If you read Hans Blix's report, you'll find that Iraq failed to give any reasonable explanation for what happened, for instance, to the tens of thousands of tons of Anthrax.
Hans Blix asked for more time to do his weapons inspections, but was denied. Blix later expressed concern why the bush adminstration was making an effort to undermind their work and even use clearly false "evidence" to prove that Iraq had WMD.
Iraq's role in international terrorism is well known and the first hard proof [bbc.co.uk] was found last week.
This "hard proof" by the Telegraph was discredited already the next day by the british intelligence community. See for instant the Times (a respected, conservative british newspaper) about it. It is funny how fast the press is to find "proof" of WMD or links with Al-Quaida, but forget to tell everyone when they are discredited. (You have to pay to read the article but it start:
Saddam link to al-Qaeda in doubt
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
BRITISH Intelligence officials have expressed doubt that Saddam Hussein established any working relationship with al-Qaeda despite the discovery of documents showing that an "envoy" for Osama bin Laden visited Baghdad in 1998.
The documents were found by The Sunday Telegraph at the bombed-out Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's Intelligence service, and were hailed yesterday as positive proof of an Iraqi link to al-Qaeda. They mentioned the arrival of a confidant of bin Laden who had travelled to Baghdad from Khartoum in March 1998. Bin Laden was based in Sudan until 1996.
Officials told The Times that there had been intelligence indicators about that time of a possible visit to Baghdad by someone purporting to represent al-Qaeda. There had been no evidence of any follow-up meetings to suggest that Baghdad had forged a long-term partnership with al-Qaeda.
That's right - and you should not even attempt to make such a comparision. Either you accept the authority of UN and play by its rules (and bow to the resistance of Russia/France) or you accept that UN is dead because you could ignore its procedures already in Kosovo.
Things are not so black and white. The veto power in the security counsel is a thing put into place by the allies after WWII and needed because of the cold-war. I agree that UN is not perfect, but that does not mean it has not been the greatest success story after WWII (more than NATO I would say, even though one can argue who has most credit for the relative peace we have seen in the last 58 years.) I agree that UN can need some reforms, I would argue that Russia, France, China, England and US should lose their veto powers in the security counsel. But there is still a need for a strong security counsel to deal with the tougher issues in the world, especially related to international conflicts like war or problems like WMD. A simple majority in the security counsel cannot be good enough for all kinds of issues, so one have to make procedures that safeguards the prosess.
I cannot see your problem with Kosovo. Everyone understood that Russia could not be seen as supporting a war against its historical allies. Even though this was clear, the moral support from a majority of the security counsel was important for NATO when going into the war. And all the diplomatic work before the war made the public in Europe and the US accept that everything had been done to try to stop Milosvitch peacefully. Even though it was clear that Milosovitch had to be stopped in his genocite on the Balkans, the majority of Republicans in congress was against the war in Kosovo. I guess they are only for protecting a population against their dictator when there is also oil involved (the democrats are not much better when it comes to the issue of Iraq).
That's right. Just bash US and don't even bother actually arguing your case. A sure way to get modded up.
You are a bit on the defensive I see, luckily you don't speak or argue for the US as a whole (even though sadly bush does at the moment).
Sure. Iraq exercised its sovereignity to full extent in the form of dictatorial regime, weapons of mass destruction and support of international terrorism.
Since you are into arguing your case, could you show any proof of Saddam having WMD (i.e., enough of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to make a real threat) in the months before the war? We all know that Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran (with Rumsfelds blessing) and against the kurds, but that does not constitute any proof except that Saddam is a true bastard (and Rumsfeld also I guess).
While you are at it, can you also show any proof that Saddam was involved in international terrorism as you call it. There has been no proof that Saddam worked with Al-Quaida (Saddam and Osama were enemies) or that Saddam or his gang had anything to do with 9-11. But I guess you were talking about some other proof?
USA has no obligation to become a member of the international court of justice... for good reasons such as the lack of certain rights guaranteed by the US Constitution
And what happened to those rights guaranteed , when dealing with the people in Guantanamo bay?
... global warming... there is absolutely no hard evidence that it is caused by geologically and climatologically insignifant human action
I guess that translate into, scientist should say what is politically correct, not what their data shows them. The bush administration has thaught you well.
... explicitly against the wishes of one of its permanent members (Russia) - just like the war in Iraq.
It is hard to compare the case of lack of majority in the UN assembly, lack of majority in the security counsel and three permanent members out of five against the war in Iraq, hell, even a lack of majority in England and Spain the only real supporting countries, with the one single veto vote the war against Kosovo.
... "public opinion": largely irrelevant (and for a good reason)
except if the U.S. forces the rest of the world to agree with it in some economic or political way.
