Slashdot Mirror

It's barely getting started.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/12/nclim12.xml

In the climate change debate, one figure is real. The Sunday Telegraph's website registered more than 127,000 hits in response to last week's article revealing that the UN had minimised the sun's role in changing past and present climate, persisted in proven errors and used unsound data, questionable graphs and meretricious maths to exaggerate future warming threefold.

The views of 200 readers who emailed me are in the link above. About a third are scientists, including well-known climatologists and a physicist who confirmed my calculations. Some advise governments.

Nearly all condemn the "consensus". Most feel that instead of apologising, the UN has misled them, especially by using the defective "hockey-stick" temperature graph.

Hey, got some data for those nice little statements there?

Which? The causation/"coincidence" one, no, I have no authoritative link: it's hard to prove a negative. The claim being made is that man causes global warming, but the data does not show that. It shows only correlation, not causation. This is true. If you disagree, show me one paper that actually shows causation. I'll wait.

As to the fudged data stuff, sure, that's widely known and understood. This is an excellent primer to the issues involved, and touches on many of the other problems with the global warming "consensus." The most startling fudging is the omission of the medieval warming period from the UN "hockey stick" graph (which was done absolutely intentionally). But there are others.

Ten years ago, the same group of scientists predicted that the ocean levels would rise 12 inches (actual levels rose something like 1 inch).

You're mistaken. You're probably thinking of this essay, which falsely claimed:

In 1988, James Hansen, a climatologist, told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch).

Slashdot linked to that essay when it was published, but we also linked to its debunking by George Monbiot a week later:

As for James Hansen, he did not tell the US Congress that temperatures would rise by 0.3C by the end of the past century. He presented three possible scenarios to the US Senate -- high, medium, and low. Both the high and low scenarios, he explained, were unlikely to materialise. The middle one was 'the most plausible.' As it happens, the middle scenario was almost exactly right. He did not claim, under any scenario, that sea levels would rise by several feet by 2000.

The Telegraph and several other news outlets are reporting on the international deal to build the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor that was signed in today. Representatives of the EU, the US, Japan, India, Russia, South Korea and China signed the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) agreement in Paris, finalising the project which aims to develop nuclear fusion as a viable energy source to fossil fuels. According to the ITER consortium, fusion power offers the potential of "environmentally benign, widely applicable and essentially inexhaustible" electricity, properties that they believe will be needed as world energy demands increase while simultaneously greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced,justifying the expensive research project.

Last I heard, they were still arguing over the existence of the medieval warming period and a hundred other possible oddities in recent climatological history.

I'm sorry, but that period doesn't support the conclusion we all want to see, so we've had it stricken from the record.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml

Stormtrooper: Let me see your identification.
Obi-Wan: [with a small wave of his hand] You don't need to see his identification.
Stormtrooper: We don't need to see his identification.
Obi-Wan: These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Stormtrooper: These aren't the droids we're looking for.
Obi-Wan: He can go about his business.
Stormtrooper: You can go about your business.
Obi-Wan: Move along.
Stormtrooper: Move along... move along.

Or like the crossing of the Red Sea. Where the water first pulled back and then a short while later came crashing down with devastating force.

The volcano eruption on the greek island of santorini has been suggested as a possible cause of that (and related) biblical event.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/..

Anyway, back to the point. The point was that there is so much clutter on some roads that its pretty much impossible to take it all in and drive safely. This is especially true on unfamilar roads in some city centres. Its not a case of not being able to navigate its just that in some places there is too much information.

In Kensington they recognised this and decluttered the high street. This decluttering removed a lot of barriers, both at the edge of the round, and around islands used for staggered pedestrian crossings. The end result of this was a reduction in accident figures (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xm l=/motoring/2006/10/14/mflights114.xml).

I listened to a discussion about this on BBC Radio 4 last week where they had one of the people who had supported this on. The main aim was to place the decision making back in the hands of the driver. If the drivers have to concentrate on what they are doing more, no barriers clearly making out 'their' space, then they devote more attention to the business of driving and hence driver safe. Its not going to work for all drivers, but no scheme does. Anything that a) reduces accidents and b) saves money sounds good to me.

> What they don't realise is that they're actually English.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1414369/

Well, I'm not sure being a Brummy counts. He's also the same guy who crashed in that 'fast'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/09/21/uhammond.xml

(well, it used to be fast)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bbc-puts-brakes-o n-top-gear-after-crash/2006/09/26/1159036516486.ht ml

car a month or two back...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/richard_hammond.shtml

I wonder what happened exactly. Some mechanical failure, or plain driver error?

