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all the bird carcasses

It's really touching how concerned people proponents of fossil fuels suddenly become about wildlife when the discussion turns to wind energy..

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

Why is a solution needed?

Acid Test: Rising CO2 Levels Killing Ocean Life | Conservation Climate

The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct | Motherboard

WHO | 7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution

Air pollution costs Europe $1.6tn a year in early deaths and disease, say WHO | Environment | The Guardian

Abrupt Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future - YouTube

Worst Case Climate Change (2008 TED Talk) - YouTube

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/17/...

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

Interesting that in the "full" article the upset Asian aspirants to the sacred halls of Harvard proposed a new basis instead of race for entrance: income. Here is a more detailed account which doesn't leave out the most important aspects of this article: http://www.theguardian.com/edu...

That the Big Education discriminates against Asians and Whites has long been very well known.

Citation needed.

I did offer a citation. Here it is again.

None of these links cite any studies.

Ah, so you did see them — you just didn't like them. Why, then, did you pretend, I have not offered anything? Could it be something personal?..

The first is the story of a girl who believes

What? Since when is one girl's account not enough to prove everything and destroy the reputations of all involved?

But, jesting aside, the 2011 article you dismiss as "one-girl story" says:

Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.

Seems rather convincing to me — which is why I cited it in the first place.

primarily to allow them to admit "legacy" students, who are children of other Harvard alumni

In that case, they wouldn't be favouring "underrepresented minorities" over Whites. The phenomena you describe may well exists, but it would not account for all of the observed discrimination. And, besides, I've encountered plenty of Asians among Harvard students even 20 years ago. Their children are now "children of alumni" too, which further reduces the effect, with which you try to explain the existing anti-Asian bias.

They simply must discriminate against the more successful races, because otherwise they will have disproportionately many Asians and too few Blacks. This would make them a target of various boycotts and governmental investigations by the assholes favoring equality of results over that of opportunity ...

I wouldn't mind a rational, reasonable conversation on the topic, but instead you've got "its not happening so don't do anything" screamers... "Well screw it, if the world is ending, we might as well enjoy ourselves..." - well, lets all be so totally selfish and not think of others - great for our children etc "If it ISN'T ending, then perhaps we shouldn't derail our economy in the process of trying to improve the environment..." what economy is derailing, the banks did that. There is a new industry starting to replace the old. Things change and move on. "Yet all we hear about are electric cars and solar power, neither of which make any economic sense." eh? new tech is ALWAYS expensive at the start, wind power is already cheaper than coal, solar is getting cheaper. http://www.theguardian.com/env... "Why spend money on something that has a payback period of more than 5 years when we have easier solutions right in front of us that have a payback period of as little as 1 year?" - short term thinking is detrimental to long term solutions. the payback on things like solar is shortening all the time

150 years ago, radicals attempted to do away with the major source of energy in southern US against the frantic resistance of those living there, who were terrified that ending slavery was just a pipe dream as there was clearly no economically viable replacement. those who rode the slavery horse until its death did in fact fare poorly, but on the whole, other forms of energy were found and the south did not in fact become a third world subsistence economy after all.

Sorry, that article was published and you somehow don't provide any citation that it's wrong. Strange.. Obama asked for funding of Proton's and Manned rockets to service the ISS and change crews, it's his decision and its hypocritical but he's fucked himself by his administration's decisions regarding NASA and manned launch capabilities. The smart thing would be to mothball the ISS until the US manned capability returns because it appears that international politics and Russian failures put the ISS mission at risk anyway.

Oddly, the GOP is split. About 1/2 of them are pushing it, and the other half are joining O and the dems in saying NO.

Oddly the Democrats are concerned on Obama's key trade policy in the TPP, are not advocating that there should be dissent? http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
http://delauro.house.gov/index...

Stop blaming the GOP for all the worlds problems and stop sniffing Obama's farts, it'll cause brain damage.

after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016 (The Guardian)

US Department of Energy-backed research project led by a US Navy scientist predicts that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice cover as early as 2016 - 84 years ahead of conventional model projections.

...if Williams had been advertising "Learn to lie to the FBI during the background check for a job in the Bureau"...

that's actually what happened. he was contacted for his services by two undercover feds claiming they wanted to apply for federal gov't jobs; one said he'd slept with underage girls and the other said he'd smuggled drugs across the u.s. border. both wanted to beat a polygraph for the fed jobs (and told him as much) and he helped them both.

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

Eh, no.
Placebos work even when exposed.

