figures the record companies come up with for losses due to piracy.

So, here is what we hear from the proponents of government run socialized medicine:

I would like to second what you said. I'm currently in Venezuela, and the health care here is way better than what I had available when I lived in the US. First of all, it's really cheap, the doctors are top of the line, and maybe the only thing you can complain here is that when they actually see somebody here with insurance they really squeeze them dry, but you still get your medical attention. If you don't have insurance you can still pay the bills since they have a different rate so to speak.

And here is the reality:

Healthcare suffers in Venezuela

Palacios, Venezuela's largest public maternity hospital and once the nation's beacon of neonatal care, has fallen on hard times. Half of the anesthesiologists and pediatricians on staff two years ago have quit. Basic equipment such as respirators, ultrasound monitors and incubators are either broken or scarce. Six of 12 birth rooms have been shut.

On one day last month, five newborns were crowded into one incubator, said Dr. Jesus Mendez Quijada, a psychiatrist and Palacios staff member who is a past president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

The deaths of the six infants "were not a case of bad luck, but the consequence of an accumulation of circumstances that have created this alarming situation," Mendez said.

He and others say the problems at Concepcion Palacios are symptoms of a variety of ills that have beset the public healthcare system under leftist firebrand President Hugo Chavez. Cases of malaria nearly doubled between 1998, the year before Chavez took office, and 2007. Incidents of dengue fever more than doubled over the same period.

Poorly paid doctors regularly demonstrate at hospitals from Puerto La Cruz in the northeast to Maracay in the industrial heartland, demanding back pay and protesting the lack of equipment and supplies. Others are leaving in droves for Spain, Australia or the Middle East, where they make 10 times the $600 monthly average salary they earn in public hospitals.

More: WikiLeaks Embassy Cables Reveal Venezuela's Health-Care System Collapsing

And the UK?

US surgery safer than under NHS

By Thair Shaikh 12:00AM BST 07 Sep 2003
Patients who have major operations on the National Health Service are four times more likely to die than Americans undergoing such surgery, according to a new study.

The difference in mortality rates was blamed on long NHS waiting lists, a shortage of specialists and competition for intensive care beds.

The joint study, carried out by University College London and a team from Columbia University in New York, found that patients in Britain who were most at risk of complications after major surgery were not being seen by specialists and were not reaching intensive care units in time to save them.

Thousands of NHS operations cancelled because of blunders as complaints about standard of treatment rise

10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care

The Grass Is Not Always Greener - A Look at National Health Care Systems Around the World

However, a closer look at countries with national health care systems shows that those countries have serious problems of their own, including rising costs, rationing of care, lack of access to modern medical technology, and poor health outc

So, here is what we hear from the proponents of government run socialized medicine:

I would like to second what you said. I'm currently in Venezuela, and the health care here is way better than what I had available when I lived in the US. First of all, it's really cheap, the doctors are top of the line, and maybe the only thing you can complain here is that when they actually see somebody here with insurance they really squeeze them dry, but you still get your medical attention. If you don't have insurance you can still pay the bills since they have a different rate so to speak.

And here is the reality:

Healthcare suffers in Venezuela

Palacios, Venezuela's largest public maternity hospital and once the nation's beacon of neonatal care, has fallen on hard times. Half of the anesthesiologists and pediatricians on staff two years ago have quit. Basic equipment such as respirators, ultrasound monitors and incubators are either broken or scarce. Six of 12 birth rooms have been shut.

On one day last month, five newborns were crowded into one incubator, said Dr. Jesus Mendez Quijada, a psychiatrist and Palacios staff member who is a past president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

The deaths of the six infants "were not a case of bad luck, but the consequence of an accumulation of circumstances that have created this alarming situation," Mendez said.

He and others say the problems at Concepcion Palacios are symptoms of a variety of ills that have beset the public healthcare system under leftist firebrand President Hugo Chavez. Cases of malaria nearly doubled between 1998, the year before Chavez took office, and 2007. Incidents of dengue fever more than doubled over the same period.

Poorly paid doctors regularly demonstrate at hospitals from Puerto La Cruz in the northeast to Maracay in the industrial heartland, demanding back pay and protesting the lack of equipment and supplies. Others are leaving in droves for Spain, Australia or the Middle East, where they make 10 times the $600 monthly average salary they earn in public hospitals.