As I live and work in London as well, (but work with Traffic Lights)

The passports were stolen or fake. 9/11 was a false flag, Reichstag Fire style event.

http://guardian.150m.com/september-eleven/hijacker s-alive.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2001/09/23/widen23.xml

they were encouraged to regard all politicians as corrupt or mendacious by the media

Since Blair's government is currently under criminal investigation, it's a viewpoint which is entirely sustained by the available evidence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/17/npeers17.xml

BBC has about as much journalistic integrity as Entertainment Tonight, they just have better sounding accents.

Not to be too harsh but it just really gets me when people try to point to the BBC as a beacon of truth when by their own admission they pander to about every special interest group out there. They've also been fighting a freedom of information act request for the release of their own internal review of their Middle East coverage; most suspect because it implies that they have been highly biased against Israel.

It's never good to rely on one new source for your information.

This kind of thing happens all the time with creation theories, perpetual motion inventions, and global warming "debunking". Any fruitcake can draft something that looks like a scholarly paper, then demand that the scientific community respond by taking him seriously.

If you want to tell the scientific community that virtually everybody in it is wrong, well, you're allowed to do it. But if you are not scrupulously correct, or worse yet if you repeat obvious lies and fundamental mistakes, you don't have a right to a scholarly rebuttal.

And if an article claiming the scientific community is completely wrong contains any bunkum, then the scentific community is entitled to assume the whole article is bunkum. Is this unfair to believers in bunkum? No. Because bunkum is easy, science is hard. If you make extraordinary claims, you have to be extraodinarily correct. To insist on less means that scientists would have to spend all their time picking sense out of nonsense instead of doing their job.

WIth respect to this specific paper: Consider this graph. The author conflates European and global temperatures, plays stupid games with the scale to make his argument even more "convincing", then asks us to draw non-sequitur conclusions from this steaming graphical turd. From internal evidence alone it is clear that Lord Moncton is either deliberately misleading us, or repeating arguments from others who want to mislead. So, the jig is up. He's forfeited his "right" to demand scientists stand on their heads by the "one piece of bunkum" rule.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/05/15/nspell15.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/15 /ixhome.html

PS: Are there dictionaries for "l33t" so I know when I'm doing it correctly?

• The article is in Australian IT, connected to The Australian newspaper.
• The report in question is a draft of a confidential briefing. So it hasn't been published, and so can't be "cited" in the conventional sense, by The Australian or anyone else.
• It's quite common for newspapers to mention that they've seen unpublished material that they're writing about, usually with the phrase "seen by"
• However, in Australia/NZ the phrase "sighted by" seems to be more common in this context.

If anything, the norm they chose understates the nature of the change.

Nonsense. The norm they chose was specifically chosen to move a local low into the middle so that a local high would look like the end of the world. If they (for instance) had factored in the medieval warm period (accurate bottom graph, includes relevant 20th century average line) instead of presuming the (VERY inaccurate top graph) hockey stick graph the climate change folks have been clinging to, then you'd see that the current temperature changes are entirely unremarkable in both excursion and scope. Furthermore, CO2, historically speaking, is a lagging indicator, not a leading one — it is complete misdirection to use it backwards and point at history to attempt to validate this. Next, we're not looking at half a degree every twenty years, not by a long shot. Why do you think they have to divide the output of the climate models by three? It's because they are way overly biased towards warming. They're not even accurately predicting the current conditions (off by 300% too high!), and that's surely not a very good indicator for what they can say about a hundred years from now.

The difference between our current climate and the last big ice age was a whopping 5-8C, and our global climate has stayed within a 0.7C window since it ended

Um, no. No, it hasn't. Again, see the bottom graph, you know, the one with all the data on it. The one that doesn't conveniently edit out the medieval warm period.

Do you know how many cities there are located less than eight meters above sea level?

Eight? EIGHT? How in the name of all that is superstitious did you get to worrying about !8! flipping meters of sea rise? Eight? Excuse me (Bwahahahahahahaha!) There, that's better. 8? (Bwahaha!) Sorry. Ha. :-)

Look here, little red riding climate, even the known to be bad climate model only predicted a fraction of a meter rise over a hundred years. That's right, less than one. Eight? Holy leaf-a-roni, what are you smoking?

