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Giant International Fusion Reactor Draws Nearer
nnnneedles writes "BBC is reporting that scientists are deciding on where to build the world's first big fusion reactor. The international effort is described as the boldest nuclear initiative since the Manhattan Project, and holds promise for future unlimited, clean energy. The choice on where to build the reactor currently stands between Japan and France, but apparantly, the U.S. is opposing a french site because France opposed the war in Iraq." There's also an AP story.
wooo.. too much crack... you know what I'm saying there but wow did I butcher that energy source sentance. lol...
Guess what?
Most of the weapons that the American colonists used fighting the British came from....Britain
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I was raised strict Southern Baptist, and what I saw didn't seem much like "love" to me. It seemed as if our rendition of God was something our religious leaders dreamed up as an entity not only to "give" the leaders authority over us, but also serve as an entity to absorb liability for all the damage done.
It seemed like the whole affair was nothing more than just a tremendous psychological barrage dreamed up by a few people very astute in human behavioural psychology in order to enslave the "believers" and "faithful", in a manner much similar to the ones used by hackers to plant malicious zombie programs into other peoples machines. The end goal is to have unquestioned obedience to follow the leader's command ( without having to pay the power bill ).
I have even seen fathers led to tease their own kids to anger, knowing that no matter how angry the kids get, the father can always rely on the swinging leather strap of "Christian Discipline" to maintain their authority. I will grant you that the ability to overpower and hurt will get you obedience any day of the week, but it is not a good foundation to build a relationship on. The wronged ones will have something far worse than indifference stored in their hearts. If the one who beats for obedience ever loses the power to hurt, hell has no fury like the uncoiling of the bands of stored hatred.
A lot of this religious stuff reeks to me of Stanley Milgram's "Obedience to Authority". Remember that study Stanley Milgram did at the end of WWII, as he was curious if there was something peculiar about the German people that made them susceptible to the horrors thay could inflict upon others ( namely the Jews )? It turned out this whole thing is a basic human condition, where easily turn our backs on fellow humans if there is a leadership / chain of command structure in place, and we are merely "following orders" and we are not taking personal responsibility for our actions. Everybody has had the frustration of dealing with a bureaucracy, where people are only "doing their jobs", but often causing much frustration to others.
Stanley's experiments showed a very substantial proportion of our population would even very painfully electrocute an innocent person, based on nothing more than the urgings of an authority figure in a white lab coat. This is across all races of all peoples!
It is my fear that people who understand psychology more than most instantiate a "god" of their own design, then use their pool of "believers" to follow the "orders" of that "god".
Its this reason I am very reticent to place much faith in anything Man has messed with. I flat do not trust Man. Sure, he may claim "Inspired by God", but is he telling me that I am not inspired because I wanna get my belief system from what I consider to be the source of all things, not from his data, which I consider likely tainted from human intervention?
Don't get me wrong. I am very religious. I believe in the God which created Heaven, Earth, and everything in it. I am a scientist. I study God by witness of his Creation. We may call them Laws of Physics, but to me, these are God's law, coined by God himself. God's Will be Done. Its not a prayer, its fact. God is no respecter of persons. These laws are immutable - no one is exempt from them or can change them. I'm not gonna claim any special insights to God, as I can't prove a thing. I don't even know what God is, but that does not keep me from the greatest joy in my life - studying his work to try to find out. I know its a puzzle I will never solve, but who needs games when God has already given me a puzzle to solve? He does give us a helluva lot of rewards along the way as we try to unravel it. Things like medicines, and as this post noted, ways of getting the power it takes to bring our own dreams to reality.
anubi
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
That's because many, many Americans (including myself) feel that the French (as a whole, leadership and population) have been a bunch of duplicitous, hypocritical, arrogant assholes. The French accuse the US of being anti-Arab greedy capitalists, but the French had significant financial interests in Saddam's Iraq, and here they are passing "progressive" cultural initiatives which are primarily anti-Arab and anti-Jew (for the damn few Jews left in France). Sec of State Powell was given assurances by French diplomats that UNRes1441 would have some teeth to it and that the French would allow the US to enforce it without much problem. Lies.
Don't make me laugh.
Google "Jacques Chirac Saddam Hussein" and you'll find a picture of the two buddies from 1976. Should we blame France for not having a time machine to see what this despot would become 25 years later ?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
That is because 10-20% of Americans appear to be mindless automatons who automatically support their president during wartime (a sensability that is much lauded by the American media).
