The salient point is that investigations of the Bin Laden family members in the United States are completely besides the point on the issue because (hold onto your hat) they were not (and I know of no serious, non-tinfoil-hat source claim they were) connected in any fashion to the Hamburg cell that conducted the September 11 attacks.
Jose Padilla wasn't detained under the Patriot Act provisions. He was detained as an enemy combatant - an agent of an illegal foreign power. Wholely different issue.
If information is so bad that it is likely to be used only by a terrorist, then it should (and is) subject to various secrecy provisions. At some point, however, information is just information and without any surrounding circumstances or evidence to make a request suspicious, there is no reason to investigate it.
You fail to recognize that some information falls in a gray area of potential harmful use and legitimate public interest. When "information is just information", then it falls outside the penumbra of potential harmful use. But when the information has a "dual use" so to speak, then when a non-traditional user of that information requests it, the FBI may have a legitimate interest in verifying the harmlessness of the request. When some student requests information that is normally of no legitimate interest but has potential harmful use, then hell yes the FBI should check up.
The government was slammed after 9/11, by the way, for sealing previously open government documents available on web sites and archives, such as maps of government installations. This is more of the same.
it has a chilling effect on the use of Freedom of Information laws if you have the G-men knocking on your door every time you make a request.
That's a false dichotomy. The G-men aren't knocking on your door "everytime you make a request". The G-men are knocking on your door when you make a request that someone like you normally has no legitimate interest in and which has a real potential harmful use. Like the plans to the tunnel system of the University of Texas.
But they weren't because, I assume, they didn't actually expect someone to attack the USA.
They didn't investigate suspicious Arabs attending US flight schools (disinterested in learning how to LAND) because of lack of foresight. It's easy for us to look back with 20/20 vision and say "they shoulda". But at the time, it simply was barely a suspicion. No one expected Arab terrorists to train to fly jet liners IN THE UNITED STATES to be used as guided suicide missiles. Simply wasn't on the radar.
The FBI is now, as this story about the University of Texas tunnels illustrates, a bit more proactive...
W A S H I N G T O N, May 3 -- Two months before the suicide hijackings, an FBI agent in Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that several Middle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs might be studying, law enforcement officials said.
The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington and New York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials told The Associated Press.
ABCNEWS reported on the intelligence last February.
At least one leader of the 19 hijackers, Hani Hanjour, received flight training in Arizona in 2001 but his name had not surfaced in the FBI intelligence from Arizona, the officials said.
None of the Middle Eastern men identified by the Arizona counterterrorism agents or any information contained in their July 2001 memo pointed to the suicide plot that leveled the World Trade Center and killed thousands in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, officials said.
"None of the people identified by Phoenix are connected to the Sept. 11 attacks," FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood said Thursday night.
"The Phoenix communication went to appropriate operational agents and analysts but it did not lead to uncovering the impending attacks," Collingwood said.
Officials said FBI counterterrorism agents in Phoenix had "suspicions" about why several Arab men were seeking airport operations, security information and pilot training and recommended, among other things, that the FBI begin alerting local agents when Middle Easterners sought visas for training at local aeronautical schools, officials said.
The FBI's concerns about the U.S. flight schools is the latest revelation about information, much of it sketchy, that the government possessed before Sept. 11 concerning the possibility of terrorism in the skies. For example:
AP reported last month that Filipino authorities alerted the FBI as early as 1995 that several Middle Eastern pilots were training at American flight schools and at least one had proposed hijacking a commercial jet and crashing it into federal buildings.
A month after the 2001 memo from Arizona to FBI headquarters, FBI agents in Minnesota arrested a French citizen of Moroccan descent, Zacarias Moussaoui, after a flight school instructor became suspicious of his desire to learn to fly a commercial jet.
Moussaoui has since emerged as the single most important defendant in the post-Sept. 11 terrorism investigation, charged with conspiring with the hijackers and Osama bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
About the same time as the Phoenix memo and Moussaoui's arrest, U.S. intelligence issued a late summer warning that there was heightened risk of a terrorist attack on Americans, possibly even on U.S. soil, officials have said.
Law enforcement officials said in retrospect the FBI believes it should have accelerated the suggested check of U.S. flight schools after Moussaoui's arrest but does not believe it would have led to the hijackers.
