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Giant Asian Hornets arrived in Europe in 2004 and are voracious predators of honeybees and wasps. There were two colonies of wasps in my family's house's roof space in summer 2005. In mid August, we suddenly started seeing giant hornets entering our house in the evenings after dusk (they have excellent night vision). I captured one in a glass jar to get rid of it and put it outside and measured its body length as 5.5cm. I killed another one that started hitting on my wife for no apparent reason. It was certainly a hornet. I also saw them entering the roof space through gaps next to the guttering. One week later both of the wasp nests were completely empty of life and we also saw no more hornets in the house that summer. A local entomologist said the hornets had eaten the wasps and then left in search of more food. Contrary to what the article says, I can confirm from personal experience that they do have a heck of a sting (in addition to a painful bite). Keep well away from these critters!

Both this post and immediate parent are saying that the whole world wants Iran out of the nuclear family. I'm not much in favour of anyone else getting nukes, or the current owners keeping them, but in the interest of adding relevant facts...

"One in four Indians, two out of five Egyptians and one out of every two Pakistanis favour a nuclear-armed Iran. " - Today's Sunday Telegraph. I think they're quoting some poll numbers from a "Gallup poll which surveyed 10,000 Muslims in 10 different countries" but the piece isn't entirely clear.

Well, I always multiply by at least a factor of pi in these articles but going below wholesale may be soon. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml.

As I've said, I expect other companies to compete with Citizenre. The Salt River Projet in Arizona is already into solar and seems to have the confidence of its rate payers so it might see the possibility of renting rate payers roofs as a good thing. So far though I think they are just filling up desert. Doing it that way is probably easier for them. Note that because of the existing relationship between utilities and their rate payers, it is more likely that the utility would pay a consideration to the customer for the use of the roof: utility pays rate payers rent. For Citizenre, customers pay the company rent.

Each utility is limited to its territory. Citizenre is limited to net metering states and their caps. Citizenre's market is larger than any one utility's market. Also, I could see utlities that are not accomodating to net metering losing territiry to those which are. APS might lose downtown Phoenix to SRP for example.
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Solar, its abundant: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I remember looking at your blog a while back. The trouble is that you are assuming the price owing to scarcity is the cost. The estimated cost per peak watt for Citizenre is $1.53. This makes the model profitable above 7 cents per kWh as your calculation shows. I think you had breakeven at $2. If you think about this in the context of the industry world wide, especially new plants in China, this makes a lot of sense. The suppliers of machinery for those plants are also suppliers for Citizenre. Also, take a look at this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml. Crossover at wholesale may not be too far off either.

The $3-4 cost per peak watt with present panels is driven now by scarcity of solar grade silicon and smaller scale less efficient production. The company expect a cost near $1.53 per peak watt and an energy return on energy in in about one year. This comes from scale and producing their own silicon. You can see that this is pretty much on the trend identified here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml.

Schools will let bullying get out of hand so that parents and others will get desperate and accept any rules - which will include not being able to disagree with homosexuality and other left wing bandwagon issues(it will be considered hurtful - awwww). Its already happening in the UK. This sort of Hegelian dialectic is what these groups practice quite often. They let streses build and then offer people a solution that seems needed but advances their fetid agenda and makes things worse. I don't know how people let their kids go to public schools - they fail teaching and excell at "re-education".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/12/12/nchurch12.xml

I don't have the energy to refute all of the points in Tony Blair's response, but here are a couple of quick comments.

it is clear that if we want to travel abroad, we will soon have no choice but to have a biometric passport.

This is a red herring that is repeated with annoying frequency. ICAO requirements state that the only required biometric is a digitised photo, which new UK passports already contain. There's no need for fingerprints, retinal scans, etc.

Secure identities will also help us counter the fast-growing problem of identity fraud. This already costs £1.7 billion annually.

The majority of fraud reported as "identity fraud" is credit card fraud. ID cards will be no use at stopping this, unless you require people to show their ID when buying anything. In particular, the "£1.7 billion" figure is nonsense.

I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice. They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held on the register. Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.

Nice to know that the Government has already gone back on its assurance in 2005 that the ID register wouldn't be used for "fishing expeditions" - also nice to know that our details will be shared with some unspecified other countries.

The additional cost of the ID cards is expected to be less than £30 or £3 a year for their 10-year lifespan.

Not according to an independent report.

