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I was just thinking about Australia's issue. If CA has a large number as well, I wonder Aussies are getting munch so much more? Greater number of sharks, shortage of food supply, or are the sharks down under simply more aggressive?

Well we do have a larger coastline than CA :) And down here, we have sharks eating other sharks.

Shark C-Section

10-ft shark eaten by even bigger shark

Virgina v. Black was about burning a cross. Burning a cross in your front yard is not the same as someone saying "I'm going to kill you".

Brandenburg v. Ohio was a ruling regarding general statements made against a class of people, not specific statements made against a specific person.

In Watts v. United States it was determined that Watts' statement did not constitute an actual death threat against the president. From the decision: "[his comments were] held to be crude political hyperbole which, in light of its context and conditional nature, did not constitute a knowing and willful threat against the President within the coverage of 18 U.S.C. 871(a)." Watts was freed because he didn't threaten the president.

Google does not make you a lawyer.

Go ahead and threaten the president. See how long it takes for the Secret Service to show up at your door. They take even the most ludicrous threats seriously.

In addition:

Virginia Code Title 18.2-60 A. 1. Any person who knowingly communicates, in a writing, including an electronically transmitted communication producing a visual or electronic message, a threat to kill or do bodily injury to a person, regarding that person or any member of his family, and the threat places such person in reasonable apprehension of death or bodily injury to himself or his family member, is guilty of a Class 6 felony. However, any person who violates this subsection with the intent to commit an act of terrorism as defined in 18.2-46.4 is guilty of a Class 5 felony.

All fifty states have statutes similar to this one, or classify death threats as "coercion" (also a criminal offense). All fifty of them are perfectly constitutional.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5191040/Astronomers-find-Milky-Way-could-taste-of-raspberries.html

The Sunday Telegraph here in the UK ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6083234/Health-warning-exercise-makes-you-fat.html ) used pre-publication data from this study that Blundell has stated totally mis-represented its findings (that, amongst other things, only 15% of the study group gained weight, and that they were all ones who ate more than usual during the study period.)

That article also quoted the one of 43 trials reviewed by the Cochrane Library that did not show a significant weight-loss in the participants (it says "some surprising studies in America " when it means "one surprising and possibly unrepresentative study in America". The lead author of that study, Dr Timothy Church of Louisiana University, seems to undermine the validity of his own study, in which the participants were asked not to alter their diet by saying (according to the Telegraph article) "after spending time in the gym, they eat a chocolate muffin, which undoes all of the work they did.”

The Telegraph unaccountably ignored the 42 studies which did not conform to what appears to be their preconception.

For more information see ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/29/telegraph-exercise-fat-bad-science ), or go to Ben Goldacre's own site ( http://www.badscience.net/ ) for a fuller version.

You might also wish to avoid the blue M&Ms:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5921266/Blue-MandMs-mend-spinal-injuries.html

Netherlands ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533248/Is-this-the-end-of-the-road-for-traffic-lights.html

While I agree with you, this video from India shows how it can work. It seems to a be a case of "critical mass".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM

There's also a town in the Netherlands with no traffic signals.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533248/Is-this-the-end-of-the-road-for-traffic-lights.html

Personally I feel like traffic signals are a good thing but who knows? Maybe it would all work better without them.

Do you realize that traffic rules were designed _specifically_ to minimize the impact of drivers' mistakes?

Not that I disagree with the fact that the parent poster might be deluding himself, I really don't know if he's a good driver or not, but...

German town bans road signs to cut accidents

This is not to say that the German town is a perfect counter-example to what you're saying, it's not, for instance even if they took out all the signs and many of the rules -- they still kept a town-wide speed-limit of 30 mph. But perhaps something can be learned from this experiment, and perhaps we should try to run such experiments ourselves in the US, first in smaller towns just like they did, and then in slightly larger and larger towns to see if the concept still works.

Conservative writers have piss poor coordination with other nations

Neah, I don't think, this is a big problem. And even if it were, it is orthogonal to the one I was talking about — the public schools are currently a stronghold of the Left and children are being brainwashed there. Not all of them are able to shake it off later in life... You lose your hard-reared children's mind to the Illiberals, who thus manage to protract the existence of their ideology way beyond, what their own birthrate would afford...

I mean, conservatives in America might be more sympathetic to the French when they decry mcdonalds overtaking local restaurants, or when writers in the eastern bloc protest how globalization threatens long standing traditions.