More: WikiLeaks Embassy Cables Reveal Venezuela's Health-Care System Collapsing

And the UK?

US surgery safer than under NHS

By Thair Shaikh 12:00AM BST 07 Sep 2003
Patients who have major operations on the National Health Service are four times more likely to die than Americans undergoing such surgery, according to a new study.

The difference in mortality rates was blamed on long NHS waiting lists, a shortage of specialists and competition for intensive care beds.

The joint study, carried out by University College London and a team from Columbia University in New York, found that patients in Britain who were most at risk of complications after major surgery were not being seen by specialists and were not reaching intensive care units in time to save them.

Thousands of NHS operations cancelled because of blunders as complaints about standard of treatment rise

10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care

The Grass Is Not Always Greener - A Look at National Health Care Systems Around the World

However, a closer look at countries with national health care systems shows that those countries have serious problems of their own, including rising costs, rationing of care, lack of access to modern medical technology, and poor health outc

Google tends to treat its customers fairly well.

Yes, they treat advertisers quite well. They treat cellular providers quite well, too; maybe you have to jailbreak Android phones, and maybe they use OHA membership as a kudgel to restrict competition in the handset market, but that's what the customers, the Samsungs, HTCs, and Verizons, want. Protip: Google's free services don't have customers, they have users; it's a critical distinction. Search Google's help documetns and you will never find a Gmail account holder referred to as a "customer."

They aggregate all of your personal information, and think personal privacy is quaint and that people should change their name if they want to prevent people from tracking them on the Internet.

But none of this matters, after all: Gmail loads fast! And my Droid syncs my contacts!

They've earned a fair bit of trust, especially compared with Microsoft and Yahoo.

Power corrupts... I've forgotten what absolute power does.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8113817/Inside-North-Korea-exclusive-footage.html

If there ever was a place called hell, that would be it.

Thanks for the reply. Putting in VItamin D and CVID into Google gets me this as a top result:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18451650
"Patients with CVID may present asymptomatic vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D and VDRs play an important role in the innate immune system and modulate Toll-like receptor-related responses. Delay in diagnosis may predispose these patients not only to irreparable bone loss but also to infections, and autoimmune and malignant disorders, thus emphasizing the importance of prompt intervention."

As a start, be sure to get your Vitamin D level checked, and get the actual number, and compare it against these two suggestions (the 40-60 ng/mL range):
    http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.heartscanblog.org/2009/01/why-rda-for-vitamin-d.html

A slightly lower target:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

Basically, your immune system needs vitamin D to "trigger and arm" the immune system:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7379094/Vitamin-D-triggers-and-arms-the-immune-system.html

But, it also needs vitamin D to shut down an excessive immune response too (thus it can be involved in both too little and too much immune response). More on that:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/h1n1-flu-and-vitamin-d.shtml

And of course you need the basic phytonutrients from plants (many as yet undiscovered) for your body to be at its best.

Anyway, your health may well involve other issues. Still, what people often call "genetic" is really an issue of how genes interact with an environment (including what we eat and how much sunlight we get) and if we can change the environment, sometimes we can keep our weak links from ever being exposed (Dr. Fuhrman says that in his book "Eat to Live").

If I said anything helpful to you, I'm glad, and you can pay me back by helping someone else with such information or something else someday. :-)

The 10 year cost of "Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich" for those that earn less than $250K/year is $4 Trillion ($400 BN/yr), the cost for the tax cuts the Republicans fought for have a 10 year cost of $700 BN ($70 BN/yr). The tax cuts EVERYONE got cost way, way more than the cuts reserved for high-earners.

Precisely, the OED is a record of language, not a guardian of it.

Obviously you are not British*. Of course Oxbridge's presses (OUP, CUP) are the guardian of English as much as L'Académie française is the guardian of the French (sorry, française) language. Don't let the Telegraph tell you any different.

* Wait, you may be. Sod it.

you will end up like the UK where most of the effort goes into getting D students to C - which is the key way schools are ranked. Schools also get round this by running classes in soft GCSE's so as to get a better score in the 5 Good GSCEs http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8374467/School-league-tables-overhauled-in-transparency-drive.html

I have not taken a GCSE Maths test, so I can't really speak to what might actually be on that test. But my impression is that second-year Algebra in the U.S. is a little more in-depth than what is required by the GCSE, as the course is generally taught as a precursor to Calculus. This is one reason why it is not required -- if you have no intention to go on to an education that requires the use of calculus, why should you suffer through the precursors to calculus (which also include a full course on Trigonometry)?

