Of course, it'd be another thing if we were the best darn seal clubbers in the world.
Sorry - between that cow Bardot and "Sir Paul" acting like a jackass, I've about had enough
a) Anybody who thinks the seal hunt is disgusting, raise your hands if you've ever visited an abatoir and watched Bessie butchered.
b) Anybody who thinks that those guys go out in the middle of the north atlantic in small dorys, jump out onto melting icefloes and kill helpless animals just because they're bored has never been on the north atlantic in a small boat - or probably even a BIG one, if it comes to that.
c) Anybody who thinks that the seals are killed just for the pelts has never seen the lineup in St Johns harbor when the fleet comes in of people lining up to buy the meat.
When the seals come down from the artctic, they are entering warmer weather - like any other fur-bearing animal, they start to loose their coats.
When you kill and skin a seal, you have a 10-15 minite window to clean the pelt or the fur is useless - you can pull it off in clumps. So when you make a kill, you leave th meat where it is and hightail it back to the boat so you can clean the fur.
You come back for the meat AFTERWARDS.... which is the part of the story that people keep forgetting. What's going to happen to it? It's sitting in the middle of an ice flow - it's not like it's going to go away untill you get back. And those ice flows also tend to act a lot like refrigerator/freezers for some strange reason known only to science. Go figure.
Bottom line: when my brother in law goes out on the hunt, he gets (depending on the market) a few bucks or so for a *perfect* pelt. But when he sells the meathe'll get $15-$20.
Now sit there with a straight face and tell me all about the mean, cruel, inhumane seal hunters killing all those cute little babies so some middle-arged rich bitch in europe can wear a fur coat.
Oh, yeah - and that really cute little one Sir Paul and his wife was petting?
As soon as they left, the sealers killed it. Because as soon as Sir Paul, in his incredible act humanity decided to pose with it and pet it, he marked it with his scent, and that pup was doomed to die of starvation. The mother would not have been willing to feed it and would have pushed it away.
Ever wonder why Bubba the Landscaper has a brand new truck every single year, a huge house, 3-4 kids, a big powerboat and a summer place on the shore? It isn't because he's an investment genius. It's because he's NOT PAYING TAXES ON MOST OF HIS INCOME.
Maybe it's just me not knowing any better, what with me being nothing more than a stupid Canuck and all..... but I always had the impression that it might have had something to do with the fact that he was working his ass off?
Part of it is woeful mismanagement of our government. Consider this: Canadians and their 'free' healthcare pay LESS per capita in annual taxes than we do.
Not quite right. We pay less in INCOME TAX than you do. But our total tax burden is slightly higher (IIRC, about 8% higher?)
What I DO find interesting, though, is that the single biggest governmental programme in canada (all levels) is the health care system - it's far from free.
But we still pay LESS per capita on health care than you do.
I remember recalling a story out of General Motors about 6 months or a year ago saying that they estimated that not having to contribute to medical insurance for their employees in Canada saves them something like $800 per vehicle.
Before the invasion, Iraqis had a full electricity and water supply. Some Iraqi bloggers talked about how upset many people are that they had to trade their electricity, water, gasoline, and phones for a new government. There was a loss of infrastructure in 2003, but it was generally repaired by 2004, and then sabotaged by guerillas in 2004-2005. Iraqis are mad that their resources are now as bad as the Invasion levels. The gas shortage only happened in 2005 as guerillas stopped convoys of gasoline to Baghdad and attacked refineries.
Ah - ok. I get it now.
The Americans invade. The americans kick out evil dictator, fix things he's been neglecting, and make it better than it was before. In a fit of "cut off your nose to spite your face", IRAQUIs redestroy the infrastructure, IRAQUIs stop oil convoys (shooing up coalition soldiers in he process, who are trying to protect them), and it's the AMERICAN'S fault. Those are the same wacos and nutjobs that brought you terrorism in the first place
*Wonderfull* leap you've made there.
If you haven't been hearing about the dozens of deaths reported per day, then I'm afraid you've been watching the American media (and why are they so lax about Iraqi deaths and report the American ones more?). Go read Al Jazeera or watch Mosaic TV. The death toll from the suicide bombing at a mosque has now reached 80, and there have been recent mass graves found of people killed this year, not to mention the dozens of Sunnis found executed or the dozens of Shia killed in a similiar fashion, or the outrage when the US bombed a Shia mosque. If you're finding it hard to keep up with these events, I'd recommend Informed Comment (voted best expert blog).
I watch the american, british, french, russian, and any other media I can find, depending on he topic. Only a fool makes a decision based on one opinion. At least, that's this fool's opinion:-)
That being said... Al Jazeera is an excellent source of propoganda, but as far as a NEWS source goes, it sucks the big wet one. I really hope that you're not refeering to that and expecting me to use it as anything even remotely authoratative.
As far as your expert blog is concerned, I just took a look at the link. I didnt' have to go any further than the first few sentences to see that he's severly out to lunch himself. Case in point - his lead story today - I'll quote it for you: I'm NOT a biologist, but I do have some critical thinking skills that I like to apply whenever I think there's a manure spreader around)
Top Reasons You Wouldn't Want a Mobile Biological Weapons Lab
Not only did Bush and Cheney and Libby tell bare-faced lies about the alleged "mobile biological weapons labs" in Iraq, the idea of such never made any sense anyway.
1. How could you have a clean room in a mobile biological weapons laboratory?
The same way you do in any other lab, except you're on wheels. Positive air pressure, so that contaminantes can't get in. HEPA filters and the like to keep contaminants out. etc etc. You *could* just go and ask the Red Cross if you really wanted to know, anyway - wtf do you think a mobile blood collection van is, if it's not essentially a lab on wheels>?
2. Petrie dishes might vibrate off the table.
Only if you're stupid enough to try to process that stuff while you're in motion. Ever hear of "park?".