This is, where we split — my favorite Conservatism is Libertarianism... To me the spread of McDonald's and globalization in general (and, even more generally, Capitalism itself) are derived not from their being economically beneficial, but from everyone's freedom to Pursue their Happiness: including founding a corporation and expanding it wherever one wants to, as well as going to any restaurant one likes, even if its mere presence offends a high-brow minority ("Starbucks was bad enough but McDonald's is worse").

You could say that about novels, too, yet people complain about Dan Brown's historical inaccuracies to no end.

And his shitty writing. It's one thing to write a rollicking good read that may not have all its technical details correct; it's another thing entirely to have formulaic plots, flat characters, *and* bad writing surrounding a core of fact after fact that is flat out wrong.

Before he became president in 2001, George W. Bush would regularly send emails to both his father President George Bush Snr, now 84, and his mother Barbara Bush, now 83. Mr Bush's online credentials took a hit in 2006, however, when he said that he had used "the Google" to pull up maps. Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist with close ties to the Obama campaign, laughed heartily at Mr McCain's technological travails. "It's just amazing," he told The Daily Telegraph. "It's very hard to even think about someone who doesn't know how to use the internet. It's like, 'Really?' My five-year-old niece can use the internet. She knows how to go to nickelodeon.com and play her games." The interview could be politically damaging, he added. "The tough part is that if one of the concerns voters have is that you are out of touch with how they live, what they want, the problems they face, then this only reinforces that notion. "He's a hero for what he did 35 years ago, but that doesn't necessarily make him the kind of president we want today. Here's somebody who is in many ways very disconnected from where people are." [1]

Or watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zovJfeHj-Uc

I find it spectacular that McCain takes these positions with nary a sprinkle of what the people want. Who is advising him? And why doesn't he get some better people?

I support Net neutrality in the broader context but there are still very valid points to be made on the opposite side... yet, all we hear are sound bites that do not further the argument and worse, detract from the real provisions that make for a good governance.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/2403704/John-McCain-technology-illiterate-doesnt-email-or-use-internet.html

Just because the press doesn't do their jobs anymore...

Here's the Telegraph's article...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/6401062/Microsofts-Bing-signs-landmark-deals-with-Twitter-and-Facebook.html

I quote (emphasis mine):

Both deals are understood to be non-exclusive, with rumours of similar conversations ongoing between Twitter and Google

( Ah, and yes, Facebook, too. The only 'surprising' thing is that /. didn't report on this, but does report on the Google deal, without even a reference to the Bing deal. )

Troll. Absolute nonsense. Scientist have pretty good ideas of what the PH levels have been based on oceanic deposits over time. It may not give the finest granularity but it provides insights into how the ocean chemistry has changed over the planet's history. Tie that into the fossil record and it's not hard to make some decent approximations to how life forms evolved with the oceans over long time scales.

Remember, a troll is not someone who disagrees with you. The fact of the matter is that although pH in seawater has been measured for many decades, a reliable long- term trend of ocean water pH cannot be established due to data quality issues, in particular the lack of strict and stable calibration procedures and standards. Moreover, seawater pH is very sensitive to temperature, and temperature is not always recorded or measured at sufficient accuracy to constrain the pH measurement. (reference: a "pro" AGW paper here).

And more to the point, there is no "ideal" anything. There are ideal conditions for humans to survive. There are ideal conditions for keeping our food chain alive. There are ideal conditions for this, that, and the other. But there is no grand ideal for life on this planet (hence evolution). No one is arguing that the planet doesn't change over time.

Sure they are. That's why they had to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. No there isn't an ideal anything. That being the case what the fuck is this whole argument about?

As far as human impacts are concerned, only a complete idiot with no understanding of dynamics would argue that we are having no impact. We've have acid rain. We've have the ozone hole. These two incidents alone demonstrate how our activities directly influence the planet on large scales.

Have I at any point said we are having no impact on the Environment? No, I haven't. I'm sorry for your straw man here but your point has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've said. It's certainly true that this whole ridiculous scare over CO2 is distracting attention and resources from those very causes you may hold close to your heart. Shoot yourself in the foot, if you like.

Now the extent of our impact, the results of said impact, and what we should do about it are all open for debate. The scientists job is to figure this out and help inform those who make decisions. This is not a few "activist" scientist, my Glen Beck worshiping ignoramus. This is the global scientific community who happen to be the best experts on the subject. I'm far more inclined to listen to them than some self-important internet troll with an agenda to feed.