Regarding your third point, yes, a lot of data is out there. Collecting it is part of a two-step political strategy. Figure that a civil libertarian doesn't want their government monitoring and analyzing their every move for suspicious behavior. So, a well-meaning person who thinks such a system is a good idea will say the following. One: "We're implementing a bunch of specific data-gathering systems for a variety of mostly-harmless purposes. Don't be paranoid; we'd never hook them up into a massive all-seeing database to analyze your every move, and there are plenty of safeguards on the data." Two: "We're merging existing databases and applying powerful new data-mining tools to them, but how can you complain? You already agreed that we could collect this data, and we're doing it to fight drugs/porn/terrorism. Besides, we'd never add a bunch of new systems to collect yet more data." Repeat.

In related news, Blair has called for a universal database of the DNA of British subjects and backed a bill against speech that "stirs up religious hatred." The UK has begun using cameras that bark orders at people. Then there's the plan to monitor all vehicle movements in the UK, the topic of petition #1 on the UK petition site.

Clearly such mundane and well-researched explanations for warming as carbon-driven greenhouse effect must not be right, if far-fetched ideas like cosmic rays could be invoked to magically produce clouds that give us the explanation we hope is true.

A team of more than 60 scientists from around the world are preparing to conduct a large-scale experiment using a particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, to replicate the effect of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.

They hope this will prove whether this deep space radiation is responsible for changing cloud cover. If so, it could force climate scientists to re-evaluate their ideas about how global warming occurs.

Mr Svensmark's results show that the rays produce electrically charged particles when they hit the atmosphere. He said: "These particles attract water molecules from the air and cause them to clump together until they condense into clouds."

Mr Svensmark claims that the number of cosmic rays hitting the Earth changes with the magnetic activity around the Sun. During high periods of activity, fewer cosmic rays hit the Earth and so there are less clouds formed, resulting in warming.

Low activity causes more clouds and cools the Earth.

Here's more detail on Svensmark's experiment that prompted the larger test:

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Rest assured, those are fellow Americans you'll be shooting, as per usual.

...if they can't even keep track of where registered sex offenders live?

let's be honest though, a large part of France and Russia's vocal objection to the war was that they were making a ton of money brokering oil-for-food programs that would go away when Saddam went away. they were right for the wrong reasons

Why is it that no one insisted on Russia being systematically "deSovietized" the way that the post-WWII Axis, Afghanistan and Iraq have been cleaned up?

Obviously because Soviet wasn't conquered by a coalition of foreign military forces as the other examples you mention. (And besides, I think past sense is more than a little bit optimistic with regards to Afghanistand and Iraq).

Why aren't the leaders who participated in the gulags, etc. hanging from gallows?

First of all, the leaders who participated in the gulags, etc, did it as part of a legal government, according to the will of the party. If you want to really punish someone, you should go after Stalin, etc, but he is dead. Finally, if the people who took part in the former government are all hanged, what good would it do to Russia? A bloody revolution is not the right way to start a democratic reform, it's exactly what the Russian people wanted to get away from.

Where are the human rights trials?

Nowhere. If people were imprisoned in gulag for e.g. political reasons, they should seek reparations from the russian government (or from other governments part of the Soviet union). Holding human rights trials serves little purpose when most of the perpetrators are dead long ago.

The Soviet Union was as bad or worse in the number of its people that it murdered than the Nazi regime. In fact, despite the cries of "Fascism!" the Italian Fascists were certifiably peaceniks in the numbers they killed compared to either the Nazis or the Soviets. In many respects, the Soviet Union was one if not the worst regime in the 20th century.

Yes.

Things like this are a left over from the Soviet era. If the Russian people were smart, they would learn to get over their bullshit nationalism and repudiate their "Soviet glory days" with a vengeance by hanging the Communists and abolishing all of the last traces of Communist rule from Russia.

Things like this are a result of international/american pressure against Russia to conform to internation/american copyright law. Trust me, the Russians would not put teachers in prison for software piracy if it wasn't for pressure outside Russia. That the Russians have kept some of their internment camps in Gulag (for regular prisoners, not political opponents), is no worse than the Americans still having the death penalty, a court-system where only poor people are guilty, Guantanamo, or the rumored secret detainment camp in Europe (Poland?).

The real issue, people, is that the Russian government has not fundamentally changed since the fall of the USSR.

It can be argued that the Russian government hasn't changed fundamentally since the Tsars either, and that the "communist" rule simply replaced the "tsar" with a "secretary general", and that the "democratic" rule simple replaced the "secretary general" with a "president". There are other fundamental problems within Russia than its communist heritage. Sure, the communist era was bad, but so has every other part of Russian history been.

