Iraq's people *are* certainly more free than before the invasion too.
I think the US attacked Iraq because it was a loose cannon in a security-critical zone. And it's trying to make spreading freedom a bonus afterwards, in the hope that a free Iraq is less of a loose cannon (a fact that remains to be proven, but there are positive signs).
So you think the following 2 actions are equivalent :
arming kids with a stick (not *even* a sword, much less any type of firearm) and sending them into a place you know is basically a minefield with a cardboard "key to heaven".
Recruiting soldiers, training them, equiping them with multiple firearms, radios, jeeps, naval and areal support. And sending them to a battlefield where they work together to defeat an army that was threatening to kill massive numbers of people, and *did* kill 30 million people right after the democrats forced those americans to depart.
If those 2 are morally equivalent in your mind, you need to see a shrink. Today, not tomorrow.
So you think defending the persian gulf is an agressive war for America ?
Then why don't you try going for ONE WEEK, without oil. Just try it.
You don't get to go to the supermarket You don't get to drive your car You can only buy things at a farmer's place, and obviously not in trade for dollars - which are worth nothing without international trade and the US marine You can't use plastic things, not even an umbrella Obviously you don't get to heat your house You get electricy, but only 10% of what you have now (and that's at most)
Let's not forget what happens when you choose not to fight :
Rome
When they finally fell, without any real defense, to the people they'd let immigrate into their lands, some 80% of the total population was killed. Life expectation fell from over 60 to below 20.
It would take over 400 years for any sort of law to re-establish itself.
Don't you think that it's a *bit* more likely that the document is a fake.
Besides, please explain how non-western (what ? commie ? islamist ?...) are better in the morality department... The current iranian administration killed 500.000 kids (well, they sent them straight into Saddam's bullets after giving them a carton "key to heaven" - this is NOT a joke). North Korea... well does anything really need to be said ?
Unfortunately western governments are the best governments there are. They're VERY far from perfect. However they beat the crap out of every other "style" of government.
Just one question that I might be interested in knowing your answer to...
Do nuclear reactors increase or decrease the radiation in the mined ore...
Just a tiny little detail that you might want to consider. Oh and most uranium mines aren't 1/100th as secure as the average storage facility of the nuclear industry.
And now for the reality of the situation : yes nuclear waste is danguerous. It is however, less dangerous than the mine that the nuclear reactor starts with, and much *much* more secure.
Buses are organized by the government in just about any country. They *CAN* transport on average more than 1 person (obviously not counting the driver).
But thanks to the govt. organising buses... they in reality don't actually transport > 2 person on average (numbers in Belgium, from "De Lijn"). And they use 4x what an average car does.
That aside buses do beat humans walking in efficiency, but not cars.
You are alive when you go shopping whether you go by car or by foot. By car however, you can shop much faster, meaning a car actually saves co2 used by shopping inside you as well. But not only there:
Your weight + the weight of groceries stays the same... except extra weight is *much* more problematic for walking locomotion than for locomotion on wheels.
But let's ditch that little detail and act as if it *is* the same.
Let's also ditch the fact that going on wheels is more efficient (perhaps you take the bike). Let's assume a linear relation between weight and energy necessary (this is not true, more weight can be more efficiently transferred per kilogram, this disadvantages the car, not you).
So you go to the supermarket. The weight that you have to move = bike + yourself + groceries =~ 80 + 20 + 10 = 110 kg.
Then take the car. Total weight = car + yourself + groceries = 600 + 80 + 10 kg (assuming you're not using a hummer, but you could make the car 1 ton and it wouldn't change the argument, obviously going by tank would be less efficient, BUT there's a caveat even there) = 690 kg
So the car is about 6-7 times heavier than you, AND it's 6-10 times more efficient. It *will* get you to the store for about the same energy as biking (and for a lot *less* than if you walk).
BUT there's a BIG caveat. The car has 10 or 100 times the carrying capacity of the bike. In other words, with the car you go to the store once per week (or twice). You can get 5x the amount of groceries easy. You'll get 5x the groceries merely for convenience.
