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If only we could get some decent peer review. Maybe it was different back then?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.economist.com/news/...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ha...
http://retractionwatch.com/201...
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21s...
https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

Aerosmith frontman asks Trump campaign to stop using song
Adele tells Donald Trump to stop pinching her songs for his campaign

When politicians use music without asking permission

In the US, welfare states are considered socialist.

Sure, if you're an uneducated hick who listens to Christian talk radio and believes that anybody who doesn't get down on his knees in front of a naked Jesus must be a bloody communist.

Since they are all wrong, name one you would accept.

Socialist country? The Wikipedia page is pretty reasonable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... except that China is arguably not communist anymore.

For a while, "social democratic parties" were doing fairly well in Europe, but they stopped being "socialist" long ago, while conservative parties have support the welfare state since Bismarck. Furthermore, the "social democratic parties" don't hold on to power for long, and much of Europe is governed by "liberal" (more like US libertarian or free market conservatives), center-right, or conservative parties. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

The Anne Frank foundation has been gold-digging in Europe as well: http://www.theguardian.com/boo... This is a world-wide problem, and European publishers, lobbyists, politicians, and authors are just as much to blame for this as Disney and their supporters in Congress, if not more so.

It has been noticed that since this sweetheart deal, typing "Conservatives are" into google doesn't throw up any suggested searches (contrast with those suggested for "Labour are" and "Libdems are"). Correlation is not causation of course, could just be a happy coincidence.

The Berkman report is pretty interesting reading and points out thatdevice encryption can be frustrating, but there's still no default for end-to-end encrypted communication, metadata is plaintext by necessity, and the security of the IoT is something that too few people have worried about.

Wired is a site that actually pays their writers. The internet has become a place where everybody wants stuff for free, and expects writers to be unpaid; the internet has been flailing around trying to find a model where writers can actually get paid for their work-- but having trouble finding one.

So, give them a little credit-- if you are neither willing to look at ads nor willing to pay-- basically, you want stuff for free--well, ok, don't go there: you can get plenty of free content elsewhere on the internet. It's a race for the bottom. But they are at least trying to find a way to survive and keep paying their writers.

(Hufflepuff Post is probably about the worst of the lot-- their business model is "we get millions of dollars, people who write for us get nothing.")
  http://blogpaws.com/executive-...
  http://www.mayhillfowler.com/p...
  http://inthesetimes.com/workin...
  http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
http://www.theguardian.com/com...

This is what happens when you have an "encrypted" system with a built in backdoor for the government - and this is why that is a bad idea.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Amazes me how NK can do cruel and horrible things to people LIKE GASSING FAMILIES TOGETHER and can lob rockets over the USes "friends" but the US can only pathetically look on because one look at China and it shits its pants!

When North America gets rid of its 5000 nuclear warheads it will have the moral right to squeal at North Korea. As it stands NK should be applauded for its technological advances. Same goes to Iran.

Well, as long as it is just about "technological advances" you may be interested is some other areas in which North Korea may in fact be a "word leader." You can read about that here and here.

I expect you will approve, but I am curious as to your evaluation. Wouldn't it be better for more of the earth to be controlled by governments like North Korea?

Yes the hops part was always interesting.
"Three degrees of separation: breaking down the NSA's 'hops' surveillance method" ( 29 October 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
You may already be a winner in NSA’s “three-degrees” surveillance sweepstakes! (Jul 19, 2013 )
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
Australia is even trying it with images.
Facial recognition: Privacy advocates raise concern over 'creepy' system Government says will enhance national security (10 Sep 2015)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

The number of hops the security forces and mil felt comfortable connecting under collect it all fits with the ~3 hop news :)

Well this is directly relevant to the number of degrees of seperation that the NSA uses to assume a connection between two people. I forget what the last hearings said about it -- was it two, or three? In either case, there starts to be evidence that this isn't so narrow a focus.

Three degrees: http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/nsa-files-decoded-hops

They will be given the right to stand trial, PUBLIC trial, where the reasons why they are being detained and how we know that information will be subject to the standard rules of evidence used in criminal court. Likely the evidence will not meet the requirements of our legal system and get thrown out, which will set them free.

That is what SHOULD happen. They are not criminals, they are not POWs. They should be deported and set free.

