Slashdot Mirror

The real trick is to know "the ice age" is on the way.
Tell the public its 'global warming' and get chemtrail funding.
World cools and you saved everybody.
Chemtrail might let you do some population reduction with different chemical mixes around the world too.
It win win win for our David Rockefeller Jr's, Warren Buffett's, George Soros's, Ted Turner's and Oprah Winfrey's.
"Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation"
"population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

+5 for a straw man argument? It's not about replacing face to face training, it's a step before that. I would imagine it adds to what's currently practiced on a faceless dummy, or just reading a textbook, or being lectured at.

If you want to learn to be a doctor - go to a real medical school

What - like Imperial College, London? You talk as if people are replacing medical schools with schools solely existing in Second Life, which would be absurd.

Slashdot is so predictable. Anything involving certain topics such as Second Life, Wikipedia or Facebook automatically draws criticism, independent of actual facts or evidence. Yes, obviously we should trust a random guy on Slashdot over medical experts in one of the top Universities, perhaps in the world. If the same new story reported a University using a virtual simulator that didn't involve Second Life, I bet you wouldn't have made these comments.

Yes, the intelligence Bush got was faulty about the WMDs in Iraq

There's practically incontrivertible documentary evidence that Bush knew WMDs would not be found and wanted to provoke the war on any grounds he could. (In case you want to talk about political bias and slanting in my sources there, The Guardian is a left-leaning paper, but The Times is a right-leaning paper owned by News Corporation, the same people who own Fox News.)

Really, it started with Clinton and Clinton's desire to have every American own a home. Sure, its a noble idea but it went way to far. For example, a person who would ordinarily qualify for a $150,000 loan would be bumped up to getting a $1750,000 loan... So then eventually they couldn't pay it back because they borrowed more than they could afford.

It's amazing how Clinton even managed to cause excessive lending and a property price crash in the UK, where he had no legislative power at all.

Or perhaps these have nothing to do with governments and everything to do with banks who were too greedy and got their hands burned when the inevitable property price slide (which should have come as no surprise, as financial experts have been predicting it since about 2005) started to happen. Here's news for you: an extra 15% on top of people's loans makes little difference when prices fall by over 30%. Most people who bought close to the top were still in serious financial trouble because of it. And there was no obligation on the banks to take that funding -- if they believed the customer wouldn't be able to repay, they were obligated under various codes of practice (let alone plain and simple commercial sense) not to offer the loan.

The banks thought they could make loans that they knew had a good chance of never being repaid, bundle them up into financial instruments and sell them for more than they were actually likely to get back. And for a while the scheme worked. But of course, in the end, it failed.

Obama's plan seems to be lets spend our way out of an economic collapse!

It's a good plan, to be honest. Government spending has a way of finding its way back to the government via taxes, so isn't as expensive to the economy as it at first appears. And it does get people spending money, which is the whole problem.

Mixed with tons of regulations.

Yes. The financial services industry has shown itself to be too irresponsible to be able to manage the significant chunk of the economy it currently does manage. Something needs to be done to tighten that up.

For example, I have a good friend who runs a home building business, he has been in business since 1982 and hasn't defaulted on a single loan and hasn't been late on any of his bills in the past 20 years. Today, he can't get a loan to build another house because Obama's administration says that he is "too big of a risk" WTF!?!

This has nothing to do with Obama or any regulations. This is just banks' typical overreaction to any property price crash. The same thing happened in the UK in the late 80s. Banks lose a whole string of money on property development projects that suddenly find themselves in negative equity, so decide not to invest in property development because the entire industry has a huge risk rating associated with it in any statistical analysis. Quite simple, really.

I don't know about the UK but here in the US we acknowledge that actions committed in other countries fall under the laws of that country.

Oh, really?

So the US would never extradite a British citizen from their legal residence in Australia for criminal acts that weren't performed on American soil?

And I'm guessing you believe the US would never declare that it could kidnap foreign citizens if they were unable to extradite them because the country in which they resided didn't view their actions as extraditable offences?

Unfortunately, those of us who live outside the US can't afford to be so delusional.

I think the "otherwise" is superfluous there.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4428270.ece
http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?id=1778&s=latestnews

Actually from what you presented in your post, there is no evidence whatsoever that the museum shooting was a hate crime.