You do realize those are investigations of members of the Bin Laden family, not Bin Laden? You do realize that the Bin Ladens are a well respected Saudi family operating one of the world's largest construction companies, and some of whom resided and (did) attend college in the US? Not all the Bin Ladens are terrorists, asshat.
First of all, there is no such distinction between "normal laws" and "Patriot Act laws". The Patriot Act IS the law, modifies existing laws, or expands existing jurisdiction.
Second of all, the Patriot Act demonstrably does not give the FBI the power to detain people without charge, without admitting they are holding them, and without warrant. That is pure, ignorant FUD. What the Patriot Act does do, is expand the Immigration and Naturalization Act to allow the FBI to detain a suspected terrorist ALIEN PERSON until they can be deported, or criminal charges brought against them. The term of that detention is LIMITED, and must be DISCLOSED to Congress.
SEC. 236A. (a) DETENTION OF TERRORIST ALIENS-
`(1) CUSTODY- The Attorney General shall take into custody any alien who is certified under paragraph (3).
`(2) RELEASE- Except as provided in paragraphs
(5) and (6), the Attorney General shall maintain custody of such an alien until the alien is removed from the United States. Except as provided in paragraph (6), such custody shall be maintained irrespective of any relief from removal for which the alien may be eligible, or any relief from removal granted the alien, until the Attorney General determines that the alien is no longer an alien who may be certified under paragraph (3). If the alien is finally determined not to be removable, detention pursuant to this subsection shall terminate.
`(3) CERTIFICATION- The Attorney General may certify an alien under this paragraph if the Attorney General has reasonable grounds to believe that the alien--
`(A) is described in section 212(a)(3)(A)(i), 212(a)(3)(A)(iii), 212(a)(3)(B), 237(a)(4)(A)(i), 237(a)(4)(A)(iii), or 237(a)(4)(B); or
`(B) is engaged in any other activity that endangers the national security of the United States.
`(4) NONDELEGATION- The Attorney General may delegate the authority provided under paragraph
(3) only to the Deputy Attorney General. The Deputy Attorney General may not delegate such authority.
`(5) COMMENCEMENT OF PROCEEDINGS- The Attorney General shall place an alien detained under paragraph (1) in removal proceedings, or shall charge the alien with a criminal offense, not later than 7 days after the commencement of such detention. If the requirement of the preceding sentence is not satisfied, the Attorney General shall release the alien.
`(6) LIMITATION ON INDEFINITE DETENTION- An alien detained solely under paragraph (1) who has not been removed under section 241(a)(1)(A), and whose removal is unlikely in the reasonably foreseeable future, may be detained for additional periods of up to six months only if the release of the alien will threaten the national security of the United States or the safety of the community or any person.
`(7) REVIEW OF CERTIFICATION- The Attorney General shall review the certification made under paragraph (3) every 6 months. If the Attorney General determines, in the Attorney General's discretion, that the certification should be revoked, the alien may be released on such conditions as the Attorney General deems appropriate, unless such release is otherwise prohibited by law. The alien may request each 6 months in writing that the Attorney General reconsider the certification and may submit documents or other evidence in support of that request.
`(b) HABEAS CORPUS AND JUDICIAL REVIEW-
`(1) IN GENERAL- Judicial review of any action or decision relating to this section (including judicial review of the merits of a determination made under subsection (a)(3) or (a)(6)) is available exclusively in habeas corpus proceedings consistent with this subsection. Except as provided in the preceding sentence, no court shall have jurisdiction to review, by habeas corpus petition or otherwise, any such action or decision.
`(2) APPLICATION-
`(A) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, inc
however, they always seem to be behind the curve as if they are not able to innovate anything.
That's just good strategy for a market leader. If you are the dominant firm, there is little payoff in innovation. Rather you tack to the innovation of smaller upstart firms, which have an incentive to innovate (gain market). You co-op the innovations of others to maintain market share.
The same strategy can be seen in yacht races. The lead yacht takes a conservative strategy, and tacks to the moves of the trailing competitor, maintaining its lead. The leader follows to stay ahead.
Re:Oh That's Right, Oil Percolates From Mantle!
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Nope, completely false analogy. Nice try though. Next time apply the fallacy of unqualified authority to, say, an example that fits. Like "Thomas Gold, based on his encyclopedic knowledge of Physics, concludes that the Commerce Clause does not apply to school gun restrictions". See? That's application of unqualified authority.