The US does not have the power to to force any such thing on the world. Yes, the US has the most deadly military but most conflict cannot be solved with killing of a third world dictator.
The only way to get such a international patent system would be through the UN and with diplomatic means. The Bush administration has shown itself to be less then adequate in diplomatic negotiation, thinking it can bribe (Turkey), threaten (France), lie (Powell security counsel), or play cool (N Korea) itself to get it the way it wants. All of the above tactics backfired and did not work.
I guess the world has to wait for an administration that can be trusted to keep what it promises and not pull out of international treaties according to if it suits them or not, before any more break throughs can come on international cooperation.
Time to call a spade a fucking shovel. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys, they lost, end of story.
Well, Rumsfeld did not complain much when he visited Saddam in 1983, even though he knew that Saddam was using chemical gas against the iranians. The important thing was of course to not let Iraq lose the war, since Iran was seen as a threat against the US (and rightfully so I guess). And the world did not complain much, because of the cold war, you did not question the decition of "your" side.
Maybe the US citizens did not suffer much from the dirty past of the cold war, but ask someone from Chile if they appriciated that their democratic elected (socialist) leader was killed in the CIA coup of Nixon and Kissinger to make the Pinoche (right wing) dictatorship. One can debate if this socialist was a threat in the cold war (probably not), but people were definitly killed and tortured with the US goverments blessing, to make sure that the "good" side was winning the cold war.
Stalin's paranoia created extra suffering for parts of the russian soceity, but Stalin managed to keep in power and Russia strong because of his ruthless style. And people who did not end up in GULAGE mourned Stalin's death sincerily, they were grateful for their "great leader" giving them jobs and food (I know a russian who can tell fasinating stories from the "other sides" view of things). There is actually people in Russia that miss the communist era (not my russian friend), at least then they had secured a job and a place in soceity, and the US president could not demand obidiance from the russian president.
Although similar persecutions continue in some countries to these days, the public opinion in many democracies would not tolerate any outside action against the oppressing governments.
I guess that is another jive against France. Well, Chirac said that he would be for a military action against Iraq if they failed to let the UN inspectors do their job or if the US could prove that they had WMD (or links to Al-Quaida). The US could not do prove any such thing (and has not found WMD yet), and Bush started the war when the UN inspections were giving results and seemed to pick up momentum. Wonder what the rush was.
Invading a sovereign country because it has oil and tried to kill your daddy is not very noble. And one could have a debate if the tens of thounds of iraqis who lost their lives (civilians and drafted soldiers) and their families have any benefit of this war. One could argue that their sacrifice is for the best for future iraqis, but the nation building does not seem very convincing yet, and what ever happens they are dead. At least under Saddam they would be alive and maybe in some years Saddam would be gone of "natural" reasons. And we have not started talking about the children with war traumas yet.
The other problem in your argument is who is going to deside which country has to go? You list Castro as one, but Cuba has a great educational system and one of the best health systems in the world. That does not help the people who want political changes and end up in jail for it, but people go to jail for similar reasons in countries that are right wing enough for Bush and his cronies.
Trade sanctions -- a modern democracies' usual "civilized" weapon against each other -- don't work against these scumbags. They pass the suffering onto their people...
Yes, the trade sanctions against Cuba are unnecessary and has not helped in the past 40 years.
Some would say the US has an oppressing goverment; an higher precentage of the people get executed in Texas than in China (who execute farmers and drug dealers regularly it seems) and usually these texans are poor and black. An higher precentage of the population today are in jail in the US than they were in Stalin's Russia (including "work" camps and all that). There are definitly jails in the US that are equally horrible to be in as Stalin's work camps. Luckily, no other country is strong enough yet to invade the US to "liberate" its people and wealth.
Saddam's place is next to Miloshevich. Get him there!
The US does not want to have an international criminal court (like the one that judges Milosovitch), since it can actually be used when american citizens do international crimes. Congress even passed a law to invade the Hague in case an american international criminal was to be held at the international court (in the Hague). So, I guess Saddam will be sent to Guantanamo bay and have a secret trial with a very public guilty verdict, similar in a way to the trials of Stalin era.
Probably one should not call it Global Warming (even though that is what the trend is at the moment), but instead human caused climate change.
The temperature has risen steadily this century, but that does not mean that it will continue to do so. But it means that we are leaving the equilibrum position that the global climate has been in since the last ice age. More over, this rapid change in the climate is claimed by a majority of climate scientist (or environmentalist if that is what you like to call them) to be caused by human energy consumption and other human activities.
When we leave the equilibrium that we have come to depend on, the system will at some point become unstabel. Such unstabel systems can be seen for instant in a simple pendelum with an external force out of frequency with the pendelum motion; the motion will become chaotic and the behavior of the system very hard/impossible to predict. The system will often come back to a new equilibrium position, but where it will end up is again very hard to predict.
