Santa's Knee @83: Now, I'm going to have to assume that you're not being serious, since I really don't understand what you're trying to say. Moving right along....

What's the weather in Houston like right now? I know it can get plenty warm there, but I don't know about this time of year. If it's really warm then I'd think a minimalist outfit would be more comfortable than the traditional acres of satin, especially in the close confines of a dance. If the dress-code is about confining the womenfolk in layers of suffocating material, maybe it should be rebelled against.

And, while I think of it, you'd think the staff of a school would have plenty of experience of dealing with bolshy teenagers. Do they not believe in de-escalating trouble, or do they prefer to pass the job onto the police?

Santa's Knee @62: I hope you don't think I'm a racist merely because I mentioned her race? Or is it because I thought there might be racist overtones to others' reactions to this girl wearing this outfit? I was asking a serious question, not making a rhetorical point. Seriously, I see all these instances of "slut" and "hooker" in reference to a teenage African-American girl, I have to wonder what's going on in commenter's heads.

Is there an elephant in the room that no-one's mentioning here? Would the girl look less of a slut if she wasn't showing so much black skin? How strongly would people be reacting to her outfit if she were white?

First off: Chiari malformation. It's there in the link that Mark posted originally, and that Tenn looked up for us, way back in comment #11. It isn't an evolutionary leap, it isn't a tweak to brain chemistry, it's a malformation of the skull, which the surgery is supposed to correct.

So, if you're going to tie yourselves and each other up in knots over the next stage in slan, sorry, human evolution, just acknowledge that it has nothing to do with this child, will you?

Second off, speciation doesn't happen overnight. Evolution occurs with every damned one of us, every generation, with an average of 10 mutations per person born. (Or four mutations, estimates vary.) Except when it doesn't, because most mutations are neutral and are neither selected for or against.

Thirdly, the amount of sleep varies from species to species, but the need for some sleep is universal. It seems to be wired into our brains and bodies at a deep level; there ain't no way that one single change to brain chemistry is going to eliminate the need for sleep. The chances are heavily stacked towards it happening already and being detected, if it was a simple change in brain chemistry. A complicated change in biochemistry is less likely to be healthy. Cthulhu knows, it's easy enough to fuck a human brain up completely with single simple changes in biochemistry, or developmental glitches, but not so easy to fix.

Eight-limbed babies can be a result of a simple mutation in the ancient homeobox genes that regulate body development for most multicellular organisms, the genetic equivalent of an instruction to grow four limbs being followed twice. (Note that the extra limbs rarely if ever fit well in the skeletal structure.) As far as anyone can tell, there is no equivalent simple switch in the brain, or the developmental genes for the brain, for requiring no sleep. Nancy Kress notwithstanding, it's going to take a lot of genetic engineering to make a sleepless human who otherwise develops normally. It's unlikely to the point of impossible that it's going to pop up in one lucky mutant child without some hints of other effects showing up in previous generations.

Now, quit yer yellin', you damn kids, and get orf my lawn!

Evidence, I see that you're as fond of putting words in God's mouth as you are of putting words in ours. Leave him alone, God is big enough to speak for himself. His word stretches over 24 billion light years, 12 billion years into the past and untold trillions of years into the future. It is so much bigger than your prejudices and that book you're so fond of.

How about blogworld? Is that reality?

Sister Y @24: Dummy head with the EEG sensors and mobile phone attached?

I suppose they're sure that the phones didn't affect the EEG sensors?

That's a great cover picture. Not sure it's got much to do with the actual contents (it's been a while since I read it) but it's a great interpretation of the title.

Shush, Evidence. The cool kids have moved on from this thread. If you want to practice baiting them some more, you're going to have to do it in a more recent thread.

I can't recommend too highly anything by Franz de Waal. His Peacemaking Among Primates I found especially enlightening.

But, as we've seen, Evidence plays by different rules.

It took me a full minute to parse that picture. Of course it's just a pony model that's been stood up on its front legs, and a face graffitied on its tail. But, tovarisch, it still keeps flicking back to a flaming chaos demon with hooves for hands and a horse's head for a phallus... I hope I haven't given any nightmares to anyone who only saw the pony.

Some of the stuff in the link, though, is just very imaginative with a poverty-driven aesthetic, different to what we're used to. That giant turnip slide would be a winner anywhere, I think, and I think the bathtub cows would appeal to most kids. It's a cow you can sit in! Neat!

GTomkins @110: All right, consider me admonished for my sarcasm. But Ben Stein aligned all of science with Hitler first, which is a damn sight worse than any name-calling he may have received.

What I was trying to draw your attention to, is that giving props to Stein for having an opinion is an empty gesture. When everyone is entitled to having an opinion, there's no merit in merely having one, and plentiful anti-merit in having an opinion that is hateful and factually wrong. Grimly hanging on to an insulting opinion doesn't deserve any congratulations at all. I'm sorry, but Ben Stein is just not an admirable human being. Insulting at best, cynically hypocritical at worst. Why should anyone respect his opinion?

Can we ask Teresa to lock this thread? I don't want to hang around any more waiting for Evidence to post another non-sequiter, and I don't really want to let him sneak in the last word when we've all gone.

This thread came pre-Godwinised, so I feel entirely safe in saying: Props to Hitler for sticking to his beliefs. He just stated his honest opinion.

GTomkins, that was a pretty silly thing to say. Ben Stein is just getting back what he gives out. He gets hate for trying to propagate hate against science and its practitioners. He gets more ridicule for doing it ineptly. There are some opinions that are just plain factually wrong. This one is one of those. If Ben Stein is entitled to give out factually incorrect information, surely we're entitled to point out he's wrong?

Fightcopyright @74: Darwin's theory is often characterised as the survival of the fittest. The sense of "fit" in this case is not synonomous with "strong" it is in the sense of fitting a key in a lock, or even a pebble fitting in a gap in the shingle on a beach.

That the mischaracterisation as survival of the "strongest", i.e the most brutal, is adopted by the most brutal as an excuse for their actions has nothing to do with evolutionary science. It's a pernicious meme, having as much truth to it as trickle-down economics, adopted by those who feel it benefits them.

Stein can be as skeptical as he wants, but skepticism is no bloody good if it gets in the way of him learning stuff that is already known. Nobody's attacking him for the skepticism, we're excoriating him for remaining wilfully ignorant, and now accusing scientists of inventing time machines and going back to the ancient world to start anti-semitism. (That is what he's saying, isn't it?)

Evidence @626: Has yours?

Evidence, you've gone back to quoting the Bible to prove itself. You've been told about that, please don't do it again.

Also, any arguments you have with old earth creationists you should take up with them, if and when you meet any. Whether the "day" of Genesis is 24 hours or millions of years, we couldn't care less, since we don't accept that Genesis provides a true description of events, anyway.

