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Climate scientists do NOT make those claims and have been explicitly stating that no single weather event can conclusively be linked to AGW.

Also, the "G" in AGW stands for GLOBAL, which seems to be a difficult concept for some North Americans to grasp.

While the polar vortex was wreaking havoc in America, much of Scandinavia was having an unusually warm winter, with flowering plants & bears coming out of hibernation.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/10/polar-vortex-us-mild-weather-scandinavia

So whose narrative does that jibe with?

no-one wears a bowler hat

[citation needed]

Ask, and you shall receive! ;-)

That is a staggeringly stupid thing to say. It's more like a government assassin was disguised as a meter reader, with the blessing of the meter readers office .

Citation needed - this contradicts the source you provide and its link to the Guardian that says that it was a "fake" program in a wealthy area that would not qualify for free vaccinations. I would hope that "fake" here just means only they were pretending to be part of the eradication program but were not, and that the actual injections were real!

"Yes, actually, it does."

Right, so if I quit my job now there's no other jobs available for me? Don't be so stupid.

"Yet apparently you think tens, hundreds of thousands of people would rather âoehold outâ and choose to be unemployed, living on the pittance offered by welfare ?"

Yep, that's exactly the problem, over a million of them are NEETS for starters, youths not in employment, education, or training. They can get away with it because they live at home and £90 a week is still plenty enough to pay for the latest XBox games.

"Anecdotally, I know many people living in London. None of them have less than a 45 minute commute door-to-door, each way."

What's the relevance of your anecdote exactly? It doesn't change the fact that 3 hours gets you from one end of England to the capital. I live in rural England where transport is far worse than that in London but an hours commute still gets me comfortably to the 3rd and 4th largest cities in the UK despite the fact I live in the arse end of nowhere. Of course if you live on one side of London and commute to the other and dawdle about walking slowly or happen to work or live far from a tube station then you're going to be able to get your commute up to 45 minutes but that still means they can get anywhere in the capital from their doorstep within 45 minutes which for a city with a population of over 7 million (think about the size of that) is not unreasonable.

"For a parent who has to drop off and pickup a child at care or school on the way to and from work, a commute could easily stretch to a couple of hours in each direction."

Except that's unnecessary because guess what? we also have publicly funded schemes to deal with those problems for parents. They also get the bulk of childcare paid for, and child tax credits which leaves them with a net profit for having a child. Soon they'll even have free school meals so they don't even need to fund the bulk of their kids food.

"No, that would have been the bank bailouts."

You're just showing you have no idea about the breakdown of UK finances, the amount of benefits available and so forth. Bank bailouts don't even get included in general spending figures as they're classed as one off costs. Some of those banks have been sold back to private investors and much of the money recouped now anyway.

"The kind of welfare benefits youâ(TM)re railing against are a small part of the UKâ(TM)s national expenditure (as they are in every other country). You could eliminate all of it tomorrow and public expenditure would be largely unaffected."

Incorrect. See above. You've no idea what you're talking about:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-benefit-welfare-spending#zoomed-picture

The sorts of benefits that are frustrating to hear about but that make a fraction of the budget include winter fuel payments for old folks even if they're millionaires, free bus passes for over 65s, again, even if they're millionaires, and that sort of thing. The things we're talking about are not included in that. The sorts of things we're talking about cost a phenomenal amount.

I think you just need to admit you're bitching about problems in your country and trying to project them everywhere. That's fine, you can do that, but it makes you wrong. I'm sure you may well be right about where you are, but you're completely wrong about the UK and the more you talk the more clueless you demonstrate that you are about the situation here.

Given the epidemic of stupid parents that refuse to immunise children nowadays it should not be long till many of the old virus's and diseases rear their ugly heads again.

I wouldn't call this 'good' news; but polio is sufficiently unpleasant to send your basic chickenshit first world antivaxxer running screaming to the nearest vaccination location (for most childhood diseases for which vaccines are available, you aren't helping your odds by playing at anti-vax; the serious disease effects are still somewhat more common than the vaccine side effects; but polio is a genuinely nasty customer).

Thankfully it has no animal vectors (of any note in the wild, I'm sure you can buy a mouse model or something that is susceptible in the lab) so it mostly hangs out in areas so remote or underdeveloped that sheer logistical difficulty keeps vaccination efforts sporadic.