The Guardian shies away from discussing the motivation, but even their description of an earlier attack alludes to it:

The body of Avijit Roy, founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site – which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation – was found covered in blood after an attack that also left his wife critically wounded.

Could some Islamic scholar chime in to describe, how such an attack (as well as that against Charlie Hebdo, or Pamela Geller, or Salman Rushdie) is not in perfect conformance with Koran?

No, pointing fingers at other religions will not answer the question and will be ignored.

The Guardian shies away from discussing the motivation, but even their description of an earlier attack alludes to it:

The body of Avijit Roy, founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site – which champions liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation – was found covered in blood after an attack that also left his wife critically wounded.

Could some Islamic scholar chime in to describe, how such an attack (as well as that against Charlie Hebdo, or Pamela Geller, or Salman Rushdie) is not in perfect conformance with Koran?

No, pointing fingers at other religions will not answer the question and will be ignored.

the irreligious people are much more liable to vote for politicians who push social welfare programs ("working for the common good")

People voting to rob other people at gun-point (which is how taxes are collected) to pay for something, they themselves consider worthwhile are not "charitable" and driven not by ethics, but by simple greed: "I want a better road, I can not pay for it — ergo, I'll vote for forcing others to pay it for instead." It is so blatant, whenever a poor person speaks out against such "spreading the wealth around", he is accosted as "an idiot" acting against "his own interests". These arguments and accusations are proof, that the accusers' own motivation is not ethical, but egoistic, greed and envy — and that they are stupefied to find somebody else not sharing them.

Whereas the "grabbing whatever you can get" Republicans are happy to limit the "grabbing", to what's rightfully theirs, Illiberals aren't satisfied with such restrictions...

So the idea of religion giving people any kind of decent morals or ethics is blatantly false.

Your generalized hand-waving in support of this conclusion hereby destroyed, do you have anything better to offer as evidence?

I definitely agree that such behaviour is illegal. However that doesn't actually stop it from happening on an institutional basis, as we recently discovered in Chicago.

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

It's open for debate how wide spread this kind of crap is. The people most likely to be put through the wringer are those least likely and able to fight back against it.

It's also a pretty good bet that as California's agriculture scales back, food prices go up.
Drive those prices high enough, and interesting things start to happen.

I wouldn't mind a rational, reasonable conversation on the topic, but instead you've got "its not happening so don't do anything" screamers...

"Well screw it, if the world is ending, we might as well enjoy ourselves..." - well, lets all be so totally selfish and not think of others - great for our children etc

"If it ISN'T ending, then perhaps we shouldn't derail our economy in the process of trying to improve the environment..." what economy is derailing, the banks did that. There is a new industry starting to replace the old. Things change and move on.

"Yet all we hear about are electric cars and solar power, neither of which make any economic sense." eh? new tech is ALWAYS expensive at the start, wind power is already cheaper than coal, solar is getting cheaper. http://www.theguardian.com/env...

"Why spend money on something that has a payback period of more than 5 years when we have easier solutions right in front of us that have a payback period of as little as 1 year?" - short term thinking is detrimental to long term solutions. the payback on things like solar is shortening all the time

Yeah -- there are false rape accusations but THE MAJORITY ARE NOT (FBI stats show about 2-8% are false). And then there's the pressure women feel to not report (shame/fear), religious baggage, and then being re-victimized by cops/courts:

" Baltimore’s “unfounded” rate used to be the highest in the nation, at about 30 percent, due partly to questionable and sometimes downright abusive police procedures, such as badgering a woman about why she waited two hours to report a street assault. By 2013, an effort to provide better training and encourage full investigation of all complaints reduced that rate to less than 2 percent."

http://www.slate.com/articles/...
OR
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Some women recant, not because a rape didn't happen, but because of the shit they'll have to face. Only 40% of rapes are even reported because women know they'll deal with all the usual shit (were you drinking, what were you wearing, did you smile at him -- which to people like you seems to mean 'she was asking for it')

You sound like a rape apologist and victim blamer. So why don't YOU 'open your fucking eyes'

Apparently most photographers think that if they are hired to take and edit photographs of YOU, the copyright and even the originals belong to them, unless stated otherwise in the contract. I find it strange, really.

They do belong to the copyright holder, which in the case of photographs is the person that took them, even if they are a monkey.

Think of the London metropolitan area as the new Royal Court. A royal toilet cleaner isn't privileged relative to the nobility, but he is privileged relative to toilet cleaners elsewhere.

