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As for speaking french, you made it clear that you think that people should only try when they're not the majority.

Here's your actual words:

However, living in a predominately french speaking area? Sure, you should try!

Your posts are the same warmed-over drivel that we see on both sides of the language divide, perpetrating isolated incidents to excuse slovenly behaviour. The whole gatineau hospital thing is dead and gone - give it up! It's like your "Hydro Quebec" thing - anyone who has a problem will just hit "0" to get an operator, same as anywhere else. Or as Pierre Trudeau said when people in the rest of the country were upset with bilingual packaging - "If it bothers you that much, just turn the damn box of cornflakes around!"

Another inanity:

You do know what racism is, yes? Making assumptions about a person, based upon their physical/cultural characteristics, yes?

No, that's stereotyping. Racism is actively discriminating against, denigrating, or otherwise mistreating someone because of those stereotypes.

But back to the old woman in Gatineau ... she was not denied health care because of her language. She did not receive any less quality of services because she didn't speak french. To the contrary, it was her relatives who complained because THEY weren't being dealt with in english. The woman in question died of Alzheimers - it's a safe bet she didn't know what was going on in *either* language. This is the same sort of stupidity as the case where a french-speaking Quebecer "wasn't allowed to die in french" because she received care in a hospital where some of the attendants didn't have a "good-enough" grasp of french as far as her relatives were concerned.

The real point, which you overlooked, and which I originally made, was that unlike the rest of Canada, Quebec is making sure that future generations will be able to function in both official languages. Being able to postpone the onset of dementia is one benefit.

The key may be something called cognitive reserve. Learning and speaking two languages requires the brain to work harder, which helps keep it nimble. It's the same use-it-or-lose-it reasoning that underlies advice to do crossword puzzles and to continue to learn new skills throughout life — the idea is to help the brain create and maintain more neural connections. Brains with more cognitive reserve — and therefore more flexibility and executive control — are thought to be better able to compensate for the loss of neurons associated with Alzheimer's.

Another recent study backed up the connection between bilingualism and executive control. The study, which involved babies who were exposed to two languages from birth, found that bilingual infants don't confuse their two languages because they learn very early to pay attention better

Anyone can learn a second (or third, 4th, etc) language at any age, unless they already have too much brain deterioration. Or they don't want to make the effort (and there's people like that on both sides - proud of "not knowing").

Now when you consider that what we call "English" is really a bastardized version of French dating back to the Norman Conquest, and that the two languages have been pretty much parallel for almost 1,000 years, what's the big deal about learning it anyway?

Hm, yes; but maybe it's even broader example of speculative execution - sort of like Z3 can be theoretically Turing complete if (also) executing all instructions and afterwards discarding unneeded ones. Or...something in-between: after all, once we pinpoint exceptional specimens, we can not only take closer look at their already existing offspring - but also use them again in breeding. Which could perhaps speed things up a bit.

Still rather slow, unfortunately. Almost certainly way beyond lifespans of everybody involved, quickly hitting our limits with execution of long term projects ;/

But there might be some hope... if we ever seriously venture into space, what other cuddly pet could be possibly better? ;p (not only agility or hygiene, also how they are chosen already when the space is scarce and conditions hard... and an environment where planning is of paramount importance; where intelligence and gripping paws could be even more useful)

Don't be surprised how trusting many people are: http://www.time.com/time/travel/article/0,31542,2045092,00.html

Jin, for instance, gives us a key to her place upon arrival, a common CouchSurfing custom that helps explain why sociologists at Stanford University are now studying the site and its ability to efficiently create trust.

"We believe that people are fundamentally good, and our service is designed around that premise," says CouchSurfing chairman and co-founder Daniel Hoffer. "Anytime you make yourself vulnerable in any way, you take a risk, and typically life rewards you for that risk."

"The Congress really wanked away their rights and obligations on the Iraq war."

You could argue that the moment we became involved in the UN and started sending "peacekeeping troops" around the world, we started letting someone other than Congress decide where our troops were going. And then we started getting into "police action" after "police action"... Go back to 1951, long before you were born, and get an education on the silliness of Korea being a "police action" rather than an actual war from the perspective of the US and UN.