So transporting the same amount of groceries, if said amount is 30 or 50 kg in a 600 kg car is 5x more efficient than biking these in. And it's over 15x times more efficient than walking them in. AND as a bonus it takes less time, and it's more convenient.
IF you express it in "joules eaten", therefore you will find the car much more efficient. Right now we get "human joules" from different sources that SEEM (for the moment) more available. Obviously they're not, or due to innovations such as this they're not going to be different for much longer. In both Brazil and Indonesia they're already the same, and the U.S. is maybe 5-10 years removed from having a completely interchangeable power source for humans and cars (from one year to the next it can be used to produce human fuel, and then switch to car fuel, and back, and... and so forth).
So obviously it's not the "oil" used that matters, but joules used. And perhaps that's not entirely true in America YET. But it won't take long.
And if you're a CO2 nut, the same is true. A human will output more or less the same amount of CO2 per joule used than a car.
And then let's see the conspiracy theory : perhaps you don't know this, but the entire climate department at every university knows this. And if Al Gore is 1/10th as informed as he claims to be, then surely he knows too. So what are the environuts doing by advocating "simpler society".
The middle age societies were vastly inferior and less efficient. Per human they produced MORE co2, and 100x as much for the same living standard, there were just many, many less humans. So why advocate going back to a simpler society ?
If you want to save co2, we must go further in mechanizing society. Much further. A human can't be improved in efficiency, but it'd be easy to make an electrical shopping robot/butler 80% efficient in energy usage (getting a control algorithm capable of doing this however isn't easy). That's the way to go if we want to 1) help people live (and have a reasonable living standard) 2) not kill half the world's population (which *will* be the result of using biofuels)
So if you're "truly" green: -> support cars, for everything but the shortest little trips -> discourage people doing stuff themselves without machines -> encourage electricity generation in various ways, for electricity generation + usage beats the crap out o
It's just so sad that this thing is not a solution at all either. The energy has to come from somewhere.
The second law of thermodynamics precludes this principle from working "sustainably". Oh sure it might increase our supply for a short while (- I doubt it will, but hey it *might*).
Plants are 2-3% efficient solar panels (at best, that is assuming 100% green cover, and every last square millimeter of green leaves perfectly illuminated and tracking the sun). Using their dead residue to power cars is about 10% efficient, which can be raised to about 30% efficiency full cycle. (which is a LOT better than using it to power humans btw, who are at best 3-5% efficient in using plant energy, it is *better* for the environment to go shopping in your car, not worse)
Knowing that we use about 3x the total energy present in the biosphere yearly, you know that we'd need 200-300% efficient conversion of plant matter to movement energy. We are, at best, at 0.2-0.3%.
Using plant matter to make biofuels can therefore not increase our energy supply (... for long).
The solution ? -> short term : nuclear power -> long term : efficient solar power
Although I'll readily admit that this could be useful for the petrochem industry (and by that I mean plastics, and *perhaps* fertilizer, not fuel).
Without an immediate serious increase in nuclear power, we're fucked. Badly fucked. Even the Saudi "allah will replace our oil" nutcases are building nuclear power plants, do you really want to be considered dumber than them ?
Due to, of all things, money. Just the thing that all the environuts claim is destroying the environment. I guess money savings only destroy the environment if they're OTHER people's savings then. Sounds just about right for the normal ethical standards of the likes of greenpeace.
I'm "cool" with it, obviously. If they want to cave preventively when it's their own money on the line. It's pretty hard to keep up with all this PC-speak though. Any other updates on the PC-speak department ? Have muslims gone back to being evil yet ? Or do we still ignore the actual, you know, content of their faith ?
Really ? You can publish the quran with this subtle statement in it just about everywhere :
(9:111) Muslims are but slaves to allah. Their orders are to fight,kill and die for islam.
If that's not incitement, then what exactly *is* ???
It's just a political opionion that's outlawed in France (and the rest of Europe), in fact by now quite a few of them, they don't truly outlaw racism. I happen to have a (currently) mostly allowed political opinion, but they're clearly preparing to outlaw it too. In fact anything except "everybody loves europe" is clearly being outlawed*.
