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IIRC, they did a bone marrow transplant between someone with AIDS/HIV and another person who had a natural immunity to the disease.
The HIV positive patient was 'cured'
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1858843,00.html

Is this a viable cure for HIV? Not by a long shot. Even [Berlin-based hematologist Gero] Huetter says bone-marrow transplants, which kill about a third of patients, are so dangerous that "they can't be justified ethically" in anything other than desperate situations like late-stage leukemia.
...
But there might be a glimmer of hope in the case. If the transplant does prove to have been a success and can be replicated, researchers say gene therapists might one day be able to re-engineer a patient's cells to change their bone marrow the same way a transplant does, except without the dangers.

You realize that saying, "Please don't block our ads or people will be out of work." is a Think of the Children argument. "Please buy our heroin or our poor farmers will starve." "Please buy our 1975 Trabant or the Fatherland will surely perish!" See 50 Worst Cars of All Time: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658533_1658030,00.html. Please see the Abbott and Costello mustard routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q24mfUn9HFU

Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open--that is to say, nonproprietary--standards, none of which were set by Microsoft.

Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft's long arms around it.

I remember reading Gates' book "The Road Ahead" something like seven years ago and being surprised at how wrong he was in his estimation of the impact that mainstream Internet connectivity would have. I wish I could get the exact quotes, but there were a few telling sentences where he comes off pretty clearly as dismissive that net connectivity would become anything more than a cute PC accessory. I'm still not sure if that was his genuine line of reasoning, or of it was just wishful thinking, but I think the point was clear that Microsoft was stacking their chips against net-based services, insisting that locally-run software was going to be the way of the future.

Now they are investing in what Google has already been doing and doing well for years, following their trend of copying other business' models instead of innovating on their own. I'm sure this will work out well for them.

The Magazine

Markets aren't rational?
People (especially people that think of themselves as being "smart") are prone to self-delusion?

But seriously, why would anyone hold on to the myth that markets are rational given the experimental findings of behavioral economics.

Oh that's right, it's the new religion to to keep the plebes down. Now excuse me, I have to cash my 30 million dollar bonus check for going bankrupt, because it's so hard to find such well qualified experts brain trust like me.

Indeed. Just about all the music we hear today is run through something called "Auto-Tune", a piece of software which corrects any wrong notes sung by the performer, matching them automatically to the song's score.

There's a number of videos on YouTube showing before & after takes of incredibly bad singing turned into mainstream pop music (with perfect pitch).

It can be obvious, like Cher, or it can be nigh-undetectable, but either way it means the human 'soul' has left music long ago. If you can work the software, you can sound every bit as good as the best musicians of the past without a day of musical training.

Apparently, the computer can even compose your score, now, too.

Is that really such a huge loss, though? Take Auto-Tune for instance: the good performers will still put in the effort, so that they do not become reliant upon cheap software tricks - and, conversely, those people who might otherwise never have been able to perform music (because they were born partially deaf, for instance) now have the same opportunities as the rest of us. The field moves beyond mastering pitch and explores the deeper mysteries of music. Progress happens.

Same, too, with the composition of music. Software like this will help us to understand what it is that makes music 'tick', and lead to better music in the future. Maybe some asshole with a 'music interpretation' degree will lose his job because, as it turns out, his core thesis of "Mozart was magic" turns out to be false, and it turns out anyone can be Mozart if they, too, understand what he learned through long experience. So what, though? That guy should be happy that, if he puts in the effort, science has given him the opportunity to finally contribute to the field he's been leeching off for so long. Composing becomes easier to learn and teach. The field moves on. Progress happens.

Simple as that.

If a ball falls down it is because of gravity.
If it bounces back up it is because of gravity.

Actually, a ball bouncing up are due to Newton's laws of motion. When the ball hits the ground, the ground pushes back. See Law 3:
Whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force F on the first body. F and F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
And since the ground is pushing back, Law 2 applies:
A body experiencing a force F experiences an acceleration a related to F by F = ma, where m is the mass of the body. Alternatively, force is equal to the time derivative of momentum.
So, you see, gravity has nothing to do with it.

If comet flies into the solar system it is because of gravity.
If the comet slingshots around jupiter and permanently exits the solar system it is because of gravity.