As I have no idea who Glen Beck is, I'm afraid I have to avoid answering this point, except to say that the best experts on the subject of, say, stomach ulcers, or Geology, some time ago, were not believers in plate tectonics or the Helicobacter pylori bacterium. Yes, Scientists can be wrong. Yes, they often are wrong. Yes, it's very hard to get papers published that counter the current scare. Wegman showed why (hint: those same people promoting the paradigm are the same people who will have to comment on your paper before it's published).

You can disagree with a scientific conclusion, but you'd better have something more than Hannity sound bites to back up your claim. To date, there has not been any reputable group of scientists that can explain away our current observations without taking into account human factors. There's no shortage of critics and skeptics, but you don't disprove a scientific theory by mere criticism nor do it show it's false just because you think so. That's the great thing about science.

Again, I don't know Hannity and ye

My mistake it was over macular degeneration and not glaucoma. One article on it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6310255/Barack-Obamas-Top-10-unfulfilled-pledges.html

Here's 10 examples of Obama's brand of hope and change. I would like to add #11: During his campaign he repeatedly stated that Afghanistan was a war of necessity, and Iraq was a war of choice. Now he's back-pedaling on yet another central campaign issue. Sorry Obama, banning Fox News from the White House will not make what's left of the free press stop pointing out the vast differences between your rhetoric and what you actually deliver. A man with such thin skin should really consider a career other than politics.

Please explain, how is it trolling to point out that several British men (there have been others, e.g. Peter Dicks) were are/were involved in the online gambling industry - activities which are completely legal in the UK - have been arrested and prosecuted by US authorities? There is no legal guarantee that being based in the UK would make you immune to prosecution in the US, and now it seems that the British government are happy to extradite citizens to the US for actions that aren't actually a crime in the UK (e.g. Ian Norris of Morgan Crucible).

Talking about black holes of information, where did the French secret service get the supposed "evidence" for this supposed list of EU terrorist targets - if there is any? Certainly not off napkin scrawls hidden under the guys bed. Perhaps it was by the normal channels: beating, starving, electrocuting, mauling with dogs then stringing to the roof some Afghan peasant/soldier in a one of the many private corporate run prisons they got set up down there and around the world until he muttered "Mohammad, list of targets, France... lllllhhhhhcccc*gasp*" ?

OR is this story just about yet another Orwellian military/police state shadow organization trying to justify they are not a *big* part of the "let all hate each other" problem?

Fscked if we will ever know, the story in all its lack of credibility is out there now and its purpose served. Slashdot only managed to scape it up, make it even worse on details or open to questions of credibility than it already was to begin with. Journalist bloggers wanting to be taken seriously, indeed.

Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Reports
(Note: We are not a GOP-sters, Republicans or affiliated with any parties, and as George Washington warned against parties We do not believe in parties and, unlike most people, We evaluate every issue on a case by case basis and do not defer to the judgments of politicians who are corrupted and untrustworthy as a group.)

Obama is controlled by the same people as Bush see The Obama Deception documentary [youtube.com]

Yuan Forwards Show China May Buy Fewer Treasuries, UBS Says [bloomberg.com]
Anemic Treasury auction effects felt beyond bonds [reuters.com]
The Sherminator Kicks Some Wall Street Ass [dailybail.com]
China Angry That Fed Is Deliberately Destroying The Dollar [bloomberg.com]
China suggests switch from dollar as reserve currency [bbc.co.uk]
What are the reserve currencies? [wsj.net]
Anatomy of a taxpayer giveaway to investors [ml-implode.com]
Geithner rescue package 'robbery of the American people' [telegraph.co.uk]
Geithner just put only the rich in Titanics lifeboats [examiner.com]
Geithner Plan Will Rob US Taxpayers [cnbc.com]
A False Choice [viewfromsi...valley.com]
Bargain-hunting house buyers wearing on sellers ajc.com [ajc.com]
Time to Take the Steering Wheel out of Geithner's Hands [alternet.org]
Socialising and Privatising [freeradical.co.nz]
Fannie, Freddie to pay out bonuses [politico.com]
Fitch Raises Prime Jumbo Loan Loss Estimates Sharply [researchrecap.com]

Chinas central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund [ft.com]