And then, of course, the failure to actually prosecute Korea as a real war is part and parcel of the ludicrous situation with mainland Red China today - our largest failure, to prevent the growth of the cancerous regime currently set up in Beijing.

The truth isn't always classy. Have you ever been to China? Here is some reading:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,187654,00.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.whitening/
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/25/china-s-agony-of-defeat.html

Don't get me wrong. I like China. I like the food, the women, the Chinese sense of humor. It's more my style than the USA nowadays. But the parent poster is dead on. Modern Chinese have all kinds of complexes about their role in the world.

The funniest thing about this is that Jenny McCarty's kid NEVER HAD AUTISM!

You joke, but if you mess with google, they'll fuck you up.

I was always under the impression that Big Brother was a repressive Government.. and didn't have anything to do with corporations anyway.. and I believe the US Government has already embraced social media.

Nkoloso, at least from the evidence we have to go on, was something closer to a cargo cult leader than a scientist. What remains fascinating to us today is that he drew on the sublimity of space travel -- not religious sentiment -- to win friends and influence people. It's a reminder of the power that space travel had in the popular imagination of the 1960s.

( Old, Weird Tech: The Zambian Space Cult of the 1960s
Edward Makuka Nkoloso )
Though I seriously wonder about the mentioned cats ;) ... if we ever seriously venture into space, what other cuddly pet could be possibly better? ;p (not only agility or hygiene, also the theme of them being chosen already when the space is scarce and conditions hard ... )

the SRB were cast in pieces because it is impossible to cast and pour such a large amount of rocket propellant at once.

More likely, the preferred vendor (read Utah prok co.) found it impossible to cast such a large amount of propellant at once.
ref:


In the early 60's Aerojet and Thiokol both had test projects build a single monolithic (?) solid rocket motor for Saturn and follow on programs. Aerojet had some success in three tests. Thiokol blew theirs up.
The 260 - the Largest Solid Rocket Motor Tested
Space: Biggest Booster Yet" Time Magazine, Friday, Mar. 12, 1965

7.2 million teachers in the US, 2.3 million have tenure. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1859505,00.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/cb10ff-14_school.pdf

There's been a few deleted/suspended:

Australia for instance: http://www.local12.com/news/state/story/Facebook-Deletes-Kate-Middleton-Accounts/vWblzM2WX067VE-7OC9Osg.cspx?rss=31

Another one in the UK (I think): http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/25/facebook-bans-kate-middleton-%E2%80%94-no-not-the-famous-one-the-other-one/?xid=rss-topstories

Yet in Portugal they decriminalized drugs and getting better results: quote:

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

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Internet was going to happen with or without government. The gov't intervened with money into an already developing idea. There were peer to peer networks before the Internet and the idea of packet switching was derived from phone networks. So, yes, the TCP/IP was specifically developed with gov't money, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't have been developed privately. After all, the telegraph, radio, phone, light communications, TV were developed privately, and Tesla was envisioning an electronic wireless communication network way before anybody had that in mind.

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GPS - nothing without Einstein's relativity, both special and general. Nothing without Tsiolkovsky's formulation of rocket math and science. But yes, gov't money often accelerates something that is not directly useful to the market at that very moment. But look at the Moon landings - how many years have passed since and what?

Gov't can produce a lot of waste.

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Personally I wouldn't even be bothered with gov't spending on SCIENCE if it was not involved in ECONOMICS.

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Deregulation has its own set of problems and I'm mystified why free-market purists like you consistently fail to acknowledge them. Remember the near-complete financial meltdown of '08? It was a purely free-market product caused by a combination of unbelievable greed (across all layers of society, not just top) and appalling lack of government intervention even when it was obvious we were headed for disaster.

- I wonder if it would be better for me to write a book on this subject and then just link to it every time I hear this nonsense, what do you think? I have no idea how many times I have already explained what happened on the Internet, many of those times on this forum. My journal has some info on it.

But basically, point by point:

1. It was a purely free-market product - false.

There was no free market for a hundred miles around. FDIC - gov't provided insurance was and still is the moral hazard, which pushes banks into gambling and which allows people not to care which bank they lend the deposits to. That's not free market at all.