Muslims are the filthiest animals on the face of the earth, because they refuse to accept the truth
(this is quran 8:55, with "infidels" replaced by "muslims", so please bear that in mind, if you call it racism, then obviously islam is racist)
And before you start barking about interpretation, please respect the content of the quran, or to be exact, please respect that it specifies that it is to be interpreted literally (quran 3:6 I believe).
* Jose Manuel Barosso, the head honcho (= dictator, since he's the leader of a non-democratic institution) stated today "I don't think Irelands 'No' vote constitutes a rejection of Europe. A release of sovereignty requires a referendum in Ireland, and we clearly need to find a way around that technicality". Those are his words. Does anything really need to be added ?
So in Scotland politicians magically don't have personal grudges against other parties ? Great.
Aren't you part of Tony Blair's England that yesterday voted in that new terror law that slashdot so extensively criticized. I hear there were corruption charges publicized against Blair.
We all read the press reaction of other parties, including of a few people that, upon closer examination, voted "yes".
It's the only way to have a coherent government response.
In America there are 3 positions of power : -> the superior court -> the presidency (in charge of all "real-world" events) -> congress (in charge of all "theoretic" events)
These fight with eachother, but each have basically a single, more-or-less coherent strategy in dealing with both the external world, and eachother.
Contrast to what generally happens in Europe (hypothetical example) :
Min. Defense : we need to modernize the army and expand it Min. Finance (political opponent of Def) : but without money Min. Labour (political opponent to Def) : AND without people Min. Foreign Affairs (political ally to Def) : Oh don't worry Europe pays, and we'll just use african "volunteers"
(it's a HYPOTHETICAL example, remember, the content doesn't mean anything)
In Europe, nothing gets done, everything becomes idiotically complex. Every member of government pulls in a different direction, resulting in completely steerless countries.
And now the local governments are basically replaced by the EU, which isn't even theoretically democratic. And it's using it's non-democratic power (did you know that EU directives, which are decided SOLELY by the minister of foreign affairs of your govt, superceed the will of parliament ?). Oh and the comission is also de-facto the highest judicial organ in Europe.
This means that voters in Europe don't have to compromise. By contrast, the American electoral system is designed to extract a compromise from the voters. No such compromise exists in European countries.
It is the only way to make anything change in the EU countries.
Yes because if Saddam had detonated the middle east (at his own expense) surely oil would have "decreased" in price, right ?
Oh... wait... it'd be $5000 a barrel. That sounds a LOT more realistic.
Now obviously we didn't take this course in history, so there's really nothing that can prove this. But if you expect us to trust a massacring dictator with creating stability in OUR intrest then you're utterly insane.
You know this guy comitted several chemical attacks "without" WMDs, who, after all don't exist. I would like to hear your explanation on exactly how this happened though :
(I don't know why in the name of God wikipedia claims this has to do with the Iran-Iraq war, but hey it doesn't change my point : how did Saddam do THAT without chemical weapons ?)
Slashdot Mirror
Iraq's people *are* certainly more free than before the invasion too.
I think the US attacked Iraq because it was a loose cannon in a security-critical zone. And it's trying to make spreading freedom a bonus afterwards, in the hope that a free Iraq is less of a loose cannon (a fact that remains to be proven, but there are positive signs).
I'll wait for capable people to do that for me, thank you.
And I still think it looks utterly fake. By that time the government had better tools to create and process documents.
Let's not turn this idiocy around. This document does not need to be "proven fake".
It needs to be proven authentic ! Dear God.
Oh and don't worry, despite the stupidity of accepting this "on sight", it will be proven a fake. Just give it enough time.
So you think the following 2 actions are equivalent :
arming kids with a stick (not *even* a sword, much less any type of firearm) and sending them into a place you know is basically a minefield with a cardboard "key to heaven".
Recruiting soldiers, training them, equiping them with multiple firearms, radios, jeeps, naval and areal support. And sending them to a battlefield where they work together to defeat an army that was threatening to kill massive numbers of people, and *did* kill 30 million people right after the democrats forced those americans to depart.