I was not aware that /. posts were supposed to be self-contained proofs of truth, even when common knowledge and just a bit of google will solve the questions like those you raise. I suppose you want him to first establish that, in fact, the holocaust museum actually exists.

Of course it was a hate crime, dumbass.

Plus, it launched on July 4th, not a particularly significant day for North Koreans...

I find it interesting that I just read a British article on how the health of Kim Jong Il is failing that included the comment:

There are no obvious signs are that Kim Jong Il is in anything less than complete control but close examination of recent internal developments leads many Pyongyang-watchers fear to the conclusion that he appears to be preparing for a transition of power and leaning towards military hardliners instead of the more reform-oriented advisers he favoured earlier.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6670248.ece

But really, what do they have to lose? The US and Europe have just announced that they will voluntarily kill what remains of their economies. If those "G8" clowns actually manage to carry out their plan, the future belongs to China and India. Actually, considering how much US debt China owns, the US future already belongs to China - bought and paid for.

Because I have absolutely no point and am clearly trolling.

No. They are suspecting North Korea

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6658672.ece

Gee, these sound like the words of a reasonable man that we should all obey...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6501720.ece

And they'll store this evidence in an unlocked, canteen freezer along with the icecream if you're in North Yorkshire: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6616759.ece

Last time I checked the air france black box recorder hasn't been located let alone pulled out of the ocean. Without having the black box how can the NTSB be making speculations as to the cause of the downed flight? Others are speculating things like the Rudder had problems, Turbulence, this computer bug.

Until they know what the actual cause is they should avoid speculation because it does absolutely nothing other then fill media headlines with non-sense.

it puts this story in hilarious contrast:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3817270.ece

If you're thinking of asking your beloved to marry you, make sure that you utter your declaration of love into his or her left ear; it may increase your chances of hearing a heart-lifting "yes". New research suggests that declarations of love, jokes, or words of anger are best remembered when they are heard through the left ear, while instructions, directions and non-emotional messages have more impact on the right side.

It is all to do with how our brains process information. Although the left and right hemispheres, or sides, of the brain are similar structures, they have specialised functions. The left side, it is suggested, is more logic-based and dominant, while the right is the more imaginative side, more visual, intuitive, emotional and spatially aware. Because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, the left ear has been shown in some research to be the route to the emotional side of the brain, and the right ear to the non-emotional, logical side.

i don't know how true all of this is, but there's all sorts of anecdotes like this

for example: women usually have their left breast a little larger than their right breast. regardless of which is larger, and regardless of handedness, women, and all simians in fact, and even breastless fathers, tend to hold their babies with their right arms to their left breast. this places the babies head on the left side of the body, putting the baby closer to the left side sensory inputs, which are governed by the right side of the brain, the more emotional side, thus establishing more of an emotional bond

so i don't know about all this ear stuff, but there seems to be something, at best subtle, that is real about side preference and emotions and logic

And I would assume similar results to this would be similar to Britans, IE it doesn't cut crime wastes money, and is ripe with abuses. Just because it was used to solve a crime, doesn't mean that it will prevent a single crime, or even solve a single crime that would have gone un-solved without the cameras. In the USA, cameras have pretty much only displaced crime to a different location, similar to Britan. Since cameras obviously are meant to temper people reactions in public, it is just a giant passifier that starts to erode freedom and enjoyment for all, and Britan is a perfect example why the US should put a end to this ASAP.

It has its flaws, as any large institution does, but these are flaws that are siezed upon by opponents and used as propaganda (check out the raft of TV commercials on US TV during Clinton's attempt to get a national system running in the US - "you can't choose your own doctor! you won't have access to cutting edge treatments! the doctors don't get paid a decent wage! you'll have to wait years for lifesaving surgeries!)

And what part of that is not true in different health care systems around the world? More importantly, what part of that was not true with Hillary care that was being pushed in 1993?

Now, in a system like the UK NHS you do have long wait times for certain things if the system is busy, and if there's one major criticism to be levelled at it, it's that it is a behemoth organisation with a lot of bloat in it, soaking up money like a sponge, yet still requiring huge investment with a lot of faults. It is still recovering from 15 years of neglect from a Tory government in the 80s, but it is coming around gradually.