As to knowing more science leading to seeing more correspondences with the Bible, it's rather the opposite, I'm afraid. Your remarks up-thread about ancient scientists believing that the Earth was supported on the back of turtles whereas the Bible "predicts" a circular form of some sort, for example, isn't supported by any history of science that I know. And the "prediction" of blood being the stuff of life is just laughable. This is a fact known by anybody who's been in battle, or for that matter by any farmer or even hunter-gatherer: when a person or animal has bled enough, they die. The big discovery about blood was that we weren't just bags of the stuff but that it actually circulated. Is there anything in the Bible about the circular nature of blood?

Similarly with ocean currents: any sailor -- of which there were more than a few in the ancient world -- knows that there are currents in the seas and oceans, and sailors followed them, making trade routes. Or "paths" if you like. The discovery of deep ocean currents are another matter.

Alas, many claims have also been proven false by comparing to reality. Many of them are in the Bible.

Evidence @610: Considering that the general mass includes those who have been poisoned in their reasoning by creationists, IDers, and other crackpots, as well as those who are apathetic to the war of ideas taking place around them on this subject, and that evolutionary scientists such as Gould and others are necessarily experts on the subject; I'd say that those of the general mass who haven't been poisoned or are apathetic do have substantially the same understanding. It's big subject that's been well-researched, so it's easy for laypeople to lose track of details and confuse issues, and even to drag up theories that have been abandoned by the mainstream of research, but otherwise generally I don't think there is disagreement. After all, more than a few scientists are skilled enough to tell us in popular form about their subject; some of us read those books and articles. And the sources are published for those with the skill and patience to examine them.

I glanced at the headline and thought, why is boingboing reviewing Harold Pinter's latest book? And then when I realized my mistake, I thought, Why aren't they reviewing his latest book?

Spork @29: But the EW systems are designed assuming that they're built with "honest" hardware. If a chip has a bit of malware encoded into it, it's essentially a sleeper agent in the plane's network; all fine until it gets the code signal, then it starts subverting the dataflow in the network and working with other sleeper agents to corrupt the network completely. The EW systems are designed to protect against external threats, not to monitor their own condition.

The trouble is, Evidence, that you're in the position of saying, Because the Bible says the Sun sets therefore the Sun goes around the Earth. When you can pick and choose which bits of the Bible are poetic and which plain-speaking according to what you think you know, but don't extend that privilege to others who know things about the world that you don't, how do you expect anyone to take you and your book seriously as a source for any information?

Spork @24: It's a bit sci-fi, but if each borked chip can communicate with every other borked chip via the normal data busses and internal network in a vehicle, say, then if only one is in a radar, radio or other communication module, if that one gets the coded kill signal it would pass it on to all the other chips in the plane. The chips wouldn't have to do anything terribly specific to whatever machinery they're in to muck things up, just randomly change instructions or data to glitch things or crash the system.

For example, your whizzy new fighter plane has borked chips in the flight-control system, the GPS receivers, the engine-management system, radio, radar, and missiles. The enemy plane you're painting with your radar picks up your scan and switches his IFF transceiver to send the 'kill' code, which is picked up by your radar and recognised by the borked chip in it. It passes the code on to all the other chips in the internal network, then a few cycles later starts randomly switching data, as do all the other chips. Your radar shows ghosts, you get thrust surges, your GPS insists you're buried in a mountain when you're over the sea, your plane starts to rattle itself apart as your fly-by-wire controls start reacting to random air currents and control innputs that aren't really there, and if you succeed in firing a missile, it flies off at a tangent as it suffers the same problems. Oh, and you can't send a Mayday call, because your frequency-hopping radio keeps hopping to the wrong frequencies.

Just one of these duff chips in the plane can be coped with, but even two or three together would cause enough hassle to scrub a mission at best. That's if you can get a signal in that way. Otherwise, it might be a matter of a saboteur sending a signal via other means, perhaps via regular diagnostic equipment.

Shrug. I don't know, not being very technical or a spook, but I think that's the way I'd be thinking if I was paid to be paranoid about it.

Is it feasible to x-ray scan a suspect chip and compare it to a known safe chip? For instance, with the PPC750 above, there are (presumably) safe versions of the chip; any subverted chip would have a different pattern of circuits. You don't need to scan every chip, just scanning a sample would reveal if a manufacturer is supplying duff chips.

What about the vendor's responsibility? A middle-aged guy with a kid in tow asks for lemonade, and he gives him a girly-drink? What was the guy on, that he couldn't parse the situation well enough to give a plain lemonade, or to ask the father whether he wanted a plain lemonade or an alcopop? I'm teetotal, and I've drunk lemonade in pubs, bars and clubs, and nobody has ever given me an alcopop when I've ordered a lemonade. If you're going to lock people up for child abuse -- while screaming "Responsibility!" at the top of your lungs, as though that justifies the most extreme action -- then the vendor should have his licence taken away, at the very least.

By the way, when are they going to lock away that woman who abandoned her eight-year-old kid to find his own way home, and who featured on BB not so long ago. Where was her sense of responsibility?

Measurements of information -- whether Shannon, Kolmogarov, or Evidence's no doubt idiosyncratic system -- aren't really relevant to a discussion of evolution. Outside of Intelligent Design, I don't think anyone has tried to synthesize a union between evolution and information theory. By all means chat about information theory, but don't let Evidence pull a bait and switch on you by conflating what you say about the information content of DNA with wild statements about how he thinks this applies to evolution.

For the record, mainstream evolutionary theory doesn't have a lot to say about the creation or destruction of information.

BTW, could someone parse this statement of Evidence's for me: "My kids showed rabbits in 4h"? Does he mean 4th grade? I get the feeling there's a bunch of information missing from that paragraph that explains how the kids proved that coprophagia is identical to rumination.

He's fake, but to what degree?

Evidence @392: No, saltation is completely different from punctuated equilibrium. Saltation is as you described; punctuated equilibrium is when a species rapidly -- in geological scales of time -- evolves and then changes only a little over a long period. The latter is compatible with a general acceptance of evolution, though it isn't strictly Darwinist.

As you don't believe in geological scales of time as it is generally understood by geologists, they may look the same to you, but saltation and punctuated equilibrium are different things.

And, no, Stephen Jay Gould did not invent irreducible complexity.

All the stuff needed for life was here, you don't know where it came from and don't care to know. But because all this stuff was here it collected itself together. Very small and simple at first but as necessity reared its head, changes occurred in what ever it was that had become organized. It changed its DNA put new information there and made itself adapt to it needs at the time.

I don't know where you got that babble from, but it wasn't from this thread.

Really, you aren't going to get a complete picture from the comments in this blog or many others. If you seriously want to know what the science of evolution is about, then you need to crack open a book or two on the subject. I'd recommend some of the late Stephen Jay Gould's essay collections, but there are other good writers.

Just to reiterate Tenn's point, in case you miss it, Evidence, there are rivers, seas, lakes all over the Earth, floods, landslides and turbidity currents as well. The normal actions of the environment serve to fossilize the occasional creature. So how do you tell the animals and plants that were fossilized normaly, and the ones fossilized by the single catastrophic event of the biblical Flood?