Actual measured sea level rise is about an inch every fifteen years, which if it continues will result in a little over 6 and a half inches (about 16 cm) over 100 years. Eight meters. That's some bad-ass kool-aid, there, son. :-)

If anything, the norm they chose understates the nature of the change.

Nonsense. The norm they chose was specifically chosen to move a local low into the middle so that a local high would look like the end of the world. If they (for instance) had factored in the medieval warm period (accurate bottom graph, includes relevant 20th century average line) instead of presuming the (VERY inaccurate top graph) hockey stick graph the climate change folks have been clinging to, then you'd see that the current temperature changes are entirely unremarkable in both excursion and scope. Furthermore, CO2, historically speaking, is a lagging indicator, not a leading one — it is complete misdirection to use it backwards and point at history to attempt to validate this. Next, we're not looking at half a degree every twenty years, not by a long shot. Why do you think they have to divide the output of the climate models by three? It's because they are way overly biased towards warming. They're not even accurately predicting the current conditions (off by 300% too high!), and that's surely not a very good indicator for what they can say about a hundred years from now.

The difference between our current climate and the last big ice age was a whopping 5-8C, and our global climate has stayed within a 0.7C window since it ended

Um, no. No, it hasn't. Again, see the bottom graph, you know, the one with all the data on it. The one that doesn't conveniently edit out the medieval warm period.

Do you know how many cities there are located less than eight meters above sea level?

Eight? EIGHT? How in the name of all that is superstitious did you get to worrying about !8! flipping meters of sea rise? Eight? Excuse me (Bwahahahahahahaha!) There, that's better. 8? (Bwahaha!) Sorry. Ha. :-)

Look here, little red riding climate, even the known to be bad climate model only predicted a fraction of a meter rise over a hundred years. That's right, less than one. Eight? Holy leaf-a-roni, what are you smoking?

Actual measured sea level rise is about an inch every fifteen years, which if it continues will result in a little over 6 and a half inches (about 16 cm) over 100 years. Eight meters. That's some bad-ass kool-aid, there, son. :-)

Also, by all means, don't miss this article and the data attached thereto (PDF warning)

Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong?

As has been noted, any report on a complex issue can be picked apart. Any one piece that can be negated does not necessarily imply the entire report is flawed. But here's a glaring problem:

Global versus Local Temperatures

Those two graphs show global average temperature and temperatures in Europe. The implication is that the first chart is questionable because it does not agree with the second chart. Therefore, one must discount the first chart. But that is either exceedingly misinformed or deliberately misleading - the medieval temperature shift in Europe is well known to have been a local shift. It resulted from a change in the Atlantic trade currents. Local shifts like that are interesting for many reasons, but are not a measure of global average temperature. It is the global average temperature that is of interest in analyzing global warming (or cooling).

The distinction can be noted also from the use of the term, "global warming." If it were a question of local temperatures, it would probably be referred to as, "local warming."

First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison.

They gave one technique for reconstructing pre-thermometer temperature 390 times more weight than any other (but didn't say so).

They used a computer model to draw the graph from the data, but scientists later found that the model almost always drew hockey-sticks even if they fed in random, electronic "red noise".

You don't need computer models to "find" lambda. Its value is given by a century-old law, derived experimentally by a Slovenian professor and proved by his Austrian student (who later committed suicide when his scientific compatriots refused to believe in atoms). The Stefan-Boltzmann law, not mentioned once in the UN's 2001 report, is as central to the thermodynamics of climate as Einstein's later equation is to astrophysics.

The Stefan-Boltzmann law, also known as Stefan's law, states that the total energy radiated per unit surface area of a black body in unit time (known variously as the black-body irradiance, energy flux density, radiant flux, or the emissive power), j*, is directly proportional to the fourth power of the black body's thermodynamic temperature T (also called absolute temperature):

Buried somewhere else in the comments is (hopefully) a helpful link to important REAL data on historical temperature data. But if not, here is a timely update on the Stern report and the falsification of evidence by the UN in the climate change debate:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_051 12006

Bottom line: it was far warmer in the middle ages. No ice at the North pole - the Chinese sailed around it in 1421. Haven't heard this before? Maybe that's because a few 'concerned' scientists decided to edit the climatological record to remove a few 'inconvenient truths'. What? Highly-regarded researchers abandon the impartiality of the scientific method for a powerful political agenda? Surely it's not possible! I don't know about you, but it's still pretty chilly where I am. I think a little global warming sounds just fine.