Fed setting 1%-0% short term interest rates have nothing to do with free market either. These 'free money' together with FDIC opened the flood gates for gambling with deposits AND leverage.

Freddie/Fannie is not free market at all. Gov't can't remove risk from lending and expect everybody not to jump on that and not to oversell/overbuy it. It's impossible. Once you 'remove risk' from lending, that's it, there is no more free market provided safe guard to stop any sort of abuse.

The regulation that was removed, that everybody cites in this case was Glass Steagall, which

How much of the science we do today is based on experiments done by people from the 17th century to the early 20th century who had no formal training, and had no clue what really caused the results. I can't remember the name of the French fellow (I believe he was a tax collector) who gave us the conservation of mass rule. He concluded that burning things did not make them disappear but just changed the material into gases and ash etc. However he and no-one had any idea what an atom was/is so couldn't tell you what exactly was happening. Did that make his experimental results any less valid? No.

I really hate academic snobbery. Just because you have a degree or masters or doctorate, doesn't make you smarter than others. I just means you had time and money that some others may not have had. Granted you need to have some intelligence to get these, but it doesn't mean others aren't intelligent too. I think sometimes that having a degree limits some people with their arrogance. I admit that I see this far more in Canada than in the United States (one of the things I like about the U.S.A.). One thing about software I kind of like is how many created this industry we have now, who never received a degree. Four people on this Time Magazine list have backgrounds or worked in some form of science related activity. They were college dropouts.

Not only that, I object to the characterization of Facebook as a better place to work that Google. Facebook might be nice if you want to pretend you're still in a college frat house with toys and a full bar. That kind of thing appeals to college students (including me when I was in college), but if you're the type of programmer who wants to work at a place where you can do interesting programming things, Google is WAY better than Facebook.

Google has a lot of interesting projects going on, with 20% (somewhat) discretionary time, but Facebook has a single website that I almost wish didn't exist. No question where I'd rather work.

I found an article about the study I was thinking of. I guess it as $75,000 a year.

The judge reviewing the story (yes, that's right: an official of the US government was evaluating comics for their suitability to be published) insisted that the character be made a white guy instead.

The pre-code story "Judgement Day" was re-printed unchanged.

The judge was Charles Murphy, the Comics Code Administrator, a former New York City magistrate.

Among the provisions of the Code:

The words "horror" and "terror" are not permitted as comic-book titles, and no "scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism or masochism" are allowed. Sympathy for criminals, "unique details" of a crime, or any treatment that tends to "create disrespect for established authority" are banned. "Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, ridicule of racial or religious groups" are not allowed, and "all characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society, [with] females drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,857654,00.html#ixzz1BoFpABoS

[It was EC's William Gaines who] called a meeting of his fellow publishers and suggested that the comic book industry gather to fight outside censorship and help repair the industry's damaged reputation. They formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and its Comics Code Authority. The CCA code expanded on the ACMP's restrictions. Unlike its predecessor, the CCA code was rigorously enforced, with all comics requiring code approval prior to their publication. This not being what Gaines intended, he refused to join the association. ... When distributors refused to handle many of his comics, Gaines ended publication of his three horror and the two SuspenStory titles on September 14, 1954. EC shifted its focus to a line of more realistic comic book titles, including M.D. and Psychoanalysis... Since the initial issues did not carry the Comics Code seal, the wholesalers refused to carry them. EC Comics

There are two long-standing problems exposed here:

The split between publishers whose books appealed to young readers and those targeting older teens and adults. (Not always with EC's intelligence or care.)

The lack of alternative distribution channels.

Reprints of newspaper comics had legitimacy among adult readers and book stores as early as Gasoline Alley ca. 1920. It was a much harder struggle for the comic book - or graphic novel, if you insist - to win that kind of acceptance.

There's the attack on Google and other non-Chinese companies from China in 2009 as well.

Not to mention Titan Rain, from 2003.

WTF is the Lipsi? The only thing Wikipedia has under this title is a Greek island.

Sorry, it's not on the English Wikipedia, though it is on the German Wikipedia. Actually, the only English link I can find relating to it is here. It was a dance (named after Leipzig) produced by the DDR government that was devoid of all the evil, decadent Capitalist influences, like rock-and-roll.