Evidence, you ask us to test the Bible as though it was completely foreign to us. The fact is, most if not all of us know something of the Bible; we've been exposed to it since childhood, and we have tested it for fact and accuracy, and found it wanting. We've tested it for internal consistency, and found it wanting. We've tested it as moral guidance, and some of us have found it wanting. Not all; some people are happy with the message in the Bible, and do not find it incompatible with their knowledge of the world, this science that you know so little of, and denigrate so in your obvious ignorance.

As you to us, we say to you, What are you afraid of? The answers are out here in the world for you to see, as countless others have seen before you. Take your nose out of that fusty old book, and look at the world. Look at the strata, look at the fossils, look at the shadows on the Moon. God gave you the capacity for reason, and he gave you a universe to work it on. Are you so contemptuous of God's gifts?

That's very interesting, but I have here the car-powered mousetrap!

Antinous @262: The, ah, point of entry there, that's not Chicxulub, is it?

Wait, smoking grass improves your blog posting?

Evidence @254: The fact that there's nothing but the Sun to light it.

Also, our shadow on the moon is not a perfect fit.

Gumby @334: The mods have been and gone. Why do you think there are no vowels or consonants in the post?

Evidence @251: That isn't how the phases of the moon work.

Whenelvisdied @29: Is there ever such a thing as a "homogenous culture" in the sense you're using? When does a culture ever unanimously agree on any course of action? If anyone in Rome disagreed with Cato's "Cathargo delenda est" would it be a mischaracterization to say that (the culture of) Rome destroyed (the culture of) Carthage? If only homogenous cultures can be spoken of interacting with each other, can one speak of cultures at all?

If one set of my brain cells outvote another set on a course of action, do "I" have an identity, by your standards? Am "I" speaking to "you", or is it just the voting majority of my brain cells speaking to a voting majority of yours?

JLB @312: Teresa said she was going to do it if you ignored her. You ignored her. That was unnecessary.

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Evidence @178: I think you'll find that you'll discover more about a book by reading the book rather than just the title.

And if you can get into the habit of reading, you might also find Darwin's The Descent of Man and The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals quite enlightening as to Darwin's attitude to race.

If I work up a list of the ten basic plots... hmm, better make it eleven, I'm sure nobody else has done eleven... and publish it, I could claim royalties on every piece of fiction written everywhere in every language! I'll be rich, I tell you, RICH!!!

Iva Buggridge @175 et al: I guess you're going to get big bonus points for preaching to the heathens, but what does all that anti-catholic, anti-gay nonsense have to do with the topic?

Talking of which, Goldschmidt's saltation theory has nothing to do with punctuated equilibrium. In fact, saltation's "hopeful monsters" is quite an anti-evolutionary theory, describing as it does a kind of instantaneous (single-generation) speciation. An event for which there is not a single shred of a suggestion of evidence anywhere on Earth, and which no evolutionary scientist takes seriously.

Mammal, you claim you didn't take sides; fr sr, y dn't sm t b n th sd f th trth. Points 1 & 3 in your original post are smply untrue, and 4 is a half-truth.

Insinuating shenanigans on the part of the photographer is also not smthng n wld ssct wth n pstndng ndvdl. If you have knowledge of what occured beforehand, please state it. f nt, thn kndly kp yr cnfbltns t yrslf.

Presumably, the spoof is attempting to hew to historical accuracy rather than trying to exactly map Obama's history onto Lincoln's. Surely the piece is more about ABC's style of debates than a comment on Obama.

Surely Shakespeare wasn't the only playwright to write in iambic pentameter? When did English writers give up the habit? And... does that anachronism somehow make the anachronism of Pulp Fiction performed in iambic pentameter less funny?

You know, I don't think there is a nice way to read that, Knifie.

I just put this book on my wishlist at Amazon.uk, went to check for the UK cover and realised that I'd already bought it yesterday. I think I'll move it to the top of my to-read pile.

What Hellhead said, and I have to wonder how new and unusual the behaviour of searching dumps for edible calories is. Not to make little of the fact that these people are so poor, but I wonder about the overt link with this week's news of rising food prices. That there are people that are this poor is not a new thing, and if there are calories to be had from rich people's garbage, chances are that people have been scavenging it for years anyway.

I've tried to read Mao:TUS but every time I pick it up I have to put it down again because the main character is such an unsympathetic bastard. I'm only halfway through the Long March at the moment.

I've gotten it a couple-few times. I figured, in my minimally-savvy way, that it was something to do with a time-out, but who knows?

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.13 under OSX 10.4.11, if that helps.

Meantime, how difficult is it to put on the front page a technical report button linked to a hotmail or gmail address? Not as elegant as a purpose-built solution, to be sure, but it'll do the job until something more techy is sorted out.

Edit: I now get to emit a Nelson Munz-style "Ha-ha" at myself, since not only did I get the "wrong text" error, when I tried to log in, I got a MovableType error "No entry_id".

What does it say about my brain, that everyone else sees a naked woman or Cheney's undead hand, and I see a rubber chicken?

Oh, please, Moon, make it more obvious that you're a shill for the Chinese government, why don't you?

Meek Geek @26: I was over there in August/September last year, and I didn't have any trouble with my Visa cards. And nobody took my fingerprints, at the border (?) or anywhere else. They did check my shoes -- very apologetically -- when I hopped over to Korea, but that seemed to be an ad hoc arrangement for the American airline I was flying with.

Spoing @102: That makes no sense whatsoever, either as a hypothetical situation or as a clarification of your positing that China doesn't care about face. I ask again, how does China care enough to lie, yet not care about appearances? How does that work?

If the Chinese government doesn't care for face, then why do they lie about what's happening? Why not just say, "Yeah, Tibetans are worth less than Han Chinese, the Dalai Lama's an ineffectual fop, we don't care about pollution or human rights or anything other than power. So what are you going to do about it?"

Shorter Sproing3: UR doin it rong.

Cory, he's not worth it. Go for a walk around the block, write a short short story about it in your head, then forget about it. And switch to decaffeinated.

Sproing, you're the best person to know what would satisfy you, don't expect the rest of us to jump through hoops trying to figure out what will make you happy. Motivating the proletariate is hard; it's way easier to take advantage of whatever movement is already going on than to theorise about the perfect action that will bring about your goals and try to make that happen. Given that this is happening, and it's happening now, the question you should be asking is how to capitalise on it to produce a change, no matter how miniscule. Because even a small victory is a victory.