Why are people being sent to Siberia, especially for such a petty crime? I could understand violent crime, such as armed robbery, rape or murder, but simple theft or piracy?

The reason Siberia was mentioned was to appeal to emotion, and it's not absolutely clear that that's where he ends up anyway. And, I don't know how the Siberian detention camps are today. Are they better or worse than other Russian prisons? Maybe it's the closest prison (he was from a remote region)? Simply appealing to emotion can obviously be effective, but sometimes you have to use reason as well, when you want to judge what is best.

What is that supposed to mean? Did they lose a battle and flee to china rather than facing their superiors? Did they lose their sense of direction? (How can you mistake east for west?)

Look at a map. If they were captured by the Parthians and after a period of captivity in Parthia, if they escaped to the east or were released/expelled/sold to the east, the way back home to Rome in the west would have been blocked by the Indian Ocean to the south, Parthia itself (Iran) in the center, and the Caspian Sea and the Hun Empire to the north. I can easily imagine them deciding to follow Alexander the Great's legacy and move eastward.

This is not true for insurgents. They don't attack forces in the field. The lob mortars and rockets at building and tents which have been there for months.

Google also updates its images fairly frequently. I was looking at one forward U.S. military base on Google Maps and the photos are dated 2007. Using Google Earth, coordinates, as well as range and bearing from a point outside the base can be determined easily.

Insurgents have already used Google Earth to target discrete building on a British base in the middle east:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/01/13/wgoogle13.xml

Thanks for that. After searching around a bit using the Chinese characters I could find quite an informative article for the Economist from just over two years ago describing the situation there.

On my web-search for "Roman looking" Chinese I found this commented slideshow (flash) showing a little girl with blond hair and a local farmer with green eyes.

Well, let's see what the DNA study will uncover.


Btw - Liqian and "legion" does sound similar, but keep in mind that the original Latin pronunciation does differ quite a bit from the contemporary English (and even Italian) pronunciation.

slide #7 features a young girl with semi-blond hair, and #10 is a close-up of an older man with green-hazel eyes.

Google surely wouldn't censor it's maps on request by an interested party.

... or that they need to pass a law to make politicians exempt from any new police powers, lest the 'safety of the nation' be compromised. Which is actually a real possibility if they do what Blair wants and create a super-database of people's information.

They are probably using pretty basic hacking methods to hack into government computers.

Yeah, they were held up for a moment when none of his kids' birthdays was the password, but then they realized it was his anniversary in reverse.

Police used computer experts...

The best example of this has to be the City Slickers fiasco at the Mirror.

Microchips for mentally ill planned in shake-up
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/01/17/ncrime17.xml

'Radical measures for tackling crime - ranging from monitoring the behaviour of the mentally ill with radio chips to hormone injections for sex offenders -- are to be considered by the Government in a wide-ranging policy review ordered by Tony Blair.'

The whole briefing document is at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/policy_review/docu ments/crime.pdf (PDF document)

Knowing this lot you can be sure they'll start selling it to other parts of the population - after all if you can do it for the mentally ill you can do it to anyone. I can imagine the sales pitch;

Say mum and dad the Home Office is offering to chip your kids. Just think how horrible it will be if little Johnny got lost in the city; but now there's no need to worry, one little chip and any policeman will know his home address and return Johnny to you safe and well. Peace of mind? Priceless.

Grandad. How's that diabetes? Wouldn't it be terrible if you fell into a coma and were unable to tell A&E about your other medical conditions? One little injection and we'll know everything. The best in health care? Priceless.

Illegal immigrants - how can we be tougher? We're going to chip all legal migrants. If you're an employer you'll want to know all your employees are legal, that's easy with one of our Home Office certified RFID scanners. No chip? no place! Acceptable xenophobia? Priceless.

And so on...

Yeah, but they might have had Queen Liz as the French queen, too.

just a few questions:
1. Is a poli-titian is what I think it is...because that sounds hott!
2. Did you know that my niece, who is in the sixth grade, corrected your spelling... (she wasn't sure about "mergered" and so she gave it to you on a draw)
3. That the data supporting global warming is based on ground temperature measurements and carbon dioxide levels that seem to follow the same cyclic pattern, and consequently since the carbon dioxide levels are steadily rising, temperatures expected to do so as well. The temperature data is based on measurements done on tree rings and geological finds and the carbon dioxide levels are based on measurements done arctic ice cores. No SATTELLITE data is necessary because SATTELLITES were not around long enough to be useful to generate a trend.
4. And finally, did you know that if you expect to convince people that you have an intelligent argument, you should at least learn to spell better than a sixth grader?