You're a fucking idiot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

http://www.newstatesman.com/po...

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

"The Abbott government’s chief business adviser, Maurice Newman, has warned that Australia is ill prepared for global cooling owing to widespread “warming propaganda” in his latest critique of mainstream climate science. Newman, who chairs the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council, said there is evidence that the world is set for a period of cooling, rather than warming, leading to significant geopolitical problems because of a lack of preparedness. Adam Bandt, deputy leader of the Greens, said Newman’s comments were an “embarrassment to the government”. http://www.theguardian.com/env...

There is always the unvocalised issue that any IP sent to an Indian outsourcing company will be stolen.

In other words, it presently is not a compelling economic option.

You need to read about economies of scale.

It's pretty stupid to compare economic viability of 50+ year old industry (covering 90+% of market) with 10+ year old industry (striving to gain a percent or two).

I like how pragmatically Germans went after the solar: it makes sense in long term, thus it makes sense to start R&D sooner than later. And apparently it is going well enough that they are even planning to repel the subsidies (to much chagrin of some).

You've got to realize though, that those congressmen are our constitutional representatives. They represent the power of the people in this democracy

I think the OP is referring to the fact that the NSA lied to Congress and the American people when asked about spying, not on Congress, but on the American people:

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

James Clapper: "No, sir."

Wyden: "It does not?"

Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."

(watch for yourself)

Some Republicans have said He should be fired. Obama said he misspoke.

One might think he should have been arrested. Instead, they arrested the lawyer who asked him why he lied..

We've seen this double-standard applied recently-- no one arrested for torture except the CIA Whistleblower. Leakers getting huge sentences unless their rank is high enough.

If the CIA can get away with spying on Senate computers then that's it. They really are above the law.

They've gotten away with much much worse already. (I started adding links but there are hundreds of them...)

Every single famous advocate for AGW has been spectacularly WRONG.

The non-scientist advocates like Al Gore, who claimed big weather events like Katrina were evidence of climate change (but does not seem to notice the current period of VERY FEW hurricanes and such and therefore does not see this lull as an argument against AGW) have been wrong.

The "experts" in the field who actually ARE scientists like Dr Hanson who, in Jan 2009 said Obama only had 4 years to save us from AGW (so it's already too late - we've been doomed for 2 years now...) have also been wrong.

"Climate Science" seems to be the only science that is more often wrong than right... oh wait... there WAS that "phrenology" thing back in the 1930's that was politically-connected and looked all science-y but turned put to be wrong pretty often too...

"The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main cause of the current global warming."
http://www.theguardian.com/env...

So you're trying to tell me that "95 percent confidence" is the same thing as "wild speculation"? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

McNally (4:39:40pm): Nice dude....jimmy needs some kicks....lets make a deal.....come on help the deflator

The Cold war is over..

except it isn't.

Seriously, pull your head out of your ass.

You hardly need to be mentally ill to reach this conclusion. Sure, it's not like there's a grand master plan nailed to a wall somewhere. But to conclude governments helped create this situation all you need to do is read about the background of the attackers. Their radicalisation started due to the US invasion of Iraq. When the attackers tried to go to Iraq to fight against the occupation they were arrested and thrown in prison, where they met a radical Islamist.

No war? Probably the chain of events that led to the attack would never have happened. Our governments will continue to be in denial about this because politicians feel they should be able to engage in arbitrary foreign "policy" (i.e. invasions, occupations, picking winners in regional conflicts) without any kind of repercussions or blowback at all. When reality refuses to go along with this notion they claim it's an outrage and the solution is to record more telephone calls.

From the article:

The Buttes-Chaumont group’s jihadi aspirations were directly linked to the second Iraq war in 2003. They would sit in apartments watching footage of the US-led invasion. “Everything I saw on TV, the torture in Abu Ghraib prison, all that, that’s what motivated me,” one of Kouachi’s friends told their trial.

But under Jacques Chirac, France had refused to intervene in the Iraq war and the young cell’s stance wasn’t really a movement against the French state. It was more a rage directed against the US. Some of the group stated that jihad wasn’t done in France. The focal point was fighting a foreign invader in Iraq.

“They were the pioneers of French jihadiism,” said Jacques Follorou, a journalist at Le Monde and author of the book Democracy under Control, the Posthumous Victory of Bin Laden, about security issues

A bit later in the same article ....