- Russia on an new world reserve currency: It is necessary to work out and adopt internationally recognized standards for macroeconomic and budget policy, which are binding for the leading world economies, including the countries issuing reserve currencies - the Kremlin proposals read. [en.rian.ru]

- President Barack "The Teleprompter" Obama is deeply connected to corruption. Rahm Emanuel, his Chief of Staff, is radical authoritarian statist whose father was part of the murderous civilian-killing Israeli terrorist organizati

Funny. The Telegraph's not exactly a "religious" site...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/3179465/Hanged-for-being-a-Christian-in-Iran.html

Neither is Radio Free Europe:
http://www.rferl.org/content/Two_Iranian_Christians_May_Face_Execution_For_Apostasy/1779217.html

Hm. Of course, the other reason the stories have trouble getting out is that it's pretty hard to be a journalist in Iran if you don't toe the mullah's line...

I would argue that no one should have access to it. There have been enough reports showing that it does not help stop or solve crimes.

The potential for abuse by regular citizens is just as bad as it is for the police or government.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4987415/All-travel-plans-to-be-tracked-by-Government.html

(reported at the time in other publications too - google for e-borders at a guess)

Pakistan developed nukes, has nukes and also was (is?) a sponsor of terrorism[1]. So what did the USA do to Pakistan for trying to make nukes? They seem to be such good friends today.

FWIW, before the US "WMD" bullshit, Saddam started selling oil in Euros, and after the invasion Iraq went back to selling oil in US dollars.

That's probably not the only reason the US Gov didn't like Iraq, but I'm sure that was one of the top reasons.

In 2007 Iran started selling oil in Euros too, and for even more fun in 2008 they started an oil bourse that allows trading of oil in other currencies, not just the USD.

Why is this bad for the USA? The fact is if everyone uses your currency to trade, you can create money (either directly or via soft loans) and by doing so automatically tax everyone else that uses your currency.

Think about it, the USA owes China/Japan/etc trillions of USD. If on the relevant due dates, the US Fed Reserve just loans the US Gov the money to pay China/Japan/etc back, or inflation has made the USD worth less, the "pay back with interest" does become rather easy ;).

It's a bit like Zimbabwe. Mugabe (US Gov) prints money, hands some to his cronies (friends and contractors of the US Gov), and the rest of the people in Zimbabwe (the countries that hold trillions of USD) end up having to carry sacks of near worthless money around.

But when Zimbabwe prints money, the rest of the world just laughs at Zimbabwe, because the rest of the world doesn't live in Zimbabwe or use Zimbabwe's currency.

The US Gov certainly wants as many countries living in its "Zimbabwe" and using its currency. It stops becoming so easy for "US Mugabe" if more and more people stop using the US dollars and switch to something else.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/5779916/Pakistani-president-Asif-Zardari-admits-creating-terrorist-groups.html

a president that denies the Holocaust while inviting the world's most well known Holocaust-deniers and general racists to visit for conferences

While, according to the Daily Telegraph, having a jewish background himself.

1) Yes you are, you can't even grow enough food to feed yourselves. Or are you going to completely fill in the entire Island with wall to wall "houses" or what you English like to call houses which are actually called "flats" or "units" or tiny cramped apartments anywhere else in the world. And import 100% of your food (how very green of you) and then export....what exactly? More debt? More funny money hedge funds?

2) Who *ever* said anything about official sanctioned Asylum Seekers??

There's this concept of Illegal Immigrants you may have heard of. They're camping on your borders.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113088221&ft=1&f=1004

They're paying up to 15,000USD to get taken to the coast of France with the specific intention of sneaking into England because unlike the tyranical countries of France, Switerland, Germany and Italy that they pass through to get there (to those countries quiet delight) - once they're in England they can hop on benefits and the UK government will not deport them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5007578/Detention-centre-planned-for-illegal-immigrants-in-Calais.html

Also

"Last year we searched over one million lorries and prevented a record 18,000 attempts by illegal immigrants to cross the channel.""

When someone illegally travels through Austria, Germany, Italy AND France, not stopping in any of these supposed "liberal democracies" to specifically to sneak into the UK your country has a significant problem, and they're NOT coming for the food, weather, people or (lol) English "culture".

They don't speak Chav for starters.