I am really not trying to insult you, but since you didn't bother to check your spelling how could I possibly expect you to have checked your facts?

Well... either that or it will turn out to be something made up by 6 Washington DC lawyers like it is. I have a newsweek article with excerpts from the leading scientists of the 1970s that said we're all going to freeze to death. The fact is that global warming was effectivly started by lawyers and polititians in the late 70s and early 80s, they where the only one's preaching it before the scientists came on board. Scientists started jumping on once they saw that ever one that did instantly became famous and praised as the savior of our time. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml= /opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/0 4/09/ixworld.html [telegraph.co.uk] - "that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase, there was actually a slight decrease" 1998 happens to also be the year NASA went full tracking of the phenomena by satalites , which is much more accurate then ground sensors. Later NASA released a press release(it was on cnn and i dont feel like grabbing it right now, search for it yourself if you feel you want to) saying that they had fixed the problem with thier satalites that had caused the skewed numbers.(Effectively skewing all thier readings the other way to get the expected results) Thier official reason was the satalites where actually recording upper atmospheric temperatures, and upper atmospheric temperatures had actually decreased durring this time. However for that to occur the sensors would have to both be picking up data for higher elevations which is theoredically impossible using infared scanning, and have tempatures skewed so that they had resembled the ground tempatures , the coincidence is near impossible. Science and politics have recently mergered, which creates a science of the politicians, one where it is hard to sepperate lies from truth and where everyone loses. Scientists and polititions are like V8 and whiskey, they are two things that should never be mixed.

Well... either that or it will turn out to be something made up by 6 Washington DC lawyers like it is. I have a newsweek article with excerpts from the leading scientists of the 1970s that said we're all going to freeze to death. The fact is that global warming was effectivly started by lawyers and polititians in the late 70s and early 80s, they where the only one's preaching it before the scientists came on board. Scientists started jumping on once they saw that ever one that did instantly became famous and praised as the savior of our time.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml= /opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/0 4/09/ixworld.html - "that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase, there was actually a slight decrease"

1998 happens to also be the year NASA went full tracking of the phenomena by satalites, which is much more accurate then ground sensors.

Later NASA released a press release(it was on cnn and i dont feel like grabbing it right now, search for it yourself if you feel you want to) saying that they had fixed the problem with thier satalites that had caused the skewed numbers.(Effectively skewing all thier readings the other way to get the expected results) Thier official reason was the satalites where actually recording upper atmospheric temperatures, and upper atmospheric temperatures had actually decreased durring this time. However for that to occur the sensors would have to both be picking up data for higher elevations which is theoredically impossible using infared scanning, and have tempatures skewed so that they had resembled the ground tempatures, the coincidence is near impossible. Science and politics have recently mergered, which creates a science of the politicians, one where it is hard to sepperate lies from truth and where everyone loses. Scientists and polititions are like V8 and whiskey, they are two things that should never be mixed.

I'm asking because there have been a lot of environmental scares (Genetic modification, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, damaged fragile food chains causing crops to fail, the build up of toxic chemicals leading to mass sterility) that were not true and have wasted a lot of time and money. There are several claims that much of the data suggesting global warming has been massaged (e.g. a climate scientist trying to remove evidence of a Medieval Warm Period when temperatures were as high as today - paragraph ten).

I don't personally doubt that there is a small global warming effect caused by CO2- about 1 degree per century judging by the last 30 years. What I am uncomfortable with is that scientists who oppose the consensus seem to get a lot of flak (ever heard of Bjorn Lomborg - all he did was write a book - that's supposed to be a good thing).

They do have abstinence ONLY education...and wow, it's still spreading. Maybe you should speak to the US government about getting off thier religious high horse and adopting a more realistic approach to halting the spread of AIDS, ie condoms.

http://www.om.org/headlines/view.jsp?id=6333

Nevertheless, moral attitudes are being allowed to dictate the practicalities of AIDS education, especially in the USA. Human Rights Watch argues that this form of education actively opposes basic human rights. http://www.avert.org/aidseducation.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/christmasappeal2005/stor y/0,16796,1654865,00.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/04/01/waids01.xml

I'm sure we can demand they "stop fucking" when all the rest of us decide to. Just because you MIGHT get hit by a car backing out of the driveway doesn't stop you from going to the movies...