This would deal more with Kepler's laws of planetary motion, angular momentum as well as gravity. See, if it were just gravity, the comet would simply fall into whatever body applying a gravitational force to the object. But there is much more to consider than just gravity.
As for it slingshotting out... well, that seems happen when momentum is greater than the force gravity exerts on the object. In other words, if the comet slingshots around jupiter and permanently exits the solar system it is NOT because of gravity, but in spite of it. ...And your last one:

If the tide rises it is because of gravity.
If the tide recedes it is because of gravity.

That's like saying, "if the day gets bright, it's because of the sun. If it gets dark, it's because of the sun." In other words... Um.... No. No one would say that. Tidal forces are due not just to gravity pulling on an object, but gravity from two different bodies pulling on an object. See, one body can not cause tidal forces. So, to say that it's caused by gravity is a gross oversimplification that no one would make. They may say that tides rise because of gravity, but they would say that they fall because of gravity. They may say something like "tides fall because of LACK of gravity" but that's not true either. It would be that tides fall because of a lack of gravity from the object that caused them to rise.

But to relate this back to AGW, see, we are hearing the very contradictory argument that you are saying is bunk. I've heard scientist say that AGW will lead to warmer temps. I've also heard that AGW will lead to colder temps. In the summer, we hear a from the first group. In the winter, we hear from the second. Hell, right now, I've heard both camps at the same time. I've heard that the lack of snow in Vancouver is due to AGW while also hearing that the snow in 49/50 US states is also due to AGW. I've heard that the increase in snow is because warmer air holds more moisture, resulting in more snow. (However, it appears that it is actually colder than it was this time last year, debunking that claim).
Here is a Vancouver's no snow is caused by AGW article:
http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m2d12-Global-warming-comes-up-again-due-to-unusually-warm-Vancouver-Olympics

Here is an article that claims that the recent snow storms are because of AGW:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1962294,00.html

So, there you have it! Two serious articles claiming that AGW both causes more snow and less snow... IN THE SAME YEAR! See, it's not us AGW deniers making shit up.

Let me give you an example of another ridiculous argument I've actually read:
1) Global warming causes oceanic conveyor to stop because it melts the ice caps
2) This causes the area near the poles to become mu

Exercise has a lot to do with keeping fit, but not so much with maintaining weight. How much you eat has a LOT more to do with that.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/exercise-still-doesnt-work
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-doesnt-exercise-lead-to-weight-loss/

And there's plenty more you can find with a quick google search, as I just did.

Foreign executives being arrested for political reasons?

And detained without charge for over 6 months. It was just last week, charges were layed.

The gutless Australian goverment did little for fear of upsetting a huge trading partner.

good chance they would detain and otherwise mistreat Google employees if Google were to start openly claiming

Foreign executives being arrested for political reasons? Sounds like they should be clamoring over each other on the roof to get a spot on the last chopper out of Beijing. Not a slow scaling-back of operations.

Or this one from about the same time. They were trying to develop a consumer version. When they gave up, it was due to a lack of interest (the heyday of SUVs!), not technical problems, from everything I've read.

Hah, IANAL either, but it real hard to libel a public figure in the United States.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,945563,00.html

Study: Doodling Helps You Pay Attention http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1882127,00.html

I prefer to mix doodling & note taking. Much harder to doodle with a laptop.

- Jasen.

My favorite is, "We have no idea what the side effect is of this vaccine in 10 or 20yrs."

What do they say when you point out the side effects of the diseases are well known, will happen a lot sooner than 10 years, and include encephalitis, retardation, blindness, and death?

The trick is finding the truth in the whirlwind of lies and deceit.

The truth appears to be that the peer-reviewed study that is the basis for arguments that autism is linked to vaccines... isn't valid. Against that are numerous studies which did not find a link, and clear and obvious health problems with not vaccinating children. Specifically brain damage, blindness, death.

So basically the "don't vaccinate your kid" side now only has old playboy models and paranoia going for it. Forgive me if I think the "whirlwind of lies and deceit" is actually all on one side of the "debate."

The trick is finding the truth in the whirlwind of lies and deceit.

The truth appears to be that the peer-reviewed study that is the basis for arguments that autism is linked to vaccines... isn't valid. Against that are numerous studies which did not find a link, and clear and obvious health problems with not vaccinating children. Specifically brain damage, blindness, death.

So basically the "don't vaccinate your kid" side now only has old playboy models and paranoia going for it. Forgive me if I think the "whirlwind of lies and deceit" is actually all on one side of the "debate."