3. Germs might get carsick. Now that's something you don't want to have to clean up.
So give the little suckers gravol and don't sweat it. How the freaking hell is a germ going to get carsick?
4. Biologists keep pulling up at the drive-through at McDonald's.
That's probably the original source of toxins.
5. What if you hit a big bump while working on the plague?
Again...... PARK
His next item is more interesting, even though they can't even add. (Deaths report
lists at least 34,000 confirmed deaths minimum since the March 2003 invasion. They're about the lowest estimate, and their maximum confirmation is closer to 38,000. UK Journal The Lancet indicated (prior to the Fallujah, Tal Afar, and Samarra bombings) that the death toll could be closer to 100,000 deaths.
You're not comparing apples to apples, or oranges to oranges. Seperate the numbers so that you have comparable contexts.
a) What was the "war" toll? By that, I mean the number of deaths attributable to the invation/war, as opposed to the occupation/pacification. Deaths on D-day alone during WWII were 10,000 - and that's just the allied military. I don't know what the total would be if you also included german & civilian statistics, as your numbers do, but I suspect it would be much higher than 35,000.
b) What is the "occupation" toll? Obviously, much lower than 35,000, given that most of those are going to be "war" deaths.
More than a single day can go by without me hearing about a death or an attack in Iraq.... but I wouldn't have to look very hard to find reports of murders in NYC, Washington, etc.
I don't know the breakdown myself, so I won't try to bullshit you by making up numbers. But I suspect that if you *were* able to come across the numbers, they would be much less sensational that you originally stated.
All of this, or course, ignores the over 120,000 Kurds Saddam killed in a single 4 month period when he was gassing them a few years ago.
The REALITY is, the majority of the Iraquis DID welcome their "liberation", and the media reports affect the perception of the current state of unrest in Iraq, but not the reality.
Iraq has a very long way to go..... but it's in no way as bad as the media paints it.
This is not to apologise or justify what is going on over there - people have to make up their own minds about that. I just wish they did with some slightly more accurate data, instead of being driven by what CNN happened to be able to get video of that day.
Regarding having only a few hours of electricty a day (sorry I missed it earlier)..... how much electricity did they have BEFORE the invasion? Saddam had been neglecting the infrastructure for years before the invasion, choosing instead to divert money into the military and his silly little games.
Essentially, Iraq didn't *have* an infrastructure left after the invasion, not that there was much to begin with. ANd instead of simply repairiing bomb damage, you lot have foudn yourself haveing to rebuild from the ground up. Given that you've had to even resort to doing the very bsic things like stringing hydro wires in the FIRST place, it's a freaking miracle they have power at all.
Don't blame bush for that - put the blame where it belongs, on Saddam.
Your logic makes sense. However, Tenet said "Slam Dunk." By your standard, he should have been fired or given a walk of shame post-election. Instead he got a Medal.
No, that's not my standard. Again, I was just trying to explain the nature of intelligence, and the difficulties with it. I don't know who Tenet is or what the context was, but just taking what you said at face value he probably should have been canned.
I'm reading Juan Cole, and things are turning out pretty awful. The Iraqi death toll is catastrophic, and this will hurt America for at least 2 decades, assuming it fixes itself immediately, which I doubt.
Catastrophic? Where did you get THAT from?
Use some critical thinking. I'm willing to be that theres as many murders in Atlanta, Washington, Detroit & LA on a daily basis than there is in all of Iraq.... and those cities don't have to deal with terrorism.
What you're dealing with when you watch CNN, or any other news service, is anecdotal evidence - nothing more, nothing less. That's all *any* news report is - a series of anecdotes.
Re:Jobs is like General MacArthur, "I" vs "We" ...
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Of course Jobs differs from MacArthur in that Jobs is not a genius.
Believe me, neither was MacArthur. He did a *brilliant* job rebuilding Japan after the war, but as a general?
I constantly go back & forth between him and Monty as to who was the most incompotent, egomaniacal, self-sentered and overrated generals of WW II.
And let's not forget a little detail like almost starting WWIII (more than once) in some place called Korea......
MacArthur was a disaster that found a place to happen.
You're dodging or downplaying the question. Doesn't it seem obvious that he would have to fire some advisors if the war turned out to be ill-advised?
No, actually, I'm not.
a) You really WOULD have to ask him, and hold him accountable for that. That's his political decision, and I have no idea of knowing why or why not he made it.
b) Whether or not the war was ill-advised based on the intelligence is not something that's been established. Hell - there's a big debate as to whether or not the war was ill-advised AT ALL. (I personally still think it was the right thing to do
I'll say it again. 99.99999% of the time, the best that intelligence can do is give you a balance of probabilities. And probabilities are, by definition, not certain. I may, to the best of my skills, determine the probability of something to be 93%...... but there's still that other 7% that's occasionally gonna pop up and bite me in the ass. Does that mean I should be fired?
If I tell you it's absolutly guarenteed - go ahead and bet the mortgage - then yes, I should be.
But if I tell you that it's 93% for and 7% against (which is my job), and you decide to bet the mortgage, that's your responsibility - you made the decision. And it's your job to do so.
So in order to know who, if anybody, should be fired, you need to know at what level and who was responsible for making the (political) decision to go ahead. Yeah, Bush can fire advisors.... but if he's the one that made the decision himself, should he?
You'd have to be inside the Whitehouse to know the answer to that one for sure.
You'd have been better off missing it. They say that the sweedish study was part of the interphone study, but the paper itself says they stayed out of the areas that that study was being conducted in to avoid an overlap of cases.
They also said the the doubling of cases was ALL on he side of the head, whereas the study clearly states that it was a 240% INCREASE on one side of the head.BR
Thank god the article was short - they didn't have enough time to fuck anything else up
I didn't even claim that the results in the study were real, I simply pointed out that people will dismiss the study out of hand (again) because of their preconceived notions about the interaction between non-ionizing radiation and cells. Turns out, I was right.