Kouachi, who scraped a living delivering for El Primo Pizza on the other side of the ring-road that serves as a moat around Paris, was arrested in January 2005 on his way to catch a flight to Damascus, believed to be ultimately heading for Iraq ..... He got a relatively light prison sentence, three years with 18 months suspended, as there was little hard evidence against him except a plane ticket for Damascus.

After his arrest while trying to fly to Damascus in 2005, Kouachi was on remand in the notorious Fleury-Mérogis prison south of Paris, a super-size decaying concrete mega-jail, which is Europe’s largest prison ..... He added that when the young men were arrested and held on remand before their case in 2008, prison gave them access to a universe never known before. “If the Butte-Chaumonts was an informal school of jihad, prison was the superior diploma.”

....

One of the prisoners involved in publicising the terrible conditions [in the prison] was Amédy Coulibaly. He was an armed robber on his third sentence, this time for robbery, receiving stolen goods and using false number plates. Coulibaly met Kouachi inside the prison and they became close during seven months on the same wing – prisoners from similar backgrounds and affinity were kept together on the same blocks, which allowed them to convene. Less than a decade later, Coulibaly joined the Kouachis in last week’s terrorist attacks .... In prison together, Kouachi and Coulibaly found not only friendship but a mentor who radicalised them

depicting Manning as a male

....as Manning was when the cables were handed over to Wikileaks.

That is a good explanation/excuse for why our left-wing Europeans depict Manning as a male while s(he) asked to be considered as a female - but i wonder if you suggest that the "new" transexual Manning is less of the man who the left-wing Europeans honor now (!) and if that "new" transexual Manning him/her-self believes that s(he) should not be associated with the acts of the "Manning the man"?

standing next to the political fugitive mister Assange

FTFY. If it had anything at all to do with rape, the Swedish government would have taken Assange up on his offer to return to the country if they promised not to hand him over to the U.S. they way they did to Mohammed al-Zari. They never have.

I will insist with my own original version ("fugitive suspect for the rape of a female mister Assange"), and i would note the hypocrisy of the left-wing Europeans that while strongly supporting the laws for rape of Sweden ... honors a Swedish justice fugitive suspect for the rape of a female!

Even i, a right-wing Greek, couldn't plan it better!

Are you a recent national socialist, or does it run in your family?

I wrote clearly that i am a right-wing Greek because i try to be honest about myself when i make comments about the left-wing.

I am NOT a "national socialist" (why did you thought i am?) - i am a LIBERAL (as the opposite of socialist - an anti-socialist!) GREEK NATIONALIST (like those who fought AGAINST Fascism and Nazism, as allies to the... alies! Yes, the Greek NATIONALISTS -under the leadership of dictator Metaxas, leader of Greece in the beggining of WW2- were the ones that fought Fascism and Nazism, while Greek communists believed that it's not right to do it... because Stalin was still an ally of Hitler!).

And even if my family has nothing to do with it, i will answer to your question about my family: my grandparent fought against Fascism and Nazism BUT THE COMMUNISTS -the ones your link is about- tried to kill him because he was a liberal - the same communists that tried to kill my uncles (they were kids), those that killed THOUSANDS in our civil war.

Do you have any other questions you would like me to answer? Preferably about myself and not my family, but if you insist i will try to ask my father about it (he was a baby when all those your link is about happened - by the way, his mother, my grandmother, with two more babies, was hiding from those communists, and my mother's family also was hiding from the communists that tried to abduct some uncles of mine).

depicting Manning as a male

....as Manning was when the cables were handed over to Wikileaks.

standing next to the political fugitive mister Assange

FTFY. If it had anything at all to do with rape, the Swedish government would have taken Assange up on his offer to return to the country if they promised not to hand him over to the U.S. they way they did to Mohammed al-Zari. They never have.

Even i, a right-wing Greek, couldn't plan it better!

Are you a recent national socialist, or does it run in your family?

Perhaps prison wouldn't be appropriate for an adult either, here? There is evidence that harsher punishment is counterproductive, increasing the chance of repeat crimes.

Yes, the reason for that is that putting criminals together, and putting minor offenders together with major offenders, socializes them in the ways of crime. They teach each other how to commit crimes. They get sent away for small-time pot dealing and learn how to steal cars and burglarize buildings.

There used to be some well-run juvenile correction centers that actually did work. My friend's brother wound up in one of them. They taught him to read, they taught him a trade (carpentry).