If by coming around you mean providing substandard treatments, denying treatment to anyone they can justify, and killing treatment for anyone who wants to pay the difference for better treatment, then I guess your right.

Even with the horror stories that the newspapers and private healthcare shills love to jump on (I waited 4 hours in the ER when I broke my leg!), these are totally atypical of the experience, and even with these issues that arise (which do need to be addressed), it is still vastly superior to the US system which exists solely to make drug companies, senators, congressmen and other select individuals very rich and has nothing to do with actual health care, other than as a side effect.

Read some of the links I provided above. This isn't a 4 hour wait for a broken leg. It's a refusal to provide effective treatment, long wait times for things like MRI scans and medically necessary procedures and so on in the various different health care systems.

And yes, it's so bad in Canada that it's economically viable for insurance companies to offer wait list insurance that will take you to another country is necessary to get treatment. Try taking a look at medical tourism where a lot of brits seem to be going to India and parts Asia if not just others parts of Europe for cheap medical coverage that they already have in the UK.

It has its flaws, as any large institution does, but these are flaws that are siezed upon by opponents and used as propaganda (check out the raft of TV commercials on US TV during Clinton's attempt to get a national system running in the US - "you can't choose your own doctor! you won't have access to cutting edge treatments! the doctors don't get paid a decent wage! you'll have to wait years for lifesaving surgeries!)

And what part of that is not true in different health care systems around the world? More importantly, what part of that was not true with Hillary care that was being pushed in 1993?

Now, in a system like the UK NHS you do have long wait times for certain things if the system is busy, and if there's one major criticism to be levelled at it, it's that it is a behemoth organisation with a lot of bloat in it, soaking up money like a sponge, yet still requiring huge investment with a lot of faults. It is still recovering from 15 years of neglect from a Tory government in the 80s, but it is coming around gradually.

If by coming around you mean providing substandard treatments, denying treatment to anyone they can justify, and killing treatment for anyone who wants to pay the difference for better treatment, then I guess your right.

Even with the horror stories that the newspapers and private healthcare shills love to jump on (I waited 4 hours in the ER when I broke my leg!), these are totally atypical of the experience, and even with these issues that arise (which do need to be addressed), it is still vastly superior to the US system which exists solely to make drug companies, senators, congressmen and other select individuals very rich and has nothing to do with actual health care, other than as a side effect.

Read some of the links I provided above. This isn't a 4 hour wait for a broken leg. It's a refusal to provide effective treatment, long wait times for things like MRI scans and medically necessary procedures and so on in the various different health care systems.

And yes, it's so bad in Canada that it's economically viable for insurance companies to offer wait list insurance that will take you to another country is necessary to get treatment. Try taking a look at medical tourism where a lot of brits seem to be going to India and parts Asia if not just others parts of Europe for cheap medical coverage that they already have in the UK.

Thanks for clarifying that. Turns out I understood a few concepts wrong. When I heard about it, it was over a cancer patient who after paying out of pocket for a drug that was supposedly 3 times as effective, was booted from the system and had to find a way to pay 11000 ero for two or three months treatment before he died.

The worse part about this is that the people paid into the system all of their lives thinking they were getting proper coverage just to find out that someone is making penny pinching decisions concerning their lives and if the patient attempts to make up the difference, they are booted from the system and in one case charged for treatment to date. Cancer survival rates in Europe itself is dismal but it seems that with universal government health care, you a die more often from cancer then a country without it.

Back in the 1970's after President Carter screwed up the US economy with his failed foreign and domestic policies, inflation was rampant and seniors who were living from Social security and pensions were running out of money. It took the US government almost 6 years and Reagan's deficit spending in order to start compensating for the amount of inflation we saw. To the date, the purchasing power of SS retirement payments aren't what they were in 1972 or 1975. Now you have the UK NHS threatening to withhold treatment from people who are over weight, who smoke, or do anything else they don't like in order to pinch more pennies. I just don't see how this is good.

At least with private coverage, I can attempt to find another provider and sue the current one if they pull that crap at the last minute.

So is there any evidence of election rigging yet?