It's because most of us are smart enough to realize that when you enter a war - even if you were opposed to it in the first place - it's always best to win.
Pragmatic, I know. God bless America.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Shaking hands is how civilized folks (well, at least the one on the left is civilized) greet. That's falling far short of building nuclear reactors with plutonium enrichment capabilities, tanks, and warplanes.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I think it's safe to assume Saddam doesn't have any WMDs today, since he's in US custody. However, it would be very bold to assert he didn't have any before the war.
When the UN inspectors were kicked out in 1998, it was virtually undisputed that Iraq still had chemical and/or biological weapons. What happened to them since then is still a mystery. But Saddam offered no evidence that he destroyed them, and blocked efforts of inspectors at every turn.
Despite what the headlines would have you believe, the main point of the David Kay report a few weeks back was not that we haven't found any WMDs yet. In fact, it told that Iraq had been purposefully deceptive in its dealings with inspectors, and actively engaged in efforts to acquire technology for banned missiles and precursors to chemical weapons. Besides, Kay's team had only searched 10 of the 130 suspected WMD sites at that point.
Only by people on the extreme left.
Only by people on the extreme right.
Correct, mostly painting a much bleaker picture than the steady progress and overwhelming success thus far.
Much of the American media didn't support the war. In fact, the largest and most influential papers--like the NY Times, Washington Post, and LA Times--explicitly opposed war in Iraq in their editorial pages.
The country most fitting of this description would be the US.
What rules did we break? And of course we didn't expect backing from certain countries. That's why Bush didn't go back to the UN Security Council for another resolution. First, because it wasn't required, as we had the necessary authorization from 1441. Second, because no matter how much evidence or justification, France had already declared their intention to veto any resolution.
I'm French, and I'm married to an American citizen (kids on the way.. twins!). We live in France, purely because at the moment, we have a much better financial situation either, than we would over there in the US, but we may move across the atlantic. I have found the US to be very welcoming (once you're past the people at customs!), and my wife has no problem whatsoever here for being an American. (besides getting whistled at, and talked to, by guys!)
... I call it defending your interests, fair enough.
I am not a fanatic of Chirac, neither is my wife a fanatic of George W. Our respective parents are a bit more, since they had a longer period of time to build their beliefs.
However, we are saddened to see the mounting misunderstanding between the two countries that we like.
I would dare to summarize the differences as:
1) France
- Scared of religious influence. We experienced hundreds of years of total Catholic domination of the country, which was so uncontested that it blocked any scientific or societal progress. You would never see a government leader in church, on TV !
- Scared of change. French are notorious for it, and it's a stereotype that's actually true! We are a country with an overwhelmingly uniform population, and anything new (Muslim religion becoming prominent, for example) is Bad.
- Trying to maintain a world position by using the European union to lessen US influence. (call it defending our interests).
2) US
- Religious influence and lobbying of sorts (religious, business, etc.) is business as usual. Actually, a government leader wins brownie points by appearing religious. It's even on your money notes.
- Used to a very widely different population ('melting pot'), due to your country history.
- Trying to maintain world dominance by isolating and lessening the influence of other world powers, in general by identifying or inventing an enemy such as russia, terrorism, france,
In the past, such cultural differences have been worked around, but it seems that lately, respective leaders are using them to stigmatize each other as political enemies, and this is really counter-productive for both countries. The US is the biggest investor in France, and (I think, from memory) the other way around.
There is a long history of helping each other. Whatever people say of US motives, that intervention was critical in WWII. I don't care that the USA wouldn't have won the war alone, I care that history would have been different without the US, most probably. France financed and greatly helped the US independence, also due to their own motives (lessening the power of the British seeming like a good one), but what country ever sends their soldier for the goodness of their heart, when they have to answer to their own opinion?
I hope both countries move on. I'm confident that things will improve after both administrations (Chirac and W.) have been replaced.
One can argue that the US did put Saddam Hussein in place anyway...
m l. In short, Saddam attained power by murdering those around him, just like his hero, Hitler. At no time did the US lend support to him, or his organization.
You can, but you'd be wrong. A quick search on Google for "saddam hussein" "rise to power" turned up quite a few pages, of which this one is the most informative: http://www.patriot-paradox.com/archives/000105.ht
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Right you moron, look at capital punishment. Besides a handful of backwards countries, the US is the only supposedly advanced country that does it. I'm right with ya.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!