The one nasty anti-vax angle with polio is, I'm ashamed to say, pretty much our fault: The CIA came up with a clever ruse to do some DNA gathering under the guise of a vaccination program (one for hepatitis B), and the subsequent revelation of this fact has not done much to quell the 'zOMG vaccines are a western and/or zionist conspiracy against muslims!!!' rumor mongering present in certain areas.

> plenty of other countries manage to feed their people without needing to resort to a program like that.

Trying to compare American problems to the problems of other countries is not easy. Western Europe isn't an easy comparison, they didn't have slavery and endemic racism affecting a significant portion of its population for a two centuries. There populations are very homogeneous. Add in that many countries don't have 'food stamp' program, there are benefits programs by other names to the same effect. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/mar/26/payment-cards-emergency-assistance-food-stamps

The U.S. has had a food stamp program for a very long time, it wasn't till the economic collapse 6 years ago that it doubled in size. Welcome to the world of outsourcing and increased robotics.

Not sure the wholesale price accurately reflects the complete picture.

Soaring energy bills in the UK is little short of a crisis but with little correlation to the wholesale cost of the energy, I the prices here don't fall at all.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/nov/16/energy-prices-rise

Certainly I was not playing games. This is the first time I've been accused of using a straw man argument, but I suspect you may be correct about it. I always thought that logical fallacies were more of a debating tactic, but now I guess they are usually just made in error. Oops. :-)

Anyway, I think my reasoning and arguments have so far been rather poor, perhaps mostly because I've been flailing around in the fog of my own opinions: something that I'm sure is more likely if you don't put enough effort into listening (or in this case reading) what is actually being said. Again, my bad.

I'll give it another try. In your first reply to me you were very clear and there was no need for me to search for analogies: "Compare parts of the US to parts of the US if you want to talk about the US statistics. You cannot compare states across national lines with any credibility." That was your apples and oranges argument all along and and I should have recognized it immediately. My apologies for the lengthy and unnecessary digression.

Instead, I should have immediately pointed out to you that I see nothing scientifically wrong with making numerical comparisons like that between countries; something that is in fact done all the time. Here are more than a dozen examples:

• List of countries by HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate
• List of countries by traffic-related death rate
• The 15 Countries With the Highest Smartphone Penetration
• List of countries by electricity production from renewable sources
• Countries with the Highest / Lowest Average IQ
• Obesity country comparison
• Cancer rates: see how countries compare worldwide
• Paid Vacation Around the World
• Average temperature in the countries of the world
• List of countries by rail transport network size
• Highways > Total (per capita) (most recent) by country
• Total Water Use per capita by Country
• List of countries by suicide rate
• List of countries by incarceration rate
• Drug Use Death Rate Per 100,000
• Teenage pregnancy (most recent) by country
• Snakebite in The Americas

Why would it be unscientific to make comparisons like these? As long as the numbers are always collected in the same way, then they are just numbers and don't attempt to explain anything about differences that may be cultural, legal, socioeconomic, etc. In all cases it's left up to the reader to explain the differences ("it's a police state", "it's probably a poor country", "perhaps they

Really? Can you give an example?
Uh, practically the whole world, right now ? Indeed, pretty much since the whole sadistic idea of NAIRU gained acceptance ?

I believe your unemployment rate is higher than 0% (or the effective 0% to allow for brief periods between jobs). That pretty much means there's more job seekers than jobs by definition.

I don't really follow the UK that closely, but a quick Google on the topic pulled up this blog that has some facts and figures. 463,000 jobs, 2.68 million job seekers. That's 2 years old, but I doubt the situation has changed dramatically (either in the 2 years since or the decade before).

Note also that official unemployment figures almost certainly vastly underestimate real unemployment, since the definition of "employed" (usually something like a few hours of paid work in week) and "unemployed" (must be actively searching for work) have been comically gamed to try and make the under- and unemployment problem look much less worse than it actually is.

The only way there isn't a job in the UK is if you intentionally place artificial reasons in the way like "I can't be bothered to commute that far", "I don't want to do that job", and so forth, but all of these are choices, not impairments.
This is just more blinkered conservative moralising bullshit.

If the only job available to you requires a three-hour commute in each direction and you have a young child that goes to school, then that job is not a feasible option. That's not a "choice", that's reality.

It's pointless to go back 30 years because different benefits have come and gone in that time, or been drastically altered, but as I say in general they've been tied to inflation so have generally done worse than average earnings in boom times but much better in bust times. Overall it tends to balance out though and they do as well as average earnings increases for workers as a result.
I'm glad you agree that it might have gone up quicker than wages in recent times doesn't matter because it all balances out over the long run, even though I sincerely doubt it hasn't balanced out at all over the last 30 years (it would certainly be unusual if it had, because it certainly hasn't in the other countries of the Anglosphere). Now, what was your point again ?

the City of London is a privately owned corporation. I would imagine their police are also.