"In 50 Iranian cities the number of votes cast in this month presidential election exceeded the number of eligible voters, the state's election watchdog admitted today. "

Take that as you will.

Its not as if BT are short of money... "BT to freeze pay of 100,000 employees" ... while "Ian Livingston, the chief executive, stands to make more than £6 million in bonuses this year if performance targets are met. This is on top of his basic salary of £850,000." ... Its a corrupt arragant UK government giving millions more to an arragant corrupt boss treating his staff with contempt. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article5890128.ece

No, its not as if BT are short of money, but why should they suffer the cost of a non profitable market sector? You can already gain access to the last mile infrastructure, but the problem is no third party has done it for these outlying areas. So why should BT?

"A third possibility might be that the last mile infrastructure is communally owned"

A fourth possibility is they pay for it out of the cost to the people who need better connections outside of the major cities.

Getting others to pay for it is nuts. Also where does this thinking end? Can the government simply choose ever more ways to tax people to give to yet more companies to partially fund what the company should be earning from the sale of its products.

Also they are selling a rubbish product. 2Mbits is obsolite now. So do they then come back in a few years time, to take even more money to pay to upgrade it to say 8Mbits ... then come back again and again taking ever more money every few years. Each time taking millions more to pay for incremental upgrades.

What is it with the current UK government. Their greedy corrupt control freak attitude seems to have no end. I love how they spin it as (implied *just*) 50p-per-month levy. That sounds so much better than £6 (about $10) extra tax per year. The UK Government gives hundreds of billions to their rich banker friends and then their friends in telecoms also want some free extra money, so the Government decides to take some more money from people. Haven't they given enough already this year?!?. £6 may not be much when you have a job, but its a lot for the elderly on a pension. Also if someone walked up to you in the street and just tried to take that amount of money off you, everyone would complain about it, yet this government can just decide to take it wherever they wish.

Its not as if BT are short of money... "BT to freeze pay of 100,000 employees" ... while "Ian Livingston, the chief executive, stands to make more than £6 million in bonuses this year if performance targets are met. This is on top of his basic salary of £850,000." ... Its a corrupt arragant UK government giving millions more to an arragant corrupt boss treating his staff with contempt. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article5890128.ece

This actually *is* a good thing - if the money inmediately is used for the intended purpose: Bringing nation-wide Broadband fast.

Unfortunately given the track record of our government, I can't say I'm hugely optimistic about that. This smells of the kind of private-public partnerships that our government is so fond of, where they can claim a low up-front cost for a scheme, but it ends up costing more than they thought, with the private companies raking it in at the tax payers expense. See for example the PFI hospital schemes that Mr Brown championed so keenly. I expect the telcos in line to be involved in this are rubbing their hands with glee.

O2 has revealed that using tethering will not be included in the normal unlimited data that comes with standard pay monthly packages. Instead, you will have to buy a bolt-on monthly package costing £14.68 per month for 3 gigabytes of data and £29.36 per month for 10 gigabytes. Additional data used through tethering will cost 19.6p per megabyte. If you want to use internet tethering overseas, you will have to pay £2.94 per megabyte in the EU and £6 per megabyte everywhere else.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/business/article6461347.ece?openComment=true (one of many)

So, it looks like life imitates art?...

No-one wants the US to be world policeman. What the world wants is for the US to be a team player. It just doesn't seem able to do that.

As the Taliban advance through Pakistan the President of the United States of America Barack Obama requested for increased presence from NATO allies. He did not get it

One only has to look at the funding the US spends on their military to see who is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting in ensuring the safety of the West. The West being Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand, Japan, Israel, South Korea and what is becoming of India. And let us not forget that it was the US playing world police who saved Europe in WWII, changed Japan from a militaristic empire to the Western democracy that they are now, brought South Korea from poverty to wealth and has been a staunch ally of the only truly western country in the middle east.

I get tired of (in particular European) psuedo-intellectuals who proclaim a general distain for US foreign policy while they sit in the luxury provided by the protection of the US defense forces. I get tired of the people who believe that the US should never intervene themselves in foreign conflict, or alternatively believe that the US should involve itself in every foreign conflict. The US won the cold war not by physically conquering the Russian state but by ensuring that enough countries around the world remained free so as to be able to destroy communism through economy instead of bombs.