I'm not a zodiac follower and I could care less about my horoscope. (Though today it says my karma may change). However, the tropical zodiac does not change which is typically what we use.

Since this is a topic I care very little for, but just enough to post another article I will provide a citation.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/14/astrologers-get-their-say-in-the-horoscope-hubbub/

It is very short so it's fairly safe to RTFA, but be warned I won't debate any of this. I really don't care enough to apologize if some zen buddhist tao roman catholic devout follower of zod says I am specifically wrong and a celestial being of my choosing will strike me down. (Stay Puff Marshmallow Man)

Now that you put it that way, I can see the burning cars and places of worship all across France in my mind right now. ;)

That's nothing new.

Why 112 cars are burning every day

France's New Year's Tradition: Car-Burning

Anti-Semitic Violence Sweeps France

France: Thickening Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism seen rising among France's Muslims
 

And put in practice by the Bush Administration.

By "line of thinking," I was referring to the statement that the United States should execute Julian Assange.

Now they're going to gulag #2: Bagram Prison. Same difference.

Bagram was handed over to the Afghans in Jan 2010: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6081IN20100109

Detainees are now being held in the Parwan facility which is being described as much more humane, where the prisoners are assigned counsel and can challenge their incarceration: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2008892,00.html

How is signing off on extra-judicial assassinations of American citizens restoring checks and balances?

I am not a constitutional lawyer, so I can't answer whether the president has that authority. Seems to me though that if the president doesn't have the authority to order the death of anybody who is a U.S. citizen, even in combat situations, then a lot of illegal shit happened during the civil war.

FWIW, supposedly Mark Zuckerberg commutes in a relatively humble Acura TSX. http://time.com/poy

That's because he's trying to retain some privacy and anonymity.

The problem here is, Wakefield's scam has actually caused the death of hundreds of kids and caused thousands of others to get sick with completely preventable illnesses.

He's personally responsible for causing outbreaks of diseases which were all but eradicated to spring back up as enough stupid parents followed the lead of batshit-insane people to break down what we call "herd immunity", which is also what we rely on to protect the small number of people in society who don't get vaccinations for "religious" reasons or because they have a demonstrable allergy to one of the vaccine components.

Further, the "debate" over this has increased distrust of doctors, which isn't helpful. We already have enough problems with hypochondriacs who should have their WebMD access taken away because they are constantly convinced they are "special" people with some rare, exotic illness rather than a garden-variety head cold.

If you like someone who murders people, regularly steals from the government to enrich himself, sets up a paradise for criminals, maintains his rule through fear and oppression, and just made himself supreme dictator for life and you'll be shot if you say otherwise, be my guest.

Just don't be surprised if I tend to disagree with you.

FWIW, supposedly Mark Zuckerberg commutes in a relatively humble Acura TSX. http://time.com/poy

I know it sounds crazy, but some people have moral hangups about killing people unnecessarily.

If you don't shoot the pirates then you may get away, but they'll attack the next ship. If you do kill them then they're no longer a problem, and it will help to discourage the others.

What's 'moral' about running away and letting these people attack someone else?

Well the problem is that it might cause the pirates to become more desperate and violent. Pirates don't kill often (only in the movies do they do that). And this has happened. In 2009, pirates took over the Maersk Alabama US Navy ship and demanded money. In the end, the US killed 3 of the pirates and the pirates claimed "After the action they took yesterday (the sniping of the 3 pirates), we will respond with action, We're warning the owners of the other ships that if they try to attack, we will kill the crews and burn their ships." Now according to a U.N. report released in Nov 2010, a year and a half later, U.N. report says pirates more violent. Maybe shooting pirates wasn't the most 'moral' idea in the end?

Sep. 22, 1997: AOL's Big Coup ("The Web was going to kill it. Microsoft was going to bury it. But by grabbing CompuServe, America Online keeps on growing."). Jan. 24, 2000: The Big Deal ("How the AOL-Time Warner merger happened. Does it make any sense?"). May 31, 2010: Facebook ...and How It's Redefining Privacy ("With nearly 500 million users, Facebook is connecting us in new (and scary) ways"). Dec 27, 2010: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ("Person of the Year. The Connector").