I've never seen the governments of any of those countries pushing to regulate what people eat and drink, how much exercise they make, when they go to sleep, or when they die.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/27/nhs127.xml

Maybe it simply hasn't hit critical mass yet. When funding becomes unsustainable (which may be imminent: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/health/8091427.stm), I wouldn't be surprised to see more and more of it.

And for some reason we don't hear about the governments of Western Europe telling people "[w]hat [they] can eat, when [they] can eat it, how much [they] can eat, when, where and what kind of exercise [they] will do, when [they] get up, when [they] sleep. and (if all that wasn't frightening enough) Who lives, who dies, and when they die," despite the prevalence of socialized programs, especially socialized medicine.

Oh?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/27/nhs127.xml

LOL - I liked this. I'm surprised the story hasn't made Slashdot (I keep meaning to submit it). For those who hasn't heard, Lily Allen joined in the filesharing "debate" by lobbying for the planned law to disconnected suspected filesharers from the Internet. She set up a blog (now deleted) to tell the Internet why they are wrong, making the same poor arguments that we've all heard before ("it's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it?")

Except she's now been exposed as a filesharing pirate herself - she made "mixtapes" of other artists' music (she admitted she didn't have permission), in order to promote her own career, and the mp3s were still on her (EMI owned) website until she was exposed.

She was also found plagiarising an article in her first blog post, without permission or attribution.

There's been some coverage in the mainstream media, but sadly most are only reporting "Lily Allen against filesharing ... and then shuts blog because of the abuse she received, poor her!"

So basically, it's okay for her to rip other artists off in order to promote her commercial career, as she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry", but the rest of us are stealing when we download, and should be disconnected. As an open source software developer who bends over backwards to obey copyright licences (e.g., when I'm looking to include music in my games), I find it ridiculous that she lectures me on copyright law, and gets to lobby for a law I oppose, yet she's the one ripping off artists without permission, and evidently doesn't give a crap unless it's her own music. But when I criticise Lily Allen on her arguments on support for the law, I'm the one who gets labelled a "thief"!

Why isn't Lily Allen being hounded for being a "thief", or sued for millions? And given they were on EMI's owned website, are they going to have their Internet connection disconnected?

And whilst she whined about "abuse" she allegedly received, she was happy to post this offensive rant from James Allan.

A brief history of heists: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/6069167/Self-preservation-societies-a-brief-history-of-heists.html

yeah i remember reading about two kids who were locked in some place who decided to update their facebook stat on their mobile than call the police. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6155017/Trapped-girls-updated-Facebook-instead-of-calling-police.html obviously the police who rescued them was facebooking in duty too.

Recently the BBC Management have been doing rather odd things recently including trying to pull off "dirty tricks" report here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6167078/BBC-schedules-Strictly-Come-Dancing-against-The-X-Factor.html It seems to me that as competition in the UK Market has reached saturation point and we will see constant "on-going" battles for customers and viewer ratings. Sky is trying to rope people in hard and fast for Sky HD which they are doing with some success, but have reached the point whereby the Public are sick of putting up with advertisements, now usually 20 mins for a 1 hour show and paying through the nose for SKY and they're HD channels. Trying to be analytical about this, the BBC has to fight back somehow, but without being seen to be malicious as they need to protect Market Share. Remember Murdoch does not give two hoots who he hurts along the way and will try and rope you all in so you have no other choice but to use Sky and pay him money. The alternative is http://www.freesat.co.uk/ I have switched from SKY recently and get HD channels through freesat which is saving me a staggering £339.00 per year that would otherwise go to Sky! I have saved a lot of money and hope some of you other people take the plunge as moving to freesat can only make the BBC better value for money.

The "unparalleled" sound of Stradivarii is probably mostly the placebo effect---the Stradivarius myth.

Here's a quote from the wikipedia article:

Above all, these instruments are famous for the quality of sound they produce. However, the many blind tests from 1817 to the present (as of 2000) have never found any difference in sound between Stradivarii and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis.[2] In a particularly famous test on a BBC Radio 3 program in 1977, the great violinists Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman and the violin expert and dealer Charles Beare tried to distinguish among the "Chaconne" Stradivarius, a 1739 Guarneri del GesÃ, an 1846 Vuillaume, and a 1976 British violin played behind a screen by a professional soloist. The two violinists were allowed to play all the instruments first. None of the listeners identified more than two of the four instruments; two of the listeners identified the 20th-century violin as the Stradivarius.[3]

At least a 19 year life estimate is more realistic than the newer and more accurate clock that is said to lose only 1s over 300 million years!

Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America',

A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html

Since there's a 61% chance I don't believe in evolution. I also eat children.

Give them credit for creative problem-solving.

They get no credit for creative problem-solving when four teenagers in Spain did the same thing six months ago:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5005022/Teens-capture-images-of-space-with-56-camera-and-balloon.html

Some High School Students from Bilbao, Spain, did the same thing earlier this year for less than $100. Looking at the photos, it seems they got better shots.

Story here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5005022/Teens-capture-images-of-space-with-56-camera-and-balloon.html

Photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/sets/

I suspect that they had adequate probable cause in that these guys had already been convicted last year of conspiracy to murder. If you ask me, this trial was a huge waste of public money to prove that these people really were terrorists (well, duh... conspiracy to murder isn't terrorism? WTF?).

What's worse, it seems to have been only thinly reported that another 3 people they were trying to convict (who were acquitted on a hung jury last year) were actually acquitted again. This should be seen as a scandalous waste of resources which could have been spent bringing other cases to trial earlier in my opinion.

The Bungie employee was being very iresponsible by carrying this in public, it certainly looks like a gun to me and initially I would be a little concerned if I was in the US and saw someone in plain clothes walking down the street with one - I certainly couldn't couldn't determine if it was an AK-47 and I'm not up on American military hardware but it certainly looks realistic to me. The poster seems to be suprised that the person in Krikland could not correctly identify the type of gun being carried, can everyone in the US determine makes and models of guns from a glance? I think this is not a story, it looks like a real gun and the person in Kirkland did the right thing by reporting it. In the UK we often get the police being called out to houses where idiots are brandishing replica guns. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5494894/Man-arrested-for-waving-gun-in-Godfather-fancy-dress.html

Surely not?

I've not heard a valid example of the US violating it.

Do you consider general Taguba, who conducted investigation of Abu Ghraib valid source? According to him prisoner were raped among other things. Is it good enough example of violation for you? I also remember (not link this time, but should not be hard to find) of hooded prisoner attached to multiple wires. The whole scene looked like something from Frankenstein.

Remember, the Geneva conventions are primarily concerned with the treatment of uniformed members of national military forces (and includes definitions of such).

Whole 4th convention is about civilians. Most relevant here is article 5, talking about spies and saboteurs (or in American newspeak "illegal enemy combatants").
Direct quote: "In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be." Seems pretty clear, doesn't it?

It also is only in force when engaged in war with another state that is also bound by the convention.

Like Iraq which ratified it in 1956? Ah, I forgot: you just need to slap 'liberation' sticker on your invasion and it is ok.

Legally, at least; morally/politically is a different game, of course.

What is the problem? You just need to redefine 'morality', like 'torture' and 'war' got redefined.

Anyone who works with children or the mentally disabled even peripherally (teachers, sports coaches, authors who give school talks) already has to submit themselves to a criminal records check (CRB check) to confirm they're not a pedophile. I work in a school, and it was a huge long form with a substantially amount of additional ID such as my passport and driving licence I had to provide in order to be employed. There's already been a number of high-profile incidents of false positives; people with a similar name getting accused of having a criminal record and losing their job or worse despite being entirely innocent, and vice-versa, people with relevent criminal records not getting flagged.

So this plan to tie CRB checks to the ID cards database as well as the police database, using the biometrics submitted for one system (ID cards) to bolster another (criminal records checks), is entirely why feature creep is such a scary problem with these giant government databases. This likely will be two way, so that having an ID card will also mean your criminal record (or quite possibly someone elses) will end up associated with your details, and queryable by pretty much anybody with access to the national ID database, which is going to be pretty much everybody. How long before they tie in the DNA database too; it's already linked to the criminal records database, so it's no great stretch to tie biometrics, DNA, personal ID, financial records, medical records and criminal records all under one giant database roof, they're already most of the way there.

And what's the odds that once that is done, that an ID card will be made mandatory to do the mandatory CRB check to work in education or healthcare? Something like 10% of the working population have already had to do a CRB check due to the work, so that's a massive amount more of people forced into the 'voluntary' ID biometrics database; assuming of course, they aren't already in it because they wanted to renew their passport.

Fine, be offended, but I thought that picture was one you were painting of yourself.