To more directly answer your question, it gives our diplomats something to work with. They can say (in appropriate diplomatese), "In just a few months a half-million visitors with digital cameras, laptops, PDAs, and flash-drives the size of a stick of chewing-gum are due to descend on your country. You aren't going to be able to control them the way you tried -- and failed -- to control the Tibetans. Wise up. Concede something to the Tibetans, have a few corrupt officials executed, kiss and make up, and everyone will be happy. Otherwise, those people will go home and talk to their friends and relatives about what a rotten country China is, and those friends and relatives will talk to their friends, and some of those will be in a position to make decisions about dealing with China, and they will decide not to, and without support from the outside world the whole lousy thing will collapse and fall and you've got the nineteenth and early twentieth century China all over again. And none of us wants that, do we?"

It was on Channel 4 News (or was it Newsnight?) a couple of weeks ago. They referenced the Tom Hanks movie The Terminal rather than Dickens, though.

It's that moment when moving my cursor randomly around that leads our eyes to meet that causes a visceral OMG reaction in me. Even with that, though, there's a few more steps to make it out of the uncanny valley: rubber hair that warps all of a piece; lack of wrinkling in the blinking eyelids; lack of micro-expressions, twitching, etc; lack of detail and depth in her irises and pupils.

So "ethnic" is the new "black"?

Uh, Joel, my Favourite count has been stuck at 5 since November.

As I understand it, Technogirl, what you're afraid of is that the Teresa will form a cult of personality about herself, akin to that Wikipedia bloke whose name escapes me right now? And that with this cult of sycophantic supporters she will distort boingboing into an unlovely place, that further improvement to the site will be impossible because she will suppress all disagreement with her methods, much as she has done in this thread? (Oh, wait....)

I don't think you're being realistic in your assessment that a week is all that's required to make her anonymous. If she is the queen bee of your fears, then surely her sycophants will recall who she is, even if the rest of the lotus-eaters forget. And I think an anonymous queen bee would be more of a threat; all sorts of evil acts are commited anonymously. In fact, the proposal that moderators should both be anonymous and spirit comments away invisibly fills me with a creepy horror; I can't see boingboing developing healthily under such a regime.

That silent anonymous moderation by an individual who can neither be thanked nor chastised for a decision is infinitely preferable to a vocal, highly opinionated moderator with a "following".

That's rather a moot point, isn't it, considering that Teresa's identity is already out? To achieve the (doubtfully needful) moderator anonymity you require would mean getting rid of this one... or, as you prophesy, for the whole system to break down again to be replaced later. Regardless, you're not going to get what you want in this incarnation.

Isn't this all drifting rather off-thread? In danger of becoming a bit flamey, in fact?

I think to compare disemvoweling to even pillaging, let alone sexual violence, is overblown hyperbole and as such is bound to attract ridicule. The message is there for anyone who wants to put a little effort into it; no content has been stolen.

Though I am mildly entertained by the mental image of a horde of vikings descending on a comment and carrying away its vowels.

Technogirl @293: I think you're really hobbling yourself by refusing to use actual examples and counter-examples. Abstract discussion can only get us so far; moderation is such an art that examples are necessary to further the discussion. Really, by trying to keep the discussion at the abstract, you make it look like there's an "argument" that you're afraid to "lose", rather than a discussion about ideal moderation.

Cory @295: Just wanted to point at your comment, in case anybody missed it. Really, what's the big deal about posting to the front page anyway, when it's going to fall off the front page after about 24-36 hours? If Teresa was the raving egotist some posters here want to paint her, she'd've put it up last thing on Friday so it would have been on the front page all weekend and well into Monday, maybe Tuesday.

KPratt @201: What would the two lines have added that wasn't obvious or couldn't be surmised with a little thought? Especially as it isn't just for the benefit of the boingers; one would imagine that as it's a declaration of policy they would all be in the loop.

Mmm, the article says "Year 11"; doesn't that imply 16-year-olds, rather than 14-year-olds?

I have to ditto the comments about the Favourites page being broken; mine hasn't been updated since November, though the tag on the post will change.

As to the comparison with EULAs, this is more entertainingly written than most EULAs I've attempted to read.

Pipenta @75: Oh, I don't think anyone feels that Card's purported repressed homosexuality excuses him. Quite the opposite, I feel.

Eh, I'm not going to slap Niven down for saying one dumb thing, not when I've said my fair share of dumb things unexposed by the media spotlight. And especially when the report seems so obviously biased (against SF writers?).

And I don't think it's so much a family as a bunch of mates who have been out on the piss all night.

If art can be seriously good for you, though, it follows that it can be seriously bad for you [..]

Is this necessarily true? I know that lack of any art at all can be seriously bad for you, but I find bad art can be quite stimulating (using my own subjective criteria for bad art), whether I disagree with it or its execution.

I think you're confusing the Gundam story with another one. Probably the Gojira statue in Ginza, Tokyo. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the radioactive lizard who waited outside the rail station for 3000 years.

Try clicking on the "Slide show" link, Pink Corner Guy.

As a graphic designer I'm supposed to be able to do this kind of thing, but the truth is, I can't sketch for toffee. So I stand back in admiration at anybody who can slap ink on paper and have it look like a human being. If they can make it look stylish as well, my admiration knows no bounds.

Just a comment to mark this page, since my Favorites page is broken. And I can't think of anything witty to say.

Crab, Tibetans have killed eighty and the Chinese soldiers stationed on every street have killed none? My, what paragons of self-restraint the PLA have become since the events of Tianenmen Square.

Tell you what, Bush can give himself immunity if he can figure out how, as long as he leaves everybody else out to dry. And co-operates with any investigative process.

Motisbeard, the line that it is only the deposed elitist monks who complain about the latest Chinese invasion is the Communists' attempt at undermining support for Tibetan independence in the West. That others are uncritically repeating the line doesn't make it any less propaganda, or more worthy of automatic respect than anything else in the media. Be skeptical, by all means, but please use that skepticism as a tool for finding out the truth, not as an excuse for inaction. As Takuan has pointed out, if you don't trust the monks then there are interviews with ordinary Tibetans out there in the webosphere, easy to find. There are even books about the subject.

Tripe! Or is that only cows' stomachs...?

Zuzu @20: I'm still waiting to grow up so I can be an astronaut.

Motisbeard @14: Oh, piffle. I forced no words into your mouth, merely pointed out the inaccuracy of those you had already written. What's the point of pretending to be aggressively neutral if you're already carrying around your own (presumably) unconscious biases? If you continue to flaunt your biases while denying their existence, you will get called out on them. As a true neutral, you should welcome my criticism, no matter how biased I am towards those who get tear-gassed and against those who deploy tear-gas.

I fear that you will remain perpetually ignorant as long as you insist that all your information comes from unbiased sources. There is no such thing on this planet. If you truly want to make a difference and not just seek an excuse for indifference, then you will have to do what the rest of us do: screen all sources for bias and decide which side of the fence you're on. And be prepared to change your mind when new information comes in.

"Evil, triumph, men, do nothing" Fill in the missing words to form a well-known phrase or saying. In this case, insisting that the old regime is as bad as the new (implying that those are the only two choices) and supporting (presumably unconsciously) the view that Tibet is part of China are not neutral choices: these are Chinese propaganda. By uncritically repeating them you are breaking your neutrality and supporting the latest Chinese invasion of Tibet. You are supporting the Chinese. And that's why you're getting grief here.