Also, don't sound too smug about the British education system ... apparently you don't actually have to know any maths to pass the GCSE Maths test with flying colors.

Makes sense to me - you won't get tasered or shot if you abide by the law.

Can I live in this black & white world that you live in, where every person beaten, tasered, or shot is a hardcore criminal that deserved it? I understand that you're biased, as your daughter and son-in-law are both police officers, but there are many documented cases out there of police using tasers against people when it is absolutely unnecessary and even more dangerous.

The problem is that police officers are now using tasers beyond situations when their lives are in danger. They are using it to shock people into compliance for not following verbal orders. They're using it in cases when they would never even think about using their gun. If your daughter and her husband are two of the few police officers using tasers ONLY when the situation calls for it, then I am happy that they volunteered to be police officers. The force needs more people like them.

But there is a reason why the Federal Court in California limits police use of Tasers.

We never said once that the car had run out of power. The car had to be pushed into the warehouse because you are not allowed to drive cars into a building.

Ok, so in what other cases has the show used that shot? Oh wait, they haven't. They were clearly implying it was out of power. Top Gear never explicitly lied in the piece, but they made things appear to be different from what actually happened and then let the viewers make the logical assumption themselves. I don't mind that the challenges are scripted, but I expected some degree of truth from their actual reviews.

You're kidding, right ? It's a ridiculous claim that a muslim found out something centuries before "western" scientists ever did, without any substantiation or source. You're not seriously expecting a source I hope. Muslims claim this sort of absurdities all the time. Talking to them about this will teach you one thing : you'll never have to wait long for a violence once you start demanding realism.

The De Viginere cipher was discovered in the 16th century. It was, obviously, not cracked in the 9th. Worse than that, al Kindi never did any math at all, and his attempts to bring a tiny bit of reason into islam ended with his execution by religious "fatwa". Whatever little discoveries he made, we only know about them because Christian monks recorded them, muslims burned his books *and* the author, after beheading him, after torturing him. What this means, other than that even a tiny amount of reason is considered an enemy of islam worthy of execution is beyond anyone who has studied even a little bit of history.

The fantasy :
muslims "knew about interstellar galactic material in the 6th century"

The reality of idiocies defended by muslim scolars, TODAY :
muhammad and allah claim the sun sets in a muddy pool
Oh, and, btw, there is exactly 1 reason children are disfigured and die from polio (Obviously the disease is going to spread again in 5 years or so. I guess allah must really hate babies)
(needless to say the sun sets over the horizon. It obviously does not contact anything, nor does it appear to touch anything consistently)
(and to get into historical relations between islam and science : read up on, say, the colossus, or the library of alexandria, or look up just what the center of knowledge and richess in the ancient world was, before muslims brought their genocides and wars. Look up statistics like that a single city like Luxemburg has more cultural output than ALL muslim nations COMBINED. How small countries yearly output in books is easily 10 times the cumulative muslim cultural output of all time. I mean you cannot imagine just how bad islam fucked up. The region, the people, the disgusting wars, executions and the total absense of any culture worth mentioning)

I guess it doesn't take much to make idiots happy. Feel free to choose what you believe. However, may I point out I have one BIG problem with this piss-poor disgusting excuse for a religion. I don't mind any religion, really. I'm an atheist myself, and feel free to choose what to believe. However, I have a problem with muslims : the killings, the death, the disgusting executions, and the everlasting destruction of people and minds islam brings wherever it goes. You don't get to kill. Not with allah's permission. Not for racist reasons. No gendercide. Not for political reasons (just look at the frontpage of tomorrow's news). Not for religious reasons. The only thing muslims excel in, is genocide and massacres.

There is not a SINGLE muslim country that has managed to hold on to the level of technology that it had in the year 700 A.D. under islam. Not a single one. That's the sad reality. Christians split the atom, discovered the technology to keep 6 billion humans alive on this planet, and put a man on the moon, in cooperation with Jews and Atheists. That's reality.

