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Germany had commercial nuclear power since the sixties. There is still no permanent waste repository here. Besides, Germany has invested a lot of money in nuclear power in the 80ies. It didn't work out. Thorium pebble bed reactors were a massive failure.

Besides, the German population doesn't want nuclear power.
Here is a pretty good explanation, why: http://www.worldpolicy.org/blo...

I read The Windup Girl and didn't find anything redeeming about it. Hell, it was just yellow peril fiction written by an alleged latter-day liberal.

Cory Doctorow will dub it "brownpunk" relating to the color of their eyes and skin where the west is marginalized and asian powers come to prominence. Everything's working on springs because of a lack of fossil fuels (OH MY GOD WHAT AN INTRIGUING PLOT POINT!!!) in a dystopia (NOBODY'S EVER DONE DYSTOPIA BEFORE!!!) since the civilized west deserves to be knocked down a few pegs and taught humility by some guy pounding out books for a nickel a word when he's not working at Geek Squad.

Give this one a pass. Bacigalupi is putting modern day ideas into a science fiction parable that's without a cogent lesson beyond "life sucks and boy howdy it's gonna suck in the future! LOOK OUT!!!" No different than your little cousin building Lego cities then demolishing them because he can't think of anything to do once he's finished with the project. Sad that Paolo isn't buying into Stephenson's Innovation Starvation and doing something to make people think about moving forward towards a beneficent future rather than perpetuating a culture of assigning blame to others and thinking that's more than enough.

In sixty years, The Windup Girl is going to be aughts kitsch science fiction that people will smile about much in the same fashion people giggle at science fiction from the 1930's full of ships earnestly powered by vacuum tubes.

Hereis both support and dissent for Slasho81's position on where US aid to Israel goes. After looking at the link, and searching a bit more, I'd like to point out that Isreael's military imports far exceed the USA's .foreign aid to Israel. I don't necessarily support foreign aid to Israel, but I would like the facts of the support to be clear.

Uh... that's total BS. The MB was, by their own admission, behind the curve on this demonstration. They were definitely no the instigators (and you'd be pissing off a LOT of Egyptians if you claimed they were) and only even agreed to join on friday (4 days in). There are sources on the net for all this stuff but I'm a to lazy now to find them for you. Just google "Muslim Brotherhood Joins Protest" and look what day those articles are reffering to.

On top of that all that, in the last two days they've just come out backing ElBaradei as a leader for the opposition. He is both a copt by ethnicity and secular by politics. Not the most radical islamic of moves now is it.

While I definitely do not agree with many of their policies and ideas but still... you might want to inform yourself about their opinions and actions just a bit more before you go ranting all Glen Beck on us...

seriously, for all intents and purposes they do seem to want a democracy. I mean NOW is their chance if ever to influence and form the shape of the next government to come. and what do they do? they put themselves squarely behind a secular leader who espouses a very western sort of government system.

Little random anecdote to give an example of why I doubt the 80% figure: my friend who is a reporter for an international news org was covering a big demo in cairo on friday. as a crowd of MB followers is passing by the begin to chant some of their recognizable slogans. promptly and spontaneously the much much larger surrounding crowd of demonstrators totally drowns out those chants with the chant "Muslims, Christians we are all Egyptians". (A refrain which has been heard quite a bit during these last days.)

It ain't all fox news out their bro... ;-)

I have often wondered why they haven't followed the money trail to find the people behind the "Antivirus 20xx" nonsense. I know I would certainly like to read a news story about the untimely death of the people involved.

They (FBI, and their equivalents in the dozen other countries widely affected) know exactly where it's coming from, it's just not in their jurisdiction.