Nice framing of the discussion there, Motisbeard. Beneath the false binary old-regime-is-as-bad-as-the-new, you tried to smuggle in the idea that Tibet is indisputably part of China with your American Civil War analogy. Of course, Tibet does dispute that it is a part of China, and has been disputing it for some centuries. Much as the Irish have disputed that they are part of the UK for several centuries.

A better analogy might therefore be that the monks are like Catholic priests calling for home rule for Ireland in the early twentieth century.

Thuper @48: Your government is bad, but that's okay because ours are as well? We're all as bad as each other? So we shouldn't criticise? Pah!

If you don't want to engage in debate, then don't post. If you're going to post in a blog that isn't actively censored by a government, then don't try to damn disagreement with your views by claiming things are equal when they are not. I am free to criticise my government and yours, you are free only to criticise others'. Can you even google the phrase "Great Firewall of China"?

Jeff, a totally closed government is resistant to all forms of feedback except direct revolution. A totally open government would be monstrous in other ways. Somewhere inbetween lies the perfect degree of transparency for these circumstances. That amount of transparency can be found by negotiation, if the government is open to it (see my first sentence above), and seeing what works.

Obviously, a government that attempts to make secret things which are public knowledge -- i.e. the locations of CCTV cameras -- is being absurd, and they should be openly mocked for it.

How are we to trust the judgement of people who may be screwing with their organs of judgement?

Anyhow, there are enormous evolutionary pressures on the human brain: it has 2% of the mass and uses 20% of the energy of the body it resides in; and it is so large that just giving birth is risky to a human mother. If it wasn't generally as efficient as it could be at getting a human being through life, evolution would make it so fairly quickly. Tweaking your brain chemistry to achieve some temporarily useful effect is almost certainly going to have some kind of penalty, elsewhere or -when.

Myself, I'll stick to judicious use of caffeine and sugar, but don't let me stop the rest of you brave pharmaceutical pioneers.

#25: These are Japanese researchers, so I guess that they went with a local product, rather than some exotic foreign substance. Is skunk-smell easily obtainable in the States?

Oh, drat! Did I miss Life in Cold Blood again, because of a mere footie match?

Is DWNPRSSR the same as DOWNPRESSOR, or is it just MOONBAT trying to sow confusion and doubt?

Re #111: [Awed applause]

Ken @75: And you're not pushing a political agenda?

Can we not take the cry of "Free Tibet" as a call to free the country from the invaders and its feudal past?

Cstatman: you're typing with your nose?

Hmm. I don't think the study says more than, "People with lots of words for colours can sort colours into finer categories than those who have few words."

If I show a Japanese person a green ball and a blue ball, and ask her to pick the aoi one, of course she's going to be confused for a second (since aoi traditionally means both blue and green). If I ask for the midori one she'll know immediately which one I'm talking about (green).

Conversely, if she showed me a ball coloured Pantone 199 and one coloured Pantone 206 and asked for the akai ball, I'd be confused until she gave me the Pantone number of the one she wanted, or said she wanted the warm red or the cool red. (Actually, I wouldn't get it until she gave me both numbers, 199 is warmer than 206.)

So are we perceiving the colours differently or categorising them differently?

Teresa, you missed comment #49.

It's fairly low rez, any idea which panzer it's meant to be? Pzkpfw IV, maybe?

Or both.

It's not so bad on my desktop machine -- though the scans are not terribly good, they don't take very long to load -- but on my iPod (so much more convenient for reading in bed) I can't even scroll the pages. Not that I can see the point of scanning the pages anyway, when they could have PDFed or even TXTed the original.

The censoring software at my old job categorised Boingboing as "Porn", but didn't block it. Something I didn't realise until I was reprimanded for surfing for porn at work.

There's been a bit of a cultural shift. I recall, in my not-so-distant youth, American pundits appearing on British TV mocking Britons for putting up with stuff and never complaining about bad products or services. Yet in recent years, if I ever point out the defects in something on an internet forum, I get lambasted for "whining" by USians. What happened?

Isn't the ISS at lower than sea-level pressure? That would cut down the smell somewhat.

Noen @ 6: "Sort of perilously close" is a bit weak. Either it's close or it isn't; it's either perilous or it's safe. If you're going to criticize an attitude, you should be sure it's there, and if it is there, to state clearly what you find offensive about it. Otherwise how can we comment on anything? Can one say, "These are pretty"? Or is that "sort of perilously close" to being something someone somewhere might find to be a negative comment?

Cheese? Sounds more like "Deeze" to me.

This is just more of the same nonsense I've condemned in previous comments.

What you fail to realize is I'm the only one not arguing here.

Perhaps your comments make sense to you.

I don't know, Chris, I take it for granted that TV sexes up the story for any historical drama. This has been going on since Homer, at least, through Shakespeare to the present day. Any history I think I learn from drama I mentally mark with a "provisional" tag, to be corrected if and when I research the period in question.

I don't know where the line is, but I appreciate drama that pays some attention to historical accuracy, just as I do when the science is done right in other fiction. It's not something I expect from a story, but welcome when it is there; after all, it's a drama, not a documentary. The two forms have different truths to tell.

As far as City of Vice goes, I'm taking away the knowledge that Henry Fielding started the Bow Street Runners, that he had a blind brother, and hints of the socio-political state of Britain in the 18th century (status of blacks, women and homosexuals, for example, and the politics of crime prevention). Dramatic stuff like Fielding's kidnap by "Tom Jones" I'm taking with a pinch of salt.

The audience for these shows aren't uncritical sponges, you know.

The most awesome thing about City of Vice is that you get to hear Ian McDiarmid (aka Chancellor Palpatine) swearing like a trooper. How much better would Star Wars I-III have been if Palapatine had dropped the occasional f-bomb?

This is the paradox at the core of you, Moonbat. You claim you want a diversity of opinion, yet you rail against everyone who disagrees with you.

Eight-eighths cloud cover here, and past my bedtime, anyway. Thanks for the offer, though.

Monnbat @41: (I don't want to disagree with you but) It's funny that you should mention reading comprehension, since it's been explained several times that you don't get disemvowelled at Boingboing merely for having a different opinion; you get disemvowelled for being rude and offensive.

Kaguya. You have the G and Y reversed in your intro.

Does EVE have a bank? I think I just read a novel about this....

CO2 sounds a bit heavy. Wouldn't he get better performance from N2?

I guess the question in the quote from SciAm is really asking about quantum teleportation rather than teleportation in general, because at first glance it reads like the physicist is calling all of SF wrong in its various incarnations of teleportation. Which would be silly, since SF has been around longer than quantum teleportation.

Well, as long as he doesn't try to trademark Teleportation on its own, I guess it's cool. Otherwise SF will have to hire Yoko Ono's lawyers....