I'm dismissing it becuase it seems to be quite out to lunch. Their conclusions are irrelevant because of that.
How many companies are making billions off of this war?
You live in a capatilistic society. Somebody is always making "billions" off of something.
How many of them have direct relations and interests with members of the Bush cabinet or republican leadership?
Probably most of them, truth be told. But if you look, you'll probably see that just as many of them have ties to the Democrats. But that has nothing to do with anything.
Betchel, for example, is one of the biggest contruction/consulting companies in the world. I don't know about their specific involvement in Iraq, but I'm willing to bet they have a sizeable chunk of the business over there. And you can bet that they massauge their contacts with the Democrats just as much as they do with the Republicans. It's good business for them to do so. The same goes for any other company......... so having "direct relations" with the Republican leadership means nothing - they all do, and always will.
They won't rebuild the local brick factories, but instead ship in american made bricks! Almost all of the reconstruction contracts are going to American companies.
So who would you like to see the work go to? The French? Germans? Any other country that has done nothing but look down their nose at what you were doing, but still want some of the "rewards"?
They even worked to bypass international law specifically designed to prevent the pillaging of other countries by forcing them to sign long-term contracts with the companies of the invading state
Who's pillaging what? The Americans are putting a shitload more INTO Iraq now then they're taking out. Any cursory perusal of a newspaper or TV broadcast, and the constant complaints about the cost of the war, will tell you that.
I won't even attempt to argue against the fact that Saddam was a bad person, who should not have been in power. But when you consider how many other leaders in the world there are that are similarly evil, why would we choose this one to destroy? What reasons did we have for invading Iraq instead of, say, North Korea? Or Iran? Or possibly intervening in Rwanda?
You do what you can. The US could invade Iraq. And it did. It would not be as easy, or even necessarily possible, to invade North Korea. Iran I think is becomming possible now. But whether or not I think that would be justified is someting else
Rawanda is a whole other matter. General Romeo Dallaire http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/Gen_Romeo _Dallaire.html pleaded with the UN for troups on the ground in Rawanda - his request was denied. He asked for the freedom to do what was required with the troops that he DID have - and again, was denied. The result was genocide. I think the world - the UN, the US, everybody else - dropped the ball on that one and should ALL be ashamed of themselves for sitting idly by and watching a genocide that was so easilly preventable it's not funny.
The Rawanda example also, in a backhand sort of way, just illustrates my point about the whole Iraq thing...... if the US (or anybody else that had the capability - the requirement was so small that pretty well any western industrialised nation could have done it) had put troops on the ground without UN sanction to prevent the genocide, I think they would have been generally applauded. But when they essentially do the same thing in Iraq, it's evil, bad, and monsterous. The only difference that I can see if that Rawanda didn't hae oil, and Iraq does - therefore, it's a plot to get Iraqi oil.
Don't get me wrong, removing Saddam is a good thing. But that doesn't mean there weren't a lot of other, less happy reasons for invading.
I agree with you there. But as I said when this thread started, It's never a bad idea to do the right thing, ev
Ya, MySQL was missing more of the "core" features, but for us, replication and large database buffers was more important two years ago than stored procedures, triggers or views.
*ahem*...... shouldn't one of the core features be DATA #$*#@&*#@$ INTEGRITY?
Sorry. Regardless of how long the laundry-list of features the zealosts come up with, I'll stop considering MySQL a toy when a) it actually does SQL properly, and b) the data I get out of my database is the same as the data I put INTO my database
Oracle's rich feature? Oracle only has one feature?
If that's the case, it would have to be a pretty mighty feature to beat any other database...well, except maybe Access.
So does anyone know what this feature is?
For ANY application, ANY database just needs one feature......
.... but my vote is we burn NAFTA. It really blows getting burnt by your money grubbing patent laws (America to world: "we own IDEAS(!)). Stuff it.
ummmmmm.... I have some bad news for you.
NAFTA covers international trade, not intellectual property rights. When RIM conducts business in the United States, it's subject to US law. When IBM conducts business in Canada, it's subject to Canadian law.
Running a business in a foreign country is not the same as selling wheat, softwood lumber, or beef from Canada into the United States.
I understand the nature of intelligence perfectly. To come to certain conclusions based on available evidence requires either extraordinary ignorance or willful self-deception. It also often requires someone to lie at some point, typically by omission, typically because someone is pushing an agenda. So, when in fact it comes out that the dissenters were ignored--even though their analysis was credible--in favor of analyses that supported something the administration already wanted to do, you can either accept what is plain, or you can continue to delude yourself.
Apparently, you do not. I was an analyst. Do you really think that the anylist has the desire - never mind the TIME - to push a political agenda? Not bloody likely - that's also the quickest, most efficient way to get your ass canned.
Analysts, by both nature and training, tend to be objective - it's their job, and something they take great pride in. That doesn't mean that they don't have their own political beliefs - they're not apolitical, and I would bet that they are in fact more likely to vote than the average, simply because they're more aware of the issues and the ramifications.
But the mistake you are making is assuming that the entire system is politcal, from the lowest level all the way to the top.
Again - intelligence gives you at best a balance of probabilities. Different people place different levels of importance on different aspects of the raw data, and so come to different conclusions. That's not pushing an agenda - thats interpretation. And that's WHY you usually have multiple analysts pouring over the same data, so you can try to reach a concensus, and eliminate individual biases. Everybody has those filters naturally - it has nothing to do with political agendas.
History is littered with examples of faulty interpretation of intelligence, erronious conclusions, and a host of other problems. TO say that it was becuase the analysts were pushing agendas just doesn't wash. Again - it's just the nature of the beast.