This sick disease of a religion should be burned off the earth. Yes, you heard me. We should just end it, because the more delays, the more people wil

We never said once that the car had run out of power. The car had to be pushed into the warehouse because you are not allowed to drive cars into a building.

Which is all well and good, except Top Gear hasn't used that kind of shot in any of its other reviews (to my knowledge anyway, and I am a fan. even if I think they were in the wrong on this one).

You may be thinking CES 2010. Ballmer at CES 2010 showed off the HP Slate. Just 20 days later, Steve Jobs demoed the iPad. The Slate was announced without a price but a release date for the holidays. When it was released 6 months after the iPad, it was more expensive than an iPad.

(I've got a list if you really need examples).

A citation quality list would be a really good thing to have.
Sometimes you run into a dittohead or similarly brainwashed person who is just at the right place in their life where a little demonstration of their idol's hypocrisy is enough to open their eyes. It worked for Paul Haggis - director and writer of movies like Crash and Million Dollar Baby. 35 years under their spell but he was finally ready to see the truth.

Unfortunately they have already decommissioned the aircraft;-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8158181/HMS-Ark-Royal-Their-final-mission.html

Maybe that's why the guy bought the Raven - it's all he could afford if he wanted to get Ark Royal as well.

Oh yeah? Back this one up with a well written, fact-based post and you'll get a +5 informative. But I seriously doubt you can do it.

Well, on one hand the state forces foreign companies to make 49%/51% joint Chinese-owned company ventures in order to have access to the Chinese market. Once foreign firms get access and have spent a considerable amount of resources getting started in China, the state forces them to manufacture a certain percent of their product in China, NOT by themselves, but it should be subcontracted out to a Chinese company (e.g., Honda China can't make, design, and manufacture all their own stuff, they have to transfer technology to some Chinese company so that the Chinese company can make it... if you don't follow their rules, the state can simply legislate your technology away, or worse). Once you've transferred sufficient technology to the Chinese company, you start wondering why no more orders for your products are coming in, and then you realize that it's because the very Chinese company you've partnered with is now making the product 100% in China without your help and "entirely of their own innovation."
http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/letter-bombs-11-coming-up-on-the-rail/

So there's our economic domination. And that's just one example of it. There's lots more, and it's in the news very frequently.

Then we have border disputes. China claims or has, in the past 10 years, claimed territory of: Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan (the entire country at missile-point, no less), Russia, India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Tajikstan, and any other country that has the misfortune to be touching them that isn't on their payroll. The People's Liberation Army annually ventures into Bhutan dozens of times. The government not only holds onto old conflicts which they have dubious claim, but starts new conflicts semi-frequently. We've also seen that when the CPC is pissed about a border, the Chinese media is used to intentionally and flagrantly lie about the facts in order to stir up nationalism. They have also shown that they will put the government's hand in everything, ranging from travel agents to school exchange trips to locking up the offending country's nationals for "espionage" (punishable by death) to economic embargoes meant to force countries to bend backwards and obey. Of course, the CPC will deny any involvement in any of these actions.

The People's Liberation Army continues to modernize and deploy more force aimed directly at Taiwan. The PLA "defense" budget continues to grow in the double digit percents every year, and it's almost exclusively aimed at Taiwan and the US -- it's still less than 20% of the US def

Oh yeah? Back this one up with a well written, fact-based post and you'll get a +5 informative. But I seriously doubt you can do it.

Well, on one hand the state forces foreign companies to make 49%/51% joint Chinese-owned company ventures in order to have access to the Chinese market. Once foreign firms get access and have spent a considerable amount of resources getting started in China, the state forces them to manufacture a certain percent of their product in China, NOT by themselves, but it should be subcontracted out to a Chinese company (e.g., Honda China can't make, design, and manufacture all their own stuff, they have to transfer technology to some Chinese company so that the Chinese company can make it... if you don't follow their rules, the state can simply legislate your technology away, or worse). Once you've transferred sufficient technology to the Chinese company, you start wondering why no more orders for your products are coming in, and then you realize that it's because the very Chinese company you've partnered with is now making the product 100% in China without your help and "entirely of their own innovation."
http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/letter-bombs-11-coming-up-on-the-rail/

So there's our economic domination. And that's just one example of it. There's lots more, and it's in the news very frequently.