Iraq is a touchstone issue that divides right and left around the world. It symbolises US interventionist tactics in a way that Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea and WWII could not. The US is no longer engaged in the cold war. It no longer has a great evil to overcome. But the US realises as a nation that if they allow small evils to grow that they become great evils. The US realises that the funding that Iraq was providing to terrorists probably would not reach US shores, but would be focussed on Lebanon and Israel and eventually would cross into European and asian countries.

The real lessons that the US learned, but that Europe seems to have missed out of WWI and WWII is that ideology is the most dangerous weapon and the most likely to bring destruction down on us all. Muslim extremism (-1 troll mod points right there) has already turned the prosperous jewel of the middle east - Lebanon - into a wartorn and unstable country who have no real, credible hope of being stable in the near future. It was being financially supported largely from oil money from Iraq and Iran, and though the two countries hated each other more than they hated the West, we were still caught in its clutches.

The US can do no right in the eyes of those who are wilfully blind. If she turns away from intervention then the world calls her crass, rude and evil for not addressing the injustice. If she goes to war against the evil and does everything in her power to minimise the loss of life on both sides she is accused of being warmongerers and extremists. The US cannot win such an argument and making it is only endangering the whole of western civilisation - the civilisation that has largely managed to feed, clothe and house its citizens and provided medical care and prosperity to the people as a whole.

Communism is largely dead now and we have the US to blame. When the US conquers the power behind religious extremism the US will again be the cause. Isn't that a country worth giving the benefit of the doubt? Isn't that a country worth cutting a little slack?

No shit. After a string of fatal crashes, the RAF won't let the SAS use its transport choppers any more.

this only child of a Taiwanese mother and an Israeli father

So, what do you call this kid? A "kink" or a "chike"?

"I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way."

Don't worry about that. As the Georgia Guidestones indicate, the world's population will soon be reduced to 500 million.

Dolphins are the only animal observed to perform nasal sex on each other... No joke.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article1288633.ece

Right to peaceful protest: There are hundreds of peaceful protests a year throughout China, ranging in size from single individuals up to groups of hundreds. While I'm no legal expert, it seems to me the relevant differences between Chinese and, say, US laws governing peaceful assembly are that the Chinese government can be a bit more nebulous in denying permits, and that protests espousing illegal activities or undermining social harmony are not tolerated. Now, one might (and probably could) argue that the government has abused loopholes in the laws. But the right to peaceful protest is enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

Right to choice of religion: Again, the right is constitutionally guaranteed. I am a practicing Catholic who attends Mass weekly here in Shanghai. If I wanted to, I could become Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or one of hundreds of persuasions of Protestant, all without government interference. I'm even free to proselytize.

Yes China has laws governing the limits and nature of permissible religious activities. So does the US. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, have found themselves in US court over refusal on religious grounds of medical treatment for their children. American religious and charitable groups are required to register with the government (currently only for tax purposes) and their right to freedom speech is curtailed: ask an American pastor or priest to endorse a particular political candidate (or even party) next election cycle, and watch how fast the government comes down on his church. How is this substantively different from China? While you or I may not like where China draws its lines, the fact remains every country draws lines.

Right to have children: Without intending to start a protracted debate over China's one-child policy, it is not illegal in China for couples to have multiple children; the national average is currently two, statistically identical to the US. It is true that the government attempts to dissuade multiple children through a(n often heavy-handed) system of positive and negative incentives, such as fines, denials of government assistance, and lump-sum retirement payments to compliant couples. It is also true that the policy has always been ripe for abuse by corrupt (an endemic problem in China) or overzealous local officials, most notoriously through incidences of forced abortion and sterilization (both of which are illegal; http://www.mahalo.com/china-forced-abortions) in rural areas. But that hardly equates to accusations of systematic government policy, and your assertion that Chinese couples have no right to have children is plain silly. In any case, the government is slated to scrap the one-child policy completely in the near future http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article3451974.ece.

Right to choice of political persuasion: depends on what you mean. Yeah, there's only one legal political party in China (and yet, CP membership, which is in decline, barely keeps pace with the US Democratic party). And yes publicly advocating contrary to the "party line" can get you in a boatload of trouble. However, I am free to personally believe any politics I wish, as long as I don't make myself a public nuisance in the process. You may not like that, and you may consider that a violation of free speech (personally, I don't and I do). I just wanted to clarify that the Chinese government doesn't give a rat's petutti what my political opinions are as long as I don't go around disturbing social harmony.