The whole "Sorry, we did the best we could with the intel we had" scenario just doesn't wash anymore.
If you read my post carefully, you will see that I was trying to explain the nature of intelligence, not support their conclusions. My argument is that if they had a better understanding of the nature of intelligence, and the skills to interpret it properly, the wouldn't have been *able* to come to some of the conclusions that they did.
And this ignores the fact that inspite of the well-publicised dissenting analysts in the CIA, NSA and elsewhere who are only too loudly saying after the fact that they disagreed with the assessment, that can't be taken as proof that Bush et. al. were willfully decietfull. That's the nature of intelligence. You seldom get a smoking gun - what you get is a balance of probabilities, and liklihoods. I may estimate something at 80/20 - the guy next to me, 60/40 or even 20/80. It's the nature of the beast.
When you point to people who disaggree with the published estimates as "proof", you're making the same mistake that the politicos made when "they" interpreted the assessments as "proof" that THEY were right. Hindsight doesn't count.
.... and the fact that the evil empire happened to be sitting on a giant pool of oil that the administration's friends are even now exploiting? Of course, but then anyone watching from the beginning could tell that.
Arguing whether he did or didn't lie about the WMD's is pointless when you consider that in all likelihood their existence was only a sham justification for a war of corporate conquest and personal satisfaction.
That is one of the silliest things I've ever heard.... and it's something I hear all the time from opponents of the war.
Reality check.... who the hell do you think controlled and exploited the oil BEFORE the war? American oil companies. So any arguement against the war that includes anything "corporate" is just nonsence. They had that beforehand.
Now, that being said.... I *do* think that the war is justified. Not for oil, and I don't give a shit about Bushes prejudices. But it's never a bad idea to do the right thing, even if it's for the wong reasons.
The period before WWII - and WWII itself - showed us the dangers of appeasement, and what can result from ignoring evil in the world. And make no mistake - the only difference between Hitler, Stalin and Saddam is a) the phisophical justification/rationalisation for what they're doing, and b) the numbers they have to work with. Saddam is the "lesser" of those three simply because he doesn't have as many people to kill, and isn't as efficient at it as the other two.
You can argue whether or not it is America's place or responsibility to rid the world of Saddam..... that's fair. But you can't argue that he needed to go, and somebody had to do it. I would argue that it WAS America's responsibility simply because they're the biggest, baddest kid on the block and were the only ones capable of doing so.
I'm ex-military myself. Nobody hates war more than the people who are the ones who may get their asses shot off.... but it doesn't change the fact that some wars are justified, and the right thing to do. I consider this to be one of them.
I have checked a few other sources and the rest of the article seems fairly accurate.
I would agree with you there. I grew up in Labrador (to the east of Quebec), and was living in Ottawa (to the west of Quebec) when the story broke, and I remember it in the national press. I was also close enough that I was able to read the Montreal Gazette and the Journal de Montreal at the time as well, so I kind of OD'd on the coverage at the time - I thought it was a very interesting story. What is in the article matches my memory of the events.
In "legacy programming" people pretty much saw data as separate from the program. In "legacy" programming you would generally go about a project in two steps. You would design the data format in one step and the program in another. In a project you would write and publish both documentation for the format and program.
When was the last time you looked at an old mainframe, cobal/isam accounting application?
Before "Object Oriented Programming", there was data-driven programming, and before that there was the idea of "compartmentalisation" and "decoupling" - (the ideas that initally led to the unix practice of defining structures in headers, and just refering to a POINTER to the structure, abstract data types, etc).
And what, pray tell, led to these developments?
A programmer's (understandably human) inclination to do things in the quickest, most convenient way possible - which usually meant taking a shortcut and saving the data THIS way, instead of THAT way, because it saved him 20 lines of code and a whole 87 bytes of machine code on his huge 32k multi-tasking time-sharing computer.
I read the article on the good doctor..... but wtf does his being, or not being a freemason have to do with anything?
That's a bit like writing an article about Hitler's treatment of the Jews and including an statement like "it's has never been established if he was a practicing Catholic or not"
I'd say the legislature got punked, along with the rest of us.
God, I hate these conversations. Ok, here's the drill:
One of the most difficult things about interpreting intelligence is not only knowing what it's telling you, but what it's NOT telling you. This may seem to be a minor point, but it's very important. Even professional analyists can sometimes have problems discerning between the two - not because they have an agenda, or are incompotent, or willfully blind - it's just the nature of the beast, and it's not always easy to tell.
The further up the food chain you get - and the farther away from the raw intelligence data - the less likely you are to encounter people who understand just that point.
Did Bush (or Blair, or any other official, in any government) willfully deceive the public? I actually doubt it. By the time it got to Bush's advisors, the intelligence would have been passed through so many levels & filters that, to be perfectly honest, I don't think they would have had enough information to be able to make a valid judgement.
The *effect* is the same - what we're told turns out to be wrong. That, however, is the benefit of hindsight.
Remember the old game you used to play in Boy Scouts? One person starts on one end of the line, and whispers something to his neighbour, who in turn whispers it to the person on the other side of him. By the time it gets to the end, it has no resembelance whatsoever to what was originally said. It's exactly the same effect.
The only solution is to place the decision-makers closer to the actual sources, so that they can better make a reasonable judgement regarding the worth of what's known (and NOT known).
In a government the size of that in a modern state, that's difficult to do in any sort of practical manner.
This is an attempt to explain the intracacies of intelligence, not to support Bush.
That being said - even a surface examination of Saddam's behaviour would lead most reasonable people to conclude that he was hiding something... and a reasonable assumption from that would be that it was WMD. Just because Bush/Blair et al turned out to be wrong doesn't mean that they were trying to be deceptive.
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Of course, it'd be another thing if we were the best darn seal clubbers in the world.