Then we have border disputes. China claims or has, in the past 10 years, claimed territory of: Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan (the entire country at missile-point, no less), Russia, India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Tajikstan, and any other country that has the misfortune to be touching them that isn't on their payroll. The People's Liberation Army annually ventures into Bhutan dozens of times. The government not only holds onto old conflicts which they have dubious claim, but starts new conflicts semi-frequently. We've also seen that when the CPC is pissed about a border, the Chinese media is used to intentionally and flagrantly lie about the facts in order to stir up nationalism. They have also shown that they will put the government's hand in everything, ranging from travel agents to school exchange trips to locking up the offending country's nationals for "espionage" (punishable by death) to economic embargoes meant to force countries to bend backwards and obey. Of course, the CPC will deny any involvement in any of these actions.

The People's Liberation Army continues to modernize and deploy more force aimed directly at Taiwan. The PLA "defense" budget continues to grow in the double digit percents every year, and it's almost exclusively aimed at Taiwan and the US -- it's still less than 20% of the US def

You know, at this point, I'm almost tempted to say who cares what's damaged or not? The contamination is happening, no matter what the cause. Residets of Iitate, 40km from the reactor and outside the exclusion zone, are getting a free dental X-ray (40 microsieverts) every 4-6 hours (including pregnant women and children). That's merely considering radiation from external sources; if they feel much like breathing or eating, they'll be getting internal accumulation and exposure, which is orders of magnitude worse.

Sure, what exactly failed matters for the cleanup and post-mortem, but regardless of how it happened, Serious Problems Occurred(TM) that have to be dealt with.

Actually, it did make headlines in conservative circles ->

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100043200/third-climategate-report-imminent-expect-a-shortage-of-whitewash-in-stores-this-weekend/

BTW, did you *read* any of the whitewashes? Here's a decent guide to the detailed problems with them - feel free to expound on any details you happen to disagree with:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/15/mckitrick-understanding-the-climategate-inquiries/

They only reported it because another website reported it falsely. Don't blame them for another website's mistake.

More important products.... yes....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/8287610/Xbox-Kinect-helps-Microsoft-beat-Wall-Street-profit-forecasts.html

Your understanding blows. It's been reported in the news for a long time that reactor three is running MOX.

Here's a report from March 13 regarding reactor 3 using MOX:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8379134/Nuclear-meltdown-threat-Japan-preparing-for-a-worst-case-scenario.html

Everybody keeps talking about pebble bed reactors. Where's the love for the energy amplifier? Basically, you stick a particle accelerator next to the reactor and feed the reaction with neutrons from spallation. Some of the energy acquired from fission can then be used to pay off the energy demands of the accelerator; and because the accelerator can be tuned, it can make use of ordinarily tricky fuel -- like thorium or what we call "nuclear waste". If it ever seems to be getting out of control, shut down the accelerator and everything stops.

Japan Tsunami = massive natural disaster - GUN TOTING POPULATION -> no looting & roving gangs -> no murder, assault -> no need for way to "protect" self and family

Thai Tsunami = massive natural disaster - GUN TOTING POPULATION -> no looting & roving gangs -> no murder, assault -> no need for way to "protect" self and family

See a pattern here?

Yes, I do see a pattern - you either don't know what you are talking about or are making things up.

There was looting in Thailand after the 2004 Tsunami (and after their recent unrest), and in Japan now.

Thailand 2004: Thai looters cash in on tsunami destruction
Thailand 2010: Thai forces to fire on looters and arsonists
Japan 2011: Japan earthquake: Looting reported by desperate survivors

Now, is it firearms that causes people to form mobs with ill intent? Apparently not as they will form with makeshift weapons:

Recently in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, dozens of men, armed with machetes and make-shift weapons, broke into and looted stores along the capital's main commercial street. Natural Disasters in Chile and Haiti the Psychology of Looting

And what of Sweden, who lost a number of citizens in the 2004 disaster in Thailand?

Even famously law-abiding Sweden and Norway have been hit by scammers who have robbed and looted the homes of tourists who vanished in the chaos.

"It is, unfortunately, a reality that people who are known to be missing . . . have had their homes gone through and partly emptied," Swedish State Secretary Lars Danielsson said.......