Code from within the 2009 version:
"00420214 - Don`t install on Rus:; 00420234 - Russian or Ukrainian Windows detected. Exiting ..." - http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/russian-don-infect-themselves.html

"In the early and mid-1990s, criminal groups provided protection to businesses and enforced contracts when the state was too weak and corrupt to do so. In the process, they actually helped sustain private enterprise, albeit at a high cost to business. The emergence of an economic market for private protectionâ"in which criminal groups compete among themselves as well as with other newly formed private security agentsâ"has stabilized the business-criminal relationship. Recently, criminal networks have taken a more businesslike approach to maximizing profit" - http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-1/sokolov.htm

The following article is the best writeup I've seen thus far on this threat, and provides some insight on the financials:

"If these stats are to be believed, one affiliate was able to install 154,825 copies of AV XP 08 in ten days' time, and 2,772 of those copies were actually purchased by the victims. This only represents a one to two percent conversion rate, but with the generous commission structure, was enough to earn the affiliate $146,525.25 for that time period. At that rate, the affiliate could be expected to earn over 5 million U.S. dollars a year, simply by maintaining a large botnet and forcing AV XP 08 installs on 10,000 to 20,000 computers a day." - http://www.secureworks.com/research/threats/rogue-antivirus-part-2/

Kinda makes a guy reconsider his chosen career... Until you consider the mortality rate of Mafiya members, and the hordes of angry noobs wherever you go ;)

Contracts to the Pentagon's top ten contractors jumped from $46 billion in 2001 to $80 billion in 2003, an increase of nearly 75%. Halliburton's contracts jumped more than nine times their 2001 levels by 2003, from $400 million to $3.9 billion. Northrop Grumman's contracts doubled, from $5.2 billion to $11.1 billion, over the same time frame; and the nation's largest weapons contractor, Lockheed Martin, saw a 50% increase, from $14.7 billion to $21.9 billion.

http://worldpolicy.org/globalrights/democracy/maps-pr.html

You too could have searched Google.

HTH.

In fact when Western companies bring employment to poorer countries it's looked on as exploitation or off-shoring and they get dog's abuse anyway.

Is there no possible reason for that? Western companies go to poor countries because they can get away with giving back as very little as possible. They are not raising the living standards of the poor country to ours, they are making Western workers live down to the standards of the poor countries. In some cases, they use the workers of poor countries as disposable assets. Look a bit into mining in Africa and tell me that Western companies are doing the poor workers a solid rather than exploiting them at every turn. They also get to avoid those pesky environmental laws that prevent them from dumping the cyanide and mercury they use to seperate minerals directly into the water table.

This article touches a bit on some of the problems, but doesn't mention that many of the mining companies are partly or largely Western owned. This article (this one as well) touches on Western involvement in supplying arms to Africa. This tells us a bit more why the West supplies arms and money for civil wars in Africa.

Considering that you get thousands of hits when you type arms to africa into google I just picked one. How about this one, it's got a more professional gravitas to it.

I'll dispute until I'm blue in the face that the problems of this society are not at the bottom but at the top and your opinion is something I disagree with and therefore have every right to say so. I'm mystified at the hypocrite charge though, is that supposed to upset me or something?

That was the precise point I was thinking of and alluding to by the phrase, yes. As I recall, his will did in fact stipulate freeing his slaves at his death, just like Washington. However, Mount Vernon was situated on excellent farmland. The lands around Montecello were mediocre at best; the nailery (relying on slave labor) was the main thing keeping Jefferson from total bankrupcy... highly ironic considering that it was Hamilton who desired a nation of industry, and Jefferson who envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers. Jeffererson's taste for books and imported French Wine didn't help matters, but probably only exacerbated an unsolvable problem. At his death, his estate's debts exceeded the assets... until one included the slaves. Given the times, the results were inevitable.

Still, he could have done more. Then again, so could we all.

Most of why I call Jefferson a blowhard is not because of his absence from the convention, but because the "wall of separation" quote comes from a much later period when Jefferson was "legacy building."