So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.

Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "

So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years. The graph looked like an ice hockey-stick. The wrongly flat AD1000-AD1900 temperature line was the shaft: the uptick from 1900 to 2000 was the blade. Here's how they did it:

What about the medieval warm period? From Climate chaos? Don't believe it by Christopher Monckton:

So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.

Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "

So they did...

It's not that we're discounting the possibility of global warming, we're just skeptical of the idea of man-made global warming. Especially when it's elevated to the status of a pseudo-religion.

You clearly didn't make an in depth study of your quote either because it's wrong.

Well, since I was answering your request: "can you please provide a source for a Muslim state swearing the destruction of Israel." ...

And the link you gave states: Ahmadinejad ... denounced attempts to normalise relations with Israel, condemning all Muslim leaders who accept the existence of Israel as "acknowledging a surrender and defeat of the Islamic world."

... I fail to see your point. If there is a significant difference between condemning those who accept the existence of Israel and advocating destruction of Israel I do not see it. The reinterpretation of "Israel must be wiped off the map" is not really significant, even if accurate. You have also completely failed to address the point I made (twice) that even if Islamic states don't declare their desire for the destruction of Israel, their apparent reluctance to condemn organisations in their juristiction that do declare intent to destroy Israel indicates support. At least, such actions (or lack of them) would be interpreted that way in the west.

While you're at it though, do you have any creative reinterpretations of Ahmadinejad's comment: "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," he said. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Do you really think he is not advocating the destruction of Israel? Seriously?

While most Muslim and Arab capitals have remained silent on the president's remarks, a few have spoken out - including Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.

"Palestinians recognise the right of the state of Israel to exist and I reject his comments," he told the BBC News website.

"What we need to be talking about is adding the state of Palestine to the map and not wiping Israel from the map," he said.

Egypt, which has signed a peace treaty with Israel, also rejected the Iranian line.

"In principle, we are way beyond this type of political rhetoric that shows the weakness of the Iranian government," said an official at the Egyptian embassy in London.

Turkey's prime minister called on the Iranian president "to display political moderation".

"Israel Should Be Wiped Off the Map" was the slogan draped on a Shahab-3 ballistic missile during a military parade in Tehran a month ago. World L eaders Condemn Iranian's Call to Wipe Israel 'Off the Map'

Harking back to language used by of the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel, the hard-line president also called Israel a "fabricated" entity......

On Wednesday Ahmadinejad said "there is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world. As the Imam (Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

Linking medical, email, phone, bank & credit card records will be as simple as putting your new National Identity Registration number on those existing databases and allowing the Govt to query them.

Furthermore, you will be denied a new passport unless you give up this information, according to the ID Cards Act.

This comes two months after Gordon Brown was reported to be "planning a massive expansion of the ID cards project that would widen surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases."
He described how "police could be alerted as soon as a wanted person used a biometric-enabled cash card or even entered a building via an iris-scan door."

More details of how the National Identity Register will be the hub of Britain's Surveillance State.

NO2ID is an increasingly successful campaign, which has helped mastermind the recent publicity. We are highly respected in both Parliament and the media. Join the monthly mailing list so that you can keep one step ahead of the Govt's attempts to snoop on you.

Unfortunately, this threat is very real. Stealth data collection through passport interviews is planned to start within 6 months - although there is still time to renew. Please forward this information on to anyone you think might like to keep Britain a free country.

These would be fascinating to look it and I'm sure anyone who could get the raw materials already has this knowledge.

Remember North Korea's nuclear fizzle just a couple of weeks ago? Do you think they intended to build a bomb with about 1/40th the power of the first US nuclear test?

Why do you think the People's Republic of China worked so hard to steal the plans for the W88 thermonuclear warhead from the United States?

Nuclear weapons engineering is just like any other branch of engineering. There are theoretical aspects to it as well as practical aspects that can only be learned by experience and experimentation, or from someone else's data.

Building a small, powerful warhead is a lot harder than just getting some Uranium to explode after a fashion.

Lets just hope Iran didn't find anything useful to help them put a little "something extra" on top of their Shahab-3 able to reach Turkey, for now, and tested during the recent "The Great Prophet 2" military exercises.

Tony Blair has called for all innocent citizens to be forcibly DNA swabbed. Since the Govt stated they would link the police databases to the National Identity Register (pg 5), this would mean our DNA, our tax/benefits records and detailed tracking of our car movements via ANPR will be cross-indexed into a single surveillance dossier.