I REALLY don't care how "bad" the government tells us they are, nor even how bad they really actually are.

We cannot simply take prisoners and hold them forever. And its not like they really pose a threat. Not a serious one anyway, certainly nothing existential, or even substantial. They'll be under surveillance and won't so much as fart in our direction, or they'll disappear into a cave somewhere and never be seen again... either way: fine.

If they personally orchestrate the fall of the United States, well, then: you were right, we should have held them. But we both know that's ridiculous.

There are far greater threats in the world then those guys.

...They'll be under surveillance and won't so much as fart in our direction...

As many as 30 percent of the nearly 600 released Gitmo inmates started fighting again. "Ridiculous" was the right word, you just used it wrong.

What's in New Hampshire?

Drugs.

It's BS. I did as the AC suggested, and Googled it. It looks like one of the women's best friend's mother's uncle's former roommate said something about Cuba one time. Or something silly like that.

http://www.theguardian.com/med...

What has most engaged the conspiracy theorists and Assange's more excitable defenders, however, are a few key incidents in Miss A career, in particular that she is said to have worked in the Swedish embassy in the US, and wrote her university thesis in 2007 on a vision of Cuba after the death of Castro.

This has led to widespread allegations that the woman is a CIA agent, planted as a honeytrap to bring down Assange. One blogger notes: "[Assange] just happens to meet a Swedish woman who just happens to have been publishing her work in a well-funded anti-Castro group that just happens to have links with a group led by a man at least one journalist describes as an agent of the CIA: the violent secret arm of America's foreign policy.

There are various more sensational articles, but none of those provide any evidence. This was the only article that seemed to explain the connection clearly.

Oooo, a tone troll, how original. What's the real problem: that people are fed up with zombie lies, or that people keep repeating them now matter how many times they are debunked. Remember Republicans spending years blaming Clinton for Waco and Ruby Ridge, when the former happened five weeks into his presidency, and the latter happened before Clinton was elected, much less took office?

I can't state with any authority that this data is accurate, but it shows multiple scenarios, under which EITHER candidate may have won.

Do tell which scenario is more accurate than a state-wide recount. A state-wide recount that the press did after the election. A statewide recount which Gore won under any method chosen. Now, you were tonesplaining about something?

I think they're trying to choke David Cameron to death on his own porridge.

The largest bill is now $100. This is equivalent to $10 in 1948 according to the CPI inflation indicator. .

As time goes on, I doubt ( barring runaway inflation ), the US will print larger bills, so the $100 will become less and less.

During the Iraq war, the US airlifted $12 billion of $100 bills, which weighed in at 363 tons. This shows that cash is no longer useful for large transactions already.

As a side note: most of it was untracked, and melted away. I know of a distant relative who worded as contractor and returned home to Turkey with suitcases full of cash.

You're sure that wasn't his pay?

The largest bill is now $100. This is equivalent to $10 in 1948 according to the CPI inflation indicator. .

As time goes on, I doubt ( barring runaway inflation ), the US will print larger bills, so the $100 will become less and less.

During the Iraq war, the US airlifted $12 billion of $100 bills, which weighed in at 363 tons. This shows that cash is no longer useful for large transactions already.

As a side note: most of it was untracked, and melted away. I know of a distant relative who worded as contractor and returned home to Turkey with suitcases full of cash.

Funny how these "Terrorist tracking programs" fail to track the US government, the Saudi government and a bunch of other western governments when these happily finance terrorism. But god forbid you try to rent a US movie with a foreign credit card to watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime, you terrorist you.

whether one agrees with him/her or not, who the hell marked this as a troll ?

There is a great deal of evidence that the US and SA funded terrorists.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I thought Slashdot was here to encourage exchange of opinions, even if unpopular with people living in the US or Saudia Arabia...

I thought they meant something far more dangerous - the backhoe. The ultimate denial-of-service tool.
Remember a few years ago some woman in Georgia took a whole country off the internet?

http://it.slashdot.org/story/0...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

http://www.wattwaybycolas.com/...

What is the price per m2?