<BZZZT>. The quote comes from a letter written in 1802. A scarce decade after the 1791 ratification of the Bill of Rights (wherein the foundation of such wall lies) hardly qualifies as "much later". Furthermore, it was still during Jefferson's first term as President — not the point in any career (even one as colossal as Jefferson's!) that one might normally refer to for "legacy building". Furthermore, the position he takes therein is entirely consistent with the language he authored in the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which not co-incidentally is considered inspiration for the relevant portion of the 1st Amendment. I would characterize his time post-presidency, such as spent on the establishing the University of Virgina from 1816 and onward, as his "legacy building" period.

(Lest we forget, the conservatives won Scopes.)

True, to a point. The religious conservatives won before the jury; the case (but not the law) was reversed on technical grounds on appeal, and I have seen it argued that this was in part to prevent the law from being struck down in a higher court. While not a Pyrrhic victory, it was hardly an epic triumph either.

I would also disagree that Scopes was the primary reason for the withdrawal, although contributory. The spectacular failure of the great Prohibition experiment, backed as it was by so many churches, was a greater blow to the politics of the far right, and in my opinion the prime cause of such withdrawal.

However, starting in the 70's, the sleeping giant of conservative Christianity awoke, and didn't like what it saw.

In my more cynical moments, I would attribute it more to the rousing Southern racism in the 60's, and their alliance with the Republicans after the failure of Wallace to swing the 1968 election to the house of Representatives. In my political debates, I have noted far too often the reactionary religious agenda being a warning sign of a reactionary racial and gender agendas. Not universally; but far too common. And far too often, such reactionaries attempt to conceal their more unsavory motivations in the language and company of religion.

Personally, I think that the federal gov't needs to get out of the church state issue, which it has gotten into consequent to Supreme Court rulings on the scope of the 14th ammendment. This is an issue where regional opinions are radically different, and dealing with those sorts of differences is the peculiar genius of federalism.

This of course depends on whether one feels that the 14th extended all, some, or non

Here we go again with this old debate....

Yes, the founders of the United States believed in God -- but this makes them Deists, not necessarily Christians. The Declaration of Independence does indeed speak of "Nature's God", and refer to mankind being "endowed by their Creator" -- but makes no mention of Christianity.

Furthermore, NOWHERE in the Constitution do the words "God" or "Christ" appear — a point oft considered conspicuous by omission in favor of "We The People". Rather, specific references are made to separate church and state, requiring within the constituion proper "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States", and in the Bill of Rights opening with "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".

Add in the evidence of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli as ratified by Congress and as published with little stir in the Press (albeit not as drafted at the treaty table!) which declared "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." , leads one to believe the Founders were doing their utmost to drag the United States away from the sectarian bloodshed that had divided Europe -- and particularly England -- for centuries.

Jefferson is the source of the phrase "wall of separation between church and state" that the religious right so detest; a man who removed all references to the miracles from his personal transcription of the Gospels; and who felt that his authorship of the Stature of Virginia for Religious Freedom one of the accomplishments most worthy for noting in his epitaph. Living in Charlottesville and having recently visited Monticello, I feel obliged to assure you that the persistent ground vibrations you can feel standing in front of his tombstone is not the rumble of a passing truck, but Mister Jefferson spinning in his grave from Bush's Presidency. =)

As for your assertion on abortion, while your position is better founded, I suggest you read the actual Roe v. Wade ruling all the way through; your assertion about the rights of the states in the 10th Amendment falls aside explicitly to the later "Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment"... although the court might reasonably revisit such a question, given the strained reasoning used. This makes the abortion war yet another twisted legacy of the debate over our former "peculiar institution."

As to your prime assertion on the legal import of the intent of the founding fathers, I suggest you read Lessig's "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace"... plus a good more of the biographies of those colorful, contestous, and amazingly human founders of ours. Leaving aside Lessig's points on unaddressed assumptions, suggesting they ever had a single unified intent is a slander to their memories and to what they achieved in their struggle to unify in common cause.

You learned your American history from a bible thumper didn't you? Because that's not what Ben "As to Jesus of Nazareth [, I have] some doubts as to his divinity" Franklin, or deist Thomas Jefferson, or the authors of the Federalist Papers, have said. Infact, they've said quite the contrary.