Re:Oh That's Right, Oil Percolates From Mantle!
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Kooks like J. F. Kenney grasp at old research by a few Soviet geologist to claim that abiogenic reserves are being constantly replenished more quickly than even our current rate of extraction
Yep. Kooks like Freeman Dyson and Thomas Gold, too.
That isn't a new problem or one unique to electronic voting machines. The Daleys of Chicago have been arranging more votes than voters for Democrats since 1960...
This was all moot for the most part until 1998, with the State St. Bank v. Signature Financial Group ruling, which made it possible to patent automated business methods. Now we have all sorts of looniness.
1. NASA already has Hubble's replacement telescope in line for 2011.
2. NASA will be able to operate the Hubble until 2007 or 2008.
3. There are a limited number of shuttle launches possible before 2010 when the station is complete. NASA needs to spend those launches on finishing the station, not upgrading a telescope that is being replaced, just so it can last a few extra years.
4. Since the Columbia disaster, non-station trips require TWO shuttles prepped for every ONE launch, so that there is a rescue shuttle available. That is a tremendous waste of resources for upgrading the Hubble, which is being replaced in any case.
In sum: The Hubble is being replaced in 2011 with an improved space telescope, so it is a waste of limited resources (shuttle launches) to upgrade it just to drag out its lifetime by three years or so. The time and energy saved from not upgrading Hubble can be spent on getting other projects done.
Hubble was great. It's lifetime is over, and it has lasted longer than scheduled. Time to move on.
The website may be, but the authors are syndicated writers. So unless you have a real counter-argument to make to the author's very clear arguments, it is a mere ad hominem.
It seems that virtually every news organ in the English language has carried the story of new scientific claims published in Nature magazine that by 2050 over a million species will be doomed to extinction owing to the effects of global warming. Yet few of them realized how flimsy the story actually is. Writing on another claim of mass extinctions almost two years ago, I said, "This area of research is prone to wild exaggerations," and here we have another one.
There are several reasons this claim should be laughed out of the court of public opinion. First, the research doesn't say what the researchers themselves claim. They have extrapolated to all species a model that looked at only 1,103 species in certain areas (243 of those species were South African proteaceae, a family of evergreen shrubs and trees). For one thing, we don't know how many species there are -- estimates vary from 2 million to 80 million -- and have only documented 1.6 million. However, assuming the 14 million figure widely used in the press reports is anywhere near accurate, the sample size is a mere 0.008 percent of the total species population of the planet, with certain species vastly over-represented (there are only 1,000 species of proteaceae on the planet). All the researchers have demonstrated is that, if their model is correct, certain species in certain habitats will run a risk of extinction. Extrapolating to the entire planet from this small, unrepresentative sample is simply invalid. So when the lead researcher told the Washington Post, "We're not talking about the occasional extinction -- we're talking about 1.25 million species. It's a massive number," he was guilty at the very least of over-enthusiasm, if not outright exaggeration.
This problem would be devastating enough for the claims, if it wasn't the case that the model on which the calculations are made is itself suspect. It relies on the 'species-area relationship,' the idea that smaller areas support fewer species. A researcher at the evocatively-titled Golden Toad Laboratory for Conservation in Puentoarenas, Costa Rica, writing a commentary on the study for Nature, called this "one of ecology's few ironclad laws." The trouble is that there are many exceptions to this supposedly ironclad law. The wholesale deforestation of the Eastern United States, for example, seems only to have caused the extinction of one species of bird. While in Puerto Rico, the island's loss of 99 percent of its forest cover caused the loss of 7 out of 60 species, but after the deforestation the number of bird species on the island actually increased to 97. The species-area relationship (plotted as a linear function in 1859) seems to be a poor model on which to base extinction rates.
So the model is suspect and the extrapolation invalid. What about the link to global warming? The researchers assume that global warming will reduce habitat. Yet this isn't the case. The earth is not shrinking. The reduction of one area of habitat does not mean that it is replaced by void. Other habitats expand. And so far, all the evidence we have points not to desertification or other changes to less hospitable climates as a result of global warming. Instead, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere seems to have led to a six percent increase in the amount of vegetation on the earth. The Amazon rain forests accounted for 42 percent of the growth. To model only reductions in habitats and not expansions accounted for by global warming stacks the deck. The researchers created a model that dictated that global warming will cause extinctions. Surprise, surprise! When they ran the model that's exactly the result they got.