If those 2 are morally equivalent in your mind, you need to see a shrink. Today, not tomorrow.
Actually the war was declared in the U.S. congress and the only purpose was regime change in Iraq.
By that standard, the war is obviously won.
And in not that long a time the new government will be capable of defending itself - then even democrats will have to accept that the war was won.
Winning a war btw, doesn't mean everybody goes home. Just look at WWII.
So you think defending the persian gulf is an agressive war for America ?
Then why don't you try going for ONE WEEK, without oil. Just try it.
You don't get to go to the supermarket
You don't get to drive your car
You can only buy things at a farmer's place, and obviously not in trade for dollars - which are worth nothing without international trade and the US marine
You can't use plastic things, not even an umbrella
Obviously you don't get to heat your house
You get electricy, but only 10% of what you have now (and that's at most)
Think you can do it ?
Let's not forget what happens when you choose not to fight :
Rome
When they finally fell, without any real defense, to the people they'd let immigrate into their lands, some 80% of the total population was killed. Life expectation fell from over 60 to below 20.
It would take over 400 years for any sort of law to re-establish itself.
Let's just hope you actually have the brains to see this document for the obvious fake that it is.
Exactly ... Glad I'm not the only non-idiotic slashdot reader.
"Have I fallen asleep and woken up in some universe where there really are aliens on area 51" is what I'm thinking if I read this document.
And the truth is simple : it's a fake.
Don't you think that it's a *bit* more likely that the document is a fake.
...) are better in the morality department ... The current iranian administration killed 500.000 kids (well, they sent them straight into Saddam's bullets after giving them a carton "key to heaven" - this is NOT a joke). North Korea ... well does anything really need to be said ?
Besides, please explain how non-western (what ? commie ? islamist ?
Unfortunately western governments are the best governments there are. They're VERY far from perfect. However they beat the crap out of every other "style" of government.
We also need some sort of common sense to spot obvious fakes (just click on the pdf).
If this is made by the US gov then they're beyond stupid. Not because of the contents. Just the layout.
WWII pilot briefing documents look better than this "official" document.
I say it's a fake.
Unless it was - you know - either a fake or inaccurately reported.
Like Bush' supposed "service record" from 73 that turned out to have been made with word 2003.
Just one question that I might be interested in knowing your answer to ...
...
Do nuclear reactors increase or decrease the radiation in the mined ore
Just a tiny little detail that you might want to consider. Oh and most uranium mines aren't 1/100th as secure as the average storage facility of the nuclear industry.
And now for the reality of the situation : yes nuclear waste is danguerous. It is however, less dangerous than the mine that the nuclear reactor starts with, and much *much* more secure.
Buses are organized by the government in just about any country. They *CAN* transport on average more than 1 person (obviously not counting the driver).
... they in reality don't actually transport > 2 person on average (numbers in Belgium, from "De Lijn"). And they use 4x what an average car does.
But thanks to the govt. organising buses
That aside buses do beat humans walking in efficiency, but not cars.
Oh and btw ... actually today's humans run on about 60% fossil fuels.
...
You might want to check out what fertilizer is made of and what powers tractors
(modern agri = using petrol to grow more biomass)
Yeah they run on biofuels, and as we all know ... that *sooooo* much better.
... just put it next to the other inconvenient truths ...
Oh wait ? It's actually worse you say
You are alive when you go shopping whether you go by car or by foot. By car however, you can shop much faster, meaning a car actually saves co2 used by shopping inside you as well. But not only there :
... except extra weight is *much* more problematic for walking locomotion than for locomotion on wheels.
... and so forth).
:
Your weight + the weight of groceries stays the same
But let's ditch that little detail and act as if it *is* the same.
Let's also ditch the fact that going on wheels is more efficient (perhaps you take the bike). Let's assume a linear relation between weight and energy necessary (this is not true, more weight can be more efficiently transferred per kilogram, this disadvantages the car, not you).
So you go to the supermarket. The weight that you have to move = bike + yourself + groceries =~ 80 + 20 + 10 = 110 kg.