I agree with your sentiments about the need for good government and the elimination of corruption. There was an article in the World Policy Journal last summer which discussed the relative effects of tarrifs and subsidies on African nations. This is the text of ther article for those interested:

Africa and the Battle over Agricultural Protectionism
Todd Moss and Alicia Bannon*

In recent years, as African governments and development advocates have stepped up their campaign to reform the trade policies of rich countries, the issue of agricultural protectionism has come to the forefront. This is a highly divisive issue, with rich countries resisting poor countries' demands for major changes. In fact, the latest World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, the September 2003 Cancun meeting, failed largely because of the impasse over agriculture.

Critics highlight the hypocrisy of rich countries giving lip service to free trade while maintaining tariff barriers and paying subsidies to their farmers. Their argument that agricultural protectionism places an unfair burden on Africa is becoming a mainstream view. The New York Times, for example, argues that African farmers are "rightfully outraged that a nation [the United States] that enjoys all the benefits of open markets for its industrial products keeps putting up walls around its farmers."1 The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have also come out strongly against current agricultural trade practices and advocate a major overhaul in order to benefit low-income countries.2

Several African countries have also become assertive on agricultural issues in international trade debates. South Africa played a lead role in the recent WTO negotiations, with Uganda, Botswana, and Kenya also becoming vocal players. Four West African countries--Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and Benin--have called on the United States to cut the $1-3 billion it spends each year subsidizing American cotton growers. More broadly, African politicians have used their bully pulpits to criticize unfair trade policies and their impact on Africa's long-term development. "The rich countries have a choice," says Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, "either let Africa have real access to your markets for products, especially agriculture, or acknowledge that you prefer to keep us dependent on your handouts."3

Recently, development advocates and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have joined the campaign for reform of global agricultural markets. Oxfam and the World Council of Churches, among other organizations, are taking an active role in lobbying trade negotiators on this issue.4 In short, fairness in agricultural trade policy has become for this decade what debt relief was for the 1990s--central to the critique of U.S. and European policies toward the poor and a focal point for development advocacy.

The protectionist policies of rich countries are indeed a serious issue for Africa, where farming accounts for about 70 percent of total employment and is the main source of income for the vast majority of those living in or near poverty. The 30 member countries of the OECD spend a combined $235 billion per year to support their agricultural producers, but only about $60 billion on foreign aid (about one-fifth of which goes to Africa). Subsidies, tariffs, and nontariff barriers distort global prices and restrict access to rich-country markets. The global trading system discriminates against the world's poorest nations, making their products less competitive and undermining opportunities for growth, employment, and, ultimately, economic and social development. Additionally, intransigence on the part of rich countries over agricultural reform also indirectly harms poor countries due to its effects on broader trade negotiations. According to one estimate, unimpeded global trade would boost developing country income by

Of the 45 countries considered real democracies, only the United States, Mongolia, Canada, and the United Kingdom use plurality, or first past the post, as their primary system for legislative elections.

In the 37 countries where proportional, or parallel proportional, voting systems are used it is not possible to change the outcome of elections by tampering with just a few thousands votes in strategic places. To influence the outcome of the election in a significant way a massive fraud involving most districts in the country would be required. Small-scale fraud is irrelevant.

That is why dictators pretending to be elected prefer first past the post.

Be waiting for even more detailed results of the health risk. You have an emitter, what are the risks to humans inside?

What would a counter measure be? A secondary wall with right angle shaping?

Finally:

"Israeli firms are well known for developing revolutionary technology, particularly in the defense fields."

Yup. A big part of that is proped up by U.S. tax dollar military aid and leaked tech from U.S. Firms. How nice.