To be honest I know where I stand fairly well on the issue of freedom of religion, and I view any tempts to quell it as fascism. (whether those sources are Leninist, Islamofascist, or whatever other fascists there are) Even if half the UK population were Muslim, the result would be no worse than say, Lebanon, which if it weren't for Israel, would be a damn site nicer place to live than Britain. If you think Britain's going to get sharia law, then you have been paying to much attention to certain clergy.

The second part of this issue, and i'm the one who's going out on a limb here, is the issue of immigration, I view with some contempt the idea that _anyone_ should have the birthright to anything, let alone to occupy a chunk of land. I think if we opened the floodgates we would solve %90 of the worlds religious, cultural and political problems in one fell swoop.

So you're saying in order to be considered innocent, even excluded from criticism on the matter, "too early to apologize". All England would have to do is to restart killing homosexuals ? Clearly they're on the right path to end criticism of gay treatment.

Wait, could you tell me again, are you FOR or AGAINST killing homosexuals ? Clearly you seem to advocate that people who institutionalize killing homosexuals deserve to not be subjected to criticism.

If you're against killing homosexuals, don't you think your attitude is a bit ... counterproductive ?

Imho, this is merely a power play. A "Let's make the government dance" idiocy, not a genuine moral problem.

Meanwhile the MoD's relieved that its prototype man-eating beaver cyborg has been found in New Zealand and is sending HMS Nottingham to recover it.

Officers not on snoozewatch have been ordered to "WATCH OUT FOR THAT BLOODY ROCK THIS TIME (PLEASE) EXCLAMATION MARK EXCLAMATION MARK EXCLAMATION MARK" since the RN has yet to upgrade from its ZX81-powered navigation system.

Well at age 24 she developed cancer. The belief that having government care is "better" is a false one. At least in the U.S. this woman could have gone to a doctor, handed-over $400, and the PAP performed immediately. In the UK she just got shoved aside. The U.S. also has one other thing in its favor: It's not a monopoly.

Uh, bozo, in any country you can hand over money to a hospital and get any treatment done.

And I call bullshit on this. In nearly every country I have been in or read about with a public health system PAP screening of women is done automatically. Prevention is better than a cure. And the frequency of screening is done based on family history and past results.

Just having a public health service doesn't prevent you from paying for things yourself. It is not a monopoly. I don't know where you get your totally fucked up ideas from. I think you have been listening to the Republican party too long. The same party who was convinced that Stephen Hawking would be dead if he was born in the UK, opps, he was.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6017878/Stephen-Hawking-I-would-not-be-alive-without-the-NHS.html

They're a hell of a lot more trustworthy and reliable than Pakistan is.

I'm not so sure at all... USSR/Russia and India go way back — during the Ghandi times, KGB's influence over Indian politicians was near-complete. The success of penetrating India was an example, that KGB studied and thought to repeat in other countries. Most of those politicians are still alive and still busy — there was no clean-up, unlike, say, in Germany, which exposed Stazi agents. Kinda...

For all we know, there are, very likely, still people in various Indian ministries (including, no doubt, the Defense), who either never got off Russian payroll, or can be blackmailed by the new Russian agents.

Pakistan's military (rather than the entire country) was, probably, a better ally throughout, even if they aren't without problems of their own...

In the UK the phone records are usually used to prove that somebody's been texting while driving. This only catches people who actually send their messages.

Here's the most famous example. Lord Ahmed, a Labour peer, killed somebody because he was texting while driving. He got off with a shockingly light sentence which prompted cries of political interference.

you may have just been trying to be funny... but it sounded enough like patriotic chest thumping that you successfully trolled me into a response

It was only our commandeering German V2 rocket technology and the pardoning of war criminals like Von Braun that gave America a slight edge in reaching the moon. For a reference point on how close of a race it was read up on the unmanned Luna 15.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5737854/Russian-spacecraft-landed-on-moon-hours-before-Americans.html

More proof that as the west concentrates on pro sports, government mc busywork jobs and "paper financial products", China is going for the tangible wealth, the *real stuff*. In this case, they already own it, and are looking to maintain an "in house" monopoly on some critical 21st century metals.

I added this as a comment to the original submission but it didn't get picked up.

According to The Telegraph this also means that there is now no copyright on DVDs. I'm not sure of the reasoning for this since copyright is supposed to be enforced by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but that's the legal system for you.

So, apparently the UK is now (unwittingly) running the first national experiment in the abolition of copyright and age controls on DVDs. Should be interesting!