The climate is of course a much more complex system than any simple mechanical model you can make in the lab. What we do know is if we get too far away from the equilibrium, the climate will become unstabel, and we will see some uncontrolable changes, before any new equilibrium, i.e., weather pattern set in. If the new weather pattern will lead to global cooling or global warming is anyones guess. But rapid changes in the climate on a global scale will definitly wipe out huge eco-systems and will probably wipe out the poorer parts of the world, if not also richer countries. The economic cost will of course sky rocket (think of the costs money wise if Miami and Manhatten suddenly are under the sea level , as one example).
There are scientific reasons to belive the earth has been into such externally driven climate changes before. Everyone knows of the theory of the dinosaurs being killed of by the climate change due to a meteorite. Similar changes have happened in the past when the sun has gone through changes. The resent change in the climate is most probably due to human beings, and therefore is unique in that we can actually do something about it.
I do not really understand the economic argument of Bush (and his oil friends). First, the cost will be much greater if these climate changes comes. Second, it makes sense to not be so dependent on burning fossile fuels, and to use energy sources that pollute less but equally importantly, are renewable. Third, what ever country or company develops the technology that makes sun, wind, waves, thermal energy competetive, or likewise, make burning of fossile fuels more effective or makes technology to not let CO2 out in the atmosphere, will have a technology that they can sell for hard bucks all over the world.
The Kyoto agreement will force industrialized countries to make investments now, that will cost some part of our budgets, but it is an investment in the future that one can hope will lead to a more stable climate, but for sure in more viable energy sources and useful technology. I think it is a more valuable budget cost than tax breaks for the rich 3% of the US population.
The God who plays with dices
on
Einstein Unveiled
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· Score: 5, Informative
No, Einstein never denied that Quantum Mechanics fits the known experimental data perfectly or claimed that further experiments would show that QM was wrong. Einstein was himself one of the founding fathers of QM and a master in using the predicting powers of the theory, predicting QM-phenomena like LASERs and Bose-Einstein condensation, decades before they were seen in any lab.
What Einstein never accepted was the interpretation given to the mathematical framework of QM by Bohr, Heisenberg, Born and others. Einstein was not alone in resisting the philosophical/physical interpretation by the "Copenhagen school" , he was joined by people like Planck, Schroedinger, and de Broglie who all knew a bit about QM. (But as always, the old generation dies out and the new generation have gotten used to the new world view.)
Einstein believed in a deterministic universe (just as Newton, Laplace and the other classic mechanics guys before), where when you knew the starting conditions perfectly, you could calculate what happened. This is how to understand the statement "God does not play with dices". "God" knows what is going to happen, He does not only know the odds are for something to happen. This is contrary to Bohr who claim that "God" (or the physicist) can only know the different possible outcomes from some given starting condition and the probability of the different outcomes.
According to the uncertainty principle "God" can not even hope to know the starting conditions perfectly.
The answer to QM by Einstein was the so-called "hidden variables" theory, variables that behave in a deterministic way but lead to behaviour that looks random in the experiments that were used to "prove" QM. Einstein also made famous thought experiments to show the inconsistency in the logic of the Copenhagen school, like the EPR paradox.
Today most physicist believe Einsteins objections to QM has been shown to be wrong, and Bohr's interpretation has become the dogma. But who knows? Newton thought light consisted of particles, but was proven wrong. Then Einstein showed that light can be seen as both waves and photon-particles. So, maybe in some hundred years Einstein's objections to QM can be shown to be a "bit" correct:-).
I agree that the US states only use death-penalty for (what most people consider) reasonable cases (example violent murders). The scary number for me is that Texas executes a larger percentage of the population than China, even though China is known for executing political prisoners and staging mass executions of drug dealers to set an example. So, even if Texas does not follow the dodgy standard of a country like China, it still manages to be more busy than China in state set killings.
Another scary statistic is that there are today a larger percentage of the population in jail than under Stalin in Soviet Union (here including people in "labour camps" in Siberia.) I am sometimes wondering what these numbers say about the current american society...
But why do these bystanders always live in trailer parks?
A friend of mine who studies social anthropology noticed that when an anthropologist want to get in touch with a group he/she wants to study (that be a tribe in the rain forest or the local LUG), it was always easiest to get to know the outsiders in the group first. (Outsider as in one not very well respected in the group and often looked on as a bit weired, like a tribe member who always messes up the hunt or a LUG member who don't compile his own kernel). An experienced anthropologist will usually take advantage of this early contact to the group's outsiders to learn the languages and rules of the society he wants to study and then slowly try to get to know more important people in the group.