--- quote from U.S. Military And Economic Aid Report

In recent years, Israel remains the top recipient of U.S. military and economic assistance. The most commonly cited figure is $3 billion a year, with about $1.8 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants from the Department of Defense and an additional $1.2 billion a year in Economic Support Funds (ESF) from the Department of State. In the last decade FMF grants to Israel have totaled $18.2 billion. In fact, 17% of all U.S. foreign aid is earmarked for Israel.

Israel is one of the United State's largest arms importers. In the last decade, the United States has sold Israel $7.2 billion in weaponry and military equipment, $762 million through Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), more than $6.5 billion through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program.

source:

U.S. Military And Economic Aid Report

Of course we really don't "sell" much to Israel. It is mostly U.S. tax payers that pick up the tab. I don't have a problem with Israel defending themselves. I just don't see why I should pay for it.

Has the success of this test been verified by any third parties? The US Military tends to declare every test a success, regardless of the actual results. Sometimes the tests are rigged to create an illusion of success and other times they just simply lie.

Damn, I knew I should have includeed citations. The first two are from John Adams' letters to Jefferson. As a poster pointed out the first Adams quote is fragmented and misleading. The full quote is supportive, if critical, of religion,

Twenty times, in the course of my late Reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it." ! ! ! But in this exclamati[on] I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell. So far from believing in the total and universal depravity of human Nature; I believe there is no Individual totally depraved. The mos abandoned Scoundrel that ever existed, never Yet Wholly extinguished his Conscience, and while Conscience remains there is some Religion. Popes, Jesuits and Sorbonists and Inquisitors have some Conscience and some Religion. So had Marius and Sylla, Caesar Cataline and Anthony, an Augustus had not much more, let Virgil and Horace say what they will.

You can find both of those in The Adams Jefferson Letters, The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, Edited by Lester J. Cappon, University of North Carolina Press (1959, 1987)

Adams, although not a Christian (in the trinitarian sense of believing Jesus is God) was pretty religious. He vacillated between Deism and Unitarianism. He was adamant about seperation of church and state however, and was angry when the Massachusetts constitutional Convention modified his draft to include Christianity. Seven years later he was vidicated when the citizens of the Commonwealth voted (under referendum) to repeal the Christian clause by a 10-1 margin.

He later wrote, " "As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?" (The Great Quotations, ed. by George Seldes, (Citadel Press) quoting letter by J.A. to F.A. Van der Kamp Dec. 27, 1816 )

The Jefferson quote on the Gospel of St. John is from a letter to Alexander Smyth. (Thomas Jefferson, An Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 quoting letter by T.J. to Alexander Smyth Jan. 17, 1825)

The Jeferson quote on the corruption of Christian doctrine is from the Adams correspondence. (Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., p. 246, quoting letter by T.J. to John Adams July 5, 1814 )

The first Madison quote is from a letter, (The Madisons by Virginia Moore, p. 43 quoting letter by J.M. to William Bradford April 1, 1774) the other two are from his Memorial and Remonstrance of 1785.

You can find the Allen quotes in his treatise Reason, the Only Oracle of Man of 1784

The Franklin line comes from a 1790 letter to Ezra Stiles in which he frankly identifies himself as a Deist.

The Paine Quote is from his The Age of Reason

Priestly's quip on Franklin is on page 60 of his autobiography.

In 1831 prominent Episcopal minister Bird Wilson complained that "The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected not a one had professed a belief in Christianity.... "Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism." (sermon preached in October, 1831, first sentence quoted in John E. Remsberg, "Six Historic Americans," second sentence quoted in Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15)

The February 12, 1996, issue of National Review, by far one of the best periodicals available, was dedicated to the war on drugs and even bore the title "The War on Drugs is Lost". It is well worth searching out this issue at the library (or via back issue). It has much thoughtful commentary about the drug war and the drug problem.

You can read the title article by William F. Buckley, Jr., at http://www.worldpolicy.org/americas/usa/nr-drugwar .html.

Lots of other first world countries use proportional representation - look at this cool map. In fact, South Australia's upper house is proprotionally elected - which is how the Democrats got a strong presence there in the first place.