Do not mistake London the city with the City of London.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval

Watson is as much AI as any other project I've ever seen. On the other hand, no AI I've ever seen understands what it's doing.

I agree, and also (much more significantly) so does David Deutsch (the title, which is generally the choice of an editor, is somewhat misleading.)

One of the lesser points he makes is that the term AGI (Artificial Generalized Intelligence) has had to be coined, because AI has been misappropriated by too many efforts that don't have much 'I' in them.
   

If Intel wants to be concerned about not being involved with conflict zones, then that should extend to all areas. Intel manufactures on land seized from Palestinians, despite UN Resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal from said land. Intel is a major supporter of Israel, who has pretty much made sure that a viable Palestinian state is no longer possible. If Intel wants to be ethical, than go all the way, not partially. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-hypocrisy-israel-boycott For more information on the State of Israel, this is a good start, Noam Chomsky's 'Fateful Triangle': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fateful_Triangle

Solitary confinement has historically been used as a way of punishing prisoners, and only ever for short periods. X0563511 is correct: the state should foot the bill of posting a guard at his door.

Sorry if I'm missing something but this appears to be flatly contradicted in the article you link e.g. as per this citation.

Your understanding of power generation is seriously lacking.
But I gotta say, your tinfoil hat is bright and shiny.

Nope, just lazy, grabbed the first thing that looked relevant to what I was saying.
Power companies are trying to op out of solar power subsidies.
"And so, as we have seen in Arizona, California and Colorado, utility companies want to roll back subsidies for distributed solar power."
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/solarcity-solar-power-nonprofit-energy-growth
It's too bad you couldn't more pleasant when showing people their errors.

France is just as bad if not worse than the US: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/04/france-electronic-spying-operation-nsa

Private US subcontractors have been developing dragnet surveillance products and services from their experiences of dealing with the NSA and selling them on the global market. Now most countries' security agencies have these technologies and systems and are using them on their own populations.

We are all suspects. We are all subject to warrantless search and seizure. We have no right privacy. We have no right to political dissent. We must obey and comply or risk being labelled thought criminals. Donating to legitimate charities that security agencies don't approve of has become thought crime, e.g. helping to alleviate poverty in Gaza. Just keep your heads down and don't complain or they're come after you.

A few companies, at least in New York, have gotten in trouble for fake positive reviews.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/23/new-york-fake-online-reviews-yoghurt

So when someone says it would cost an arm and a leg, we now know that is $200.
Thanks for the info!

On a more serious note, anybody have an update on
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/may/22/joshua-silver-glasses-self-adjusting
Did this project take off?

My guess is they are going to start classifying various crimes as terrorist acts.

Well, they're already classifying peaceful protests as such so I'm thinking were just a little way past that.

And who owns a very large proportion of that Capital? The workers

> Those on low wages get generous benefits

Tune in to "Benefits Street" on Channel 4 to see what it's like on benefits.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/07/tvratings-channel4

If that's the kind of life generous benefits get you, I'll stick to working.

Either Mr Cameron lied or the ISPs have radically over-reached in the level of national censorship.

Have a read of this article - David Cameron's internet porn filter is the start of censorship creep - and make your own mind up. For example this quote:

"The category of 'obscene content', for instance, which is blocked even on the lowest setting of BT's opt-in filtering system, covers "sites with information about illegal manipulation of electronic devices [and] distribution of software" – in other words, filesharing and music downloads, debate over which has been going on in parliament for years. It looks as if that debate has just been bypassed entirely, by way of scare stories about five-year-olds and fisting videos. Whatever your opinion on downloading music and cartoons for free, doing so is neither obscene nor pornographic."

I expect between whatever lump-sum he got when BT bought Counterpane, his actual salary at BT, and his writing and speaking engagements, he's not particularly worried about the next mortgage payment.

Those numbers don't mean what you likely think that they do:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/07/android-market-share-smartphone-users-google-apple

These has never been a single reputable study by anyone anywhere that has shown GMO anything to be unhealthy.

Is that argument by "no true Scotsman"? There have clearly been studies closely matching Monsato's own protocols which showed harm. I guess these are ruled out as disreputable since they found that GMO's might not be healthy?