.... which is the part of the story that people keep forgetting. What's going to happen to it? It's sitting in the middle of an ice flow - it's not like it's going to go away untill you get back. And those ice flows also tend to act a lot like refrigerator/freezers for some strange reason known only to science. Go figure.
Sorry - between that cow Bardot and "Sir Paul" acting like a jackass, I've about had enough
a) Anybody who thinks the seal hunt is disgusting, raise your hands if you've ever visited an abatoir and watched Bessie butchered.
b) Anybody who thinks that those guys go out in the middle of the north atlantic in small dorys, jump out onto melting icefloes and kill helpless animals just because they're bored has never been on the north atlantic in a small boat - or probably even a BIG one, if it comes to that.
c) Anybody who thinks that the seals are killed just for the pelts has never seen the lineup in St Johns harbor when the fleet comes in of people lining up to buy the meat.
When the seals come down from the artctic, they are entering warmer weather - like any other fur-bearing animal, they start to loose their coats.
When you kill and skin a seal, you have a 10-15 minite window to clean the pelt or the fur is useless - you can pull it off in clumps. So when you make a kill, you leave th meat where it is and hightail it back to the boat so you can clean the fur.
You come back for the meat AFTERWARDS
Bottom line: when my brother in law goes out on the hunt, he gets (depending on the market) a few bucks or so for a *perfect* pelt. But when he sells the meathe'll get $15-$20.
Now sit there with a straight face and tell me all about the mean, cruel, inhumane seal hunters killing all those cute little babies so some middle-arged rich bitch in europe can wear a fur coat.
Oh, yeah - and that really cute little one Sir Paul and his wife was petting?
As soon as they left, the sealers killed it. Because as soon as Sir Paul, in his incredible act humanity decided to pose with it and pet it, he marked it with his scent, and that pup was doomed to die of starvation. The mother would not have been willing to feed it and would have pushed it away.
Ever wonder why Bubba the Landscaper has a brand new truck every single year, a huge house, 3-4 kids, a big powerboat and a summer place on the shore? It isn't because he's an investment genius. It's because he's NOT PAYING TAXES ON MOST OF HIS INCOME.
..... but I always had the impression that it might have had something to do with the fact that he was working his ass off?
Maybe it's just me not knowing any better, what with me being nothing more than a stupid Canuck and all
Part of it is woeful mismanagement of our government. Consider this: Canadians and their 'free' healthcare pay LESS per capita in annual taxes than we do.
Not quite right. We pay less in INCOME TAX than you do. But our total tax burden is slightly higher (IIRC, about 8% higher?)
What I DO find interesting, though, is that the single biggest governmental programme in canada (all levels) is the health care system - it's far from free.
But we still pay LESS per capita on health care than you do.
I remember recalling a story out of General Motors about 6 months or a year ago saying that they estimated that not having to contribute to medical insurance for their employees in Canada saves them something like $800 per vehicle.
Before the invasion, Iraqis had a full electricity and water supply. Some Iraqi bloggers talked about how upset many people are that they had to trade their electricity, water, gasoline, and phones for a new government. There was a loss of infrastructure in 2003, but it was generally repaired by 2004, and then sabotaged by guerillas in 2004-2005. Iraqis are mad that their resources are now as bad as the Invasion levels. The gas shortage only happened in 2005 as guerillas stopped convoys of gasoline to Baghdad and attacked refineries.
:-)
... Al Jazeera is an excellent source of propoganda, but as far as a NEWS source goes, it sucks the big wet one. I really hope that you're not refeering to that and expecting me to use it as anything even remotely authoratative.
...... PARK
Ah - ok. I get it now.
The Americans invade. The americans kick out evil dictator, fix things he's been neglecting, and make it better than it was before. In a fit of "cut off your nose to spite your face", IRAQUIs redestroy the infrastructure, IRAQUIs stop oil convoys (shooing up coalition soldiers in he process, who are trying to protect them), and it's the AMERICAN'S fault. Those are the same wacos and nutjobs that brought you terrorism in the first place
*Wonderfull* leap you've made there.
If you haven't been hearing about the dozens of deaths reported per day, then I'm afraid you've been watching the American media (and why are they so lax about Iraqi deaths and report the American ones more?). Go read Al Jazeera or watch Mosaic TV. The death toll from the suicide bombing at a mosque has now reached 80, and there have been recent mass graves found of people killed this year, not to mention the dozens of Sunnis found executed or the dozens of Shia killed in a similiar fashion, or the outrage when the US bombed a Shia mosque. If you're finding it hard to keep up with these events, I'd recommend Informed Comment (voted best expert blog).
I watch the american, british, french, russian, and any other media I can find, depending on he topic. Only a fool makes a decision based on one opinion. At least, that's this fool's opinion
That being said
As far as your expert blog is concerned, I just took a look at the link. I didnt' have to go any further than the first few sentences to see that he's severly out to lunch himself. Case in point - his lead story today - I'll quote it for you: I'm NOT a biologist, but I do have some critical thinking skills that I like to apply whenever I think there's a manure spreader around)
Top Reasons You Wouldn't Want a Mobile Biological Weapons Lab
Not only did Bush and Cheney and Libby tell bare-faced lies about the alleged "mobile biological weapons labs" in Iraq, the idea of such never made any sense anyway.
1. How could you have a clean room in a mobile biological weapons laboratory?
The same way you do in any other lab, except you're on wheels. Positive air pressure, so that contaminantes can't get in. HEPA filters and the like to keep contaminants out. etc etc. You *could* just go and ask the Red Cross if you really wanted to know, anyway - wtf do you think a mobile blood collection van is, if it's not essentially a lab on wheels>?
2. Petrie dishes might vibrate off the table.
Only if you're stupid enough to try to process that stuff while you're in motion. Ever hear of "park?".