My friend concluded that the reason UFOs usually visit trailer parks, is of similar reasons. The ETs just want to learn a bit about our language and culture with people who are easy to get in touch with, before trying to talk to more important figures in our society.
Anyway, now that my "friend" got to now the real 3I337 HaCXoRs in my group, he does not talk to me much anymore:-).
The US could send the corn to a mill and these hungry Zimbabweans could get their meal. One have to differentiate between short term and long term in any discussion. For the people who go hungry the important thing is to get food. For the long term it is equally important that Zimbabwe is able to build up its own food production (which, among other things, means getting rid of Mugabe). GM could mean a threat to the food production in Zimbabwe on a long term, and also have yet unknown health effects. The situation can look a bit like the introduction of DDT, which was supposed to save Africa from mosquitoes, but ended up being an equal health problem as malaria. There is nothing abstract in discussing the long term, even though the people themselves have to focus on their short term needs...
However, the food that could feed them is not politically correct in the EU...
Why is it "politically correct" (which translates into "just BS" for the average joe) to worry about what is in the food you eat? The fact of the matter is that there has not yet been done much scientific research on GM that has been published in scientific journals (one has to hope the corporations promoting GM do their own internal research on any bad effects...). One should be a bit conservative when big changes are made both to the environment around the farms and what ends up in your lunch box. It is not unreasonable that food containing/might contain GM be labelled as such so consumers at least have a choice, even if it will hurt profits of some american corporations.
The irony in the whole debate is that often the same people claiming that scientist already have shown that GM food is safe, are the same ones that say the Green house effect needs more research before we do anything to counter it. Do they only listen to what the big corporation say is good science and good politics (i.e. what is good for profits)?
Anyway, eat your modified food and plant your modified seeds and let's see if it has any effect in 10-20 years. It is an interesting experiment.
But how about the obvious question: "What if it's NOT really them or us"?
I think this is a very valuable point.
There seems to be an underlying assumption in this whole discussion that is very questionable. The assumption that there is only a fixed amount of jobs available at any given point. This belief is often connected to the belief there is a certain amount of work that needs to be finished at any given period.
If one thinks about it, both are not correct.
First, there is always more work to be done. We all do are small part in whatever role we have, but if we do more each day it does not generally mean that there will be less for other to do that day. It can mean that others can try to slack more, but it equally often leads to pressure/inspiration for others to do more themselves. It can lead to the company needing fewer employees, but those employees with extra inspiration and work energy often give better profits for the company and then again the wish for more employees to help in the companies growth. A good example is the way technology has made us more effective. The related myth that computers/machine will make people jobless is easily disproved by pointing out how many more (in percentage/total numbers) have a productive and interesting job today than 100 years ago.
Similarly, the number of jobs available is not a fixed number but is always updated together with the companies perception of opportunities available and current economy. In this particular example, if there are skilled Indians available who ask for less pay, some companies will use the opportunity to hire, even if they would not hire if these job seekers where not there in the first place. One could say, their presence in the market created new jobs not there before, since not only did they get a job themselves, but they spend their money in the local shop and pay their taxes too. And if the company did a good analysis of the value of these extra people, the company becomes more productive and pay more taxes/can hire more people too etc. etc. (By the way, I am not saying that these Indians should only be allowed to get under-payed jobs. This is not what a open society is about. Discrimination is hard to prevent, but that doesn't mean that one should allow it, and I do not think it is good for the economy or make more jobs for the non-discriminated.)
And, lets not forget, I am sure that among some of those 40,000 or whatever the number is, are a few entrepreneurs who helps create new companies, new markets, new products and be a great benefit to the countries economy.
There is no need for government mandated pollution reduction, and to attempt to legislate such a reduction plan would waste billions of dollars.
And how many billions of dollars is going to be wasted to deal with the consequences of a rising temperature on a global scale? Just ask Trans-Alaska Oil how much money they have wasted on dealing with disappearing perma-frost and then add it to the other expenses.
Why should we resist legislation (from democrats, communist or terrorists or from whining republicans) to make sure that Big Business does their part of the job to keep energy consumption and pollution production down? No legislation is just good for slackers in Big Business who don't want to "waste" their precious money on our common future. The only problem is that the extra money dirty companies saves, the rest of the community will have to pay back with rents. But I am sure that Bush has our common future in mind and not his crony friends when he wants to cut down on all that "restrictive legislation" connected with air pollution, strip mining, alska oil, Kyoto...