Sep. 22, 1997: AOL's Big Coup ("The Web was going to kill it. Microsoft was going to bury it. But by grabbing CompuServe, America Online keeps on growing."). Jan. 24, 2000: The Big Deal ("How the AOL-Time Warner merger happened. Does it make any sense?"). May 31, 2010: Facebook ...and How It's Redefining Privacy ("With nearly 500 million users, Facebook is connecting us in new (and scary) ways"). Dec 27, 2010: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ("Person of the Year. The Connector").

Sep. 22, 1997: AOL's Big Coup ("The Web was going to kill it. Microsoft was going to bury it. But by grabbing CompuServe, America Online keeps on growing."). Jan. 24, 2000: The Big Deal ("How the AOL-Time Warner merger happened. Does it make any sense?"). May 31, 2010: Facebook ...and How It's Redefining Privacy ("With nearly 500 million users, Facebook is connecting us in new (and scary) ways"). Dec 27, 2010: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ("Person of the Year. The Connector").

Sep. 22, 1997: AOL's Big Coup ("The Web was going to kill it. Microsoft was going to bury it. But by grabbing CompuServe, America Online keeps on growing."). Jan. 24, 2000: The Big Deal ("How the AOL-Time Warner merger happened. Does it make any sense?"). May 31, 2010: Facebook ...and How It's Redefining Privacy ("With nearly 500 million users, Facebook is connecting us in new (and scary) ways"). Dec 27, 2010: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg ("Person of the Year. The Connector").

Stop making shit up. You know very well that the popularity of extremist right-wing militia hate groups have skyrocketed since Obama was elected.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2022516,00.html

Jenny McCarthy's son was misdiagnosed.
  Time article (lengthy)

This appears to be a rumor. Observe:

Or is this the truth? There are dark murmurings from scientists and doctors asking, Was her son ever really autistic? Evan's symptoms — heavy seizures, followed by marked improvement once the seizures were brought under control — are similar to those of Landau-Kleffner syndrome, a rare childhood neurological disorder that can also result in speech impairment and possible long-term neurological damage. Or, as other pediatricians have suggested, perhaps the miracle I have beheld is the quotidian miracle of childhood development: a delayed 2-year-old catching up by the time he is 7, a commonplace, routine occurrence, nothing more surprising than a short boy growing tall. It is enraging to the mother to hear that nothing was wrong with her boy — she held him during his seizures, saw his eyes roll up after he received his vaccines — and how can you say that she doesn't know what she knows?

This entire thing is a straw-man anyway, even as presented in the article. It sums up as 'if her son never had Autism, can vaccines be harmful?'

Anyway, even the original case, Donald T, travels to foreign countries alone these days. Does that mean that HE is not Autistic as well??

Jenny McCarthy's son was misdiagnosed.
Time article (lengthy)

In the unlikely case that you were not: Show me any evidence from a reputable source that Ayers wrote DOMF and that refutes all the statements to the contrary (see 1 or 2 for instance). Tell me why a part-time university lecturer, who in his other job is a State Senator and is campaigning for the US senate needs do scholarly publication (something that is usually of necessity only for full-time tenure-track positions).

Well, there is heavy suggestion from the structure of the writing that it was Ayers: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/breakthrough_on_the_authorship_1.html And, of course, he admitted it. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2009/10/bill-ayers-admits-he-wrote-dreams-of-my-father.html

Also, since you seem less-than-well-informed about student writing in the HLR: The president of the HLR is also editor-in-chief, and as such contributes as well. The president is selected from the editors, so any president has done some writing before. Most if not all student writing in HLR takes the form of Notes, Recent Cases, Recent Legislation, and Book Notes. The _articles_ in HLR are by professors, judges, and law practitioners, so it is entirely unsurprising that neither Obama nor any of his other sophomore classmates have published any articles in HLR.

He would have published, either before or after, because he is a lawyer. A Juris Doctorate is a doctorate level degree. He is an academic, and law students (promising ones, at least) do write law review articles -- and sign them. Obama didn't so any of the things that a law review editor does -- he didn't write or even cosign on any articles, he's never published as an attorney, and he didn't even get a Supreme Court clerkship like most HLR editors. He has every appearance of someone who just spending time and checking off boxes on a resume.