Oh, the irony, Herr Tomoe. Anyhoo, never let reality get in the way of business... or politics, for that matter.

Much easier to just rattle off paranoid "fascist rogue state" rabble.

Skepticism is not the "lazy person's default position." Skepticism is the result of actually looking at the claims of global warming proponents and looking at simple, readily-available data and determining that the two are incompatible. If human CO2 emissions are the cause of climate change, then explain why global temperatures dropped from the mid 40s to the mid 70s. Or even better, explain why, according to statistics compiled by the same research group that compiled the statistics for the graph linked to above, there was no measurable increase in global temperatures from 1998 to 2005. There was no concurrent decrease in human CO2 emissions during either of those two time periods. In fact, CO2 emissions rose steadily during both. And yet global temperatures did not follow suit. This is not conjecture, this is fact, and this information is available to anyone who takes the time to look. But it is the lazy people who took the time to look. Sure.

As to the consensus amongst scientists, this is simply not true. There are plenty of respected researchers who disagree with the panicked conclusion that human CO2 emissions are about to destroy us all.

One final subject on which I'd like to touch, and that is how the proponents and skeptics of global warming relate to one another. Search for information on the views and opinions of the global warming skeptics, and you'll find that they (for the most part, there are always exceptions) deal in data. When they attempt to refute claims by the proponents, they use research, they use statistics, they use facts. The proponents, on the other hand, seemingly have no problem resorting to personal attacks and skirting the issues entirely. For example, Michael Mann (creator of the infamous hockey stick graph) versus McIntyre and McKitrick. For those unfamiliar (shame on you!) with the hockey stick graph and the controversy surrounding it, a brief primer. The hockey stick graph is the result of research by one Michael Mann, purporting to show historical global temperatures over the past 1000 years. The graph shows a stable, steady temperature until the beginning of the 20th century, when temperatures spike. This was the impetus behind the Kyoto Protocol. McIntyre and McKitrick performed research debunking this graph and the statistical methods used in its creation. They point out any number of flaws, such as the absence of the so-called "little ice age", and its general incompatibility with known historical temperatures. To debunk this bad science, they used facts, they used reality, and they did not resort to attacking Mann's character and credibility. Do a quick google search about their research, and you'll see that they stick to the science. Now, do a search about those who disagree with them. It's full of personal attacks, irrelevant statements, and some claims that border on libel. It should say something that the skeptics are sticking to the science, and their opponents are, in return, attacking them like this was a political campaign (which, in many ways, it has become). Hell, just read how Gore, the poster boy for the global warming crowd, characterizes the skeptics. Came right out and said that they are in the same category as people who think the moon landing was staged. Scientists don't need to attack the character of other scientists. They stick to research, and the facts.

Is global climate changing? Yes, of course it is. The history of this planet's climate is a history of dramatic changes, from i

Skepticism is not the "lazy person's default position." Skepticism is the result of actually looking at the claims of global warming proponents and looking at simple, readily-available data and determining that the two are incompatible. If human CO2 emissions are the cause of climate change, then explain why global temperatures dropped from the mid 40s to the mid 70s. Or even better, explain why, according to statistics compiled by the same research group that compiled the statistics for the graph linked to above, there was no measurable increase in global temperatures from 1998 to 2005. There was no concurrent decrease in human CO2 emissions during either of those two time periods. In fact, CO2 emissions rose steadily during both. And yet global temperatures did not follow suit. This is not conjecture, this is fact, and this information is available to anyone who takes the time to look. But it is the lazy people who took the time to look. Sure.

As to the consensus amongst scientists, this is simply not true. There are plenty of respected researchers who disagree with the panicked conclusion that human CO2 emissions are about to destroy us all.