3. Germs might get carsick. Now that's something you don't want to have to clean up.
So give the little suckers gravol and don't sweat it. How the freaking hell is a germ going to get carsick?
4. Biologists keep pulling up at the drive-through at McDonald's.
That's probably the original source of toxins.
5. What if you hit a big bump while working on the plague?
Again
His next item is more interesting, even though they can't even add. (Deaths report
lists at least 34,000 confirmed deaths minimum since the March 2003 invasion. They're about the lowest estimate, and their maximum confirmation is closer to 38,000. UK Journal The Lancet indicated (prior to the Fallujah, Tal Afar, and Samarra bombings) that the death toll could be closer to 100,000 deaths.
.... but I wouldn't have to look very hard to find reports of murders in NYC, Washington, etc.
..... but it's in no way as bad as the media paints it.
..... how much electricity did they have BEFORE the invasion? Saddam had been neglecting the infrastructure for years before the invasion, choosing instead to divert money into the military and his silly little games.
You're not comparing apples to apples, or oranges to oranges. Seperate the numbers so that you have comparable contexts.
a) What was the "war" toll? By that, I mean the number of deaths attributable to the invation/war, as opposed to the occupation/pacification. Deaths on D-day alone during WWII were 10,000 - and that's just the allied military. I don't know what the total would be if you also included german & civilian statistics, as your numbers do, but I suspect it would be much higher than 35,000.
b) What is the "occupation" toll? Obviously, much lower than 35,000, given that most of those are going to be "war" deaths.
More than a single day can go by without me hearing about a death or an attack in Iraq
I don't know the breakdown myself, so I won't try to bullshit you by making up numbers. But I suspect that if you *were* able to come across the numbers, they would be much less sensational that you originally stated.
All of this, or course, ignores the over 120,000 Kurds Saddam killed in a single 4 month period when he was gassing them a few years ago.
The REALITY is, the majority of the Iraquis DID welcome their "liberation", and the media reports affect the perception of the current state of unrest in Iraq, but not the reality.
Iraq has a very long way to go
This is not to apologise or justify what is going on over there - people have to make up their own minds about that. I just wish they did with some slightly more accurate data, instead of being driven by what CNN happened to be able to get video of that day.
Regarding having only a few hours of electricty a day (sorry I missed it earlier)
Essentially, Iraq didn't *have* an infrastructure left after the invasion, not that there was much to begin with. ANd instead of simply repairiing bomb damage, you lot have foudn yourself haveing to rebuild from the ground up. Given that you've had to even resort to doing the very bsic things like stringing hydro wires in the FIRST place, it's a freaking miracle they have power at all.
Don't blame bush for that - put the blame where it belongs, on Saddam.
Your logic makes sense. However, Tenet said "Slam Dunk." By your standard, he should have been fired or given a walk of shame post-election. Instead he got a Medal.
.... and those cities don't have to deal with terrorism.
No, that's not my standard. Again, I was just trying to explain the nature of intelligence, and the difficulties with it. I don't know who Tenet is or what the context was, but just taking what you said at face value he probably should have been canned.
I'm reading Juan Cole, and things are turning out pretty awful. The Iraqi death toll is catastrophic, and this will hurt America for at least 2 decades, assuming it fixes itself immediately, which I doubt.
Catastrophic? Where did you get THAT from?
Use some critical thinking. I'm willing to be that theres as many murders in Atlanta, Washington, Detroit & LA on a daily basis than there is in all of Iraq
What you're dealing with when you watch CNN, or any other news service, is anecdotal evidence - nothing more, nothing less. That's all *any* news report is - a series of anecdotes.
Of course Jobs differs from MacArthur in that Jobs is not a genius.
......
Believe me, neither was MacArthur.
He did a *brilliant* job rebuilding Japan after the war, but as a general?
I constantly go back & forth between him and Monty as to who was the most incompotent, egomaniacal, self-sentered and overrated generals of WW II.
And let's not forget a little detail like almost starting WWIII (more than once) in some place called Korea
MacArthur was a disaster that found a place to happen.
You're dodging or downplaying the question. Doesn't it seem obvious that he would have to fire some advisors if the war turned out to be ill-advised?
...... but there's still that other 7% that's occasionally gonna pop up and bite me in the ass. Does that mean I should be fired?
.... but if he's the one that made the decision himself, should he?
No, actually, I'm not.
a) You really WOULD have to ask him, and hold him accountable for that. That's his political decision, and I have no idea of knowing why or why not he made it.
b) Whether or not the war was ill-advised based on the intelligence is not something that's been established. Hell - there's a big debate as to whether or not the war was ill-advised AT ALL. (I personally still think it was the right thing to do
I'll say it again. 99.99999% of the time, the best that intelligence can do is give you a balance of probabilities. And probabilities are, by definition, not certain. I may, to the best of my skills, determine the probability of something to be 93%
If I tell you it's absolutly guarenteed - go ahead and bet the mortgage - then yes, I should be.
But if I tell you that it's 93% for and 7% against (which is my job), and you decide to bet the mortgage, that's your responsibility - you made the decision. And it's your job to do so.
So in order to know who, if anybody, should be fired, you need to know at what level and who was responsible for making the (political) decision to go ahead. Yeah, Bush can fire advisors
You'd have to be inside the Whitehouse to know the answer to that one for sure.
Ii>If the intelligence world is so complex, how come Bush didn't fire anyone?
That one, you'd have to ask Bush
Faxing those documents makes some sense, but it is still so antiquated -- a technology from the 60s (or earlier) still being used today.
....... it's a very old technology.
x .htm
Try the mid-1800's
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfa
whoops. I missed the ars technica link.
You'd have been better off missing it. They say that the sweedish study was part of the interphone study, but the paper itself says they stayed out of the areas that that study was being conducted in to avoid an overlap of cases.