OK, flame away. But flame me for what I'm saying, not what I'm not: don't accuse me of being some pro-China apologist who thinks China has no human rights problems (even Beijing admits it does; see its 2009-2010 "National Human Rights Action Plan"). What I am arguing is th

From 2001 to 2005 he ran a $170 million hedge fund that returned an average of 15 percent a year.

Nice job Newsweek (someone take a screenshot before the article gets pulled/corrected). His hedge fund didn't even exist in 2001. And it's not a $170 million fund, it's roughly a 170 million British Pounds fund. I would add more, but his hedge fund was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange in January 2005 right after this fiasco (and it's funny, except for one cryptic note about taking counsel in their official news section, one wouldn't know that the fund got liquidated and delisted four years ago for its shenanigans).

Philanthropy? HAH! More like eugenics and population reduction.

He just met with other billionaires, like Ted Turner who has called for a 95% reduction in population and for 1 child policies (while he has 5).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

Don't forget that Gates' father was the President of Planned Parenthood which was created by Margaret Sanger who was a proud eugenicist and racist.

Praiseworthy? You been watchin' too much Oprah, Willis!

Look, his "philanthropy" is just more oligarchal, social and economic control for an elite agenda.

"They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming."

Why all the secrecy? "They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece

He's also a Bilderberger. He wants to turn mosquitoes into flying syringes - to inject folks with agents that serve the "Overpopulation" agenda.

Overpopulation? That's your children, mate. The world can sustain 10,000 ordinary mortals for the same resources that support Gate's own two children.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=7628545&page=1

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30851839/

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05202009/news/regionalnews/worlds_richest_hold_secret_meeting_170193.htm

Watch Goodman on the agenda of the BMGF
http://www.snapbuzz.com/view/video/6051/

According to some sources, dumping iron in the ocean actually stimulates plankton growth.

Not sure if iron administered in ship form will have the same effect though.

timeOday is referring to Roxana Saberi. The Iranian government rarely acts appropriately, but in her case, it was 100% in the right in sentencing her to imprisonment.

The American media understandably presented her as an innocent victim. American journalists simply did not know that Roxana Saberi had taken -- without authorization -- top-secret military documents authored and owned by the Iranian government. Those documents assessed the Iraq War.

If a dual national had done the same thing in the USA, then Washington would have sent her to prison.

In the case of Roxana Saberi, Tehran was right to act. Washington was wrong to complain.

The American people were wrong to support Saberi. She made no attempt to rescind her Iranian citizenship while simultaneously holding American citizenship. Indeed, she used her Iranian citizenship to her advantage to get a job with the Iranian government.

Americans should not waste resources -- time, money, or lives -- in supporting a person who willfully exhibits divided loyalties.

Yes, drugs consumption really needs to be addressed, but now (or, now more than ever) we need to consider that legalization of certain recreational drugs would likely just compound the problem of the chemicals tainting the oceans and local water bodies.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-02/your-sewer-drugs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4207235.ece

http://www.sfei.org/inthenews/5-11-06_sfchron_Dumpoldmeds.pdf

Yes, it could have, but it seems it wasn't so I guess the AC was right, I found this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8033388.stm

and someone else in this thread listed this:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6229529.ece

It seems pretty authentic.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6229529.ece

nature reserves mean less food production (especially, again, in Africa)

This is not only wrong, but it is way wrong. The study Economics, Objectives, and Success of Private Nature Reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America shows that private nature reserves can be profitably run. With it's nature reserves Limpopo Province is South Africa's breadbasket.

meaning less population AND THEY ALREADY HAVE OVERPOPULATION (ie food production is insufficient to keep the population alive).