Wattway's price per m2 is to be seen in light of the production cost of electricity.
Photovoltaic energy is measured in watt-peak, which takes into account sunlight conditions.
Today, depending on the technology used and the support on which the panels are installed, prices fluctuate between 2 to 8 euros/watt-peak.
The cost with Wattway is estimated at 6 euros/watt-peak.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that Wattway can turn an existing surface into a money-maker by providing an additional use, which has a positive impact on the final price.
With Wattway, there is no need to rent or purchase farmland to install solar panels, nor do you need to redo your entire roof to produce photovoltaic electricity!

How efficient is Wattway compared to a conventional solar panel?

Wattway panels have a 15% yield, compared to 18-19% for conventional photovoltaic panels.

So... More expensive (per watt) than conventional solar panels, with ~20% lesser yield.
Which would probably decrease by at least 30% per panel, as that is about the area of the panel that would get most tires tracking over it.
Which brings us down to ~10% yield.
While the cost stays in the upper 25%, meaning it's 3 times more expensive than the cheapest panels out there. Per watt.
Combine that with the (optimistic) reduction in yield due to dirt, and they are ~5-6 times more expensive.

Now... considering this article's claim that "4m of solarised road is enough to supply one household's electricity needs, apart from heating, and one kilometre will light a settlement with 5,000 inhabitants"...
And similar claims regarding similar but FAR MORE realistic project in Amsterdam and the claims of "enough energy to power three households" per 100 meters, later readjusted a bit to "provide a single-person household with electricity for a year" for about half a year of work, per 70 meters or road installed (which comes out to not quite but almost 3 homes per 100 meters)...
Those 4 meters of road per household seem to be calculated based on roads some 4-5 lanes wide.
Granted, not the same tech as that Dutch bike lane but that's how wide those bike lanes would have be to to provide that same amount of power.

Which is not the issue of lack of such roads... but that's a lot of potential potholes.
Which does not really sound realistic for regular roads, considering Wattway's "fresh asphalt with no deformations or ruts" policy.

How long does a Wattway panel last?

A Wattway panel lasts as long as conventional pavement, meaning at least 10 years depending on the traffic, which speeds up wear.
If the section is not heavily trafficked - a stadium parking lot for example - then Wattway panels can last roughly 20 years.

Are Wattway panels all-weather?

Wattway panels are rainproof thanks to the fact that the silicon cells are encapsulated and the junction box which provides the connection between the panels complies with IP66 sealing effectiveness standards.
The panels have even passed the snowplow test with flying colors.
Operators do, however, need to operate the machines with a bit more care on Wattway panels than on conventional pavement.

Can Wattway be installed on any type of road? Are there any constraints (road

You left out the nerve gases Tabun and Sarin, which Saddam had in quantity, and VX nerve gas, which he secretly disposed of by dumping large amounts of it in the dessert. You also left out biological weapons which Saddam also developed.

Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Bush administration was NOT adamant that "Saddam had a bomb." They were adamant that he not GET a bomb.

The West didn't sell Saddam chemical agents, Iraq manufactured them by itself. Any state that can produce modern insecticides can produce nerve gas. Mustard gas is less demanding, if a country has a chemical industry it can make it.

Below is a link to the text of Powell speech. He seems to mention chemical weapons a lot, with some mention of biological, and of nuclear program information.

Full text of Colin Powell's speech

Powell wasn't setup, at least not deliberately. Most intelligence agencies thought Saddam had WMDs, but not everyone thought it was worth going after him. It was very unfortunate in many ways that the Bush administration didn't make the information public. At the end of the day Powell was not responsible for the information he presented, that was the responsibility of the intelligence agencies. His job as the US chief diplomat was to make the US case.

When one considers the $8 billion we taxpayers are forced to hand over to the apartheid state of Israel each year, combined with technology stolen by traitors such as Jonathan Pollard, it's not as if we didn't have a right to the images.

The figures I've seen suggest the US aid is Israel is only about half that, and much of that is military aid that is used for purchases of US built equipment.

Israel cooperatively develops technology with the US military, including missile defense technology.

The USS Liberty incident occurred during active hostilities among multiple belligerents in the area almost 50 years ago. Has there been some kind of repeat problem that would cause you to bring that up now? Do you think Israel has been patiently biding their time for 50 years to lull the US into a false sense of security? When do you think the actual attack might be? At 75 years? 100 years?

Israel isn't an apartheid state. It is slander to claim that.