GMO products have been made for decades and have been intensely studies by people with a vested interest in keeping them out.

Just as each different species is different; a Hedgehog is very unlikely to harm you as a house guest, however inviting a tiger over might be more unwise, each individual GMO would have to be studied for decades in every eco-system it might interact with in order to see if they are actually safe.

This is where we really see the arguments of GMO supporters for the lies they are. Science means experiment. There is no way to "scientifically prove" that GMOs are safe since you never know about the next different one. You can just show that no known mechanism of danger exists for the ones created so far and that it is unlikely that an unknown one exists.

The only side here which is in any way scientific is the people who believe in the "precationary principle" and they are only scientific since they clearly admit a lack of evidence and knowlege. Almost everyone else involved in this argument is lying.

At least in principle. The exact details of *weather* are always complex.

Here's a link to an article explaining where the ice in question comes from:

“There's a misconception here – we are not trapped in new ice that's been created because its cold,” said Turney. “This is very old, thick ice that's been re-mobilised. It was attached to another part of the continent and has broken out and, with the south-easterly winds we've had, has pushed it up against the coast and pinned us in.”

The austral sea ice situation is complicated by the fact there's a continent down there and it's not perfectly round. It sticks out into the sea in irregular ways. This means that the extent of sea ice (which is present year round) is dependent on the wind, which in turn is stronger with a more energetic (warmer) atmosphere.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/20/union-to-sue-construction-firms-blacklisting-allegations
Undercover police had children with activists
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-children-activists
"Derry interrogation centre hidden from torture inquiry"
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/derry-interrogation-centre-hidden-from-torture-inquiry-1.1486059
The results of UK public, private, police, military, signals intelligence work can make for interesting reading over the years. In the past you had to take part in protests, be seen or be informed on. In a more digital age a lot more sections of the UK gov and private sector are been invited to look over files and submit reports or will have expanded information 'logging' powers. Recall what powers the UK gov wanted see used on the internet?
"Changes to council surveillance powers"
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/66244.article
A lot of councils, government departments and various quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) where to get new telco related powers

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/20/union-to-sue-construction-firms-blacklisting-allegations
Undercover police had children with activists
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-children-activists
"Derry interrogation centre hidden from torture inquiry"
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/derry-interrogation-centre-hidden-from-torture-inquiry-1.1486059
The results of UK public, private, police, military, signals intelligence work can make for interesting reading over the years. In the past you had to take part in protests, be seen or be informed on. In a more digital age a lot more sections of the UK gov and private sector are been invited to look over files and submit reports or will have expanded information 'logging' powers. Recall what powers the UK gov wanted see used on the internet?
"Changes to council surveillance powers"
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/66244.article
A lot of councils, government departments and various quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) where to get new telco related powers

Thats some interesting take on everyday legal gov use vs a vast domestic surveillance network.
People are happy too or have to interact with "central government organisations, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the NHS"
Kind of hard not to pay your tax, collect a pension, apply for benefits (e.g. help with heating bills), enjoy the benefits of the National Health Service.
Energy provider - again kind of hard not to pay your bill, seek a better rate.
Supermarkets - people do enjoy their rewards, discounts.
Thanks to Snowden and many other whistleblowers like him the UK can now more fully understand how their everyday net usage and other databases can be combined under sigint development.
Sigint development seems new from around 1994 via Ripa for 'targeted surveillance" now moving on as Tempora and Prism.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/legal-loopholes-gchq-spy-world
We do recall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora ?
The UK is now waking up to the reality of the "five eyes" sharing, along with a few nations who are extra good friends of the US, contractors, ex and former UK staff, ex and former UK contractors, ex and former five eyes staff and contractors...
Thats a lot of people with insight into junk GCHQ/NSA encryption standards, the telco systems and national databases...
So enjoy your http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/25/leaked-memos-gchq-mass-surveillance-secret-snowden
"GCHQ lobbied furiously to keep secret the fact that telecoms firms had gone "well beyond" what they were legally required to do to help intelligence agencies"
"GCHQ feared a legal challenge under the right to privacy in the Human Rights Act if evidence of its surveillance methods became admissible in court."
"GCHQ assisted the Home Office in lining up sympathetic people to help with "press handling"" - nice to have skilled sock puppets - just like we see on slashdot :)