The insufficiency of food in Africa has 2 causes, climate change and politics. Ethiopia has had a food crisis because of a change in their climate. Reduced rainfall has caused "ever more frequent droughts". On the other hand Zimbabwe has turned from the bread basket of Africa into a basketcase. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe ruined Zimbabwe. He kicked all the white farmers, who produced most of the food, off the farms. He then gave those farms to his cronies, who did not know how to farm. Zimbabwe went from being a big exporter of food to needing food donations from other nations. Another cause of lack of food was the economic policies that forced or encouraged small scale farmers to leave those farms. "Africa: Civil Society Blames World Bank, IMF and WTO". However with the new Green Revolution in Africa farmers are starting to grow more food.

Falcon

That makes no sense. In this case, the "messenger" was the AC. Unless you can prove that the AC is either of the people you mentioned, their comments are irrelevant.

It makes complete sense. You have someone who is parroting something someone else said in an effort to spread propaganda and gain support for something that they felt otherwise wouldn't have it. It would be different if the AC used his own words, but he didn't, he use the words of someone else changed slightly. The messenger was a tool attempting to turn people like you. Pointing that out is completely valid.

You don't need to believe everything I say, but you at least should have the knowledge about what was said. What I mean by that is, if I say X and X is a strawman or a bastardization of something else in an attempt to fool you, then you knowledge of that helps you decide whether or not my statement can persuade you to my line of thinking. It doesn't matter who tells you what's up, what's important is that you know of it.

What the hell does this have to do with the conversation at hand? You seem to be going for a "rich people all suck" thing, and if that's it, this conversation is pointless because it's not hard to find specific examples of bad behaviour. That still does not invalidate the idea that there are people who have high incomes and support paying higher tax rates.

It means that everyone else who has parroted those same words or some close incarnation to them has been a hypocrite in practice. Most of them have been so hypocritical that they have been caught cheating on their taxes. So to say "I can pay more and think I should pay more" but when presented with the opportunity, you you do the exact opposite, shows that your not sincere about your position or the statement in question. I'm sorry that you can't see that. I'm also sorry that you couldn't see my sarcasm was being hypocritical in the example of using more fossil fuels then anyone else while telling everyone else they need to cut back. It's the Do as I say, not as I do syndrome which is completely wrong.

Cite specifics or don't waste my time. I'm not here to research your arguments for you.

Lol.. Are you that out of touch with reality? I mean this is common knowledge but if you really do need a picture drawn or someone else to do the google finger for you, I guess I can. Warren Buffets financial structure is so public knowledge that investment strategies of just doing what he does has been created and Buffet has actually allowed access to his transactions to let this happen. He actually publicly admitted to this in his famous statement "I pay less taxes them my secretary" where he went on to show how he protects or shelters income from taxes "legally" and eventually to the same statement the AC posted.

Of course the article I mentioned seems to use some faulty math because a reduction in one area doesn't mean an increase in another. But hey, when you point exists in a false dichotomy I guess everything is fair game.

Again, just because *some* people abuse the system does not mean *everyone* does. I know plenty of people who have high six and even seven figure incomes and they do not have dummy holding companies.

Lol.. Those "some people" are the people I was talking about who have made that same statement. Fuck dude, you act as if I'm saying some people don't like apples so no one likes apples. No, that's not even close to what is being said. I said that the AC parroted X which was said by several Y people and those Y people did Z instead of X with Z being the exact opposite of X. Warren Buffet when asked why he didn't just donate money to

The article is from the Daily Mail, hardly a good source.

While not another paper covering the same story, this does lend some weight to it.

I'm not a British citizen, though, so I don't know which papers are fraudulent this week.

The second part is just nonsense though, the kind of tripe put out by the Daily Mail.

Presumably you are referring to this Mail article which is in fact referring to a Daily Telegraph interview with Lord Ashdown the former leader of the Liberal Democrats? This has also been reported by the Times and the Independent, making your comment somewhat disingenuous.

The Labour Party won't split into two, no one (except Daily Mail writers) is even suggesting that.

According to the Telegraph article Lord Ashdown is suggesting just that. Of course no one knows just yet how many Labour MP's have discussed this yet, but a huge election defeat may make this happen.

The UK does not have massive debt, it's actually still a lot lower than most other developed counties (including France, Germany and Japan). It's big by our standards but put in perspective it's not particularly unusual, in fact our previous low levels of government borrowing were unusual.