Israel has many injustices. But it is not an apartheid state
In South Africa, I saw real apartheid up close. These claims against Israel are a distraction from the battle for justice for Palestinians

I saw Nelson Mandela secretly when he was underground, then popularly known as the Black Pimpernel, and I was the first non-family member to visit him in prison.

I have now lived in Israel for 17 years, doing what I can to promote dialogue across lines of division. To an extent that I believe is rare, I straddle both societies. I know Israel today – and I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid.

The Arabs of Israel are full citizens. Crucially, they have the vote and Israeli Arab MPs sit in parliament. An Arab judge sits on the country’s highest court; an Arab is chief surgeon at a leading hospital; an Arab commands a brigade of the Israeli army; others head university departments. Arab and Jewish babies are born in the same delivery rooms, attended by the same doctors and nurses, and mothers recover in adjoining beds. Jews and Arabs travel on the same trains, taxis and – yes – buses. Universities, theatres, cinemas, beaches and restaurants are open to all. . . .

How does that compare with the old South Africa? Under apartheid, every detail of life was subject to discrimination by law. Black South Africans did not have the vote. Skin colour determined where you were born and lived, your job, your school, which bus, train, taxi and ambulance you used, which park bench, lavatory and beach, whom you could marry, and in which cemetery you were buried.
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Israel is not remotely like that. Everything is open to change in a tangled society in which lots of people have grievances, including Mizrahi Jews (from the Middle East) or Jews of Ethiopian origin. So anyone who equates Israel and apartheid is not telling the truth.

A better question may be why they haven't come down harder on terrorist activities on Twitter

This is why. The Saudis have a Sunni supremacist agenda and they will use any leverage they have to promote it.

The fact that they don't clean their own house and have become an ego trip for the editors

http://www.theguardian.com/boo...

or the fact that they are useless for any topic with even a whiff of controversy

The problem is, it costs a lot to accurately work out who should be earning each of the benefits, for every one of those 64% of UK households:

• You need positively identify everyone claiming
• Assess their situation in terms or dependent children, work situation, housing, health, pensions
• Reassess everytime one of those conditions changes
• Reassess everyone everytime a new Tax Year starts since the rules are often changed

And all that is for people who are honestly trying to claim benefits, it hasn't covered the costs of checking people who are intentionally trying to claim more by not declaring work or making up illnesses etc.

The savings for UBI come from eliminating pretty much all of that stuff, you just need to identify each person and record which bank account to pay the money into.

"The British prime minister is currently trying (and failing) to negotiate changes to allow the UK to discriminate between people in terms of how long they have been in the country to alter what benefits they are entitled to and when."

The problem we have in the UK is that it doesn't matter. The British people are overwhelmingly xenophobic having been fed that mindset for decades by a rabid press.

The fact that this happens is largely irrelevant when on average immigrants contribute far more to the UK than they consume, that means that contrary to the UKIP line, immigrants do not take school and hospital places, but they create them, because they're net tax contributors and greater net tax contributors than native born Brits:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-...

Our problem in the UK has nothing to do with "benefits tourism" and everything to do with an unproductive native workforce that has an attitude that the world owes it a free ride. We need to worry less about those coming in, and more about those who have been here since birth. For example, the older generation (~60+) has got much wealthier on average throughout the financial crisis whilst those younger have all suffered on average. If we're worried about our nation's finances we should start by stopping pandering to those living off the "respect your elders" mantra that was deserved of their parents for fighting in two major wars to give us the country we have, but lived off by their sponger children who are nothing but a net drain on society that have not paid their way. The current generation of post-war elderly folks have given themselves massive pensions, massive amounts of benefits, and yet they expect everyone else to pay for them. They're the real spongers in our society - it's a travesty that you can be a multi-millionaire with multiple homes but still get a free bus pass, TV license, state contribution to heating your house, and state pension. The fact is we're handing out far more money to our own who neither need it, nor have worked for it anymore than those younger than them whom they're expecting to pay for it.