They also said the the doubling of cases was ALL on he side of the head, whereas the study clearly states that it was a 240% INCREASE on one side of the head.BR
Thank god the article was short - they didn't have enough time to fuck anything else up
I didn't even claim that the results in the study were real, I simply pointed out that people will dismiss the study out of hand (again) because of their preconceived notions about the interaction between non-ionizing radiation and cells. Turns out, I was right.
I'm dismissing it becuase it seems to be quite out to lunch. Their conclusions are irrelevant because of that.
How many companies are making billions off of this war?
......... so having "direct relations" with the Republican leadership means nothing - they all do, and always will.
...... if the US (or anybody else that had the capability - the requirement was so small that pretty well any western industrialised nation could have done it) had put troops on the ground without UN sanction to prevent the genocide, I think they would have been generally applauded. But when they essentially do the same thing in Iraq, it's evil, bad, and monsterous. The only difference that I can see if that Rawanda didn't hae oil, and Iraq does - therefore, it's a plot to get Iraqi oil.
You live in a capatilistic society. Somebody is always making "billions" off of something.
How many of them have direct relations and interests with members of the Bush cabinet or republican leadership?
Probably most of them, truth be told. But if you look, you'll probably see that just as many of them have ties to the Democrats. But that has nothing to do with anything.
Betchel, for example, is one of the biggest contruction/consulting companies in the world. I don't know about their specific involvement in Iraq, but I'm willing to bet they have a sizeable chunk of the business over there. And you can bet that they massauge their contacts with the Democrats just as much as they do with the Republicans. It's good business for them to do so. The same goes for any other company
They won't rebuild the local brick factories, but instead ship in american made bricks! Almost all of the reconstruction contracts are going to American companies.
So who would you like to see the work go to? The French? Germans? Any other country that has done nothing but look down their nose at what you were doing, but still want some of the "rewards"?
They even worked to bypass international law specifically designed to prevent the pillaging of other countries by forcing them to sign long-term contracts with the companies of the invading state
Who's pillaging what? The Americans are putting a shitload more INTO Iraq now then they're taking out. Any cursory perusal of a newspaper or TV broadcast, and the constant complaints about the cost of the war, will tell you that.
I won't even attempt to argue against the fact that Saddam was a bad person, who should not have been in power. But when you consider how many other leaders in the world there are that are similarly evil, why would we choose this one to destroy? What reasons did we have for invading Iraq instead of, say, North Korea? Or Iran? Or possibly intervening in Rwanda?
You do what you can. The US could invade Iraq. And it did. It would not be as easy, or even necessarily possible, to invade North Korea. Iran I think is becomming possible now. But whether or not I think that would be justified is someting else
Rawanda is a whole other matter. General Romeo Dallaire http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/Gen_Romeo _Dallaire.html pleaded with the UN for troups on the ground in Rawanda - his request was denied. He asked for the freedom to do what was required with the troops that he DID have - and again, was denied. The result was genocide. I think the world - the UN, the US, everybody else - dropped the ball on that one and should ALL be ashamed of themselves for sitting idly by and watching a genocide that was so easilly preventable it's not funny.
The Rawanda example also, in a backhand sort of way, just illustrates my point about the whole Iraq thing
Don't get me wrong, removing Saddam is a good thing. But that doesn't mean there weren't a lot of other, less happy reasons for invading.
I agree with you there. But as I said when this thread started, It's never a bad idea to do the right thing, ev
Ya, MySQL was missing more of the "core" features, but for us, replication and large database buffers was more important two years ago than stored procedures, triggers or views.
...... shouldn't one of the core features be DATA #$*#@&*#@$ INTEGRITY?
*ahem*
Sorry. Regardless of how long the laundry-list of features the zealosts come up with, I'll stop considering MySQL a toy when a) it actually does SQL properly, and b) the data I get out of my database is the same as the data I put INTO my database
Oracle's rich feature? Oracle only has one feature? If that's the case, it would have to be a pretty mighty feature to beat any other database...well, except maybe Access. So does anyone know what this feature is?
......
For ANY application, ANY database just needs one feature
It does the job.
Everything else is just noise.
Ok. Stop now. Right now you are trying to explain my own job to me. I'm just not enough of an ass to brag about it on /.
I mentioned it once, in a thread containing 3 or 4 asides form each of us. And I did it at a point where it was germaine to the conversation.
If that's what you consider to be bragging then I want nothing to do with anything that you've analysed - your judgement is seriously off.
It was nice while it lasted, but I guess here everything winds up being a personal attack eventually.
.... but my vote is we burn NAFTA. It really blows getting burnt by your money grubbing patent laws (America to world: "we own IDEAS(!)). Stuff it.
.... I have some bad news for you.
ummmmmm
NAFTA covers international trade, not intellectual property rights. When RIM conducts business in the United States, it's subject to US law. When IBM conducts business in Canada, it's subject to Canadian law.
Running a business in a foreign country is not the same as selling wheat, softwood lumber, or beef from Canada into the United States.
...a Canadian company is on the receiving end of US courts?
..... well, since we got rid of the Liberals, anyway :-))
Why wouldn't they be? They're operating in the US, and as such those operations are subject to US law (and the silly US Patent system)
(A Proud Canadian
I understand the nature of intelligence perfectly. To come to certain conclusions based on available evidence requires either extraordinary ignorance or willful self-deception. It also often requires someone to lie at some point, typically by omission, typically because someone is pushing an agenda. So, when in fact it comes out that the dissenters were ignored--even though their analysis was credible--in favor of analyses that supported something the administration already wanted to do, you can either accept what is plain, or you can continue to delude yourself.
Apparently, you do not. I was an analyst. Do you really think that the anylist has the desire - never mind the TIME - to push a political agenda? Not bloody likely - that's also the quickest, most efficient way to get your ass canned.