Thats some interesting take on everyday legal gov use vs a vast domestic surveillance network.
People are happy too or have to interact with "central government organisations, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the NHS"
Kind of hard not to pay your tax, collect a pension, apply for benefits (e.g. help with heating bills), enjoy the benefits of the National Health Service.
Energy provider - again kind of hard not to pay your bill, seek a better rate.
Supermarkets - people do enjoy their rewards, discounts.
Thanks to Snowden and many other whistleblowers like him the UK can now more fully understand how their everyday net usage and other databases can be combined under sigint development.
Sigint development seems new from around 1994 via Ripa for 'targeted surveillance" now moving on as Tempora and Prism.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/legal-loopholes-gchq-spy-world
We do recall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora ?
The UK is now waking up to the reality of the "five eyes" sharing, along with a few nations who are extra good friends of the US, contractors, ex and former UK staff, ex and former UK contractors, ex and former five eyes staff and contractors...
Thats a lot of people with insight into junk GCHQ/NSA encryption standards, the telco systems and national databases...
So enjoy your http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/25/leaked-memos-gchq-mass-surveillance-secret-snowden
"GCHQ lobbied furiously to keep secret the fact that telecoms firms had gone "well beyond" what they were legally required to do to help intelligence agencies"
"GCHQ feared a legal challenge under the right to privacy in the Human Rights Act if evidence of its surveillance methods became admissible in court."
"GCHQ assisted the Home Office in lining up sympathetic people to help with "press handling"" - nice to have skilled sock puppets - just like we see on slashdot :)

And if the NSA could keep its hands off of domestic data

You know what is sad-funny? If you look at the original leaked verizon order, it applies to 3 out 4 categories of phone calls:

1. those that start and end in the US
2. those that start in the US and end in a foreign country.
3. those that start in a foreign country and end in the US.

It expressly excludes calls that start and end in a foreign country. Good job focusing outward NSA.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

Right. This is what happened with the financial meltdown, exactly. There were few prosecutions and none of the household -name people - Jamie Dimon Lloyd Blankfein, Angelo Mozilo, Richard Fuld, Bear Stearnsâ(TM)s Jimmy Cayne, Merrill Lynchâ(TM)s Stan Oâ(TM)Neal, Citigroupâ(TM)s Chuck Prince all of these people are untouchable even though we lost literally a trillion dollars and more during the meltdown and entire lifetime retirements of people were destroyed . Eric Holder and his justice department looks and looks but golly! just can't find a gosh-darn thing he can charge them with.

It's a joke. A sick sick joke and made me lose a LOT of respect for the whole process of criminal justice. This is not a nation of laws, it's a nation of money and a nation of men when it comes right down to it. Same thing with the Transpacific Partenership- people with money and connections are literally usurping the environmental, labor , patent, copyright and other laws of nations. Laws which were arrived at through the respective societys' democratic process.

This is how empires fail They overreach. They heedless impose the will of mere individuals - or in this case corporations- upon people who disapprove of what they're doing by a ratio, in this nation at least , of 300 million to one.

This is how societies collapse. This is the steady rip rip of the social contract between the government and it's people that is not forgotten but instead goes underground, into people's living memories only later to emerge and play a decisive roll in the dissolution of that society. The government is known by all, in this case left and right and center, to be corrupt, unresponsive, indifferent to its people and serving only the needs of its elite, which are endlessly craven and grasping and greedy. People are cynical, but that's just the outward tell of their inner states.

Then something ecological happens directly owing to the untrammeled greed of the 1% and the society goes down all at once. This is not speculative, it's happened time and time again. To the Anasazi of the U.S. Southwest, to the Classic Lowland Maya, to the inhabitants of Easter Island and some other Polynesian societies, to the Greenland Norse, to the Mycenean Greece, and to the Western Roman Empire.

Hate to present a totalizing narrative which "explains all things" but it's not just my opinion that this is coming; it's the Pentagon's and the NSA's also:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism

If the Pentagon and the NSA and Obama had any sense at all, they'd prioritize climate legislation and start treating the manufacturers and purveyors of climate change denial like the threat to civilization they literally are.

Then they'd go after the deprivations of the 1% - typical example the contents of the TPP- which are literally tearing the social fabric of this nation apart.

https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

http://www.exposethetpp.org/

https://www.citizen.org/TPP

Environmental disaster as the trigger to societal collapse:

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/10/3632.full

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed

\http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/07/17/2858655.htm

The expedition celebrated another crazy one by the Aussie Mawson. Those were some rugged sonza bitches, no doubt. Stark contrast. This vid of Laurence Topham deserves a high profile. Feel of a Monty Python sketch, or something from the Onion. This entire escapade has that, actually. http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/video/2013/dec/30/antarctica-live-video-diary-trapped-ice-missing-milkshake-video

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/apr/28/krystian-zimerman-missile-defence-poland

You seem to be a little naive my friend.