While the Pentagon said it had received no prior notice of China's missile test, it added that U.S. space-based sensors "detected two geographically separated missile-launch events" leading to an "exo-atmospheric collision."

It's completely fair and moral for a country's citizens to have their own culture, government, and economy.

There are folks in Vermont who are working hard and fighting for it, which I read about this morning: they're attempting to secede from the USA. I fear for their lives.

Netscape used to offer a "bug Bounty" for issues reported -- xref article "BUGS BOUNTY By Philip Elmer-DeWitt Monday, Oct. 23, 1995 " http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983604,00.html "[...]Netscape last week began offering cash awards to anybody who can find a security hole in the beta, or test, version of its latest browser software. Under the so-called Bugs Bounty program, the first person to identify a "significant" security flaw wins $1,000. Lesser bugs earn smaller prizes ranging from $40 sweatshirts to $12 coffee mugs. The idea, explains a company spokesperson, is to get hackers to hack when it will do the Netscape some good--before the product is officially released.[...]" So - given inflation, does this mean that the value of a bug has gone down over time - or was Netscape just paying way above market value? :D

Take the money and invest it or save it. One day you will need it and the market for this shit isn't liquid - meaning, you won't be able to sell the thing to another sucker when you really have to.

People are so stupid with their money. No wonder we have these economic problems.

The collector may not get rich.

But he can have a lot of fun along the way - and he just might take a lot of folks with him. Sci-Fi's No. 1 Fanboy, Forrest J Ackerman, Dies at 92

Here is some information on the recent incredible rise in filibusters:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/11/25/the-staggering-rise-of-the-filibuster.html

http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/01/25/how-the-filibuster-changed-and-brought-tyranny-of-the-minority.html

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1933802,00.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016901.php

This is NOT business as usual. This is obstructionism, plain and simple. The Democrats are more than willing to debate, but what the Republicans are doing is not debate. The voters are desperate for change, though, and the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot.

Thankfully, Obama is spearheading a reform of the filibuster. Hopefully, the Democrats will force the Republicans to play their filibuster card over and over again, to demonstrate to the people that the Republican party is the party of NO. That is the answer the Republicans are providing to this country's problems: don't let the Democrats 'score points' by doing anything useful.

However, the Republicans will find that people do not look kindly on people who, though they have no answers or plans of their own, nonetheless obstruct anyone who does.

For movies there is Nina Paley and her movie Sita Sings the Blues , but there are plenty of others, including Michael Moore.

For books, lots of authors and even publishers are making more money by having their books freely available using smart economics.

The music industry has even more examples of unknown indie artists as well as well known artists and everything in between making money by using smart economics. Movies and books are going to go through the same transition. They can choose to do so kicking and screaming and make it painful for everyone, or they can try to actually give their customers what they want and be successful. It's very simple, you give people a reason to give you money, and they will do it. The happier you can make them, the more they'll give you.

It amazes me that people can freak out about free music, movies, books, etc., yet these same people don't see anything wrong with Krispy Kreme handing out free doughnuts to customers standing in line, or any of the other freebies people get. No one in their right mind thinks a basketball team is going to go bankrupt because they give out free t-shirts during the half-time show, yet many of the same people think that 50 cent is crazy to be happy that his music is freely available, yet he's making money and thinks it's just part of the marketing.

If you think that's bad, the German government really took the cake on that one. There's appearantly two different vaccines, one, cheaper, with some not so pleasant side effects and questionable vaccination ability and one that works better but is also more expensive.

They ordered the expensive variant only for government and some "key personell", while the rest of the population was supposed to get the cheap shot.

Here is the story for the interested. Say about it what you want, but at least these politicians are honest: They show you that they don't give a shit about you and only care about themselves.

Reading some of the news coming out about hackers in China, I get the impression that there might be unofficial sanctioning or sponsorship by the government of some Chinese hacker groups.

I would tend to agree, except I would replace "unofficial" with "actively". These types of large-scale, sophisticated, coordinated attacks from China have been going on for at least 7 years (that's a fairly long article, but it's a good one).

If you are a company like Google, you don't openly call the government for hacking and spying.

In the blog post (TFA), the Chief Legal Officer who wrote it seemed like he made a point not to directly accuse the government of anything. It's a lot easier to give a bunch of evidence and let people draw conclusions themselves than directly accuse the government and have them deny it.

e.g.:

...
we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China ...
we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists ...
we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties ...