Analysts, by both nature and training, tend to be objective - it's their job, and something they take great pride in. That doesn't mean that they don't have their own political beliefs - they're not apolitical, and I would bet that they are in fact more likely to vote than the average, simply because they're more aware of the issues and the ramifications.
But the mistake you are making is assuming that the entire system is politcal, from the lowest level all the way to the top.
Again - intelligence gives you at best a balance of probabilities. Different people place different levels of importance on different aspects of the raw data, and so come to different conclusions. That's not pushing an agenda - thats interpretation. And that's WHY you usually have multiple analysts pouring over the same data, so you can try to reach a concensus, and eliminate individual biases. Everybody has those filters naturally - it has nothing to do with political agendas.
History is littered with examples of faulty interpretation of intelligence, erronious conclusions, and a host of other problems. TO say that it was becuase the analysts were pushing agendas just doesn't wash. Again - it's just the nature of the beast.
The whole "Sorry, we did the best we could with the intel we had" scenario just doesn't wash anymore.
If you read my post carefully, you will see that I was trying to explain the nature of intelligence, not support their conclusions. My argument is that if they had a better understanding of the nature of intelligence, and the skills to interpret it properly, the wouldn't have been *able* to come to some of the conclusions that they did.
And this ignores the fact that inspite of the well-publicised dissenting analysts in the CIA, NSA and elsewhere who are only too loudly saying after the fact that they disagreed with the assessment, that can't be taken as proof that Bush et. al. were willfully decietfull. That's the nature of intelligence. You seldom get a smoking gun - what you get is a balance of probabilities, and liklihoods. I may estimate something at 80/20 - the guy next to me, 60/40 or even 20/80. It's the nature of the beast.
When you point to people who disaggree with the published estimates as "proof", you're making the same mistake that the politicos made when "they" interpreted the assessments as "proof" that THEY were right. Hindsight doesn't count.
Arguing whether he did or didn't lie about the WMD's is pointless when you consider that in all likelihood their existence was only a sham justification for a war of corporate conquest and personal satisfaction.
That is one of the silliest things I've ever heard
Reality check
Now, that being said
The period before WWII - and WWII itself - showed us the dangers of appeasement, and what can result from ignoring evil in the world. And make no mistake - the only difference between Hitler, Stalin and Saddam is a) the phisophical justification/rationalisation for what they're doing, and b) the numbers they have to work with. Saddam is the "lesser" of those three simply because he doesn't have as many people to kill, and isn't as efficient at it as the other two.
You can argue whether or not it is America's place or responsibility to rid the world of Saddam
I'm ex-military myself. Nobody hates war more than the people who are the ones who may get their asses shot off
I have checked a few other sources and the rest of the article seems fairly accurate.
I would agree with you there. I grew up in Labrador (to the east of Quebec), and was living in Ottawa (to the west of Quebec) when the story broke, and I remember it in the national press. I was also close enough that I was able to read the Montreal Gazette and the Journal de Montreal at the time as well, so I kind of OD'd on the coverage at the time - I thought it was a very interesting story. What is in the article matches my memory of the events.
In "legacy programming" people pretty much saw data as separate from the program. In "legacy" programming you would generally go about a project in two steps. You would design the data format in one step and the program in another. In a project you would write and publish both documentation for the format and program.
When was the last time you looked at an old mainframe, cobal/isam accounting application?
Before "Object Oriented Programming", there was data-driven programming, and before that there was the idea of "compartmentalisation" and "decoupling" - (the ideas that initally led to the unix practice of defining structures in headers, and just refering to a POINTER to the structure, abstract data types, etc).
And what, pray tell, led to these developments?
A programmer's (understandably human) inclination to do things in the quickest, most convenient way possible - which usually meant taking a shortcut and saving the data THIS way, instead of THAT way, because it saved him 20 lines of code and a whole 87 bytes of machine code on his huge 32k multi-tasking time-sharing computer.
I read the article on the good doctor ..... but wtf does his being, or not being a freemason have to do with anything?
That's a bit like writing an article about Hitler's treatment of the Jews and including an statement like "it's has never been established if he was a practicing Catholic or not"
I'd say the legislature got punked, along with the rest of us.
... and a reasonable assumption from that would be that it was WMD. Just because Bush/Blair et al turned out to be wrong doesn't mean that they were trying to be deceptive.
God, I hate these conversations. Ok, here's the drill:
One of the most difficult things about interpreting intelligence is not only knowing what it's telling you, but what it's NOT telling you. This may seem to be a minor point, but it's very important. Even professional analyists can sometimes have problems discerning between the two - not because they have an agenda, or are incompotent, or willfully blind - it's just the nature of the beast, and it's not always easy to tell.
The further up the food chain you get - and the farther away from the raw intelligence data - the less likely you are to encounter people who understand just that point.
Did Bush (or Blair, or any other official, in any government) willfully deceive the public? I actually doubt it. By the time it got to Bush's advisors, the intelligence would have been passed through so many levels & filters that, to be perfectly honest, I don't think they would have had enough information to be able to make a valid judgement.
The *effect* is the same - what we're told turns out to be wrong. That, however, is the benefit of hindsight.
Remember the old game you used to play in Boy Scouts? One person starts on one end of the line, and whispers something to his neighbour, who in turn whispers it to the person on the other side of him. By the time it gets to the end, it has no resembelance whatsoever to what was originally said. It's exactly the same effect.
The only solution is to place the decision-makers closer to the actual sources, so that they can better make a reasonable judgement regarding the worth of what's known (and NOT known).
In a government the size of that in a modern state, that's difficult to do in any sort of practical manner.
This is an attempt to explain the intracacies of intelligence, not to support Bush.
That being said - even a surface examination of Saddam's behaviour would lead most reasonable people to conclude that he was hiding something