Thank goodness for the New York Times, whose writer John Gorman was careful enough to note the limitations of the study. While others talked about millions of extinctions, he said, "By 2050, the scientists say, if current warming trends continue, 15 to 37 percent of the 1,103 species they studi
You were suggesting that Scandinavian socialism is an example of why communism is not a stale idea. If you would care to retract that as a mistake, be my guess.
But of course I can tell you're an expert in communism - you've heard of both Lenin *and* Stalin!
Americans often confuse socialism and communism, or fascism and socialism
He's not an American.
Why do you americans think the nazis were socialist?
Because fascism is socialistic. Private enterprise under public control. Strict regulation of wage and prices. Generous welfare state with strict labor control regulations onerous on business. If that's not socialism, I don't know what is.
Try telling that to the Scandinavians - it's been called "communism that works"
And it isn't communism at all, not in the Leninist sense, not in the Stalinist sense, not in the Maoist or Green Men from Mars sense. It is welfare state capitalism. The engine of wealth is firmly capitalistic. No dice.
Interesting. I guess that would be totally unlike the christian totalitarianism you espouse at home.
If that was your excuse for humor, it is pretty poor. If you are serious, you're just a blathering idiot.
If the oil supply to the USA could be halted for long enough, they could be reduced to the level of a third world country.
What that would mean is the worldwide collapse of the global economy. The United States is the lynchpin.
Anyone that says oil is not worth fighting for is a naive fool. Oil isn't worth fighting for? Tell you what, take a look around you and try to find something, anything, that is not predicated on oil. Yeah, that's what I thought. Now you think oil is a bit important, hmm?;)
you can fight a country but you cannot fight ideas.
You can't? The US did that for 50 years during the Cold War. Communism as an idea is pretty stale today. Fascism was a very popular idea in the 30s, until it was crushed by Allied bombs. Fascism isn't so fashionable today. Likewise Islamic totalitarianism as espoused by those like Bin Laden can be fought by guns and by the strenuous and unashamed heralding of OUR Western liberal ideals. As Bin Laden said, people like the strong horse. No one will be won over to liberalism and democracy when it is meek, self-hating, and afraid. Especially not the Arabs.
As to "sending the Arab worlds brightest students to good American universities", they already do. And not only to American universities, but the best Universities throughout Europe as well. The Arab elite are educated in the West. Little good that has done. Mohammed Atta and the core of the September 11 cabal were students at German universities, for instance.
Why the defensiveness? Why the apologetic tone? Of course the headline is misleading, British intelligence believed there was some good probabilities, given the situation at the time, that the US was considering seizing the oil fields. But why apologize if indeed the Nixon Administration HAD seriously considered invasion if (as the article points out) the oil embargo was unreasonably prolonged and/or the Arab-Israeli conflict reignited into war?
Most of Slashdot's readership was not born in 1973, I think it's fair to say. And probably haven't even considered the impact of the 1973 oil embargo on the West, from a national security standpoint. As Carter would declare later in the decade, the use of oil as an economic weapon to harm the United States is the "moral equivalent of war." In the event of an intractible OPEC causing severe economic, and thus political, upheaval, it is in the interest of the United States, and any other nation, to take steps necessary to resolve the situation, by force if necessary.
In 1973, the oil embargo was extremely dangerous. Today, largely as a result of the 73 and 78 crises, the world has diversified its energy suppliers and this is far less of an issue. Oil is a fungible commodity, a lesson the Arabs have learned since. Saudi Arabia for instance, has publicly renounced the use of oil as an economic weapon, as have the Iranians. In hindsight, the embargo was folly, as the end result was a DECREASE in the market share of Middle East oil as an energy source. Today, the oil producing Gulf states need the West more than the West needs the Gulf. So no more embargos from OPEC.
Who modded that post up as insightful? Here's some insight: the radioactivity of the uranium on board is laughable compared to the rads bombarding Europa from **JUPITER**.
Slashdot Mirror
The salient point is that investigations of the Bin Laden family members in the United States are completely besides the point on the issue because (hold onto your hat) they were not (and I know of no serious, non-tinfoil-hat source claim they were) connected in any fashion to the Hamburg cell that conducted the September 11 attacks.