Furthermore, you will be denied a new passport unless you give up this information, according to the ID Cards Act.

This comes two months after Gordon Brown was reported to be "planning a massive expansion of the ID cards project that would widen surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases."
He described how "police could be alerted as soon as a wanted person used a biometric-enabled cash card or even entered a building via an iris-scan door."

More details of how the National Identity Register will be the hub of Britain's Surveillance State

It has invaded Iraq many times.

Here is one from April 25th of this year,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/05/01/wiran01.xml

While Iraq started the Iran-Iraq war with an invasion, Iran had invaded Kurdish Iraq several times.

It has also invaded US soil by taking the US embassy in 1979.

I also think that al-Qaida would vote G.W.Bush: Never ever have the recruiting possibilities have be better, never ever have the arguments of al-Qaida being existant better. Never ever have the means and possibilities of getting money from the Arab world being better due to high income on oil and an general feeling of being waged an undeclared war against from the U.S..

It was brilliant the way Al Qaeda tricked the US into occupying all of its nicely equipped and well supplied training bases in Afghanistan, not to mention the way it bogged the US down with all of its supplies, mountains of documents, large numbers of prisoners, and weapons. And the physical training they are getting by running away will no doubt always be useful. And I can't help but think of all the US Treasury officials who gave up weekends because they were forced to freeze the accounts of Al Qaeda members, suppliers, and sympathizers. They also cleverly got around the problem of Afghanistan's government only being recognized by 2 countries, the funny looks you might get with an Afghani passport, by tricking the US into removing the Taliban government. Of course that did create a problem with finding enough ballots for all of the Afghans to vote.

They are being fiendishly clever in Iraq as well, forcing us to use up precious bullets, killing at least 4,000 foreign fighters in the process. And just because Bin Laden claims that the war in Iraq is "greatest battle of Islam in this era" doesn't mean it has to be important to the US. After all, with the Iraqi Army almost up to full strength, and growing more proficient, day by day, you have to wonder about the hatred of the US when Muslim soldiers are killing Islamist extremist terrorist who are killing Iraqi Muslims who used to be killed by the thousands by Saddam, but not any more, so I guess its fault of the US that fewer Muslims are being killed... and voting.... I think that is supposed to be bad.

Never ever have allies of the U.S. being more alienated from the U.S., making "divide et impera" the most easiest ever. Never ever was the danger of the own population being in favor of U.S. so minimal.

Your point about US allies is well taken. If it wasn't for the 34 or so countries that have had forces in Iraq as part of the coalition, the fact that NATO is running the Afghanistan operation these days, including commanding US troops in addition to 36 other countries, or that the US is part of the Six Party talks over North Korea, or that the US is coordinating with European powers over Iran, it is hard to say when the US would ever talk to any other country.

If only the world hadn't turned against the US before 9/11.

You might find that the typical slashdotter might go apeshit over ID cards, but you misrepresent the feelings of the English. Every single poll that's ever been done in the UK about ID cards has shown the majority to be in favour.

In October 2003, Indian Air Chief S. Krishnaswamy stated that India had started development of an operations command station for an eventual space platform for nuclear weapons.[10] However, he retracted the statement within days, under pressure from India's civilian leaders.[11] India: Military Programs

According to a senior U.S. Air Force official, Brazil is one of a group of countries "seriously involved in using space assets for military purposes."[1] Indeed, when Brazil became a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1995, it was allowed to keep its space launch program, despite the potential for military applications.[2] Brazil: Military Programs

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has drafted a bill to allow Japan's into space. The calls for the military to venture into space within the parameters of self-defense rights. That would be a drastic change from the current civilian-based limitations that Japan has placed on space ventures. Japanese Military Going Into Space

We've already seen the precision of so-called "smart bombs" taking down hospitals and civil locations.

Who does assure that one of such weapons instead of hitting an WMD goes crazy and destroy a city somewhere else? Or just happily go down in the middle of North Korea as an happy present for their military research?

But there are plenty of idiot would-be terrorists who have no hope of carrying out what they are planning, but who are more than willing to martyr themselves by pleading guilty when they are caught (here is an example).

If the police can keep up a steady trickle of arrests of people like this, the "war on terror" can be kept going indefinitely.