Then take the car. Total weight = car + yourself + groceries = 600 + 80 + 10 kg (assuming you're not using a hummer, but you could make the car 1 ton and it wouldn't change the argument, obviously going by tank would be less efficient, BUT there's a caveat even there) = 690 kg
So the car is about 6-7 times heavier than you, AND it's 6-10 times more efficient. It *will* get you to the store for about the same energy as biking (and for a lot *less* than if you walk).
BUT there's a BIG caveat. The car has 10 or 100 times the carrying capacity of the bike. In other words, with the car you go to the store once per week (or twice). You can get 5x the amount of groceries easy. You'll get 5x the groceries merely for convenience.
So transporting the same amount of groceries, if said amount is 30 or 50 kg in a 600 kg car is 5x more efficient than biking these in. And it's over 15x times more efficient than walking them in. AND as a bonus it takes less time, and it's more convenient.
IF you express it in "joules eaten", therefore you will find the car much more efficient. Right now we get "human joules" from different sources that SEEM (for the moment) more available. Obviously they're not, or due to innovations such as this they're not going to be different for much longer. In both Brazil and Indonesia they're already the same, and the U.S. is maybe 5-10 years removed from having a completely interchangeable power source for humans and cars (from one year to the next it can be used to produce human fuel, and then switch to car fuel, and back, and
So obviously it's not the "oil" used that matters, but joules used. And perhaps that's not entirely true in America YET. But it won't take long.
And if you're a CO2 nut, the same is true. A human will output more or less the same amount of CO2 per joule used than a car.
And then let's see the conspiracy theory : perhaps you don't know this, but the entire climate department at every university knows this. And if Al Gore is 1/10th as informed as he claims to be, then surely he knows too. So what are the environuts doing by advocating "simpler society".
The middle age societies were vastly inferior and less efficient. Per human they produced MORE co2, and 100x as much for the same living standard, there were just many, many less humans. So why advocate going back to a simpler society ?
If you want to save co2, we must go further in mechanizing society. Much further. A human can't be improved in efficiency, but it'd be easy to make an electrical shopping robot/butler 80% efficient in energy usage (getting a control algorithm capable of doing this however isn't easy). That's the way to go if we want to
1) help people live (and have a reasonable living standard)
2) not kill half the world's population (which *will* be the result of using biofuels)
So if you're "truly" green
-> support cars, for everything but the shortest little trips
-> discourage people doing stuff themselves without machines
-> encourage electricity generation in various ways, for electricity generation + usage beats the crap out o
It's just so sad that this thing is not a solution at all either. The energy has to come from somewhere.
The second law of thermodynamics precludes this principle from working "sustainably". Oh sure it might increase our supply for a short while (- I doubt it will, but hey it *might*).
Plants are 2-3% efficient solar panels (at best, that is assuming 100% green cover, and every last square millimeter of green leaves perfectly illuminated and tracking the sun). Using their dead residue to power cars is about 10% efficient, which can be raised to about 30% efficiency full cycle. (which is a LOT better than using it to power humans btw, who are at best 3-5% efficient in using plant energy, it is *better* for the environment to go shopping in your car, not worse)
Knowing that we use about 3x the total energy present in the biosphere yearly, you know that we'd need 200-300% efficient conversion of plant matter to movement energy. We are, at best, at 0.2-0.3%.
Using plant matter to make biofuels can therefore not increase our energy supply (... for long).
The solution ?
-> short term : nuclear power
-> long term : efficient solar power
Although I'll readily admit that this could be useful for the petrochem industry (and by that I mean plastics, and *perhaps* fertilizer, not fuel).
Without an immediate serious increase in nuclear power, we're fucked. Badly fucked. Even the Saudi "allah will replace our oil" nutcases are building nuclear power plants, do you really want to be considered dumber than them ?
No it isn't. Especially not if they get spread over a large area.
GM crops were evil in greenhouses, I seem to remember. Which are, obviously, also "sealed vats".