The Labour government has been spending like a drunken sailor in port. This has been widely reported both in the UK and abroad. While the UK may have less government debt than other nations the next UK government is going to have to cut back on spending on a large scale.

At the moment a poll of polls suggests that the Labour party would remain in power were an election called tomorrow

Please provide a link to the poll you refer to.

I'm no fan of labour, and Jacqui Smith is a particularly nasty, authoritarian powermonger, but I try not to delude myself by believing everything I read in the right wing press.

I go further and view all press reports with scepticism.

If you were the Italian government wouldn't you rather go after 4 guys running a website than the mafia?

Especially so since the Italian government now is the Mafia.

When I see the word "miraculous" used to describe any kind of progress in an experimental science, I get suspicious.

Experimental data has been fudged before. That was in South Korea, not China, but the point stands: If the results are too good to be true, they probably are.

The Chinese have a traditional knack for obsessing over miracle cures. Most long disproved remedies are still in wide use much to the detriment of their environment. It's entirely conceivable that stem cells could be treated the exact same way in China. It's also not far fetched to see alt-med proponents latching onto worthless though sciency sounding quackery (I'm not saying stem cells are quackery, I'm saying given the current research it's unlikely to be a slam-dunk 'just rub it into the sore spots' type cure)

I'll be more convinced when they start publishing research papers in proper medical journals as opposed to releasing fantastical claims of curing blindness.
A couple week ago Slashdot ran an article on how stem cells could be used to cure a certain kind of blindness. It's looking promising but still they're not touting any fantastical claims of cures. They still have to get through clinical trials.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6122757.ece
Meanwhile this article on the Chinese stem cell research has people being completely cured of their blindness. Just like with the old magic tiger bones but with a modern twist.

FTFA:

The letter contained three specific charges: that Intel offered discounts to a major European personal computer distributor to favour its products[...]

OMFGWTFBBQ, discounts? GET THE BASTARDS! I thought it was only illegal to offer the product below cost to one customer while charging others some profitable price, and then only under certain situations, but certainly IANAL and if I were I'd be one in the US of A. Here's some more:

Following an anti-trust investigation of Intel launched six years ago, the Commission sent a list of complaints to the company in July 2007, accusing it of offering "substantial" rebates to computer makers that mostly used its chips.

Again, unless they're giving these chips away, what's the problem? I'd be inclined to do the same thing, and I'd be shocked and amazed if the OEMs didn't suggest it and perhaps even push the idea themselves. (But honestly, both sides stand to profit from the arrangement. Follow the money...)

Everyone has things to hide. You don't expect your bank statements on the back of a postcard, you want them hidden in an envelope. In fact, it's the law to hide parts of your body when in public.

Oh, but it's okay if the only people looking at your private stuff are the police, who naturally you can trust 100% not to abuse that power.

Put it to the vote - Zimbabwe style of course...

And guess whose partner/husband may have a use for such a database.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/07/jacqui-smith-mps-expenses

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5999287.ece

Well, who wouldn't want to wait months for an operation, even after alleged "improvements", while risking death in a poorly-run hospital? Poorly-run because bureaucracies are inefficient, and in the public sector, there is no motive for improvement.

I wonder why so many people buy private healthcare insurance in Britain, paying twice for healthcare, if NHS provision is so good?

Could it be that the NHS isn't actually that great, and people only believe that it is because they are lied to by the Government and the media? Both of which tell them that (1) the NHS is value for money and (2) the alternative would be worse.

The British imagine that poor people were dying in the streets and becoming destitute to pay for operations, until the NHS was brought in to fix everything. It doesn't occur to them that without the tax burden, even the poorest people were free to make their own arrangements for healthcare, and that's exactly what happened. Friendly societies and charity hospitals used to be commonplace until the NHS replaced them with something "better". And now, the tax burden is so high that even people who live below the poverty line are paying income tax in Britain.

Except you're forgetting one thing - that gimmick lasted for about 2 years. Nintendo's stock fell in April because the sales of the Wii dropped for the first time in 14 months, and it's currently the 4th best selling console all time behind PS2, PS, and NES.

I agree that the graphics aren't as nice as the other platforms, but I think that Wii's target audience and purpose is different - they are after the casual/family gamer and part of the appeal to that crowd is the game interface a la the Wii Remote.