A bit of topic maybe, but I have just installed SuSE 8.0 and I was happy to find a lot of music related software to play with on the SuSE CDs (MusE, Brahms, Jazz+, kmidi etc). Since I have a digital piano (Yamaha Clavinova), it was natural to think about trying out the midi capability that the digital piano has. So, I bought a midi connector (for the joystick entrance of my SoundBlaster Live 5.1 oem card) but have not been successful yet to get the digital piano to communicate with any programs.
Is there any slashdotters out there who have some experience with these things? It would be nice to hear from anyone else who have tried to connecting their digital piano to their linux box. Advice to a newbie like me would be much appreciated!
Which happens to be illegal under both US and WTO rules, if memory serves.
The U.S. has already lost four cases in front of the WTO, in earlier attempts to protect local steel industry from "dumping" of steel. There is no reason to think that this latest court case brought to us by Bush will be different. So, leave WTO out of it, the "dumping" tax (that ironically indirectly is tax on American citizens, this from a no-tax president) is only something U.S. thinks is legal. But of course, a case in front of WTO usually takes four-five years, so then Bush won't have to deal with it anymore....
There are actually two versions of Statue of Liberty, one in Paris and one in NY. The one in Paris is smaller (and less well known). I guess it was done by Eiffel to show the friendship between the two countries (don't know where he got that from;-), and the historical connections between the two young republics.
People will bribe governments so long as governments have the power do something for them.
And when the government does not have any power anymore, we will have to bribe whatever entity governing instead of the government. I prefer to pay tax than "microsoft tax" or mob "protection" tax.
Heisenberg wanted Bohr on the team. Germany will win; be a slave or be a Nazi.
I do not think Heisenberg was so naive that he thought he could get Bohr on his team. Remember, Bohr was a jew, so it would be politically impossible at that time even if Bohr would be stupid enough to accept. I belive more that it could be true (as Bohr believed), that Heisenberg wanted to get some information about what Bohr knew about the allies work on the atomic bomb. Bohr never forgave his old friend and student for trying to use him in this way.
The inertia behidn MP3 is too big to bring a total change in formats for most people for I'd say around 3-5 years. DVDs have been around for a while now, and STILL most people have a video player, huge amounts of videos are still sold and rented. Probably an unfair comparison - cheap DVD recorders aren't around - but you get the point.
Your argument is interesting, but flawed on one account. It is not that many years ago that CD's were introduced. Today CD's dominate the marked completely. Why? I guess because the sound is superior and because the big companies went behind the format. When talking about DVD, consider the fact that DVD's are growing faster than CD's did when it was introduced. Again, big companies are pushing (and using the format) and the quality of video is much better.
So, if the word gets out that.ogg's have better sound quality than mp3 and still don't take much space on your harddisk (sometimes less), I am sure alot of people won't look back. The problem is to make people aware of.ogg (without the money for PR like Philips or Sony have) and to make companies like BBC start using the format.
Slashdot Mirror
Saddam link to al-Qaeda in doubt
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
BRITISH Intelligence officials have expressed doubt that Saddam Hussein established any working relationship with al-Qaeda despite the discovery of documents showing that an "envoy" for Osama bin Laden visited Baghdad in 1998.
The documents were found by The Sunday Telegraph at the bombed-out Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's Intelligence service, and were hailed yesterday as positive proof of an Iraqi link to al-Qaeda. They mentioned the arrival of a confidant of bin Laden who had travelled to Baghdad from Khartoum in March 1998. Bin Laden was based in Sudan until 1996.
Officials told The Times that there had been intelligence indicators about that time of a possible visit to Baghdad by someone purporting to represent al-Qaeda. There had been no evidence of any follow-up meetings to suggest that Baghdad had forged a long-term partnership with al-Qaeda.
I cannot see your problem with Kosovo. Everyone understood that Russia could not be seen as supporting a war against its historical allies. Even though this was clear, the moral support from a majority of the security counsel was important for NATO when going into the war. And all the diplomatic work before the war made the public in Europe and the US accept that everything had been done to try to stop Milosvitch peacefully. Even though it was clear that Milosovitch had to be stopped in his genocite on the Balkans, the majority of Republicans in congress was against the war in Kosovo. I guess they are only for protecting a population against their dictator when there is also oil involved (the democrats are not much better when it comes to the issue of Iraq).
While you are at it, can you also show any proof that Saddam was involved in international terrorism as you call it. There has been no proof that Saddam worked with Al-Quaida (Saddam and Osama were enemies) or that Saddam or his gang had anything to do with 9-11. But I guess you were talking about some other proof?
What can I say, you have it both ways I guess.
The only way to get such a international patent system would be through the UN and with diplomatic means. The Bush administration has shown itself to be less then adequate in diplomatic negotiation, thinking it can bribe (Turkey), threaten (France), lie (Powell security counsel), or play cool (N Korea) itself to get it the way it wants. All of the above tactics backfired and did not work.