Jose Padilla wasn't detained under the Patriot Act provisions. He was detained as an enemy combatant - an agent of an illegal foreign power. Wholely different issue.
If information is so bad that it is likely to be used only by a terrorist, then it should (and is) subject to various secrecy provisions. At some point, however, information is just information and without any surrounding circumstances or evidence to make a request suspicious, there is no reason to investigate it.
You fail to recognize that some information falls in a gray area of potential harmful use and legitimate public interest. When "information is just information", then it falls outside the penumbra of potential harmful use. But when the information has a "dual use" so to speak, then when a non-traditional user of that information requests it, the FBI may have a legitimate interest in verifying the harmlessness of the request. When some student requests information that is normally of no legitimate interest but has potential harmful use, then hell yes the FBI should check up.
The government was slammed after 9/11, by the way, for sealing previously open government documents available on web sites and archives, such as maps of government installations. This is more of the same.
it has a chilling effect on the use of Freedom of Information laws if you have the G-men knocking on your door every time you make a request.
That's a false dichotomy. The G-men aren't knocking on your door "everytime you make a request". The G-men are knocking on your door when you make a request that someone like you normally has no legitimate interest in and which has a real potential harmful use. Like the plans to the tunnel system of the University of Texas.
But they weren't because, I assume, they didn't actually expect someone to attack the USA.
They didn't investigate suspicious Arabs attending US flight schools (disinterested in learning how to LAND) because of lack of foresight. It's easy for us to look back with 20/20 vision and say "they shoulda". But at the time, it simply was barely a suspicion. No one expected Arab terrorists to train to fly jet liners IN THE UNITED STATES to be used as guided suicide missiles. Simply wasn't on the radar.
The FBI is now, as this story about the University of Texas tunnels illustrates, a bit more proactive...
From ABC News:
W A S H I N G T O N, May 3 -- Two months before the suicide hijackings, an FBI agent in Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that several Middle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs might be studying, law enforcement officials said.
The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington and New York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials told The Associated Press.
ABCNEWS reported on the intelligence last February.
At least one leader of the 19 hijackers, Hani Hanjour, received flight training in Arizona in 2001 but his name had not surfaced in the FBI intelligence from Arizona, the officials said.
None of the Middle Eastern men identified by the Arizona counterterrorism agents or any information contained in their July 2001 memo pointed to the suicide plot that leveled the World Trade Center and killed thousands in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, officials said.
"None of the people identified by Phoenix are connected to the Sept. 11 attacks," FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood said Thursday night.
"The Phoenix communication went to appropriate operational agents and analysts but it did not lead to uncovering the impending attacks," Collingwood said.
Officials said FBI counterterrorism agents in Phoenix had "suspicions" about why several Arab men were seeking airport operations, security information and pilot training and recommended, among other things, that the FBI begin alerting local agents when Middle Easterners sought visas for training at local aeronautical schools, officials said.
The FBI's concerns about the U.S. flight schools is the latest revelation about information, much of it sketchy, that the government possessed before Sept. 11 concerning the possibility of terrorism in the skies. For example:
AP reported last month that Filipino authorities alerted the FBI as early as 1995 that several Middle Eastern pilots were training at American flight schools and at least one had proposed hijacking a commercial jet and crashing it into federal buildings.
A month after the 2001 memo from Arizona to FBI headquarters, FBI agents in Minnesota arrested a French citizen of Moroccan descent, Zacarias Moussaoui, after a flight school instructor became suspicious of his desire to learn to fly a commercial jet.
Moussaoui has since emerged as the single most important defendant in the post-Sept. 11 terrorism investigation, charged with conspiring with the hijackers and Osama bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
About the same time as the Phoenix memo and Moussaoui's arrest, U.S. intelligence issued a late summer warning that there was heightened risk of a terrorist attack on Americans, possibly even on U.S. soil, officials have said.
Law enforcement officials said in retrospect the FBI believes it should have accelerated the suggested check of U.S. flight schools after Moussaoui's arrest but does not believe it would have led to the hijackers.
-- The Associated Press
You do realize those are investigations of members of the Bin Laden family, not Bin Laden? You do realize that the Bin Ladens are a well respected Saudi family operating one of the world's largest construction companies, and some of whom resided and (did) attend college in the US? Not all the Bin Ladens are terrorists, asshat.