Unfortunately most of those places have been replaced by what amounts to torture chambers run like prisons by sadistic guards. It's the fault of both Democratic and Republican conservatives. It's mostly Republicans, but I can't let Bill Clinton off the hook. http://www.theguardian.com/us-... Tax cuts have eliminated the budgets. Here's the umpteenth expose of the juvenile justice system, by the Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/... That's Rahm Emanuel's territory. At one group home, the staff was billing for "television therapy" when the kids watched movies on TV.

One of the problems is that the American people have turned mean-spirited without compassion or concern for those who are having problems, as demonstrated by some of the posts here. If these people take over, America isn't going to be a very good place to live.

Perhaps prison wouldn't be appropriate for an adult either, here? There is evidence that harsher punishment is counterproductive, increasing the chance of repeat crimes.

A 1999 study tested this assumption in a meta-analysis reviewing 50 studies dating back to 1958 involving a total of 336,052 offenders with various offenses and criminal istories. Controlling for risk factors such as criminal history and substance abuse, the authors assessed the relationship between length of time in prison and recidivism, and found that longer prison sentences were associated with a three percent increase in recidivism. Offenders who spent an average of 30 months in prison had a recidivism rate of 29%, compared to a 26% rate among prisoners serving an average sentence of 12.9 months. The authors also assessed the impact of serving a prison sentence versus receiving a community-based sanction. Similarly, being incarcerated versus recidivism.

This is especially pronounced for low-risk offenders.

Researchers also find an increased likelihood that lower-risk offenders will be more negatively affected by incarceration. Among low-risk offenders, those who spent less time in prison were 4% less likely to recidivate than low-risk offenders who served longer sentences. Thus, when prison sentences are relatively short, offenders are more likely to maintain their ties to family, employers, and their community, all of which promote successful reentry into society. Conversely, when prisoners serve longer sentences they are more likely to become institutionalized, lose pro-social contacts in the community, and become removed from legitimate opportunities, all of which promote recidivism.

If one goes to the step of imprisoning people, then the prisons that perform best when it comes to low risk of preventing future crimes are ones like this one.

Actually, the IPCC models have been very good at predicting the changes.

• IPCC model global warming projections have done much better than you think
• Contrary To Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
• Models successfully reproduce global temperature since 1900.
• Validation and forecasting accuracy in models of climate change
• New Paper “Validation And Forecasting Accuracy In Models Of Climate Change” By Fildes and Kourentzes

... revelations about the fraudulent hockey stick with the dramatic downfall of Michael Mann's reputation, ...

LOL, the only place Michael Mann's reputation has suffered is climate science deniers eyes. His reputation in scientific circles is doing just fine.

Nope. Here's a quote from Wallace Broecker who is a professor of Environmental science at Columbia University:

"The goddam guy is a slick talker and super-confident. He won't listen to anyone else," one of climate science's most senior figures, Wally Broecker of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, told me. "I don't trust people like that. A lot of the data sets he uses are shitty, you know. They are just not up to what he is trying to do.... If anyone deserves to get hit it is goddam Mann."

Here's Michael Liebreich, a clean energy executive, activist, and engineer:

@MichaelEMann I've read #HSCW, #WUWT, #McIntyre and #Climategate emails. I think you were sloppy and unethical. I also think #AGW is real.

Here's Michael Hulme, prof of Climate Change at U. East Anglia addressing Mann's use of unproven statistical methods, i.e. leading to circular reasoning:

"I don't think it was seminal for scientists. To me that was never a decisive interventional piece of evidence. The data was absolutely scanty."

You seem to be unaware that many rank and file climate scientists today are actually angry at Mann and what he has done to their field of study. If you are an honest and open minded person, go read the ClimateGate emails yourself. See where Mann's (then) boss at UVa said in an email that he felt like barfing in response to the way Mann insisted on hijacking the peer review process at Nature. Read about Mann and Jones's privately expressed worries over The Pause. Read about the efforts taken by Mann and Co. to deny auditors like M&M access to their raw data.

If you're an honest and open minded person, reading some of that stuff will make you mad.

... revelations about the fraudulent hockey stick with the dramatic downfall of Michael Mann's reputation, ...

LOL, the only place Michael Mann's reputation has suffered is climate science deniers eyes. His reputation in scientific circles is doing just fine.

Nope. Here's a quote from Wallace Broecker who is a professor of Environmental science at Columbia University:

"The goddam guy is a slick talker and super-confident. He won't listen to anyone else," one of climate science's most senior figures, Wally Broecker of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, told me. "I don't trust people like that. A lot of the data sets he uses are shitty, you know. They are just not up to what he is trying to do.... If anyone deserves to get hit it is goddam Mann."