I think that was satire, Dusty.

This never would have happened if the professor and the students had all had guns....

CKD @12: Yeah, but my cell phone is smarter than a IIc and cost a hell of a lot less.

It reminds me of these lamps I saw in Akihabara:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nelc/1289468885/

Yay, congrats! Have a virtual handshake. Sure is cute for a mutant.

Takuan @15: From page 6 of the article

The FIRRE may look deadly and efficient, but it has a serious design flaw. Though the tank treads allow it to cross nearly any obstacle, the lack of suspension slowly destroys any type of robotic weapon system that is mounted to it. SPAWAR tried, unsuccessfully, to lessen the rough ride by mounting the robo-gun with shock-absorbing cabling. The FIRRE platform is no longer being considered for battlefield deployment.

Well, the same is true of any weapon system; the first-time deployment brings wondrous results (except when it doesn't) as the enemy doesn't know how to cope with it, but then they figure out its weaknesses and it's no longer quite so effective. Shrug. What do you want from porn, an accurate representation of reality?

Israelis, Palestinians, a plague on both their houses. You can't make a simple criticism of either side without being accused of ignoring the crimes of the other. That corner of the world is a goddamn mess of just and unjust causes, indiscriminate murder and desperate rationalisations.

We must all remember that 9/11 happened

As if we could forget.

Well, the subtitle on the cover says "from the continent", which would exclude the British Isles. British SF is pretty well represented in the American market anyway, I think. I suppose they could have titled the book "The SFWA Languages-other-than-English Hall of Fame" but it seems a little overly pedantic.

I'm usually oblivious to the local newspaper headlines here in Cheltenham, but this one gave me a serious WTF moment a while ago. Badgers dug up my husband's grave.

Michael @68: Didn't you make the same post on the Gibson thread?

WaveyDave @32: Eh, the consulate couldn't do anything if they didn't know about the situation. As to why the staff at a hospital in a cosmopolitan city like New York didn't think to contact the consulate is another question. It can't be the first time that a tourist has fallen ill in the city needing their kids to be looked after.

MScot @37: Who knows whether you're a naif or a liar? All anyone can tell is that you're exhibiting troll-like characteristics, including self-righteousness, ignoring explanations when they're given, marking as paranoid a moderator who most certainly has experience of sock-puppeteers, and ignoring the issues that caused you to get disemvowelled in the first place.

If you're honest, you'll take the explanation of disemvowelling onboard, read up on moderation issues (including sock-puppets), accept that when you're rude your comments will get disemvowelled if not deleted, and try not to be rude again. I acknowledge that the last might be the most difficult, but disemvowellment isn't a permanent condition; you'll have plenty of opportunity to try and get it right.

Jake @2: They want to ban DNA?

Darth @3: Pot. Kettle. Orange.

I concede my mistake about the name of the nation on the island to the west of the island that I live on, though I'm still not clear exactly which is the generally acceptable name.

I'm used to boingboing commenters not reading the original post very carefully, but it looks to me like even the original contributor hasn't. The post says "the plan would be contrary to EU law on state aid", which I take to mean that the original plan relied on an EU subsidy which has some conditions on it which make it difficult to use for this project, not that wi-fi is illegal in the Socialist States of EU.

And as for not even Cory picking up on the speculation that this is not the real reason, but that it was actually due to pressure from the telcos, well....

Also, DJS, Republic of Eire =/= Britain

Better than your mother.

Takuan @37: True as far as it goes, but that doesn't mean that any odd psychic ability that the mind of man can imagine necessarily exists, now or in the future. If it can't be demonstrated to a skeptic, then it probably doesn't exist.

Church @17: Yep, looks just the job for despatching French knights stuck in the mud at Agincourt.

Any aliens reading this blog, we're not with RyanH @14, okay? He just declared war on you all by himself, it's nothing to do with the rest of us, so aim your pre-emptive retaliation just at him, please.

Is there a word for when you get totally confused by a boing-boing post? When I read the headline, I had an image of special watering cans for cricket pitches, then I saw the actual picture and I thought it was some widget for tampering with cricket balls, then I began reading the copy, and thought they were for filling with insecticide for keeping down cricket infestations, and then I wondered if there was really such a thing as crickets that fight, but decided that was too silly....

Talia @16: No, this is iSloating, which is Apple's new gadget for sloating music tracks.

Antipax @12: Someone has to speak for us profane, boozy, drug-addled, angry old men.

Stephen @8: So the labels are bashing Apple by only letting some music go DRM? And this will hurt Apple how? DRM is customer-unfriendly, so the customers will tend towards buying DRM-free music. The labels will follow the money and eventually make all their music DRM-free. Apple doesn't have to do a thing; the labels will end up fighting each other, as per usual.

Oh, Miles @8, what a callow youth you are. These were the 7-of-9s and Number 8s of their day. One day you'll be old and grey/bald, and you'll be amazed that none of the younger generation can see the pulchritude of your favourite sci-fi babes of yesteryear.

Also: T'Pring? Totally hot!

Not @32: I'm not going to flame you, brother, just disagree with you.

Most of the people taken and interrogated were picked up at random, having been snitched on by people hoping for a reward, or just picked up in a random sweep. People standing in the wrong place when something bad went down in a -- surprise -- Islamic country. It may further surprise you to learn that the words "Islamic" and "fundamentalist" don't automatically link together; you can be one without being the other.

People like Feroz Abbasi, Moazzam Begg, Richard Belmar, and Martin Mubanga. The cases against these people were so good that, uh, nothing happened to them after they were released. Or Jose Padilla, who has been tortured into a near-catatonic state, who doesn't even trust his lawyers anymore; the case against him was so strong that, mmm, most of the charges so triumphantly trumpetted in the media on his arrest have been dropped.

See, this is why we have legal processes. If you get arrested, you are not, in point of fact, automatically guilty of anything. That isn't just an inconvenient theoretical point unfortunately reified as law, but a necessary basis for further investigation, for finding the truth.

But, lol, yes, I am intolerant of intolerance. I see no contradiction in that; it is a necessary feature of being tolerant. What would be the point of a tolerance that let itself be trampled on by trolls such as yourself? Get back under your bridge while I laugh at you. You're not important enough to hate.

And how are you supposed to change your shoes without anyone noticing? Last time I went through there was only a few yards between the metal detector and the X-ray machine, a constant flow of passengers and nowhere to pause hidden from view as you perform this suspicious act.

Besides, they X-ray your bag as well.

Shrdlu @17: All food is expensive in the UK. A Big Mac and fries from McD's is cheaper than cod and chips from the local chippie.

Shall we open a book on how long it takes the JAV industry to come out with a Coffee Bukkake DVD?

Charlie @15: Meh, it's not as though there haven't been a whole bunch of film adaptations already; check IMDb's list, of which I've seen a fraction. I don't think it's a particularly easy book to film, really. If Burton only manages a version somewhere in conceptual space between the Disney animation and Jonathan Miller's production he'll have done well.