One final subject on which I'd like to touch, and that is how the proponents and skeptics of global warming relate to one another. Search for information on the views and opinions of the global warming skeptics, and you'll find that they (for the most part, there are always exceptions) deal in data. When they attempt to refute claims by the proponents, they use research, they use statistics, they use facts. The proponents, on the other hand, seemingly have no problem resorting to personal attacks and skirting the issues entirely. For example, Michael Mann (creator of the infamous hockey stick graph) versus McIntyre and McKitrick. For those unfamiliar (shame on you!) with the hockey stick graph and the controversy surrounding it, a brief primer. The hockey stick graph is the result of research by one Michael Mann, purporting to show historical global temperatures over the past 1000 years. The graph shows a stable, steady temperature until the beginning of the 20th century, when temperatures spike. This was the impetus behind the Kyoto Protocol. McIntyre and McKitrick performed research debunking this graph and the statistical methods used in its creation. They point out any number of flaws, such as the absence of the so-called "little ice age", and its general incompatibility with known historical temperatures. To debunk this bad science, they used facts, they used reality, and they did not resort to attacking Mann's character and credibility. Do a quick google search about their research, and you'll see that they stick to the science. Now, do a search about those who disagree with them. It's full of personal attacks, irrelevant statements, and some claims that border on libel. It should say something that the skeptics are sticking to the science, and their opponents are, in return, attacking them like this was a political campaign (which, in many ways, it has become). Hell, just read how Gore, the poster boy for the global warming crowd, characterizes the skeptics. Came right out and said that they are in the same category as people who think the moon landing was staged. Scientists don't need to attack the character of other scientists. They stick to research, and the facts.

Is global climate changing? Yes, of course it is. The history of this planet's climate is a history of dramatic changes, from i

Here's the earliest citation of it I can find from 1999:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml;js essionid=0KTO1YEKMW1ABQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/con nected/1999/06/24/ecnpara24.xml

A clone is an identical twin. The cow/sheep/dog/cat is still a cow/sheep/dog/cat, whether twinned or cloned.

It isn't anywhere near as simple as that.

The cost of the Iraq war is a pimple on the behind of either the American economy, or the US Government budget. The annual costs of the Iraq war are on the order of $100-150 billion. The US Government budget is $2 trillion. The US economy is on the order of $12 trillion. From an economic perspective, the cost of Iraq is an annoyance, nothing more. The US Army during the Vietnam war was 3x its current size. During WW2, it was 16x larger while the country was half its current size. Militarily the Iraq war is uncomfortable for the current size of the Army and the policies they want to keep, but that is about all.

Iran isn't simply provoking Israel, its President is making statements suggesting a threat of genocide that even various Arab governments condemn. Maybe you can understand why the Jewish state might be sensitive to that? Or, maybe not. I can't imagine you advocate them accepting annihilation just to keep the peace.

Europe has been taking the lead on the Iran problem*, and is failing. Is that because Europeans want oil priced in Euros, a nuclear armed Iran (soon) with missiles capable of reaching Europe (now), they are simply feckless, or maybe the Iranian government is run by fanatics who have an agenda of their own that they value above Europe's carrots & sticks?

Wars tend to start when one country attacks another. Iran has been sponsoring terrorism across the region, providing arms to Iraqi insurgents, and is making threats against other countries. That isn't a recipe for peace.

By the way, how does suicide bombing work into this? Since we "know" that religion isn't involved, but oil is, how do they convince suicide bombers to do it? Do they offer to bury the bomber's remains in pure kerosene or something?

* Yet more evidence of US unilateralism.

people can wear defense cloaks to prevent the effect of the military's microwave guns (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n ews/2004/09/19/wirq319.xml)?

--josh

That seems like a much better argument for "legal but voluntary" than "illegal". The police in the US must waste so much time trying to stamp out something that is never, ever going to go away. Here in New South Wales (the most populous state in Australia), prostitution has been legal for decades. It's not like there isn't still a social stigma attached, but I find it hard to see how throwing criminal sanctions into the mix is helpful.

Yeah, illegal, except for "rural" Nevada. Enforced to various degrees depending on where you are, and there are always loopholes for people setting up brothels ("it's a massage parlor, dammit!"). As to why - probably due to religious taboos to a large extent. After all, the USA *was* founded by Puritans.

I hate to say it, but better illegal than legal *and* legally recognized by the State as a "normal" profession like in Germany. There was the recent case of an unemployed lady there who was refused continuing unemployment benefits because she didn't take a job as a "sex worker." (Cite: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml ) I'd be ok if it were legal for the purpose of harm reduction but not overtly encouraged by the State.

-b.

Yeah, illegal, except for "rural" Nevada. Enforced to various degrees depending on where you are, and there are always loopholes for people setting up brothels ("it's a massage parlor, dammit!"). As to why - probably due to religious taboos to a large extent. After all, the USA *was* founded by Puritans.

I hate to say it, but better illegal than legal *and* legally recognized by the State as a "normal" profession like in Germany. There was the recent case of an unemployed lady there who was refused continuing unemployment benefits because she didn't take a job as a "sex worker." (Cite: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml ) I'd be ok if it were legal for the purpose of harm reduction but not overtly encouraged by the State.