I guess the world has to wait for an administration that can be trusted to keep what it promises and not pull out of international treaties according to if it suits them or not, before any more break throughs can come on international cooperation.
Maybe the US citizens did not suffer much from the dirty past of the cold war, but ask someone from Chile if they appriciated that their democratic elected (socialist) leader was killed in the CIA coup of Nixon and Kissinger to make the Pinoche (right wing) dictatorship. One can debate if this socialist was a threat in the cold war (probably not), but people were definitly killed and tortured with the US goverments blessing, to make sure that the "good" side was winning the cold war.
Stalin's paranoia created extra suffering for parts of the russian soceity, but Stalin managed to keep in power and Russia strong because of his ruthless style. And people who did not end up in GULAGE mourned Stalin's death sincerily, they were grateful for their "great leader" giving them jobs and food (I know a russian who can tell fasinating stories from the "other sides" view of things). There is actually people in Russia that miss the communist era (not my russian friend), at least then they had secured a job and a place in soceity, and the US president could not demand obidiance from the russian president.
Invading a sovereign country because it has oil and tried to kill your daddy is not very noble. And one could have a debate if the tens of thounds of iraqis who lost their lives (civilians and drafted soldiers) and their families have any benefit of this war. One could argue that their sacrifice is for the best for future iraqis, but the nation building does not seem very convincing yet, and what ever happens they are dead. At least under Saddam they would be alive and maybe in some years Saddam would be gone of "natural" reasons. And we have not started talking about the children with war traumas yet.
The other problem in your argument is who is going to deside which country has to go? You list Castro as one, but Cuba has a great educational system and one of the best health systems in the world. That does not help the people who want political changes and end up in jail for it, but people go to jail for similar reasons in countries that are right wing enough for Bush and his cronies.
Yes, the trade sanctions against Cuba are unnecessary and has not helped in the past 40 years.
Some would say the US has an oppressing goverment; an higher precentage of the people get executed in Texas than in China (who execute farmers and drug dealers regularly it seems) and usually these texans are poor and black. An higher precentage of the population today are in jail in the US than they were in Stalin's Russia (including "work" camps and all that). There are definitly jails in the US that are equally horrible to be in as Stalin's work camps. Luckily, no other country is strong enough yet to invade the US to "liberate" its people and wealth.
when you outlaw spam, only the criminals will get spam...
The temperature has risen steadily this century, but that does not mean that it will continue to do so. But it means that we are leaving the equilibrum position that the global climate has been in since the last ice age. More over, this rapid change in the climate is claimed by a majority of climate scientist (or environmentalist if that is what you like to call them) to be caused by human energy consumption and other human activities.
When we leave the equilibrium that we have come to depend on, the system will at some point become unstabel. Such unstabel systems can be seen for instant in a simple pendelum with an external force out of frequency with the pendelum motion; the motion will become chaotic and the behavior of the system very hard/impossible to predict. The system will often come back to a new equilibrium position, but where it will end up is again very hard to predict.
The climate is of course a much more complex system than any simple mechanical model you can make in the lab. What we do know is if we get too far away from the equilibrium, the climate will become unstabel, and we will see some uncontrolable changes, before any new equilibrium, i.e., weather pattern set in. If the new weather pattern will lead to global cooling or global warming is anyones guess. But rapid changes in the climate on a global scale will definitly wipe out huge eco-systems and will probably wipe out the poorer parts of the world, if not also richer countries. The economic cost will of course sky rocket (think of the costs money wise if Miami and Manhatten suddenly are under the sea level , as one example).
There are scientific reasons to belive the earth has been into such externally driven climate changes before. Everyone knows of the theory of the dinosaurs being killed of by the climate change due to a meteorite. Similar changes have happened in the past when the sun has gone through changes. The resent change in the climate is most probably due to human beings, and therefore is unique in that we can actually do something about it.
I do not really understand the economic argument of Bush (and his oil friends). First, the cost will be much greater if these climate changes comes. Second, it makes sense to not be so dependent on burning fossile fuels, and to use energy sources that pollute less but equally importantly, are renewable. Third, what ever country or company develops the technology that makes sun, wind, waves, thermal energy competetive, or likewise, make burning of fossile fuels more effective or makes technology to not let CO2 out in the atmosphere, will have a technology that they can sell for hard bucks all over the world.
The Kyoto agreement will force industrialized countries to make investments now, that will cost some part of our budgets, but it is an investment in the future that one can hope will lead to a more stable climate, but for sure in more viable energy sources and useful technology. I think it is a more valuable budget cost than tax breaks for the rich 3% of the US population.