Common characteristics of a police state, wide spread spying on citizens, warrantless arrest and detention, torture, rigged judicial system and trials, execution of citizens without due process, suppression of a free press, suppression of opposition parties, censorship, seizure of property, targeting of opposition groups and minorities, prevent freedom of movement.

You do realize the U.S. and U.K. have engaged in all of these. I can run through examples of each if that will help enlighten you. The U.S. and U.K are not particularly iron fist police states, they prefer more the velvet gloved fist. They aren't particularly wide spread or oppressive police states yet, just give them time and a few more excuses.

It is no secret the U.S. has tortured people on a wide scale and very recently. This precedent has been set and the people who did it got away with it. Obama has dialed it back some, preferring to let third parties do it so he can claim the U.S. isn't torturing but the U.S. is still actively participating in and bankrolling it.

Obama has executed at least three American's by drone, which is the new prefered means of execution. Thre is no judicial process or if there was it is secret. One the the people killed was a 16 year old boy who apparently was targetted because he was the son of someone the U.S. hated.

Obama has been he most aggressive adminstration in targetting journalists in recent history, especially ones who are telling stories the U.S. doesn't want told. Obama had a journalist in Yemen jailed for 3 years for exposing a cruise missile strike that killed civilians and interviewing Anwar Awliki.

Try bring any of the recent abuses of our Constituion to a court of law and most are shut down by State Secret privlideges. Many abuses of civil rights are currently untriable.

The U.S. pretends to have opposition parties but in fact the two parties we have are two sides of the same coin pursuing the same agenda on most issues that count, and only differing on wedge issues or where tax money is squandered. Third parties are ruthlessley suppressed, marginalized and muzzled in the U.S. especially ones which challenge the status quo.

The U.S. doesn't practice overt censorship, the U.K. is farther down this road. The U.S. favors more suble censorship and propaganda using a small number of corporate controlled media companies who do most of the shaping of public opinion. The U.S. prefers just listening to and recording what everyong is watching, reading, listening to and saying so they can spot the troublemakers.

The U.S. is actively planing for the near future when there will more terrorist attacks (i.e. 9/11), natural disasters(i.e. Katrina), protest movements (i.e. Occupy) and resource shortage shocks and when they occur they will ratchet up the police state a few more notches.

If you want an eye opener on the next generation global police state the U.S. has become grab a copy of Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars. U.S. special forces and intelligence are now roaming the globe engaging in largely unsupervised executions, renditions, torture and spying. This started under Bush/Cheney and Obama has actually dramatically accellerated and extended it. Some of their attacks have been very successful like killing Bin Laden, many of them are deeply flawed, killing large numbers of innocents, including women and children, and spawning new generations who hate America. The important part being they have almost no oversige from Congress or the judiciary, and often inadequate oversight from the White House and Pentagon who are running this global police apparatus.

That's repetition, not contradiction. I say there is no proof in science, then I say there is no proof in science. Though, in your defense, I made a typo: I should have capitalized "logic" as "Logic", so perhaps that threw you off

That's not what you said, and changing 'logic' to 'Logic' makes no difference. You are first claiming that math is not science, which is wrong.

It is, and I did, because it's not (though to be fair, I didn't specify a "natural science". One could argue that any body of knowledge is a science, but let's stick to natural sciences, else we could include just about anything, like the "science" of sewing or numerology).

Next you are claiming that "logic" is a field of science or subject of science, which is absolutely wrong (take an entry level Philosophy class if you are that lost).

I didn't. Find me quoted as saying "logic is science" and I'll mail you a Kennedy half dollar. Everything I said is all right up there ^^^.

Lastly, you claim that no other field of science has proven anything which is also wrong.

That's true, despite your assertions otherwise. And again, this is natural science we're talking about. The natural sciences don't prove things because there is no one final end-all, be-all fact to find about any given aspect of the natural world. Any new evidence can modify or nullify what we have already observed.

Your next paragraph seems rather incoherent, so let me get this straight. You don't agree that we can ever prove evolution, so I guess the work that we have done on genetics proving large portions of the complete theory are not proven.