Some of the references they link to directly accuse the PRC of participating in this type of behavior in the past, so one would assume that Google is under the impression that the current round of attacks is again led by the PRC.

Lastly, Google's only "retribution" at this point is the censorship issue:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn

That's significant to me because the decision to censor results by Google was made solely for the benefit of the government, and no one else. If Google now wants to withdraw their censorship, then they are targeting the government with that move, and no one else. A rogue hacker group does not get punished if Google removes censorship, the government does. Google is clearly going after the government, without ever stating that outright.

There are various situation in which we give up certain privacy, e.g., giving our Social Security number to get a credit card

Actually that's a textbook example of what not to do with your SSN.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211586,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1690827,00.html

And I would rather not be scanned and board a plane that could have a bomber on it who may have been prevented from getting on board if we had all been digitally stripsearched. The chances are so slim I'm more than willing to take the risk - my cars are far more likely to kill me and they're not uber-safe modern tanks either. Besides, terrorists are pretty much all trying to attack the US, and any terrorist who takes more than 0.5 seconds to pull off his attack over the US is going to be instantly beaten to shit by a plane-load of passengers. See: every attempted attack on an aircraft to or from the US since 9/11.

BTW, you know you car could be safer if you wore a six-point harness and a helmet with a HANS device and your car had 3" steel plating over it and a racing-style fuel cell. Your current car's practically a deathtrap compared to that. Of course it would cost more, carry less and get about 2MPG, but you can't put a price on safety right? How good is good enough?

There are various situation in which we give up certain privacy, e.g., giving our Social Security number to get a credit card

Actually that's a textbook example of what not to do with your SSN.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211586,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1690827,00.html

And I would rather not be scanned and board a plane that could have a bomber on it who may have been prevented from getting on board if we had all been digitally stripsearched. The chances are so slim I'm more than willing to take the risk - my cars are far more likely to kill me and they're not uber-safe modern tanks either. Besides, terrorists are pretty much all trying to attack the US, and any terrorist who takes more than 0.5 seconds to pull off his attack over the US is going to be instantly beaten to shit by a plane-load of passengers. See: every attempted attack on an aircraft to or from the US since 9/11.

BTW, you know you car could be safer if you wore a six-point harness and a helmet with a HANS device and your car had 3" steel plating over it and a racing-style fuel cell. Your current car's practically a deathtrap compared to that. Of course it would cost more, carry less and get about 2MPG, but you can't put a price on safety right? How good is good enough?

Look, I think this stuff is kinda interesting, but you need to be very careful with information visualisation of geographical regions. And some of this information is a little misleading.

Some neighbourhoods are smaller in size (area) than others. If a neighbourhood is larger in area than another, a dominant colour (such as red!) will be highly dominant - not just because the movie is more popular - but because there is more red and the area is larger. This is a psychological thing; eyes are drawn to larger objects (yeah baby!) and we see fewer shades of red to blue (a physics thing).

Are the number of people in a neighbourhood more than another neighbourhood? How the borders are defined really needs to be stated. Using point sources of density would have been more appropriate (eg http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/

I could be full of shit as I've had a few white wines and we had a lovely 30 degree day out in the sun after a few weeks of cloudy rain.

They found Mary's grave, and Dan Brown was right, she had a kid by Jesus, only they'd stayed in Jerusalem and both Jesus and their son are buried with her. The son was named Judas.

http://mideast.blogs.time.com/2007/02/23/jesus_tales_from_the_crypt/

Sorry but mods are wrong.

Arrested yes, charged no... PAID well yes.. matter of fact he was $50,000 thank you very much.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1923125,00.html

I've heard climatologists say that we may have reached a tipping point, meaning that no matter how much we reduce carbon dioxide emissions we could be locked into several degrees Celsius temperature rise and several meters of sea level rise. That will be costly, but it's not going to destroy humanity, or even human civilization.

If you believe that there is no such thing as human nature, you have quite a bit to learn. From our innate ability to form languages, to our universal preference to find symmetric facial features beautiful, there are countless examples of attributes that apply to all of us. Money may be a human invention, but even monkeys will trade food for sex. We cannot choose to be other than what our nature makes us, any more than we can choose to have 8 limbs.