-b.

Why bother when you're allowed to torture people?

Given enough time, you get these guys to say anything you want.
Why waste all that effort to find the guilty, when you can just pick someone and beat them until they admit their guilt or agree to testify to someone else's guilt?

Why you clever fellow, that is an interesting solution: just manufacture it all with torture. There is a minor problem in that real torture isn't legal. It also has the disadvantage of getting you absolutely no useful information about real terrorists if you are just picking innocent victims to torture to confession, doesn't it? That could be a problem if there really are terrorists in the world, because they will be making plots, blowing up things, and getting away while you are working over some poor innocent bastard you picked up off the street. If there really is a terrorist problem in the world, you are doing worse than nothing about it.

So what if the actual terrorists blow up a few more things, it only confrims that you need even more power to persue them!

Well, until the voters figure out you are a bunch of knobs and put the other party in power. Democracies tend to be rather practical in that way. And when the other party comes into power, your problems are just beginning. If you've been wasting the governments efforts on torturing the innocent, instead of performing real counterterrorist investigations, the terrorists will be likely be worse off as well. See how long you are out of power then.

I'm not necessarily saying that's what happened here, but when you look at the big picture, it sure looks really bad.

Then what the hell did you write this crap for? "Why bother when you're allowed to torture people?"

How about this for an answer: Because there are real terrorists and screwing around is only going to get people killed!

Well, don't worry your pretty head too much. If we don't win, there are some folks, our would be overlords, so to speak, who will straighten out society. We may not care for it so much, but at least the rules will be clear. Torture will definitely be in the new OK list, along with beheading, stoning, amputations, crucifixion, whipping, and all of that. The underpinnings of it, Sharia, is already getting some traction in Britain: Sharia law is spreading as authority wanes. We'll have to see how the whole Londonisan thing works out.

By the way, for your edification, here are a few incidents from the last couple of weeks from all over the world where the good guys won in some fashion (I know some of you are snickering) (Note that I didn't list the ones in which the bad guys won.). What do you think this means for the question of the existence of terrorists?

11 suspected Islamic radicals arrested in Spanish African enclave
Spain arrests Chechen rebel suspect wanted in Russia
Turkey Arrests Suspected Regional Al Qaeda Leader
Turkey arrests 10 with suspected links to al-Qaeda
Pakistan arrests 47 suspected Taliban
13 foreign nationals

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/0 5/warm-refs.pdf

Here are some quotes, go read the rest your selves. Yes we should pollute less, use less oil, but not at 2x the price to make someone
else filthy rich!!!! You want 50 graphs and references and specs and REAL SCIENCE, READ THIS REPORT!!

"changes in temperature would be seen to precede changes in CO2 concentration by 400 to 4,000 years. Petit et al.
(1999) state that during each of the last four interglacial periods the Earth was warmer than the current
warm period"

"Were mediaeval temperatures at least as high as today's? This question is central to answering the
question whether "global warming" is or will become dangerous to the planet."

"According to Villalba (1990, 1994), and Soon & Baliunas (2003), the mediaeval warm period was
warmer than the current warm period by up to 3C. From c.1000 AD, ships were recorded as having
sailed in parts of the Arctic where there is a permanent ice-pack now (Thompson et al. 2000; Briffa
2000; Lamb 1972a, b; Villalba 1990, 1994)."

"Not only is the mediaeval warm period not shown on the UN's graph of temperature over the past 1000
years: the Little Ice Age is also absent."

If such an investigation finds no hidden counter-claims, then we will know for a fact that the claims of stifling are overblown.

Because the BBCsaid so? !

Government != impartial.

If such an investigation finds no hidden counter-claims, then we will know for a fact that the claims of stifling are overblown.

Because the BBCsaid so? !

Government != impartial.

"Actually, the phrase "rife with claims and counter-claims" is making more of the counter-claims then they are; the vast body of the evidence indicates climate change is real; Lomborg is the only serious counter-claimaint that I am aware of."

Thus providing a perfect example of what the BBC is talking about. Even if you never take your eyeballs off slashdot itself, there is ample evidence to the contrary, including the very detailed analysis by Moncton: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml. Don't just glance at the head; download the PDF and see what he's saying. Are there dissenters to this point of view? Sure there are. Did the United Nations cook the books on the evidence here? Yes, they did, and THAT ought to be a serious warning bell to anyone. Don't ignore this. WHY did the UN CHANGE the data to make global warming look worse than it is? This is a smoking gun. Even if you push it under the rug it's going to make an ugly lump.