We can't, because theories are provable in the same way the number 9 is salty to the touch. It doesn't make sense. What is the "complete theory" of Evolution? Which fact, once discovered, will close the books on ToE so we never have to study it anymore? That we have such a large body of knowledge about evolution is what makes it such a strong theory, one of the strongest theories of the natural world we have. There's still no proof of anything in there, though.

Hrm, something is wrong with that line of thinking.

In your gravity example, by your own thoughts you must accept Newton's Law as factual.

No, I accept it as a law, and I accept that it, like all scientific laws, only apply in limited conditions and limited circumstances. Newton's Law it only applies in weak gravitational fields. At subatomic levels or in immense gravity fields, for example, Newton's Law is invalid. But it still is immensely useful in day to day life, like predicting eclipses or firing missiles at Iraqi weddings.

The people that started looking at merging Einstein's work and Newton's work were heathens and of course those guys that showed where Einstein's work fails are simply blasphemous!

Einstein is the people who merged Einstein's work with Newton's work, and he called it the Theory of General Relativity. (As an agnostic, I guess he technically was also a heathen.) There is no blasphemy in science, only in religion. I'm beginning to suspect you are secretly an intelligent design proponent.

And of course any theory we have of gravity, even when it does not work, must be proven by your way of thinking.

That's something you just made up about me, especially in light of the fact that I must have said about 30 times already that theories are unprovable by their very nature, and can be completely undermined by even a single piece of evidence that contradicts all previous observations. Also, what I said about Newton's Law about two paragraphs up.

Your failure to contemplate theories of gravity in relation to evolutio

"Right now, since there have been no abuses..." NSA employee spied on nine women without detection NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds No abuses, General?

See, that's the problem right there. We know he has lied to us. He has no credibility. If he told me the sky was blue, I'd look up to be sure. As we all know, once you have lost trust, it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong; no on will listen to you. It's not just Hayden. So many government officials and spokespeople have lied to cover their asses, or hide wrongdoing, I just can't take their word for anything anymore.

Can you identify the specifics that weren't known before? (excluding revelations concerning spying on other countries).

Sure: http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files

Welcome to the internet.

"Right now, since there have been no abuses..."
NSA employee spied on nine women without detection
NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds
No abuses, General?

Before the gloating sets in, you have to put these numbers into perspective: a significant fraction of Europeans also do not believe in evolution; here is data from the UK:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/feb/01/evolution-darwin-survey-creationism

In addition, although scientific literacy is low in both Europe and the US, American adults are generally better informed on science than European adults:

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-public/science-literacy-us-college-courses-really-count

It's called documentary evidence: Hersch is "certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden "changed the whole nature of the debate" about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence. "Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn't touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game,"" http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

Well, here is one fact: Most scientific output is of very bad quality. If anything, reviewing papers for publication has taught me that. By implication, most scientists are not very good at their job. Commercialization makes this worse: The mediocre is declared the norm and actually good scientists find it hard to get funding or find that they cannot do science anymore. This great dumbing down has been vastly advanced by the "MBA plague" taking over the universities. It is getting worse. Look for example, what Peter Higgs says about his chances of having a scientific career today http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-interview-underlying-incompetence. And he is certified one of the greatest minds in physics alive. Or think what Stephen Hawkins chances would have been if he had already been in a wheelchair.

Refute this you wacko.

Foreign surveillance ops have never been hidden from view. The embassies are filled with antennas, the satellites and spy ships can be tracked. Any regional effort by other nations can be understood by their lack of global scale. Only the NSA, GCHQ have the ability to reach down into South America, surround Africa, Russia, Asia and the Pacific with vast help in the EU. Aircraft, satellite or a vast network of optical tap needs regional support - very few nations have that.
The US "domestic context" is unique given the 1970's Church Committee reforms, the Fourth amendment and constant political and legal reassurance about role of the rule of law. Thats the interesting aspect of "one way or another" - can the surveillance program data collected be used in an open US court without the need for the "parallel construction"? Will an entire digital US lifetime be held in a digital lock box removing all freedom of speech, association, contact with the press, public expression of faith, political support, protest, charity work, travel, reading of books/web use... open courts, warrants under oath and cross examination of witnesses...?
Re the "negative dealings with NSA" - the world can see the desire for a court friendly "lock box" call logs and 3 or more hop tracking.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/nsa-files-decoded-hops
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2013/06/surveillance_lockbox_why_can_the_nsa_search_your_phone_records_without_a.html
The NSA just seems to be following the UK GCHQ down the "National Criminal Intelligence Service", "Government Telecommunications Advisory Centre" and "Government Technical Assistance Centre" efforts.
Where could the US end up vs UK attempts at legal telco law reform?
If the US gov uses color of law to get around the Fourth amendment and everything done becomes not illegal - its a bit like a legal digital Berlin Wall - kind of hard to hide.
Make it all legal and find a way into open US courts with gov experts/contractors to offer expert decryption, domestic US or global tracking, logs to the courts...a lifetime of phone calls in open court.
The UK could have told the US where it all ends up in the 1990's - everything interesting goes dark and all the people of interest are warned by 'contacts' in the police, legal system and press.