First of all, there is no such distinction between "normal laws" and "Patriot Act laws". The Patriot Act IS the law, modifies existing laws, or expands existing jurisdiction.
Second of all, the Patriot Act demonstrably does not give the FBI the power to detain people without charge, without admitting they are holding them, and without warrant. That is pure, ignorant FUD. What the Patriot Act does do, is expand the Immigration and Naturalization Act to allow the FBI to detain a suspected terrorist ALIEN PERSON until they can be deported, or criminal charges brought against them. The term of that detention is LIMITED, and must be DISCLOSED to Congress.
The relevant text is below, from the Patriot Act.
SEC. 236A. (a) DETENTION OF TERRORIST ALIENS-
`(1) CUSTODY- The Attorney General shall take into custody any alien who is certified under paragraph (3).
`(2) RELEASE- Except as provided in paragraphs
(5) and (6), the Attorney General shall maintain custody of such an alien until the alien is removed from the United States. Except as provided in paragraph (6), such custody shall be maintained irrespective of any relief from removal for which the alien may be eligible, or any relief from removal granted the alien, until the Attorney General determines that the alien is no longer an alien who may be certified under paragraph (3). If the alien is finally determined not to be removable, detention pursuant to this subsection shall terminate.
`(3) CERTIFICATION- The Attorney General may certify an alien under this paragraph if the Attorney General has reasonable grounds to believe that the alien--
`(A) is described in section 212(a)(3)(A)(i), 212(a)(3)(A)(iii), 212(a)(3)(B), 237(a)(4)(A)(i), 237(a)(4)(A)(iii), or 237(a)(4)(B); or
`(B) is engaged in any other activity that endangers the national security of the United States.
`(4) NONDELEGATION- The Attorney General may delegate the authority provided under paragraph
(3) only to the Deputy Attorney General. The Deputy Attorney General may not delegate such authority.
`(5) COMMENCEMENT OF PROCEEDINGS- The Attorney General shall place an alien detained under paragraph (1) in removal proceedings, or shall charge the alien with a criminal offense, not later than 7 days after the commencement of such detention. If the requirement of the preceding sentence is not satisfied, the Attorney General shall release the alien.
`(6) LIMITATION ON INDEFINITE DETENTION- An alien detained solely under paragraph (1) who has not been removed under section 241(a)(1)(A), and whose removal is unlikely in the reasonably foreseeable future, may be detained for additional periods of up to six months only if the release of the alien will threaten the national security of the United States or the safety of the community or any person.
`(7) REVIEW OF CERTIFICATION- The Attorney General shall review the certification made under paragraph (3) every 6 months. If the Attorney General determines, in the Attorney General's discretion, that the certification should be revoked, the alien may be released on such conditions as the Attorney General deems appropriate, unless such release is otherwise prohibited by law. The alien may request each 6 months in writing that the Attorney General reconsider the certification and may submit documents or other evidence in support of that request.
`(b) HABEAS CORPUS AND JUDICIAL REVIEW-
`(1) IN GENERAL- Judicial review of any action or decision relating to this section (including judicial review of the merits of a determination made under subsection (a)(3) or (a)(6)) is available exclusively in habeas corpus proceedings consistent with this subsection. Except as provided in the preceding sentence, no court shall have jurisdiction to review, by habeas corpus petition or otherwise, any such action or decision.
`(2) APPLICATION-
`(A) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, inc
however, they always seem to be behind the curve as if they are not able to innovate anything.
That's just good strategy for a market leader. If you are the dominant firm, there is little payoff in innovation. Rather you tack to the innovation of smaller upstart firms, which have an incentive to innovate (gain market). You co-op the innovations of others to maintain market share.
The same strategy can be seen in yacht races. The lead yacht takes a conservative strategy, and tacks to the moves of the trailing competitor, maintaining its lead. The leader follows to stay ahead.
Nope, completely false analogy. Nice try though. Next time apply the fallacy of unqualified authority to, say, an example that fits. Like "Thomas Gold, based on his encyclopedic knowledge of Physics, concludes that the Commerce Clause does not apply to school gun restrictions". See? That's application of unqualified authority.
Kooks like J. F. Kenney grasp at old research by a few Soviet geologist to claim that abiogenic reserves are being constantly replenished more quickly than even our current rate of extraction
Yep. Kooks like Freeman Dyson and Thomas Gold, too.