Something tells me that bootlegging gasoline and electricity won't happen,

ian

One of those independantly confirmed kills was an Tornado which the system couldn't differentiate from a scud missile

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2877349.stm

Another was an F18 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2003/04/04/wjet04.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/04/i xnewstop.html

Great defensive system the patriot.

It sure as heck should be scared! If you haven't read this yet, you gotta check it out:

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml= /opinion/2006/04/16/do1609.xml

The other really scare force in the world is well documented here:

        http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmare s

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

This is much much more of a free-speech issue than any kind of right-left issue.

Atheist racially neutral economic egalitarians have killed tens of millions of people in the last hundred years. When someone suggests that the horrors of the world are due to racial strife, religion and economic inequality, it is important to keep that in mind. The Left's hands are just as bloody as the Right's. It just gets covered up by the liberal media and academia. A cover-up by omission.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2004/11/10/wbelg10.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/11/1 0/ixportal.html/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlaams_Blok/

Take the example of Vlaams Blok. This was a political party which had nearly 12% of the Belgian vote and was banned because the high court of Belgium decided that their anti-immigration stance was unacceptable. One of the reasons they were banned was their opposition to female circumcision. Should anyone who proposes a border fence on the southern border of the United States be thrown in jail for several years? Hate speech laws are a license for a judge to directly impose their political will on the public.

This is not the equivalent where someone goes to jail for flag burning. This is the equivalent of where someone goes to jail for proposing flag burning should be legal.

Well, that's kind of wrong: Most people in the USA who've been jailed on laws later ruled anti-1st-amendment were Communists and Socialists prosecuted under the Smith Act and earlier sedition laws. A lot of them remain on the books as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act/

The Smith Act makes it illegal to conspire to overthrow the government of the United States. I admit that I don't know that much about it, but it appears that most of the convictions were thrown out in 1957. It is extensively documented that the Communist Party of the United States collaborated with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, so there are several issues beyond free speech involved.

Theres the Torygraph that attempts to cater for rich upper crust (sadly not intellectual) class. Its the one that would get ironed for somebody else. Also tends mainly to have pictures of lots of young attractive (although clothed) ladies. Liz Hurly was their favourite picture subject for a while. But it alteast isnt the Daily Mail which caters to closet racist and the Sun which caters the to "doesnt even realise s/he is racist" racist.

Hi JakartaDean.

Add Gun Control to Litany of Misbegotten Government Plans
National crime rates compared
England has worst crime rate in world
Statistics Confirm Huge London Crime Wave
Gun Control's Twisted Outcome

There are plenty more links out there--this was about 5 minutes of googling.

Here. OK, so it is only 4/10, slightly less than half. The point is still valid - these people are not trying to escape Sharia.

(And that only took a few seconds on Google, and has been reported on Slashdot before!)

My mate got a new British passport a couple of weeks ago. The 2nd last page or so has a chip and a large rectangular loop of wire shaped in it. From what I remember, the rectangular loop of wire measured about 8cm long by 2cm high or so.

Here's a smallish picture of what the RFID bit looks like: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2005/11/1 8/npassport18.jpg

It seems that defending yourself by running away from a threat can result in you being prosecuted.

Interesting to note that in this case the police watched the whole scenario degenerate into violence from a safe distance of 600 yards, yet chose to prosecute the intended victim.

Also interesting is the judges acceptance of her excuse that she was attempting to "save herself and the young persons from a genuine risk", before convicting her anyway.

Talk about picking and choosing yr epochs. 1998 was the hottest year on record. Two things are frightening:

1. There has not been a significant cooling trend since then src. Ow. No downward movement since the hottest year on record.

2. Not only you, but people working for fairly mainstream publications cite this as some kind of refutation.

"I've been tracking the temperature since the middle of July and have noticed a significant cooling trend. What's up with that? This issue is so politicized no one can tell what the facts are!"

lol.

so I assume I'm free to duplicate CDs

bad assumption, you either are free to do that (under the laws where you are) or you aren't - but it's entirely unlikely that the availability of copying hardware has anything to do with it.

copying consumer hardware has been sold (and promoted) for years in the UK ("high speed dubbing" anyone?) but it is NOT and never has been legal to copy tapes / lps / cds without copyright holder's explicit permission.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2006/05/07/cnbpi07.xml for example.

similarly I can buy cars where the top gear isn't usable below 70mph, so can I assume I'm free to go faster than that (since "that is the whole reason for its existence") ? - no, the legal use of that top gear is restricted to private roads/tracks where I've got permission - NOT on normal roads.

similarly, at least here, the legal use of a CD recorder is restricted to copying CDs (eg. stuff you've recorded yourself), where you have explicit copyright permission - NOT normal purchased CDs.