Depends upon the field. It doesn't necessarily have to be about publishing. I see it a lot in the pharmaceutical and medical fields. Somebody, either an academic institution or a company, does some initial research on a small sample group. They see some possible correlation at a 1 or 2 sigma level. Next thing you know, there is a press release touting the "discovery" that oat bran reduces your cholesterol, or that such-and-such has high levels of anti-oxidants and "may reduce your chance of cancer by up to 50-percent." Of course, more research is needed.

Maybe it is the rush to fame, the rush to patent filing, or trying to make a strong case that further funding is justified. Often, it seems to me, that the marketers get involved. Those old enough to remember the oat bran craze will recall that suddenly everything had oat bran added to it. Then somewhere down the line it all fades away because, surprise surprise, further research shows that the effect isn't there, or it is small, etc. Another great example of marketeer influence is the famous 4-hour erection (priapism) danger with Viagra and other ED drugs. Did you know that there weren't any examples of that happening during the clinical trials, but think of how important is became to the marketing campaigns. In fact, the risk of it happening is a concern for people with sickle-cell anemia, leukemia or urethral inflammation, but you wouldn't get that impression from the ads. Here you have a case where something that has an apparent very small effect become a major part of advertising.

Cold fusion is another good example for this thread (I didn't read the original article, but it if wasn't mentioned, it should have been). When the first reports came out, and then the first conferences, we clearly were going to have a free-energy society by now.

Not maybe in your lifetime but... It was done by Henry Ford himself.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,788057,00.html

I guess nobody reads history books anymore?

Your 'quote' is bogus. It is a heavily edited version of a speech Ike gave in public in 1953, when all of Eastern Europe was occupied by the USSR. You edited it to change the meaning entirely. This was a speech about how to keep the free world free, not about metals.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,858151,00.html

It was included in one edition of the Pentagon Papers but was never secret.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/ps7.htm

Here's the part you deliberately left out:

"But all India would be outflanked. Burma would certainly, in its weakened condition, be no defense. Now, India is surrounded on that side by the Communist empire. Iran on its left is in a weakened condition. I believe I read in the paper this morning that Mossadegh's move toward getting rid of his parliament has been supported and of course he was in that move supported by the Tudeh, which is the Communist Party of Iran. All of that weakening position around there is very ominous for the United States, because finally if we lost all that, how would the free world hold the rich empire of Indonesia? So you see, somewhere along the line, this must be blocked. It must be blocked now. That is what the French are doing."

You're one of those revisionists who claim the Cold War never happened, tight? Or it was all America's fault?
Communism killed around 100 million people in the 20th century. There's books about it, read one.

Bull [noaa.gov] shit [noaa.gov]

Yes, you Warmers do certainly like to trot out those pages! I see them every time someone questions the validity of your little cult. You were frothing so much I think you forgot you linked twice there to the same thing - or was it your first lie, pretending you had more sources than you really do. You don't mind being called a liar right? After all you brought up the notion it was proper to do so in debate. I see something you got wrong, therefore the correct term to call it out is "liar".

So since you're leaning so heavily on that one article for data, let's consider what it means.

Did you ever stop to think what those graphs are showing temperatures as being warmer than? They are showing a warming in relation from 1961-1971 on (depending on the graph). Note that's exactly the period when things were getting pretty cold and people were scared about another ice age. (that article is from 1974)

Consider this segment:

when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades

OK, so we're at some kind of local minimum there. And then from there it starts rising again, until it crests over where it was. But that means that saying the lasts years average temperatures is warming so drastically when comparing against this large period of time where we considered it to be much colder, is misleading at best because you have a large period of artificially cool temperatures added into the comparison pool.

Let's take NASA again, a different link, talking about November 2010 being the warmest on record.

Scary stuff! Except now we have veered off what you called a lie, that it has been cooling in recent years. Let's return there. Even this NASA article says:

there is a good chance that 2010 as a whole will be the warmest year in the GISS analysis. Even if the December global temperature anomaly is unusually cool, 2010 will at least be in a statistical tie with 2005

Hey, guess what that implies. It's saying that between 2005 and now, temperatures have been cooler than in 2005.