No, Einstein never denied that Quantum Mechanics fits the known experimental data perfectly or claimed that further experiments would show that QM was wrong. Einstein was himself one of the founding fathers of QM and a master in using the predicting powers of the theory, predicting QM-phenomena like LASERs and Bose-Einstein condensation, decades before they were seen in any lab.
What Einstein never accepted was the interpretation given to the mathematical framework of QM by Bohr, Heisenberg, Born and others. Einstein was not alone in resisting the philosophical/physical interpretation by the "Copenhagen school" , he was joined by people like Planck, Schroedinger, and de Broglie who all knew a bit about QM. (But as always, the old generation dies out and the new generation have gotten used to the new world view.)
Einstein believed in a deterministic universe (just as Newton, Laplace and the other classic mechanics guys before), where when you knew the starting conditions perfectly, you could calculate what happened. This is how to understand the statement "God does not play with dices". "God" knows what is going to happen, He does not only know the odds are for something to happen. This is contrary to Bohr who claim that "God" (or the physicist) can only know the different possible outcomes from some given starting condition and the probability of the different outcomes. According to the uncertainty principle "God" can not even hope to know the starting conditions perfectly.
The answer to QM by Einstein was the so-called "hidden variables" theory, variables that behave in a deterministic way but lead to behaviour that looks random in the experiments that were used to "prove" QM. Einstein also made famous thought experiments to show the inconsistency in the logic of the Copenhagen school, like the EPR paradox.
Today most physicist believe Einsteins objections to QM has been shown to be wrong, and Bohr's interpretation has become the dogma. But who knows? Newton thought light consisted of particles, but was proven wrong. Then Einstein showed that light can be seen as both waves and photon-particles. So, maybe in some hundred years Einstein's objections to QM can be shown to be a "bit" correct :-).
I agree that the US states only use death-penalty for (what most people consider) reasonable cases (example violent murders). The scary number for me is that Texas executes a larger percentage of the population than China, even though China is known for executing political prisoners and staging mass executions of drug dealers to set an example. So, even if Texas does not follow the dodgy standard of a country like China, it still manages to be more busy than China in state set killings.
Another scary statistic is that there are today a larger percentage of the population in jail than under Stalin in Soviet Union (here including people in "labour camps" in Siberia.) I am sometimes wondering what these numbers say about the current american society...
A friend of mine who studies social anthropology noticed that when an anthropologist want to get in touch with a group he/she wants to study (that be a tribe in the rain forest or the local LUG), it was always easiest to get to know the outsiders in the group first. (Outsider as in one not very well respected in the group and often looked on as a bit weired, like a tribe member who always messes up the hunt or a LUG member who don't compile his own kernel). An experienced anthropologist will usually take advantage of this early contact to the group's outsiders to learn the languages and rules of the society he wants to study and then slowly try to get to know more important people in the group.
My friend concluded that the reason UFOs usually visit trailer parks, is of similar reasons. The ETs just want to learn a bit about our language and culture with people who are easy to get in touch with, before trying to talk to more important figures in our society.
Anyway, now that my "friend" got to now the real 3I337 HaCXoRs in my group, he does not talk to me much anymore :-).
The US could send the corn to a mill and these hungry Zimbabweans could get their meal. One have to differentiate between short term and long term in any discussion. For the people who go hungry the important thing is to get food. For the long term it is equally important that Zimbabwe is able to build up its own food production (which, among other things, means getting rid of Mugabe). GM could mean a threat to the food production in Zimbabwe on a long term, and also have yet unknown health effects. The situation can look a bit like the introduction of DDT, which was supposed to save Africa from mosquitoes, but ended up being an equal health problem as malaria. There is nothing abstract in discussing the long term, even though the people themselves have to focus on their short term needs...
Why is it "politically correct" (which translates into "just BS" for the average joe) to worry about what is in the food you eat? The fact of the matter is that there has not yet been done much scientific research on GM that has been published in scientific journals (one has to hope the corporations promoting GM do their own internal research on any bad effects...). One should be a bit conservative when big changes are made both to the environment around the farms and what ends up in your lunch box. It is not unreasonable that food containing/might contain GM be labelled as such so consumers at least have a choice, even if it will hurt profits of some american corporations.
The irony in the whole debate is that often the same people claiming that scientist already have shown that GM food is safe, are the same ones that say the Green house effect needs more research before we do anything to counter it. Do they only listen to what the big corporation say is good science and good politics (i.e. what is good for profits)?
Anyway, eat your modified food and plant your modified seeds and let's see if it has any effect in 10-20 years. It is an interesting experiment.
I think this is a very valuable point. There seems to be an underlying assumption in this whole discussion that is very questionable. The assumption that there is only a fixed amount of jobs available at any given point. This belief is often connected to the belief there is a certain amount of work that needs to be finished at any given period.