Here's how well loved you are in Iraq imperialist scum bag:

"Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.

The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.

It demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western feeling in Iraq after more than two and a half years of bloody occupation."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/10/23/wirq23.xml

And even more Iraqis support the U.S. leaving peacefully and don't trust the U.S. occupiers:

"Four out of five Iraqis report holding a negative view of the U.S. occupation authority and of coalition forces, according to a new poll conducted for the occupation authority.

In the poll, 80 percent of the Iraqis questioned reported a lack of confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and 82 percent said they disapprove of the U.S. and allied militaries in Iraq."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A224 03-2004May12.html

And that was in 2004 before the torture at Abu Gharaib had been revealed to the world, the numbers are no doubt worse now.

You aren't wanted you aren't needed, get gone already.

You sed: "None of my Marines would ever grab a civilian to hide behind while advancing on an enemy position. We would never kidnap the children of a family and threaten to kill the kids if the family didn't allow a weapons or bomb cache to be located in the house. And we sure as hell would never drive a carbomb into a crowd of kids hoping to kill as many of them as we could just so it would make the evening news."

No instead you bomb an ENTIRE CITY into rubble killing hundreds if not thousands and making life miserable for tens of thousands of people of now homeless people. You would then write off that great number of civilian dead as collateral damage.

"The video shows a good deal of the damage to the city (2/3s of buildings damaged) and has some graphic shots of the dead. At one point the health workers excavate a shallow grave with a body bag. They look inside and say "Atfal"-- "children." Someone had had to bury them hastily."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/06/fallujah-film-ital ian-magazine-diario.html

" * On 9 November, CNN Correspondent Karl Penhaul reported the use of cluster bombs in the offensive: "The sky over Falluja seems to explode as U.S. Marines launch their much-trumpeted ground assault. War planes drop cluster bombs on insurgent positions and artillery batteries fire smoke rounds to conceal a Marine advance."[17]
* November 10, 2004 reports by the Washington Post suggest that US armed forces used white phosphorus grenades and/or artillery shells, creating walls of fire in the city. Doctors working inside Fallujah report seeing melted corpses of suspected insurgents.[18] The use of WP ammunition was confirmed from various independent sources, including US troops who had suffered WP burns due to 'friendly fire'. On November 16, 2005 The Independent reported that Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable "disclosed that (white phosphorus) had been used to dislodge enemy fighters from entrenched positions in the city"..."We use them primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target marking in some cases. However it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants." [19] But a day before, Robert Tuttle the US ambassador to London denied that white phos

Solving a crossword in under 12 minutes was the entrance exam.

I assume it was solving a cryptic crossword in under 12 minutes.

English cryptic crosswords are notoriously difficult, at least in part because of their assumed local knowledge (e.g. "Mayfair" stands for the two letters "WI".) I've seen one where virtually all of the clues referenced the answer of others - until you solve the key clues, you can't even start! Another had no numbers - you have to solve all of the clues first, then fit them together jigsaw style... Australian cryptics are much easier.

>Part of me wants to dismiss his entire argument as nonsensical luddite ramblings. Another part of me wonders if he might have at least a small point. But it's where those two parts of me meet and ask "where's the proof?" that I finall come to the conclusion there is nothing to see here, move along.

You've hit on the central issue here -- they don't provide any evidence to support their claims.

That's not surprising if you look at the signatures of the letter http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/09/12/njunk112.xml While they may have good hearts, these are people who don't understand academic evidence. They're teachers and consultants, and even a couple of psychoanalysts. There are also a couple of Waldorf teachers, and this letter is consistent with the Waldorf philosophy. Love it or hate it, where's the evidence? They also display a lack of specific suggestions, which makes me wonder what their specific program really is.

The letter says:

>We therefore propose as a matter of urgency that public debate be initiated on child-rearing in the 21st century this issue should be central to public policy-making in coming decades.

"Initiated"? Where have they been for the last 100 years?

Please read the real letter and not the CNet version.

The authors cite multiple negative influences on childhood which I'm sure many of us with children agree with; junk food, school targets (a big Government issue in the UK) and mass marketing

Video games are just one of the influences - and no way as bad as the others.

Or you can read the the BBC summary which is more accurate.