Deep Hot Biosphere
That isn't a new problem or one unique to electronic voting machines. The Daleys of Chicago have been arranging more votes than voters for Democrats since 1960...
Umm, no. You LEASE the box. The box remains the property of Ev1.
This was all moot for the most part until 1998, with the State St. Bank v. Signature Financial Group ruling, which made it possible to patent automated business methods. Now we have all sorts of looniness.
1. NASA already has Hubble's replacement telescope in line for 2011.
2. NASA will be able to operate the Hubble until 2007 or 2008.
3. There are a limited number of shuttle launches possible before 2010 when the station is complete. NASA needs to spend those launches on finishing the station, not upgrading a telescope that is being replaced, just so it can last a few extra years.
4. Since the Columbia disaster, non-station trips require TWO shuttles prepped for every ONE launch, so that there is a rescue shuttle available. That is a tremendous waste of resources for upgrading the Hubble, which is being replaced in any case.
In sum: The Hubble is being replaced in 2011 with an improved space telescope, so it is a waste of limited resources (shuttle launches) to upgrade it just to drag out its lifetime by three years or so. The time and energy saved from not upgrading Hubble can be spent on getting other projects done.
Hubble was great. It's lifetime is over, and it has lasted longer than scheduled. Time to move on.
The website may be, but the authors are syndicated writers. So unless you have a real counter-argument to make to the author's very clear arguments, it is a mere ad hominem.
And that has exactly what to do with the arguments made?
That's called an ad hominem in Big People Land. Try again.
Virtually Extinct
By Iain Murray Published Tech Central Station
It seems that virtually every news organ in the English language has carried the story of new scientific claims published in Nature magazine that by 2050 over a million species will be doomed to extinction owing to the effects of global warming. Yet few of them realized how flimsy the story actually is. Writing on another claim of mass extinctions almost two years ago, I said, "This area of research is prone to wild exaggerations," and here we have another one.
There are several reasons this claim should be laughed out of the court of public opinion. First, the research doesn't say what the researchers themselves claim. They have extrapolated to all species a model that looked at only 1,103 species in certain areas (243 of those species were South African proteaceae, a family of evergreen shrubs and trees). For one thing, we don't know how many species there are -- estimates vary from 2 million to 80 million -- and have only documented 1.6 million. However, assuming the 14 million figure widely used in the press reports is anywhere near accurate, the sample size is a mere 0.008 percent of the total species population of the planet, with certain species vastly over-represented (there are only 1,000 species of proteaceae on the planet). All the researchers have demonstrated is that, if their model is correct, certain species in certain habitats will run a risk of extinction. Extrapolating to the entire planet from this small, unrepresentative sample is simply invalid. So when the lead researcher told the Washington Post, "We're not talking about the occasional extinction -- we're talking about 1.25 million species. It's a massive number," he was guilty at the very least of over-enthusiasm, if not outright exaggeration.
This problem would be devastating enough for the claims, if it wasn't the case that the model on which the calculations are made is itself suspect. It relies on the 'species-area relationship,' the idea that smaller areas support fewer species. A researcher at the evocatively-titled Golden Toad Laboratory for Conservation in Puentoarenas, Costa Rica, writing a commentary on the study for Nature, called this "one of ecology's few ironclad laws." The trouble is that there are many exceptions to this supposedly ironclad law. The wholesale deforestation of the Eastern United States, for example, seems only to have caused the extinction of one species of bird. While in Puerto Rico, the island's loss of 99 percent of its forest cover caused the loss of 7 out of 60 species, but after the deforestation the number of bird species on the island actually increased to 97. The species-area relationship (plotted as a linear function in 1859) seems to be a poor model on which to base extinction rates.
So the model is suspect and the extrapolation invalid. What about the link to global warming? The researchers assume that global warming will reduce habitat. Yet this isn't the case. The earth is not shrinking. The reduction of one area of habitat does not mean that it is replaced by void. Other habitats expand. And so far, all the evidence we have points not to desertification or other changes to less hospitable climates as a result of global warming. Instead, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere seems to have led to a six percent increase in the amount of vegetation on the earth. The Amazon rain forests accounted for 42 percent of the growth. To model only reductions in habitats and not expansions accounted for by global warming stacks the deck. The researchers created a model that dictated that global warming will cause extinctions. Surprise, surprise! When they ran the model that's exactly the result they got.