Fearing an outbreak of looting akin to what occurred after the 1994 sinking of the ferryboat Estonia that killed 551 Swedes, police refused to release the names of the dead and missing. Somehow, though, the names got out, and now police are standing watch over hundreds of homes scattered across the country. Gangs pillage tsunami villages, stealing corpses & selling orphans

And more of the same: Robbery, rape and kidnap

Sri Lanka Churches Worried about Looting in Tsunami-hit Areas

Referring to the looters, the Sri Lanka church council said: "We appeal to them to kindly desist from such dastardly conduct and join with the several who are helping those in need," as it urged more church volunteers and others to join in the relief work.

The criticism came after reports that thugs were looting homes of some tsunami victims and rapists were preying on homeless survivors.

"We have received reports of incidents of rape, gang rape, molestation and physical abuse of women and girls in the course of unsupervised rescue operations," the Women and Media Collective group in Sri Lanka was quoted saying by the Reuters news agency.

But don't only bad people have guns? No. For example, Dr. Martin Luther King owned guns for protection.

I also suggest that you become clear on this point: Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone . This has been the law for quite some time.

You can't necessarily count on the police:

Actually, if time is shifting into a spacelike dimension, than perhaps this is the origin of all spacelike dimensions.

In that case I would predict that they will not discover a gravity wave cutoff at high energies.

This isn't the first theory about the dimensionality of the universe changing over time. A while back it was proposed that time itself is shifting into a spacelike dimension.

But I don't see how you have "stolen" anything from him, except in a metaphorical sense, or if you prefer in an "indeterminate" sense, based on theoretical future benefits which the law has no business presuming to guarantee.

I see your point - but yes, future benefits can be stolen. The law recognizes the value of intangible property, corporate secrets, etc. See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2809408/Ex-Coke-secretary-jailed-for-Pepsi-conspiracy.html

I completely agree, that people who risk their lives to save others are nothing else but heroes.

What I am confused about is what made such an act of heroism nessesary. With all the reports about Fukushima like http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/2011/03/17/wikileaks-cables-reveal-worry-over-japan-s-nuclear-plants-115875-22994842/ or http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8384966/Japan-nuclear-plant-disaster-engineer-retired-35-years-ago-over-Fukushima-safety-concerns.html I can not shake off the feeling that it was exactly calculated, that this plant will likely cost lives someday.

So now these workers (maybe) giving up their health or more, because someone wanted to make some more money. And what if things go completely fubar? There isn't even a way to punish a corporation for such a behaviour, because the damage is almost always higher than anyone can pay for.

To play devil's advocate: what is this incredibly sensitive personal information that Facebook has that could not be obtained by anyone else very easily?

You know that is is actually trivial to find the sexual orientation of people, even for those that has not disclosed it? And who knows what else that might be possible to pick out from such a system. That you're a virgin? That you pick your nose? That you actually like "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley?

For individuals or groups putting effort into data mining there are undoubtly information to be found that someone would prefer to be private. There is a paradigmic difference in everyone in the whole world can find out you are gay compared to just a few of your closest friend (and other gay men you meet).

Geothermal is a good answer for Japan. It's clean, it's cheap, and it'll never run out. It costs a little more up front than nuclear, but if you ask the people in Tokyo today if they would prefer it they might buy in.

wMind actually showing who was put into what sort of risk? I know of one Iranian fencer from a prominent family that was used as a contact. He can probably be identified by authorities. So far, that's it.

And if you even THINK about throwing back some vague "endangering our troops" comment, you need to re-examine your entire argument. Because I can quite equally and vaguely say that he's a great force for freedom and liberty. The difference is that I can point to specific examples of transgressions that he brought to light. Although you might have to dig around, it appears the powers that be have decided to move a lot of stuff to various subpages.

As requested....

Taliban Study WikiLeaks to Hunt Informants

Updated | 12:36 p.m. A spokesman for the Taliban told Britain’s Channel 4 News on Thursday that the insurgent group is scouring classified American military documents posted online by the group WikiLeaks for information to help them find and “punish” Afghan informers.

Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid, who frequently contacts news organizations, including The Times on behalf of the Taliban, said, “We are studying the report.” He added:

We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with U.S. forces. We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them.