Here's Michael Liebreich, a clean energy executive, activist, and engineer:

@MichaelEMann I've read #HSCW, #WUWT, #McIntyre and #Climategate emails. I think you were sloppy and unethical. I also think #AGW is real.

Here's Michael Hulme, prof of Climate Change at U. East Anglia addressing Mann's use of unproven statistical methods, i.e. leading to circular reasoning:

"I don't think it was seminal for scientists. To me that was never a decisive interventional piece of evidence. The data was absolutely scanty."

You seem to be unaware that many rank and file climate scientists today are actually angry at Mann and what he has done to their field of study. If you are an honest and open minded person, go read the ClimateGate emails yourself. See where Mann's (then) boss at UVa said in an email that he felt like barfing in response to the way Mann insisted on hijacking the peer review process at Nature. Read about Mann and Jones's privately expressed worries over The Pause. Read about the efforts taken by Mann and Co. to deny auditors like M&M access to their raw data.

If you're an honest and open minded person, reading some of that stuff will make you mad.

The official Turkish position is, "Let the historians decide." I'm not sure what good that does them.

Is that a new position? Or does Turkey like the Armenians better than the Kurds somehow?

When Noam Chomsky wrote about the treatment of Kurdish people in Turkey, the position of the Turkish government was to prosecute Noam Chomsky's Turkish publisher.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

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

It dipped 2.9%, I wouldn't say that is "less coal for the past few years.

We shall see if that is a trend (a single datapoint doesn't made one) or a blip.

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Of course, all that misses the point. China is aiming to cap their coal production by 2020. They might hit it, they might even be early, but that is a far cry from doing much to reduce it.

That's not exactly the story I thought that I heard. Lemme try to find something . . .

You're right, in that the Guardian's article comes up first in a Google search - http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

Here, the Guardian again, backpedaling on that story - http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

The wikipedia entry seems to confirm what you say - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... specifically, "Dowler's phone automatically deleted messages 72 hours after being listened to.[47]" HOWEVER, "in September 2011 it was reported that the Dowler family had been offered £2m in personal damages.[49]"

Now, is it true, or is it not true, that Murdoch ALSO paid off celebrities, in the same manner, after having "hacked" into their phone/email/other accounts? It sure looks like the Guardian called it correctly - to me, anyway.

Brief statement that falls in line with my point of view - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b5d... "Until now the paper’s illegal actions, while costly and damaging to its reputation, were largely seen as being targeted at celebrities and politicians. The News of the World has been battling to draw a line under a scandal that has already seen two people sent to prison."

I'll admit that it's possible that my take on the story is not entirely accurate. But - unless you come up with something convincing, I'll continue to hold that view. Murdoch's minions were making a lot of money by "hacking" into celebritie's accounts, with his tacit approval, if not his clearly stated approval. He was making more money off those tabloid articles than he was spending on settlements. IMHO - Murdoch's boys and girls did exactly the same thing with Milly Dowler's phone, that they had already done with other phones.

But, right or wrong, Murdoch is still a freaking scumbag. So are all of his people associated with the case.

That's not exactly the story I thought that I heard. Lemme try to find something . . .

You're right, in that the Guardian's article comes up first in a Google search - http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

Here, the Guardian again, backpedaling on that story - http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

The wikipedia entry seems to confirm what you say - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... specifically, "Dowler's phone automatically deleted messages 72 hours after being listened to.[47]" HOWEVER, "in September 2011 it was reported that the Dowler family had been offered £2m in personal damages.[49]"

Now, is it true, or is it not true, that Murdoch ALSO paid off celebrities, in the same manner, after having "hacked" into their phone/email/other accounts? It sure looks like the Guardian called it correctly - to me, anyway.

Brief statement that falls in line with my point of view - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b5d... "Until now the paper’s illegal actions, while costly and damaging to its reputation, were largely seen as being targeted at celebrities and politicians. The News of the World has been battling to draw a line under a scandal that has already seen two people sent to prison."

I'll admit that it's possible that my take on the story is not entirely accurate. But - unless you come up with something convincing, I'll continue to hold that view. Murdoch's minions were making a lot of money by "hacking" into celebritie's accounts, with his tacit approval, if not his clearly stated approval. He was making more money off those tabloid articles than he was spending on settlements. IMHO - Murdoch's boys and girls did exactly the same thing with Milly Dowler's phone, that they had already done with other phones.