I'm all for dishing out massive respect to those who fought for our freedom in World War I and World War II but those are becoming an increasingly small fraction of the remaining elderly population, and those who fought in neither being too young are living off of that past glory to steal wealth from the rest of the population whilst blaming immigrants for those problems that their theft of the nation's finances causes. These are the people who don't just take a massively disproportionate amount of benefits, but who also use the most hospital beds, demand that everyone else pay for their social care as they age, and also are at the source of the housing crisis because they're using their wealth to buy up houses, cutting the available to-buy stock and forcing those who hence as a result can't afford to buy into the rental cycle,

If immigrants start being an actual net drain on our country then sure, let's look at that, but whilst it's not immigrants but instead a specific segment of native born Brits that are taking up a disproportionate amount of state funding at the expense of everyone else then let's sort out the actual problem first and stop blaming it on people who are actually helping counter that eh?

Yes we have a lot of public funding problems in the UK, but the immigrants are helping us solve it with their net contribution. Stop blaming them for a problem they're not responsible for.

Look, nobody (except some seriously sick perverts) wants kids to be raped.

Don't be ridiculous. There are entire cultures that have a special place for that custom. And there are people that post on Slashdot that think sex with children (normally referred to as rape) is just fine. Just today I saw a post from someone that stated in essence that he would side with child molesters over the police.

If you want to pretend that drawings are a widespread, major source of injustice in the prosecution of alleged pedophiles, that's your affair. There are far, far more kids that have their lives ruined by child molesters than that.

It's not BS. Perhaps you haven't been watching very closely, but these voter ID laws are indeed being actively used to disenfranchise many mostly poor, minority voters. Alabama, for instance, passed its voter ID law then promptly closed the DMV offices in most of its majority poor, black counties.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-...

Just how many hoops do you want people to jump through to be able to exercise their right to vote, especially when voter fraud is by all accounts minimal? A lot more people are being disenfranchised than alleged voter fraud is being prevented. But that kind of egregious distortion of the electoral system suits those who don't like that poor and minority voters can vote, such as yourself (because you disapprove of which way they vote), just fine, doesn't it?

Making accusations that can be easily disproved

James Comey tells crime summit that ‘it’s ridiculous’ Guardian and Washington Post have more information on civilians’ deaths at hands of US police than FBI

Thank you, you prove my point again. The media merely has more data.

But both the accuracy of the figures and any trends emerging from them have been called into question because of the voluntary reporting system.

Again, thank you for proving my point: that the controversy is over the amount of data. And thank you for confirming my suspicion, you merely repeat what some other nameless person unfamiliar with statistics had said. Note that the FBI disputes such a claim through their desire to keep the system voluntary, more on this below.

The justice department and the FBI have resisted calls for a mandatory reporting system, calling for more data on fatal police shootings but keeping the voluntary reporting system.

As I said, it has not been shown that the voluntary system is inherently flawed. The fact that its a departmental decision, all or nothing, rather than an incident by incident decision, may keep the data submitted representational.

Everyone is saying that the FBI figures arec rap and that it's due to a systemic process problem.

Your own quotes demonstrate you have a reading comprehension problem. The FBI only said the media has more data. The FBI has not said voluntary reporting is inherently flawed, they want to keep the system voluntary.

Making accusations that can be easily disproved

James Comey tells crime summit that ‘it’s ridiculous’ Guardian and Washington Post have more information on civilians’ deaths at hands of US police than FBI

and

Federal officials currently rely on local police to report shootings involving officers, but reporting is voluntary and typically occurs months after the fact. The FBI counted 444 “justifiable homicides” by law-enforcement officers in 2014, a 5.7% decrease from the 471 counted the year before.

But both the accuracy of the figures and any trends emerging from them have been called into question because of the voluntary reporting system. The justice department and the FBI have resisted calls for a mandatory reporting system, calling for more data on fatal police shootings but keeping the voluntary reporting system.

Lynch said last week that her department did not want to dictate to every local department how they should handle the minutiae of record-keeping. She subsequently clarified her statements, insisting that information on police shootings was “vital”.

Everyone is saying that the FBI figures arec rap and that it's due to a systemic process problem.

"they are not thermometers in space. The satellite [temperature] data ... were obtained from so-called Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs), which measure the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules from broad atmospheric layers. Converting this information to estimates of temperature trends has substantial uncertainties."

- http://www.theguardian.com/env...

He's also quoted in this video: https://youtu.be/UVMsYXzmUYk

Senator Cruz focuses on one data set (mine) from one type of instrument (satellite) and he ignores all of the other evidence. For example the surface temperature record, things like the arctic sea ice declining, things like the time of year that plants flower or leaf out. All of those sorts of things he's ignored in favour of this one piece of evidence that supports the story that he wants to tell.