Due to, of all things, money. Just the thing that all the environuts claim is destroying the environment. I guess money savings only destroy the environment if they're OTHER people's savings then. Sounds just about right for the normal ethical standards of the likes of greenpeace.
I'm "cool" with it, obviously. If they want to cave preventively when it's their own money on the line. It's pretty hard to keep up with all this PC-speak though. Any other updates on the PC-speak department ? Have muslims gone back to being evil yet ? Or do we still ignore the actual, you know, content of their faith ?
Really ? You can publish the quran with this subtle statement in it just about everywhere :
(9:111) Muslims are but slaves to allah. Their orders are to fight,kill and die for islam.
If that's not incitement, then what exactly *is* ???
It's just a political opionion that's outlawed in France (and the rest of Europe), in fact by now quite a few of them, they don't truly outlaw racism. I happen to have a (currently) mostly allowed political opinion, but they're clearly preparing to outlaw it too. In fact anything except "everybody loves europe" is clearly being outlawed*.
Muslims are the filthiest animals on the face of the earth, because they refuse to accept the truth
(this is quran 8:55, with "infidels" replaced by "muslims", so please bear that in mind, if you call it racism, then obviously islam is racist)
And before you start barking about interpretation, please respect the content of the quran, or to be exact, please respect that it specifies that it is to be interpreted literally (quran 3:6 I believe).
* Jose Manuel Barosso, the head honcho (= dictator, since he's the leader of a non-democratic institution) stated today "I don't think Irelands 'No' vote constitutes a rejection of Europe. A release of sovereignty requires a referendum in Ireland, and we clearly need to find a way around that technicality". Those are his words. Does anything really need to be added ?
So in Scotland politicians magically don't have personal grudges against other parties ? Great.
Aren't you part of Tony Blair's England that yesterday voted in that new terror law that slashdot so extensively criticized. I hear there were corruption charges publicized against Blair.
We all read the press reaction of other parties, including of a few people that, upon closer examination, voted "yes".
It's the only way to have a coherent government response.
In America there are 3 positions of power :
-> the superior court
-> the presidency (in charge of all "real-world" events)
-> congress (in charge of all "theoretic" events)
These fight with eachother, but each have basically a single, more-or-less coherent strategy in dealing with both the external world, and eachother.
Contrast to what generally happens in Europe (hypothetical example) :
Min. Defense : we need to modernize the army and expand it
Min. Finance (political opponent of Def) : but without money
Min. Labour (political opponent to Def) : AND without people
Min. Foreign Affairs (political ally to Def) : Oh don't worry Europe pays, and we'll just use african "volunteers"
(it's a HYPOTHETICAL example, remember, the content doesn't mean anything)
In Europe, nothing gets done, everything becomes idiotically complex. Every member of government pulls in a different direction, resulting in completely steerless countries.
And now the local governments are basically replaced by the EU, which isn't even theoretically democratic. And it's using it's non-democratic power (did you know that EU directives, which are decided SOLELY by the minister of foreign affairs of your govt, superceed the will of parliament ?). Oh and the comission is also de-facto the highest judicial organ in Europe.
This means that voters in Europe don't have to compromise. By contrast, the American electoral system is designed to extract a compromise from the voters. No such compromise exists in European countries.
It is the only way to make anything change in the EU countries.
Yes because if Saddam had detonated the middle east (at his own expense) surely oil would have "decreased" in price, right ?
... wait ... it'd be $5000 a barrel. That sounds a LOT more realistic.
Oh
Now obviously we didn't take this course in history, so there's really nothing that can prove this. But if you expect us to trust a massacring dictator with creating stability in OUR intrest then you're utterly insane.
You know this guy comitted several chemical attacks "without" WMDs, who, after all don't exist. I would like to hear your explanation on exactly how this happened though :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack
(I don't know why in the name of God wikipedia claims this has to do with the Iran-Iraq war, but hey it doesn't change my point : how did Saddam do THAT without chemical weapons ?)
So wait ... you're accusing the ANTI-"medicare" people of hunting for government handouts ?
...
Could you repeat that one more time ? Just so I'm sure