But, right or wrong, Murdoch is still a freaking scumbag. So are all of his people associated with the case.

"More that 3 million" had clearance, according to the Guardian. And there appears to have been no auditing of access.

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

There are court battles happening today because people were made aware of the issue. One of the criteria to open a case is to prove that there is an injured party. That was not a possibility before Snowden because all proof was considered "secret".

Yes, Binney, Drake, and Meyer were all people that got punished for doing the right thing. Yes, there were people in the public that toed the party line of "the US doesn't torture", then following up with "waterboarding isn't torture and is legal because the White House counsel (but not the Attorney General) says so".

I don't understand this concept that someone is a fool for trying to right a wrong by making the the wrong known. Is it because he'll undoubtedly have a harder life? That's not foolish if he made the decision knowing that his life would be harder, which he does. There are many people that would do so (see other whistleblowers, aid workers, emergency workers, etc).

I agree that it will take a sea change in order to make long term changes to society. However for that to occur society needs to be made aware of the problem, which is being done by whistleblowers.

We must burn all the Three Stooges reels!

Three Stooges are not offered as role-models. Viewer is invited to laugh at them, not be inspired by them.

And Tom and Jerry? My god!

Actually, my collection of Looney Tunes came with a video-clip by Woopy Goldberg apologizing on behalf of Warner Brothers for the "racism" and "stereotypes", which, according to her, "were wrong then and are wrong now", but, nevertheless, "are part of Americana"...

Funny, how Django had no such disclaimers and apologies over portraying the two good guys as head-hunters sniping from afar at innocent people for money. (Kinda vindicates our Dear Leader's policies, but I digress...)

"Was this hack always an inevitability? Perhaps not. Fail0verflow claims it only started to work on the PS3 system when Sony made the decision to disable the machine's Other OS functionality."

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2011/jan/07/playstation-3-hack-ps3

It takes a long time when nobody's trying. As soon as Sony removed OtherOS, it only took a few weeks.

"Carter said that sensors guarding the Pentagon's unclassified networks detected the intrusion by Russian hackers, who discovered an old vulnerability that had not been patched."

Maybe they were looking for evidence of the UFO coverup and the intrusion consisted of logging into a passwordless WindowsNT box. ref

"On Thursday, Carter stressed the U.S. military needed closer cooperation with California's Silicon Valley, particularly after high-profile attacks on companies like Sony Pictures Entertainment."

How is putting backdoors into 'computers' going to make them more secure from hacking?

Maybe the civilian casualties also deserves apologies too..

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

How many civilian casualties hidden under the newspeak term "militant" ?

I wonder if the study controlled for the fact that people tend to get more conservative as they age.

I bet if Snowden had done his thing in the 90's, the age distribution of approval would be similar, and I bet you'd get the same result in another 15 years, when those same millennials have kids and are facing their mortality.

Progressive ideals are risky, and it takes more courage to take risks as folks age and have more to lose.

Note this is purely an academic comment and is not meant to endorse or deny either snowden or the NSA.

Agree. Remember that in university Tony Blair was in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament but later supported renewing the UK's nuclear arsenal

They're only "completely effective" when so thoroughly and effectively used that the bacteria or virus is completely eliminated. That's why smallpox is believed eradicated, there haven't been any new cases since 1978. Polio has repeatedly been close to eradication, but has failed in countries like Nigeria and Pakistan.

        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The vaccine was tied in local political and religious leader's speeches to harassment of Islam, with claims that the vaccine was designed to sterilize them. By the time the vaccine supply could be examined and verified as untainted by local leaders, it was expired and no longer safe to use. This is why polio remains an infectious disease: according to the "Global Polio Eradication Initiative", Nigeria and Pakistan have the last major reservoirs of existing polio cases, and until it's cleared out of those nations, all other nations are at risk and have to spend their limited medical and educational resources on annual vaccination drives to prevent a resurgence, much like that from Pakistan in 2013. And immunization is _banned_ by Islamic militants in parts of Pakistan. And innocent refugees from the fighting there remain a dangerous vector for polio to be brought to other communities.

Politically, I'd be hard pressed to invent a more dangerous mix of medical issues, religion, and politics if Israel hadn't already been caught forcing refugee women to accept birth control shots, and some of the women injected hadn't thought they were flue vaccines.

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

Note especially that it was the government of _Israel_ doing this, and Israel is an icon of Western civilization and religious strife for Muslim countries. It lent credence to the most paranoid concerns of the Islamic who've been banning immunization. I admit that it quite incensed me at the time because it discredited the genuine immunization efforts of WHO and helped waste the polio eradication effort in Nigeria.