Roscosmos, Russia's Federal Space Agency, will start working on a project to save planet Earth from a possible collision with Asteroid Apophis

This would be the same people who just tried to engineer a winter without snow in Russia, with mixed results.

Now they're going to try diverting an asteroid.

What could go wrong?

I always thought we could just consolidate all US military bases into one, long skinny one along the border. :-)

The whole controversy is weird. It's like we're not allowed to have a border. You'd think it was Kashmir, but even India and Pakistan mange to have a little fun with it.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1689795,00.html

I can't think of any other border where people act like it's an offense against the universe. Meanwhile, you see all sorts of anti-illegal immigration laws being tightened around the world and you don't hear boo about them.

There may be a downside to all this though, from what I understand of digestion and our immune system, it seems to me that when you lose X amount of microbes then you will end up with more of a different microbe that may breed much faster due to lack of competition.

There was recently a story about how people with a high-fat, high-sugar diet have different microbes in their stomach that allow them to absorb a higher % of calories from those fat/sugar than a more moderate diet. And that it could change as fast as 16 hours - so if you decide to go for yogurt and vegetables one entire day, and then eat a high fat carbohydrate laden meal the next, your body wouldn't absorb nearly as many calaries as it would have if you ate the previous day. Which may hold the key for some weight loss.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1938023,00.html

"Two people died in a nitrogen asphyxiation accident at NASA some time ago."

Yes. It was an accident before the first shuttle launch. According to the wikipedia page on nitrogen asphyxiation, accidental nitrogen asphyxiation apparently accounts for about 8 deaths per year in the U.S.

It might be simpler to think of this as the equivalent of drowning, but with a dangerous twist -- everybody knows that you'll ordinarily die within a few minutes if you are immersed in water, but the advantage there is the reaction of your body the moment it starts happening: you *know* you are drowning, and your body naturally reacts vigorously. It isn't so clear for many non-breathable gasses, where you may get no distinct clue that there is a problem until you are about to faint, and some people apparently experience no warnings at all due to oxygen hypoxia.

Read about what happened in Portugal.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

And it turns out I was right.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1947868,00.html

Astronomers were further able to estimate the planet's makeup by calculating its size, based on the amount of light that GJ 1214b blocked when it passed in front of its star, as well as its mass (6.6 times Earth's mass), based on the wobble in the wavelength of starlight caused by GJ 1214b's gravitational pull on its star. That analysis revealed the new planet's density: about one-third of Earth's.

Of course the crushing atmospheric pressure would remain an issue...

Boy, that Chavez really must hate democracy. Imagine getting elected by 70 percent of the population in a ballot declared 'Free And Fair' by international observers, the nerve of that guy!

In fact, Chavez loves democracy, because when it doesn't work for him he can just twist it to his wishes.

See, at the beginning he was so popular that it was easy to win elections cleanly. But now that he lost support he rigs elections, politically persecutes his opponents, or simply disregards its outcome.

In Venezuela you can't get a job in any of the state controlled companies if you have voted against Chavez.
This is a serious problem in a country where the state controls the oil industry, electric companies, banks, telecommunications and most of the media, and where all the powers are subjugated to one man's desires. After such a precedent, how can anybody expect the people to participate freely in any elections against Chavez?

Now he's promoting Free And Fair elections in other countries too? Well, we just can't have that!

I don't think that sneaking suitcases with millions of dolars of Venezuelan money to his favorite candidates in Latin America counts as promoting Free And Fair elections.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1654511,00.html
http://english.eluniversal.com/2009/11/26/en_pol_art_venezuelan-businessm_26A3120691.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maletinazo

I take it you approve of the military coup in Honduras then, with its sham elections conducted in complete violation of the country's constitution? Maybe we should just let the Pentagon decide who gets to be president of the Latin American countries again, like in Reagan's reign of error. Those people can't be trusted to elect someone who supports the interests of the multi-national mega-corps over their own citizenry like the Americans do.

I never even mentioned Honduras, in fact, I don't approve the coup, so try to keep your current job, cause mind reading is not your thing.

I don't think the US should do anything outside their borders. We are fine as we are right now.

I assume you are not from Cuba or Venezuela, because they really are not fine right now.
I'm sure if there was any way to conduct a clean poll, completely secret and without any fears of repercussion, the majority in these countries would favor a government change.
Maybe not in the case of Cuba, because they have been brainwashed for so many years now. Sadly, this will also be the case in Venezuela if nobody does anything in the next few years.