Thank goodness for the New York Times, whose writer John Gorman was careful enough to note the limitations of the study. While others talked about millions of extinctions, he said, "By 2050, the scientists say, if current warming trends continue, 15 to 37 percent of the 1,103 species they studi
You were suggesting that Scandinavian socialism is an example of why communism is not a stale idea. If you would care to retract that as a mistake, be my guess.
But of course I can tell you're an expert in communism - you've heard of both Lenin *and* Stalin!
And you obviously understand it not at all.
Americans often confuse socialism and communism, or fascism and socialism
He's not an American.
Why do you americans think the nazis were socialist?
Because fascism is socialistic. Private enterprise under public control. Strict regulation of wage and prices. Generous welfare state with strict labor control regulations onerous on business. If that's not socialism, I don't know what is.
But you probably got taught creationism at school, and evolution is just a competing theory? Or did I get something wrong?
If you would lose the Straw Man, you would fare better.
Try telling that to the Scandinavians - it's been called "communism that works"
And it isn't communism at all, not in the Leninist sense, not in the Stalinist sense, not in the Maoist or Green Men from Mars sense. It is welfare state capitalism. The engine of wealth is firmly capitalistic. No dice.
Interesting. I guess that would be totally unlike the christian totalitarianism you espouse at home.
If that was your excuse for humor, it is pretty poor. If you are serious, you're just a blathering idiot.
If the oil supply to the USA could be halted for long enough, they could be reduced to the level of a third world country.
;)
What that would mean is the worldwide collapse of the global economy. The United States is the lynchpin.
Anyone that says oil is not worth fighting for is a naive fool. Oil isn't worth fighting for? Tell you what, take a look around you and try to find something, anything, that is not predicated on oil. Yeah, that's what I thought. Now you think oil is a bit important, hmm?
Derek
you can fight a country but you cannot fight ideas.
You can't? The US did that for 50 years during the Cold War. Communism as an idea is pretty stale today. Fascism was a very popular idea in the 30s, until it was crushed by Allied bombs. Fascism isn't so fashionable today. Likewise Islamic totalitarianism as espoused by those like Bin Laden can be fought by guns and by the strenuous and unashamed heralding of OUR Western liberal ideals. As Bin Laden said, people like the strong horse. No one will be won over to liberalism and democracy when it is meek, self-hating, and afraid. Especially not the Arabs.
As to "sending the Arab worlds brightest students to good American universities", they already do. And not only to American universities, but the best Universities throughout Europe as well. The Arab elite are educated in the West. Little good that has done. Mohammed Atta and the core of the September 11 cabal were students at German universities, for instance.
Why the defensiveness? Why the apologetic tone? Of course the headline is misleading, British intelligence believed there was some good probabilities, given the situation at the time, that the US was considering seizing the oil fields. But why apologize if indeed the Nixon Administration HAD seriously considered invasion if (as the article points out) the oil embargo was unreasonably prolonged and/or the Arab-Israeli conflict reignited into war?
Most of Slashdot's readership was not born in 1973, I think it's fair to say. And probably haven't even considered the impact of the 1973 oil embargo on the West, from a national security standpoint. As Carter would declare later in the decade, the use of oil as an economic weapon to harm the United States is the "moral equivalent of war." In the event of an intractible OPEC causing severe economic, and thus political, upheaval, it is in the interest of the United States, and any other nation, to take steps necessary to resolve the situation, by force if necessary.
In 1973, the oil embargo was extremely dangerous. Today, largely as a result of the 73 and 78 crises, the world has diversified its energy suppliers and this is far less of an issue. Oil is a fungible commodity, a lesson the Arabs have learned since. Saudi Arabia for instance, has publicly renounced the use of oil as an economic weapon, as have the Iranians. In hindsight, the embargo was folly, as the end result was a DECREASE in the market share of Middle East oil as an energy source. Today, the oil producing Gulf states need the West more than the West needs the Gulf. So no more embargos from OPEC.
Who modded that post up as insightful? Here's some insight: the radioactivity of the uranium on board is laughable compared to the rads bombarding Europa from **JUPITER**.
Not to mention, the State is tracking ITS OWN DAMN PROPERTY. Orwellian indeed. What a douche.