"Bandwidth exceeded." They've been boingboinged already?

That's no good, that little bit of close-up, we want the whole thing, man. For, um, Science!

Oh, that's all we need, a thread about goatse and 2g1c....

Father Brown @34:

Whether it's a Canadian holding court on American issues or Americans [..] interfering in specific global matters it's the same difference.

How many divisions does Cory Doctorow have? There is a difference between the two: Cory or any Otherplacian can only offer criticism, whereas Bush can lay waste to entire nations with just a scrawl from the presidential fountain pen. Keep a sense of proportion, Father Brown, otherwise we might mistake you for someone with their fingers in their ears going "Lalala, can't hear you!"

Noen @28: Yes. Yes, it is crazy talk. Any crazy can think of a story involving the government and random-disaster-of-the-day, and lots of crazies do, but they're just stories if you don't have any evidence. Any story is just a story without evidence. If you read it in a novel, or hear it from a drunk at a bar, it's entertaining, but entertainment value does not equal truth.

I don't know why there's a need to make this shit up, since the lackadaisical approach of the US government to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 is well-documented.

A rubbish bin is a very good place to put a bomb. It's out in the public space, anything can be put in it without being conspicuous, bins and their contents are rarely examined and putting stuff in bins is common and unremarkable. Also, removal of rubbish bins goes back way beyond Blair, to the Thatcher era at least, if not before.

Personally, I always wondered why they didn't just redesign bins in railway stations and so forth with six inches of concrete surrounding them so that any blast would be contained and projected upward. They'd also be proof against the more common forms of vandalism.

That's fine (for the pirate) until the site owner updates the filter to apply ROT13 to files before checking for matches again. Then the pirates apply another coding scheme, which works fine until the site gets wise, and so on. Classic germ-immunity arms race, with the burden seemingly on the immunizer/site to filter for all possible schemes. OTOH, the pirate has to keep coming up with new encoding schemes, and propagate information about them to the illicit downloaders without the site getting wise to them for as long as possible.

So, is an o with a line through it pronounced the same as an o with an umlaut?

Zrenneh @6: It's actually Dave that wants us to send in our thoughts. And, you know, in English when one is asking someone to do something, one usually uses the word "your" to indicate the someone; the someone then thinks, "I'll send in my thoughts". If Dave wanted us to send in his thoughts, he'd say "Send in my thoughts". That's how it works in English, I don't know about whatever your (i.e. Zrenneh's) first language is.

Would you (Zrenneh) like to lie down for a spell? I (Nelson) am concerned that you (Zrenneh) may be feeling unwell.

If it's just a toy, why are they doing it? Do they get a kick out of making something simulate suffering? Or do they get a kick out of other people's reactions to the toy's simulated suffering?

If the former, I wonder if they would torture an animal if they were told, "It's just a pet," or a human if told, "It's just an Other-racian." And if it's the latter, I wonder how far they'd go to invoke other emotions. Perhaps they're just the film-makers, SFX geeks and writers of the future. Or maybe they are sociopaths. Either way, for different reasons, they're going to be worth keeping an eye on.

Father Brown @26: Not in my case, I'm a relic of the Cold War, and in the seventies I invaded or defended the Fulda Gap many, many times, using nothing but paper maps and cardboard counters. If you think big fast jets are scary, you should try using (virtual) 100 kT nukes in West Germany, where the average distance between villages and towns is about the blast radius of a 10 kT weapon.

Thing is, if you're convinced that all future conflicts are going to be COIN operations and plan accordingly, then someone will try and take advantage of that by performing a conventional operation, e.g. grabbing Taiwan, claiming the newly forming North-West passage or taking back Texas. So, to be sensible, given the inertia of the weapons development and procurement process, you have to plan for any type of conflict you can imagine. Plus, the military-industrial-entertainment complex does love those big baroque weapons. And, Cold War dinosaur that I am, so do I.

Father Brown @26: Not in my case, I'm a relic of the Cold War, and in the seventies I invaded or defended the Fulda Gap many, many times, using nothing but paper maps and cardboard counters. If you think big fast jets are scary, you should try using (virtual) 100 kT nukes in West Germany, where the average distance between villages and towns is about the blast radius of a 10 kT weapon.

Thing is, if you're convinced that all future conflicts are going to be COIN operations and plan accordingly, then someone will try and take advantage of that by performing a conventional operation, e.g. grabbing Taiwan, claiming the newly forming North-West passage or taking back Texas. So, to be sensible, given the inertia of the weapons development and procurement process, you have to plan for any type of conflict you can imagine. Plus, the military-industrial-entertainment complex does love those big baroque weapons. And, Cold War dinosaur that I am, so do I.

Normanack@9: that's still quite impressive, implying around 4.3 children per family, which is a bit above the necessary replacement rate.

It's downhill from here, Dillo. You may as well go back to bed.

Hemidemi @17, the tags are part of the text, for flavour and verisimilitude. If you read the book, you'll notice that they are part of the intaweb chat between the characters, not just randomly left in by poor proof-reading.

I'd take that bet, Moon. Turkey is actually quite a secular country, compared to the stereotype of Muslim countries you have in mind. I'm sure there are more than a few free thinkers in the country.

Matt @7: The misinformed reference to the CCTV "network" among other things, but yes, I am just guessing. OTOH, nobody's denying it.

Imani2 @10: If you think the British public is indifferent to all this, then you're misinterpreting British phlegmaticism. Just because we're not rioting in the streets....

Cory, you have to learn to verify everything Burt tells you.

I roll my eyes at the Americans in this thread telling me how vile a place the UK is. You think your personal data is safe in the hands of the corporations and three-letter-agencies of the USA? The best that can be said is that at least your bureaucrats aren't as technologically incompetent as ours, and I'm not sure that's such a blessing.

I'm guessing, but I assume that it's something like, "Mohammed was a man, so naming a child after him isn't blasphemy, it's just the hope that he'll grow to be like Mohammed, peace be unto him. But naming a soul-less animal after the Prophet can only be an insult, since the animal has no comprehension of the meaning of the name, let alone the meaning of His words." It's logical, given a certain mindset.

Strider @6: Yeah, I get the reference, thanks. I think that if you're going to parrot a quote from a movie in a situation where it's in bad taste, you could at least have the wit to realise it, and maybe turn it into an actual joke?

Would that I had that much spare space on my bookshelves.

RCM @110: I thought I had added something. Let me try again.

Now they're slaves to the whims of terrorists.

Please explain exactly how Spain is in thrall to Muslim terrorists. What terrorist tune is the present government dancing to? Also explain how Spain is in thrall to Basque terrorists, since it would make no sense for them to be tough on the old set of terrorists and soft on the Muslim arrivistes simultaneously.

Strider @1: It's been done. Twice.

Not such a funny joke, really.

RCM @108:

I say if Spain had been smart, their reaction to the train bombing would have been a doubling of the numbers of troops. Now they're slaves to the whims of terrorists.