It has already been done - sort of - by a town in Norway that uses mirrors to reflect sunlight down into the valley to extend the daylight hours. At a reasonably high latitude in the northern hemisphere there are not many flora or fauna to worry about in the middle of winter in an urban setting.

The only time you'd need to worry about it is if they focus the light a lot to create a heat based-death ray. That would also be far more like the plot of a bond film...

The US has a habit of setting bad precedents these days and that is especially true of drone assassinations. Now every country will want a drone fleet, and we have given them all the excuses they need to employ them to "kill terrorists". Of course, like us, they will be the ones who decide what a terrorist is. UK courts just decided that journalists should not be considered terrorists, indicating that we are in a world of hurt when that question even comes up.

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

How can the US complain when other countries deploy drones to "kill terrorists"? It can be done much cheaper than our drone program, and with much less high-end technology. You just need a video camera on an RCA big enough to carry an explosive payload. What goes around comes around. But then again, I am sure that is the whole point. The US wants instability, or we wouldn't be forcing regime change all over the place. I can't imagine that the government hasn't figured out that regime change leads to conflict, civil war and refugee crises. In fact, it happens every time.

If in reality car emissions are higher than overly ambitious standards, but still low enough that air quality is OK - should the cars be "fixed" (as in the pet related term, neutered) or instead should the regulations be brought to realistic levels based on what cars are actually emitting today?

Did the car makers complain about the standards? No
Were they upfront about the issue to the customer and public? No
Did they install the best for low emission software by default? No

This is not bending the rules but breaking them.
And the standards are not overly ambitious: http://www.theguardian.com/env... Stop buying fraud stuff.

It's a very slick, efficient way to conduct the war, without having to have the massive ground invasion mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's not much of a "war" if your opponent has no way to defend themselves much less retaliate against your attacks.

Considering we also have a problem with cruelty, being able to determine when we are bombing a hospital and stopping the act, and making little kids fear the sky, I don't think assassination goes quite far enough to describe the US governments use of drones in combat. It's pure murder, caused by people who have gone insane with power, accountable to no one. Who will complain? The dead victims families? Who never saw the attacks coming? Who would take responsibility? A government that places no value on the lives of others during war, and places so much money into their war machine that attempting to get them to back down would require support from the entire world? No one should be able to kill like that. Not an individual, not a government, no one. The US government should be condemned and punished for their actions and the use of these things. I say that as a US Citizen, albeit as an AC, as even I would fear those drones being used on us.

Odd that they don't mention the wildfire that shut down 101, which caused traffic to be diverted to 5. So the higher traffic due to holiday travel was compounded by road closure.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-...

A section of Highway 101, a key north-south route, remained closed on Saturday afternoon, forcing holiday travelers to use alternative routes.

Maybe not in the states, but in Brazil, for example, there is already a thriving economy. Sao Paulo has nearly 500 helicopters operating. Here is an article but there is also a great documentary on Netflix, I believe. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Other manufacturers have done far worse things, both regarding emissions and other aspects (e.g. safety, fuel economy). It is ridiculous how much flak VW gets for something that the majority of the industry seem to be doing while VW is the only manufacturer that actually acknowledging what they have done and that is actually recalling the cars to reduce emissions. Never mind GM knowingly selling cars with faulty ignition switches that have caused over a hundred deaths to save a few cents and then lying about it. Or GM receiving a mere token fine when they were caught with a defeat devices in 500.000 Cadillacs. Or GM denying emissions cheating even when it is pretty clear.

Just look at the whole life cycle of uranium ore and waste as well as plant decommission as well as the over 100k years the radioactive contamination is a problem and you will realize that nuclear production is actually pretty dirty.