Saying that Chavez can influence Argentina is an insult to Argentina as a regional power.

Chavez financed Argentina's president campaign using Venezuela's state owned oil company money:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1654511,00.html
http://english.eluniversal.com/2009/11/26/en_pol_art_venezuelan-businessm_26A3120691.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maletinazo

About Honduras... I don't know what you think about Honduras, but Chavez is very much in line about that issue with Brazil and the rest of Mercosur.

What I think about Honduras is that the supreme court of Honduras wanted to spare the country the dark reality that the people of Cuba and Venezuela are living right now. I'm not justifying their actions, I don't think the end justifies the means, but at least they did it for the right reasons.

So some of the comments on the boingboing post, e.g., this one, have had their vowels removed and a "Moderator note" added, with a link to an article about "disemvoweling". The article says, "comments on blogs and in other online forums can be incredibly annoying, not to mention hate-filled and obscene. How can moderators walk the line between unregulated anarchy and oppressive censorship? Some have begun discouraging problem commenters by simply removing the vowels from their posts, a process known as disemvoweling. The offending message is rendered less obnoxious, but it's still possible for other readers to decipher it — f thy rlly wnt t."

So let's try to decipher one of the disemvoweled comments:

It's my observation that most of these cases begin with a person who becomes belligerent when asked to do something he doesn't want to do (get out of the car, step away from the car, etc.) These officers may very well have overstepped their bounds, but I doubt very seriously that Watts is completely innocent.

I suspect the crux of the matter lies (no pun intended) in this sentence: "When Peter got out of the car and questioned the nature of the search, the gang of border guards subjected him to a beating..."

So he innocently said, "Why are you searching my car?" Then they commenced to beating him. Sure.

So that is what the moderators consider "offensive" enough that they think it should be censored? I looked a few more of the censored comments, and they were of a similar vein--suggesting that we don't know the whole story, but doing so politely. Sure is nice to see dissenting viewpoints being suppressed!

(Reposting this where appropriate)

People seem to forget the context of that "undermining the peer review process" took place.

They certainly tried to impact the peer review process. The paper in question resulted in half of the editorial board of the journal in question resigning over the peer review process that took place.

http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm

The paper in question turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute.

As for Mann and Jones' apparent effort to punish the journal Climate Research, the paper that ignited his indignation is a 2003 study that turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute. Eventually half the editorial board of the journal quit in protest. And even if CRU's climate data turns out to have some holes, the group is only one of four major agencies, including NASA, that contribute temperature data to major climate models — and CRU's data largely matches up with the others'.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1946082-2,00.html#ixzz0ZJERceR1

People seem to forget the context of that "undermining the peer review process" took place.

They certainly tried to impact the peer review process. The paper in question resulted in half of the editorial board of the journal in question resigning over the peer review process that took place.

http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm

The paper in question turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute.

As for Mann and Jones' apparent effort to punish the journal Climate Research, the paper that ignited his indignation is a 2003 study that turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute. Eventually half the editorial board of the journal quit in protest. And even if CRU's climate data turns out to have some holes, the group is only one of four major agencies, including NASA, that contribute temperature data to major climate models — and CRU's data largely matches up with the others'.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1946082-2,00.html#ixzz0ZJERceR1

Just ranked dead last in customer satisfaction by Consumer Reports, AT&T also illegally spied on American citizens and then successfully lobbied to get themselves retroactive immunity. Not only will they not be punished, but no one will ever find out the extent of their crimes. Technicians have stumbled into secret rooms used to "shunt its customers' Internet traffic to data-mining equipment" for the NSA.

And don't believe bloated Luke Wilson--many iPhone users I know tell me they have shitty GSM coverage.

Meanwhile, Time Magazine just called the Verizon Droid phone the top gadget of the year and Droid has been rooted, so you know it won't be long before a custom ROM comes our way.

And now AT&T wants to charge for usage? Well, their exclusive contract is almost over with Apple. And if you ask me, not a moment too soon.

It also almost exactly coorilates [sic] with education completed [...]

For an alternate viewpoint, check out "Are We Failing Our Geniuses?" Relevant citation:

[...] gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids--about 5% of both populations leave school early. Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range.