Steve Coll, an expert on the region and a former senior editor of The Washington Post, said in a New Yorker podcast on Thursday, “my reading of the disclosure of these informants in the context of Taliban-menaced southern Afghanistan is that people named in those documents have a reasonable belief that they are going to get killed, or — actually the way it works with the Taliban is, if they can’t find you, they’ll take your brother instead.”

Although various professional news outlets attempted to redact the documents, there were documents put on the Internet without redaction. Names were named.

Having informants against the Taliban is a good thing, and not just because of what is going on in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Taliban paid $12,000 to Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad

You picked the wrong "hero".

The upside? Duke Nukem Forever is going to ship!

And Gaddafis dream is to teach his version of Islam to a room full of 200 beautiful women...
Thankfully his good friend Silvio was happy to help.

It is all about the friends you keep.

On a somewhat related note, the British government is apparently issuing "super injunctions".

FFS. It's not the government, it's the judiciary. There is a difference, you know.

On a somewhat related note, the British government is apparently issuing "super injunctions". We don't know why, of course, because the hearings are sealed and (usually) even the existence of the injunction can't be reported on - the only reason this one became public is because one of the few decent MPs used their parliamentary privilege to question it on the record. It's not even conceivably a matter of national security (their go-to excuse), since it's preventing the papers from reporting on the affairs of one of the key figures in the UK's banking collapse.

When this is how the governments are behaving, I honestly wonder whether there's a viable choice other than Wikileaks-style [vigilantism/civil disobedience]?

For the MOX in Unit 3 comment http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/Meltdown_at_Japanese_Nuclear_Power_Plant__A_Disaster_Waiting_to_Happen_110313
Not much MOX news in google.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576199884191526312.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8379134/Nuclear-meltdown-threat-Japan-preparing-for-a-worst-case-scenario.html
and for the "minimal" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366055/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-Navy-crew-months-radiation-1-HOUR.html
The USS Ronald Reagan was around 100 miles (160km) offshore.

has already decided to end daylight-saving time.
Because "power savings" from this back-and-forth are 0.2%. And hassles from switch time are simply not worth it :) Heck, Arizona lived without DST without problems...

MOST CERTAINLY NOT. I am unaware of any rival startup that has been squashed, bullied, or suffered a hostile takeover by Google.

Then you should read the news a bit more.
Yelp, Foundem, and 1plusV have all made complaints in the last 3 months.

BTW - you may or may not have noticed, but Microsoft's most innovative stuff has always been acquired in one manner or another. Google, on the other hand, innovates day in, and day out.

Like Google Docs... oops, no that was an acquisition (Writely). Or Android... oops, no, an acquisition again. Or Google Maps ... blast that was another acquisition... hang on, I'm sure I'll think of an example to back up your case soon.

Oh heck, may as well burn the only mod point I've used in this discussion.

Why shouldn't the government be researching 0 days, rootkits, and other exploits? I believe they should, because in order to know thy enemy you must know thy weakness. (Art of War and all that) It is also a weapon to be used in protection of your own systems (take down theirs before they take down ours.) Years ago (late 1990's or early 2000's) there were articles about how the US government was practicing destroying a country's economy by hacking the country's banks and other data communications. This would create havoc among the populace and hopefully turn them against their politicians (regimes) and should be ousted forthwith.

Where any of us are correct to object is if they turn this weapon on their own populace or our international "friends" (I'm currently unsure of who our friends are - since gifts have been returned to England and Israel and Dalai Lama was escorted out the back door via the trash cans). Then our politicians will be as bad as the regimes we are fighting. (Judiciously, of course.)

Does it matter that the government were purchasing this knowledge from a private company. Perhaps. I would prefer they work on this stuff in house, but even then not everything would be caught. That this private company was selling without morals certainly does need to be investigated for potentially treasonous acts (ie. selling weapons to enemies - again who are our enemies?)

Finally, so boohoo, the unions are being investigated. They darn well should be. If Republicans represent a Corporatocracy then the Democrats represent Union Bosses. Just because Democrats yell "special interest" when business sends in their lobbyists, doesn't mean that the unions and Democrats don't have their own special interest and lobbyists. And, no, the unions are no longer for the working person. They were once a necessity, but when they injected themselves in government, We the People have no way to protect our interests and tax expenditures when the Unions make a demand and the politicians fall in lock-step because of Union donations. This theft has been going on as long as the banks and Wall Street (1920s and on).