So it really doesn't seem like he was lying at all now, does it? You just don't want to believe it, because it conflicts with your dogma of a constant and unrelenting rise in temperature that will burn us with earthly hellfire!

As for the "clear warming trend across decades", I find it hard to get excited with such a tiny little window of study, and the new understanding that C02 can only marginally raise temperatures (a revision from five degrees to two degrees). If there's no runaway greenhouse effect, there's not nearly the cause for Alarm you Warmists are trying to instil. And if they were wrong by so huge a margin about how much CO2 would cause temperatures to rise, well then you wonder about other predictions like acidity level and so forth...

Actually, we don't know any of this about Obama. We know that he didn't graduate Columbia with honors, because they said so. Both he and Harvard have refused to release his transcript. There's very good evidence that he didn't write Dreams of My Father and that Bill Ayers did. His HLR time is moot, because he didn't actually do any work and as President of HLR left all that to the other 80 editors of HLR. His time as a lecturer (which was originally claimed as professor, until it was proven without a doubt that he was never any kind of professor) and on HLR weren't particularly productive, in that he has never published any sort of law article at any time. Ever. Authored: 0. Obama might be smart. He might not. He's got lots of empty credentials and puffery. Real accomplishments, though, are pretty thin.

At first I thought you were sarcastic... Compliments to the quality of your trolling.

In the unlikely case that you were not: Show me any evidence from a reputable source that Ayers wrote DOMF and that refutes all the statements to the contrary (see 1 or 2 for instance). Tell me why a part-time university lecturer, who in his other job is a State Senator and is campaigning for the US senate needs do scholarly publication (something that is usually of necessity only for full-time tenure-track positions).

Also, since you seem less-than-well-informed about student writing in the HLR: The president of the HLR is also editor-in-chief, and as such contributes as well. The president is selected from the editors, so any president has done some writing before. Most if not all student writing in HLR takes the form of Notes, Recent Cases, Recent Legislation, and Book Notes. The _articles_ in HLR are by professors, judges, and law practitioners, so it is entirely unsurprising that neither Obama nor any of his other sophomore classmates have published any articles in HLR.

But he doesn't seem to be exercising a lot of descretion in these releases. I wonder if he might not always be completely truthful.

How can you claim that there isn't a lot of discretion with the leaked documents?

Assange has requested support from the US Govt on redactions; he was rebuffed[1]. He's provided the cables to newspapers and has only released a small portion of documents that they've felt were important. To date, were talking ~1% of the total documents.

None of this sounds like someone who just dumped the whole lot without a care in the world besides total transparency.

1. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2033771,00.html

Word of God says no.

Besides, where did you hear that he flunked math? He might have had trouble with speaking, but math wasn't a problem for him.

You are a corporation.
Steve Jobs is a person.
You do not have standing to take action on behalf of Steve Jobs as a person.

Standing is for a court to decide.

But I strongly suspect you'll discover that Apple has licensed Steve Job's image from Steve Jobs - and that will stand up in court.

There is, however, another argument that can be made:

That Apple has rights in the image of Steve Jobs because of his iconic association with Apple.

Who Can Inherit Fame?
[Merchandising rights to the images of Bela Lugosi and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy]

I keep hearing the phrase "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" associated with things like wind turbines and nuclear power. Maybe somebody should do a little research and discover that 1% of the electricity in the U.S. is generated using oil as fuel. Unless you're planning on cars, trucks, buses and trains powered by wind turbines or nuclear reactors, how exactly does this "reduce our dependence on foreign oil"?

I think the idea is that people would buy electric cars and hence start putting far more load on the electricity grid instead of going to filling stations. It is a long way off but the idea of running your personal transportation device on stuff that explodes to provide momentum is doomed in the long run. Electric is the way to go as we already have a way of distributing it around the country so you can save on infrastructure:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1705518,00.html

Israel is far more serious about moving away from oil as the population has a better understanding of where the money they spend on oil goes: Some of it is donated to the likes of Hamas and it comes flying back to the Israel in the form of a rocket. Every one knows that some Saudi money is diverted to terrorism:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/031215/15terror.htm

Most of the 9-11 bombers were from Saudi or had saudi ties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks

This is the best reason for getting away from our dependence on middle east oil, most of the countries that have large amounts of oil are distinctly Muslim and while their leaders might be friendly with our leaders the people in those countries often have more sympathy with the terrorists than the do with us decadent westerners.