If one thinks about it, both are not correct.
First, there is always more work to be done. We all do are small part in whatever role we have, but if we do more each day it does not generally mean that there will be less for other to do that day. It can mean that others can try to slack more, but it equally often leads to pressure/inspiration for others to do more themselves. It can lead to the company needing fewer employees, but those employees with extra inspiration and work energy often give better profits for the company and then again the wish for more employees to help in the companies growth. A good example is the way technology has made us more effective. The related myth that computers/machine will make people jobless is easily disproved by pointing out how many more (in percentage/total numbers) have a productive and interesting job today than 100 years ago.
Similarly, the number of jobs available is not a fixed number but is always updated together with the companies perception of opportunities available and current economy. In this particular example, if there are skilled Indians available who ask for less pay, some companies will use the opportunity to hire, even if they would not hire if these job seekers where not there in the first place. One could say, their presence in the market created new jobs not there before, since not only did they get a job themselves, but they spend their money in the local shop and pay their taxes too. And if the company did a good analysis of the value of these extra people, the company becomes more productive and pay more taxes/can hire more people too etc. etc. (By the way, I am not saying that these Indians should only be allowed to get under-payed jobs. This is not what a open society is about. Discrimination is hard to prevent, but that doesn't mean that one should allow it, and I do not think it is good for the economy or make more jobs for the non-discriminated.)
And, lets not forget, I am sure that among some of those 40,000 or whatever the number is, are a few entrepreneurs who helps create new companies, new markets, new products and be a great benefit to the countries economy.
(my italics).
And how many billions of dollars is going to be wasted to deal with the consequences of a rising temperature on a global scale? Just ask Trans-Alaska Oil how much money they have wasted on dealing with disappearing perma-frost and then add it to the other expenses.
Why should we resist legislation (from democrats, communist or terrorists or from whining republicans) to make sure that Big Business does their part of the job to keep energy consumption and pollution production down? No legislation is just good for slackers in Big Business who don't want to "waste" their precious money on our common future. The only problem is that the extra money dirty companies saves, the rest of the community will have to pay back with rents. But I am sure that Bush has our common future in mind and not his crony friends when he wants to cut down on all that "restrictive legislation" connected with air pollution, strip mining, alska oil, Kyoto...
A bit of topic maybe, but I have just installed SuSE 8.0 and I was happy to find a lot of music related software to play with on the SuSE CDs (MusE, Brahms, Jazz+, kmidi etc). Since I have a digital piano (Yamaha Clavinova), it was natural to think about trying out the midi capability that the digital piano has. So, I bought a midi connector (for the joystick entrance of my SoundBlaster Live 5.1 oem card) but have not been successful yet to get the digital piano to communicate with any programs.
Is there any slashdotters out there who have some experience with these things? It would be nice to hear from anyone else who have tried to connecting their digital piano to their linux box. Advice to a newbie like me would be much appreciated!
The U.S. has already lost four cases in front of the WTO, in earlier attempts to protect local steel industry from "dumping" of steel. There is no reason to think that this latest court case brought to us by Bush will be different. So, leave WTO out of it, the "dumping" tax (that ironically indirectly is tax on American citizens, this from a no-tax president) is only something U.S. thinks is legal. But of course, a case in front of WTO usually takes four-five years, so then Bush won't have to deal with it anymore....
There are actually two versions of Statue of Liberty, one in Paris and one in NY. The one in Paris is smaller (and less well known). I guess it was done by Eiffel to show the friendship between the two countries (don't know where he got that from ;-), and the historical connections between the two young republics.
And when the government does not have any power anymore, we will have to bribe whatever entity governing instead of the government. I prefer to pay tax than "microsoft tax" or mob "protection" tax.
I do not think Heisenberg was so naive that he thought he could get Bohr on his team. Remember, Bohr was a jew, so it would be politically impossible at that time even if Bohr would be stupid enough to accept. I belive more that it could be true (as Bohr believed), that Heisenberg wanted to get some information about what Bohr knew about the allies work on the atomic bomb. Bohr never forgave his old friend and student for trying to use him in this way.
Your argument is interesting, but flawed on one account. It is not that many years ago that CD's were introduced. Today CD's dominate the marked completely. Why? I guess because the sound is superior and because the big companies went behind the format. When talking about DVD, consider the fact that DVD's are growing faster than CD's did when it was introduced. Again, big companies are pushing (and using the format) and the quality of video is much better.
So, if the word gets out that .ogg's have better sound quality than mp3 and still don't take much space on your harddisk (sometimes less), I am sure alot of people won't look back. The problem is to make people aware of .ogg (without the money for PR like Philips or Sony have) and to make companies like BBC start using the format.