Because Spain is suffering so much from terrorism now? More than when it was just the Basques? Spain is dancing to the tune of terrorism how, exactly?

I say, if you knew anything about the world, the world would be an infinitismally better place. Leave this poor thread to die, go to a library, read a book or two. Come back when you can sound less ignorant.

"No, I'll be late, I'm still in orbit.... Had to take care of some military satellites.... I don't know, but I'll think of something."

You're not paying attention, JM @83: "These people" aren't necessarily terrorists. They are swept up, having been identified by very dubious means for the most part, and are then abused until they come up with something that will lead to other people being swept up for further abuse. They aren't all Abu Zubaydah. Most of them are Richard Belmar or Jose Padilla. Torturing the wrong people is not only a waste of resources, it is actually counter-productive. Not only that, but torture is useless without confirmatory intel from other sources, analysis, deduction, logic and reason. And when you have those, you don't need torture.

But why am I arguing the utilitarian argument? It's obvious that you, at least, are not interested in acquiring useful intel. You just want to torture people you have been told are the "enemy". What a wizened little soul you are.

Malex @47: Must be old-school Catholic, thinks Torquemada was a whining librul.

Kevitivity, it shouldn't be used on anybody.

Isn't that the "Do Not Want!" face? (Or have I spent too much time on 4chan?)

I keep my onions in the fridge, which seems to work just fine for keeping emissions to a minimum.

They probably wouldn't be any good for tear gas, either, I expect.

These days, Realcatholicman, BB's comments sections are filled with twits trying to prove how politically-motivated every post that mentions Fox, or copyright, or voting machines, etc. In other words, the same stuff that BB has always been interessted in.

And what kind of insult is "politically-motivated" anyway? Is it illegal in Bush's America to have a political opinion? If the politics here offend you so much... go somewhere else.

Xeni @14: But what does it mean? I never got the "orker" bit, because the "cow" jams up my neurons, "cow" being a female-specific insult here in the UK. Why is Cory calling his co-workers "cows"? I keep wondering.

"The content of the FOX News network cannot be questioned"? What world are you living in, J Davis?

Interesting idea, Teresa. I wouldn't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if police radio procedures, like all radio procedures dating from early to mid-twentieth century are based on the assumption of limited bandwidth. On the other hand a lot of officers these days also carry cell phones for direct officer-to-officer communications.

On the other hand, a major part of the de Menezes tragedy seems to have been different understandings of the word "stop" by the senior officer in charge and SO19 officers. Not so much a compression problem as an ambiguity one.

Nick @34: I don't know about the States, but that doesn't apply to UK police, who are generally unarmed (at least with lethal weapons). We have firearms squads who get called in only when it's deemed necessary. Not that there haven't been tragic mistakes, even before de Menezes.

Simon @35: the well-known poor ability most people have to make accurate assessments of serious but unlikely risks

I think this is precisely what happened with de Menezes: that SO19 got themselves into a tizzy trying to weigh the odds and consequences of a false positive and a false negative, and let the generally awful but relatively unlikely chance of one outweigh the more likely chance but individually awful outcome of the other. It was obvious from the public statements made by the Met immediately after the shooting in the Underground, though they seem to have retconned that a bit in the recent court case.

Yes, I was so disappointed to sea it was the WW2 version. Where's the Wave Motion Gun?

25 minutes is too long to wait for something to read. Can I microwave it? (j/k)

Nonesuch @3: From the Yorkshire Post article:

He said West Yorkshire Police told him that he had been blasted twice with the weapons because after the first shock he had fallen from his seat and lay face down with one hand underneath his body.

My emphasis. Really, the information is there, if you're not too busy trying to prove an invalid point.

As to why the officers did it, it was only a week after the suicide bombings in London, so heightened fear of terrorism was undoubtedly part of it. Not that this excuses the utter absurdity of the idea that an unconscious man on a bus is more likely to be a suicide bomber than, say, a drunk, or indeed seriously ill.

I misread the header of this post as "Marie Curie Engine". I keep thinking what an awesome name for a band or an SF short story this would be.

TSOL @10: Radio-interception, and that was the actual messages rather than the codes; Colossus was built to crack the codes, using algorithms derived by pencil, paper and wetware. So Germany wouldn't even have a case under copyright law, since it's certainly fair use to record radio for your own use. Especially when it's being transcribed by hand. (See Battle of Wits, by Stephen Budiansky.)

Boingboing's agenda is that repression is wrong, m'kay? Something that Kamapuaa seems to have a problem with, for some reason.

This is not scholarship

What makes it not scholarship, the fact that the publisher expects to make some money off it? So if a "scholarly" work unexpectedly became a best-seller, it wouldn't be scholarly anymore?

The intellectual property developers are trying to make as much money for themselves as they can. That the rights they assert would promote an ivory-tower culture where knowledge belongs to a few while the rest of us are denied any outlet for creativity at all doesn't matter to them, they're just grabbing any rationale for making money. But just because they assert a right doesn't make them right.

Artists infect our brains with their ideas; the measure of how successful they are is how many other ideas we spin off from them. If artists allow their publishers and lawyers to choke any intellectual spin-off from their work it will ultimately strangle our culture. That this book might make money is a reason for publishing it, not against. That's how it works in our society. We do things for money, just as JKR herself did when she gathered up a load of popular memes and repackaged them as Harry Potter.

NickP @24:

If we can't trust Green Card holders, what makes Kerr think we can trust citizens?

Kerr doesn't care if we trust citizens. He probably thinks citizens are untrustworthy, which is why he wants to look after our data for us. He knows that his staff are trustworthy, because they've all been vetted. He just hasn't made the final step of wondering whether the vetting process is trustworthy.

Sounds like these places need Sun's Black Box, basically 250 servers and their cooling systems housed in a 20' shipping container. Of course, they might then find the limiting factor to be available water.

For me, a science blog should be interesting in and of itself, as well as being about science (or, at the least, in some way vaguely connected to the subject). Climate Audit may be good or bad science, but it's as dull as ditch-water.

The poll is a popularity contest; it's not going to mean a thing if CA wins it. Do all those voting for CA seriously think they can vote an alternative scientific paradigm into being? Are the scientists who contributed to the IPCC report supposed to register this protest vote and turn their backs on their conclusions? Not going to happen.

Moderate Nazis and Perfect Stalinists? Sounds like a match made in heaven...

I think it looks more like Goofy.

So this year we lost a dolphin (Yangtze River Dolphin) and gained two whales.

Knitme @4: Isn't elving something to do with eels, possibly catching them?

"Vagina" is a very warm-sounding word anyway, I don't know why you would want to replace it with "vajayjay" unless it was illegal to say "vagina" or something.

One word I'd like to use is Ali G's "punani" which has a nice exotic sound to it, but I've no idea if it's a real word or how offensive it is. I'd hate to find it's the swahili equivalent of the c-word rather than the v-word.