Other than Afghanistan being willing to extradite him if they were given evidence he was complicit in the crime? Here's an idea.... give the fucking Afganie gov the fucking evidence! I'd suggest that would have been a whole fucking hell of a lot better than what we did on pretty much every fucking level.. unless you're a fucking murderous sociopath that needs to be removed from society because you're a danger to everyone around you.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sou...

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

Seriously, if all your going to do is regurgitate useless ignorant bullshit... don't bother.

I think that the exemptions for SUVs and trucks need to be eliminated entirely when under a certain GVWR, and that basically "half ton" trucks in the form of Class 1 light trucks sold as lifestyle trucks need to meet this standard. "three quarter ton" trucks sold as Class 2 trucks need to meet a fairly stringent standard too.

That's nice, do you have any real suggestions for how to accomplish this? This is engineering, and with where the engines & cars are at it's already costing something like $150 million per 1 mpg in research and development. Magically mandating that all chips hit a certain thermal/energy threshold without losing performance would hit similar problems.

You can take your truck and remove the 8-cylinder and drop in a turbo-6 which is constantly whining and straining at the top-end to keep up with the weight of the chassis, let alone cargo... but then are you going to go to a turbo-4 with double the cylinder size to get your torque? Well there goes your gains as you're needing more fuel due to larger pistons...

Aside from the chassis, you can make the car or truck much lighter, say an all-fiberglass body, and get a higher MPG, but then it becomes much less safe and people start wigging and wanting something that feels more solid. At some point EPA mandates are at war with safety mandates, and that leaves out what the public wants. e.g., Women especially prefer a higher seating position as they feel more secure (this isn't sexist, it's what they're buying and what they've answered as to why -- the Toyota Rav4 sells well for a reason). People don't just want to be safe, they want to feel safe.

At some point you end up looking at ridiculous things, like steam-turbines to reclaim exhaust heat as steam for an extra few MPG, drastically upping cost and complexity but... Seriously, any ideas beyond waving a wand and saying "make it so!"

Unless every car is made to be a turbo-diesel as opposed to gasoline, but those are really best for highway miles and have their own drawbacks, like reports that deisel fumes are worse than gasoline on the environment & people's lungs:

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

There's just too many cars and people, and we're hitting huge engineering issues. We're either going to be in plastic cars with underpowered engines and lots of deaths, or we'll need to have much fewer cars and shipping, or plastic cars without human drivers so they're never bopping into anything.

Here's just one of the ones that have passed the turing test.

Your Turing test example is terrible. iirc the slashdot commentors ripped the story to shreds when it appeared here. Other people agreed: http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

Many software applications based on neural networks and other self-evolving/learning AI alogirthms are already in everyday use not only learning complex tasks but also themselves coming up with new and better solutions to them.

Another bad example. Self-learning algorithms aren't at all what you seem to imply here, and I'd love to see you continue to make the same claim after a few days of playing with a neural net implementation (there are tons of free libraries containing machine learning implementations, as well as tutorials).

Uh how about you do your own looking? just try Googling stuff? Its not like this stuff isn't easily findable..

I see you've linked:
- A hardware focused project appearing to emphasize simulating humanoid-like visuals more than implementing any kind of AI (the FAQ for the project even says it doesn't have memory and current research using the system doesn't require it: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/lb...)
- The MIT page for the department that made COG
- An system that uses image recognition to parse extremely simple handwritten commands and then write them out by hand. If this counts as machine intelligence, than so does a simple assembler.
- An "animatronic puppet" (the creators words, not mine), that uses speech recognition/TTS and a standard chatterbot interface to (poorly) mimic a humans responses. Did you notice how it kept talking over the people conversing with it? And that was a cherry picked clip of people talking to it who knew how to hold conversations with the thing. Show me an example of someone asking it a technical question (hell, they can type the question if that makes it easier to parse) and then getting a real answer out of it. e.g. "explain to me how a keyboard works".

There's nothing wrong with being excited about AI developments. It's just that historically, people like you who go around calling things AI that aren't really AI (and have no potential to actually be "AI") have done significant harm to the field by generating unrealistic hype and making promises that can't be delivered. Please take your own advice and google some tutorials and example projects for the neural nets that go into simple image recognition and the markov chains that go into making a chatterbot. Then get back to me about how your examples demonstrate some kind of true machine intelligence in the sensationalist sense of the word.