Franklin sued to pay people to steal corpses so he and his friends could dissect them and learn about anatomy. This was very highly illegal in Colonial America. They had a basement in a where he was staying . It was a part of the Enlighenment impulse to to come to understand reality through natural science without the *benefit* of the intermediaries of his day the Church and the King, who were glad to tell you everything you needed to know about any topic whatsoever.

As is sometimes the case with facts about historical Americans you have to go overseas to get a unbiased analysis of what was going on. US web pages will tell you Franklin this universally curious and endlessly inventive guy, golly, just knew nothing about what was happening in the basement of the house he lived- he was more interested in non-squimish subject matter like physics . Overseas of course they're less sensitive to the idea that one of our Founding Fathers may have been involved in grave robbing and dissecting corpses merely for curiosity's sake:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/11/usa.past

I have said that Microsoft hurt the future of computer science. This particular instance, the AARD code, would be meaningless as an isolated instance. Cumulatively, Microsoft's actions have held science back.

Extraordinary evidence? There it is, all over the web. "The AARD code ran several functional tests on the underlying DOS that succeeded on MS-DOS and PC DOS, but resulted in an error message on competing disk operating systems such as DR-DOS" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

I think you posted that same information, didn't you? Of course I'm not retracting any statement I have made. Because I lack documentation for frustrations I experienced more than 20 years ago, I should retract my statements? Are you nuts?

As for moderations - don't worry about them. I don't. Sometimes, the mod demons beat hell out of me. Stuff happens. As with Microsoft's actions, it's the cumulative effects that matter. You post intelligent posts, and your karma stays high. You've been stubborn in this thread, but you haven't been stupid.

I do have some strong anti-Microsoft sentiments. I've explained them. No other company on earth has inflicted as much frustration on me as Microsoft. How many operating systems are there, which you could install, then connect to the internet for updates, and be thoroughly infected with a half dozen viruses before the updates could download? That was much more frustrating than my experience with Windows 3.11 refusing to install on any but Microsoft's select, approved OS's. And, that too is documented on the internet!

I view MS with a jaundiced eye, you view MS through rose tinted glasses. I think my view is more realistic. We have agreed earlier that both Apple and Google do wrong. It seems to me that it is demonstrably true that MS has done far more wrong than either of the other two. Someone above argues that Google is more evil because they outed some Chinese dissidents. Here's a story about Microsoft doing the same thing,
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/feb/01/business.microsoft

Both companies have backed off of exposing dissidents, apparently because they suddenly realized how "real" that shit can get. I suppose that I might find a similar story on Apple if I searched.

Whatever - Happy New Year. Maybe we'll battle over another subject sometime soon.

Especially when they basically have lied about the photos being deleted.

Again LOL.
Trade deals, banking, political parties, political leaders around the world, NGO's, anti war protesters, law reform groups, environmentalists... commercial and scientific developments...end users are all at risk.
As the video you posted stats bulk collection of data is now cheap and easy. At the 43 min and 46 min point in - "we have made surveillance too cheap"
So long term, where the NSA and GCHQ got in thanks to junk encryption standards, so can ex staff, former staff and any group that can hire them.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/nov/28/war-on-democracy-corporations-spy-profit-activism
Bad encryption is useless at any level or price - too many people have the keys now :)

The fun the US and UK govs had was setting global standards and then passing them as 'tested' back to a tame private sector to offer in its product mix. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/16/nsa-gchq-undermine-internet-security
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA)

The fun the US and UK govs had was setting global standards and then passing them as 'tested' back to a tame private sector to offer in its product mix. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/16/nsa-gchq-undermine-internet-security
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA)

Is amazing how easy is for them to dodge those safeguards, even if there is no relation in 3th grade with anyone foreigner (what is already pretty hard).

Anyway, this is not just about spying, is also about control, in particular of the US citizens.