Don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but just in case:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/10/13/father-son-team-launch-balloon-with-hd-camera-iphone-into-space/

Unless you're talking about antidepressants.

"Most recently, a headline-grabbing Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) paper published in January found that antidepressants worked no better than a placebo in patients with mild or moderate depression (but the study did conclude that medication helped the most persistent and severe cases)."

Wikileaks is guilty only of receiving the data and publishing the parts they feel are morally justifiable to make public, not stealing, and not espionage, and certainly not treason (they aren't even eligible to commit that one).

Well, thats kind of the problem.

Taliban Study WikiLeaks to Hunt Informants
WikiLeaks Comes Under Fire from Rights Groups
Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review

This could turn into a feedback loop. If enough informants against the Taliban and Al Qaeda are killed as a result of Wikileaks, it could have consequences in the United States or Europe.

The diplomatic consequences have already been considerable.

What motivates Assange?

In December, 2006, WikiLeaks posted its first document: a “secret decision,” signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali rebel leader for the Islamic Courts Union, that had been culled from traffic passing through the Tor network to China. The document called for the execution of government officials by hiring “criminals” as hit men. Assange and the others were uncertain of its authenticity, but they thought that readers, using Wikipedia-like features of the site, would help analyze it. They published the decision with a lengthy commentary, which asked, “Is it a bold manifesto by a flamboyant Islamic militant with links to Bin Laden? Or is it a clever smear by US intelligence, designed to discredit the Union, fracture Somali alliances and manipulate China?”

The document’s authenticity was never determined, and news about WikiLeaks quickly superseded the leak itself. Several weeks later, Assange flew to Kenya for the World Social Forum, an anti-capitalist convention, to make a presentation about the Web site. “ No Secrets

Assange the Anti-American

Manning supposedly had some encrypted chats with Assange prior to releasing any material. It will be very interesting if those come to light.

One possibility is that Wikileaks and Assange are losing public support.

They are.

WikiLeaks: A Document Dump Too Far

WikiLeaks Comes Under Fire from Rights Groups

Reports that Wikileaks released the names of Afghan informants hasn't helped

Sad, but true. Hopefully none are killed. We need as many informants against the Taliban as we can, both to protect the Afghans, and to protect the US from more terrorist attacks.

WikiLeaks Reportedly Outs 100s of Afghan Informants

profiles of Assange (such as the one in the New York Times) don't paint him in a very flattering light.

They aren't the only ones.

10 days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange

The wildly promiscuous lifestyle of WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange: Look away now Jemima as our report reveals the sordid truth

Exposed: The 'creepy, lovesick' emails WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange sent to 19-year-old girl student

No one gains from this 'rape-rape' defence of Julian Assange

My understanding from the Times article is that even within Wikileaks, there is a lot of controversy about how Assange has acted.

Is WikiLeaks Reneging on its Financial Promise to Bradley Manning?

Former WikiLeaks Activists to Launch New Whistleblowing Site

‘Chaos’ at WikiLeaks Follows Assange Arrest

Although not internal to Wikileaks, thought provoking.

Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review

Meh, after reading http://time.com/poy 's spread on Zuckerberg, (hey, I was on a 5-hour flight, and had first read all the runner-ups and practically all of the other articles), I actually don't feel so badly about him anymore. I still don't really care for FB, but people use it, so that's why I maintain a presence there. But the TIME article helped vet out some of the theory and philosophy behind it, which was more useful than most of the third-hand descriptions I get about Zuckerberg from the various protests and even "The Social Network" movie I didn't bother seeing.

Nearly 1 in 3 women in the military say they were victims of rape or sexual assault while serving http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0m9171,1968110,00.html -- "twice the rate in the civilian population".

Once a woman is in the Army, she IS one of our forces and those statistics say that putting her in the Army *does* doom her. Or did you think the military commanders who spoke out against it were thinking only of the forces they already had?