For further reading see: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/dec/05/nuclear-greenpolitics

Sad truth: the messenger matters to how we get the message. We've seen a slew of stories along those lines -- physics tests lower if gender is known, violin auditions need to be anonymous to be judged on sound quality, insufficient peer review given to bad ideas of famous scientists such that death is the only thing that opens up the field to opponents (I can't find my citation on that one, but it was in the news last year), and just the fact that we reject ideas that come from political opponents, regardless of facts. But at the same time, true anonymity makes people behave in a much crueler way (much better cites exist, but this one will do for today). And all those "AC" labels make it hard to carry on a conversation -- I can't tell when the same person replies to me. Also, that name eventually develops a reputation for making good comments, which makes it possible to dredge out of the morass of people who just dump inanity, attacks, or lies -- those get recognized over time. The pseudonym of Slashdot seems to me to be a pretty good compromise. Pick a number to be your screen name, something large and random to avoid any connotations. But give me something to see you as a source of information.

Citation on the mines causing radioactive contamination? Do you have any idea how dirty other mining operations are? None of them are really 'clean'.

As for the energy cost of refining - I suppose you're one of the ones that argues that we shouldn't be using solar panels because making them involves mining and refining materials that creates nasty waste? Just like with solar power, nuclear power quickly becomes energy positive, and while it takes a relatively large amount of refining to get a fuel rod, it produces so much power over it's life, even in a wasteful US once-through system, that the energy costs are negligible, at least compared to the most frequent replacements - coal, natural gas, and such.

...
To produce the 25 tonnes or so of uranium fuel needed to keep your average reactor going for a year entails the extraction of half a million tonnes of waste rock and over 100,000 tonnes of mill tailings. These are toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The conversion plant will generate another 144 tonnes of solid waste and 1343 cubic metres of liquid waste.

Contamination of local water supplies around uranium mines and processing plants has been documented in Brazil, Colorado, Texas, Australia, Namibia and many other sites. To supply even a fraction of the power stations the industry expects to be online worldwide in 2020 would mean generating 50 million tonnes of toxic radioactive residues every single year. ...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/dec/05/nuclear-greenpolitics

The time factor involved for radioactive material being hazardous is what makes it bad compared to many other alternatives. The amount of energy needed to produce the fuel at a quality needed for the reactors is also pretty high, which easily can be translated to CO2 emissions.

...but in some chinese backyard?

Look. I'm all for "green progress". But just pushing things to where environmental laws are cheaper ain't fair. And thinking we can keep up our perceived "standard of living" (two leaf blowers for one household? hello?) while staying whithin our sustainable envelope is just criminally naive.

The "progressive" left. You know, the kind of people that participate in this kind of thing:

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

Or will insult/exclude/harass you for being white or male, justified by their tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.

Lately there have been a small number of cases of black youth violently attacking police officers, typically after being confronted for some crime these youth had committed, and then the police officers do the only reasonable thing and defend themselves using their guns.

Yes, the only reasonable thing for a well-trained law enforcement officer to do when violently attacked by unarmed black youth is to shoot them. After all, policing isn't supposed to be a dangerous job, so we can't expect police officers to endure any level of danger, no matter how insignificant. Any threat to an officer, no matter how minor, must be met with gunfire. This is, after all, "the only reasonable thing" to do.

In 2015, 129 American police officers died in the line of duty. 39 by gunfire, 7 by vehicular assault, 6 by bomb, 3 by assault. That's 55 cops killed by some form of violence (the rest died from automobile accidents, heart attacks, 9/11 related illness, etc).

In 2015, 1138 people died at the hands of on-duty American police officers. 554 of those people had firearms, and 223 of them were unarmed.

For every cop that is killed through violence, twenty Americans are killed by police violence. Of those twenty, four are entirely unarmed.

Source for cops killed by people, source for people killed by cops.

Depends on the size and scale of the project.
"US army blimp wreaks havoc after breaking free from military facility" (2015/oct/28)
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
"... dragging its 10,000 foot long cable behind it and knocking out power to thousands."

You've just demonstrated multiple areas of ignorance.

Here, knock yourself out.

That's bullshit. He had a follow-up interview scheduled with the police before he fled Sweden

The Guardian understands that the recent Swedish decision to apply for an international arrest warrant followed a decision by Assange to leave Sweden in late September and not return for a scheduled meeting when he was due to be interviewed by the prosecutor. Assange's supporters have denied this, but Assange himself told friends in London that he was supposed to return to Stockholm for a police interview during the week beginning 11 October, and that he had decided to stay away. Prosecution documents seen by the Guardian record that he was due to be interviewed on 14 October.

http://www.theguardian.com/med...

Fluorine is a seriously badass element

Which is why we add it to drinking water.