The issue here is not so much whether global warming is true. After all, we're coming off an ice age. At some level of course it's true. The issue is, Why does there seem to be a concerted push to make this a 'done deal' by people whose political interests would suggest they very nuch want it to be for their own agenda. The backlash to Moncton is interesting. It's similar to the Christian church demonizing Pan into Satan simply to gain control of he largely ignorant populace. A lot of the counter claims amount to argumentum ad hominem, an argument against the person, not the evidence. For all you folks who bristle every time someone calls Stallman a big fat smelly boy, well, this is the same thing.

If there are no alarm bells going off in your head over at least some of the issues raised by the dissenters, then you are already converted. If you believe the world was created on October 29, 4004 BC at 10:00 in the morning, there is nothing anyone can do to convince you otherwise. For the rest, you owe it to yourselves to take a dispassionate and serious look at what the dissenters are saying without letting your SUV-loathing get in the way. Let us all see what the issues are here without jumping on either extremist side.

My apologies if this reference has already been cited, but the following article was compelling, IMHO. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml The follow up article the next week was equally compelling. Essentially, the Telegraph reporter broke down the science being used to present evidence on behalf of global warming.

I believe we have a combination of suppression and blatent poor judgement.

First of all, I"m a fan of Lomborg's work: I think a lot of resources are misspent in poor attempts to improve the environment, when those resources could be much better spent in if they carefully targeted the most critical environmental problems. But Lomborg's not a climate scientist. He doesn't do research on global warming. The BBC is asking about suppressing global warming research, which is an issue irrelevant to Lomborg. Calling Lomborg a "counter-claimant" in this context makes it look like he does research showing that there isn't global warming, which might be being suppressed. That isn't the case at all. He doesn't do climate research. He evaluates the state of the environment and makes economic arguments about where and how we should direct resources to acheive the biggest envionmental improvements for our efforts.

Even as an economist, he's not a "global warming counter-claimant," as he believes in global warming. As he says right up front in this Telegraph opinion piece, "Global warming is real and caused by CO2."

Lomborg's arguments don't attempt to be, and are not, relevant to the scientific debate about global warming. (The debate being exactly how much there is and what all is contributing to it in what ways, not whether there is any, which is pretty well settled.) He just argues about the costs and benefits of various scenarios for attempting to counter global warming. For example, his argument in the linked article is:

1. Climate scientists think that even worldwide adherence to Kyoto would make a tiny difference in the speed of global warming.
2. Kyoto adherence would be fabulously expensive.
3. For less than the costs of adhering to Kyoto, we could provide clean water, sanitation, and basic health care to every poor person in the world.

If those three statements are provably true, I think they would make a lot of people rethink what actions should be taken regarding global warming.

Actually I don't believe so. I believe most of all that "the mainstream media" is taking more and more advantage of us.

War Crimes reported in the news in Iraq for the last 8 months were sourced by a non-existant "Captain" Jamil Hoessein :

http://www.floppingaces.net/jamil-hussein-story/

You can see the effect of their lies every day on slashdot unfortunately. The reality of the matter is, of course, very simple :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/09/10/wirq10.xml

However bad the americans are, the iraqi's themselves are infinitely worse. Nobody is reporting that of course.

There's video of the recreation and 3d animation of the original here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/29/ugreek129.xml

to pacify a communist nation, is to export capitalism to it. It worked with Russia.

Errr, excuse me?

Inside Russia:
A KGB leader rules he country, were mafias run rampant, foreigners get killed in the streets, petty wars are fought abroad, and regime-critics get killed.

Outside Rusia:
Blocking resolutions against Iran developing the bomb, providing funds to terrorist group (seems like a good way to keep the West troubled and give free ride to Russia as "it does not matter anymore"), the tactics of cutting gas supplies to neighbours and trying to own strategic European infrastructure and industries. And, of course, killing of disidents abroad with radioactive material.

I say Russia is back as the enemy of the West. And this includes the USofA

Peace!

Great news about the transmitters you plug into the iPod being legalised - now if we could only update our copyright laws to permit ripping music CDs we own to computers we own and then onto MP3 players we own, for our own use, we'll be home free.

[Clubs] are requiring patrons to give up their drivers licenses for a swipe through a card reader.