I only know of it off the top of my head because I fall into the category of [test in the gifted range] + [left school early]. For the record, I'm more financially successful than most of my friends of comparable intelligence, including the ones who went on to 4 or 6 years at University.

Except that much of the "glaciation loss" is probably due to lowered precipitation instead of increased temperatures.

That doesn't explain why the Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic ice shelf are melting. As for your claim of predictions that have already been falsified, please provide a source.

Quite Anecdotal to me. The Antarctic has 90% of the earth's ice anyway. The eastern half of Antarctica is 4x the size of the western half, and is cooling/growing.

You may want to update the facts that you were trained to regurgitate.

Normal cycles, should not be made into an international crisis.

I've never studied climatology or even oceanography but if you're going to make such statements, I hope you have the credentials to back it up and tell me without any doubt what a 'normal cycle' constitutes.

... require extraordinary evidence. The global-warmists, or climate change proponents need to pony-up some real evidence for all the wild, alarmist claims about doomsday they've been making for the past 20 years... not just anecdotal bunk like misc. ice sleets falling off Antarctica, etc.

I agree with your subject statement but I disagree with that very last part. Apparently the West antarctic ice sheet was the part with "ice sheets falling off it" while the East side remained relatively stable. That's recently changed. I don't think this proves anything but I admit it's alarming to me that we might just be sitting on our hands while Antarctica breaks apart. Hell, we're already opening up shipping lanes through the north pole. It's true, I am just another internet moron but I would really prefer we don't have to find out what results from Antarctica breaking apart or melting. At this point, I'm open to suggestions and theories ... although for any of them to be unquestionably valid, I refer to your first statement.

No one seemed to refute our decision to stop using CFCs. We all seemed to agree as a planet that they were bad. And so on and so forth you can look back historically at man negatively altering his environment to varying degrees. I think more than sufficient evidence has been provided to prove that we need to get a better grip on what emissions and carbon proliferation mean for the Earth and -- most importantly -- us. I'm a small government kind of guy but if that means more government funding being dumped into unbiased investigations than so be it. I don't want Earth to end up like Easter Island.

How is he going to get a fair trial,he will not have a jury of his peers, they all live in the UK. Are we going to extradite them as well?

No we are not:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. The Sixth Amendment

Juries must be drawn from a panel that is representative of the citizens of the district in which the crime was committed.

Individual jurors must be free of bias.

The jury of your peers isn't a mirror reflection of your own self-image.

It's a richer sampling of the community in which you have been charged with a crime.

To a geek, this passage should sound familiar:

When you're in the government's sights, your best friend would seem to be a jury, that lovable amalgam of ordinary Americans with a simple, if sometimes mistaken, sense of justice. Did nothing wrong? Don't worry, jurors will sniff out the truth. Cheated a bit? No problem -- prosecutors would rather cut a deal than risk their case before a fickle jury. And if you do end up at trial, there's a good chance that jurors will be so sympathetic, confused or hostile to the government that they'll disagree on a verdict or let you off the hook.

It almost never works out that way.

Why to Fear a Jury of Your Peers

1. Lebanon is a RINO - Republic in Name Only. Consider the huge population of disefrachized Palestinians who have been living in camps for the past fifty years. Lebanon-born "Palestinians" have it as bad as they would have it in Israel. Jordan is also guilty of this.
2/ Why is Hezbollah a "terrorist" organization? They fight in wars to keep their land free of occupation. Wars result in civilian deaths. Is this news? IDF kills civilians. Hezbollah kills civilians. Hamas kills civilians. Islamic Jihad kills civilians. US Army kills civilians. Either one is terrorist or they all are; as for Hezbollah, at least they fight on their own land and not the land of others.
3. Whatever your opinion, Hezbollah has stated that while it receives funding and support from Iran, they are not a puppet and are Lebanese fighting for Lebanese sovereignty. Consider that in the last war Christians and Druze both fought in Hezbollah and supported Hezbollah by overwhelming majority. In fact, Hezbollah offers a non-confessional alternative to the country's entrenched political system which is based entirely and sickeningly on religion

Oh boy! Nice cheap shot there! So glad we've all moved past that. Now lets talk about the time that GWB was so classy that he flipped the bird to that camera. How about when he oh-so-slickly commented about a certain member of the press, Adam Clymer, not minding that the microphone was still on? Or when Chanukah cards were sent with Christmas trees on them? I could go on if you'd like.