Politics

http://news.com.com/Physicist+James+A.+Van+Allen+dead+at+91/2100-11397_3-6104148.html

AOL recently released 21 million search queries by 650,000 of its users: http://news.com.com/AOL+offers+disturbing+glimpse+into+users+lives/2100-1030_3-6103098.html?tag=nl Usernames were replaced with numbers in hopes of protecting the anonymity of the users performing the searches. However, since searches could be cross-referenced by user, a large enough corpus of search data provided a substantial amount of personal data on the user performing the search. This was enough for Internet sleuths to figure out the identity of at least one of the individuals whose data was released: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?ex=1312776000&en=f6f…

the public face of MI5 is now online here:http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page502.html it also has an Alert level (Currently Severe) for attack likelyhood. http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page269.html here.

Year after year the war continues between Israel and it's neighbours. No reasonable solution to resolve the conflicting issues between Israel and it's neighbours exists. It has occured to me, that a solution might be arrived at, if the conflicting requirements of each side could be incorperated into a board game. The game could be played on the web by Palestinians, Israelis, and others. The game would consist of many boards, each board having at least two opposing players. The players of each board would negotiate/barter real issues, and respond to events. The game winners would be the players of the board that arrives at sustainable peace in a short tim…

Recent debate in Australia is weather the country should go nuclear ( power plants). Nothing is certain, but the cards are on the table. John Howard appears to be in favour of the idea. I am not so sure. Firstly, we have natural gas resources and by the time they are depleted some new technology could emerge. If not, we can always go back to nuclear power. And what to do with all the waste? We can bury it in sand but even then background radiation could cause problems. A much better alternative, in my opinion, is investing in hydro or solar power on mass scale. We have a enormous amount of space for either of these two options. Another problem with nuclear power is the ti…

One of the more interesting aspects of the current crisis between Israel and Lebanon is the impact it's having in internal Iranian politics. Iranian political and religious leaders have been playing a very high stakes game of "wag the dog" when it comes to Hezbollah, and there are signs that, while they've generally been playing that game very well, they may be getting more than they bargained for. This interesting article by Jim Sciutto of ABC News was broadcast from Tehran today, and appears to be unique amongst current reportage in the region: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2275230 At first Scutto reports about the demonstrations at the British Embas…

i think pakistan is responsible 4 the terrorism around d world!!!!! wats ur thoughts????? rply must.

I got one of those flyers from a local politician in the mail today, asking me what my priorities are and the like. The politician was still in university, so probably in her early twenties. I thought this was probably a bit young and inexperienced in the ways of the world to represent me in parliament. So I wondered what everybody else thought.

On January 16, Newt Ginrich had this exchange with Tim Russert on Meet the Press: On July 20, Sen. Sanatorum delivered a prepared speech to the National Press Club stating: And later in the speech: While I'm fairly hawkish by this board's standards and agree with most of the points made by Ginrich and Santorum, I'm still not sure what I think about two leading republicans in the space of five days saying we are in World War III. It feels like a signficant moment on several levels. First, they could be right and even I would need to rethink a lot of assumptions. Second, this could be the leading edge of the 2006 campaign: Reca…

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/19/stemcells.veto/index.html Another chapter of the GOP war on science ? I'm curious, did he ever admit his motives were religious ? He says it's about morality and "being conscious", but that's a diversion, without his religious beliefs, he wouldn't see those cells as "living beings".

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/21/Sept.11.prof.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories I'm pretty torn on this issue. On the one hand, I think 9/11 conspiracy theorists are completely delusional, propagate a bunch of hearsay/lies/misinterpretations/half-truths between each other. This pisses me off more than Ward Churchill (at least I could see where he was coming from) However, I can see a legitimate free speech angle here. In the end, I'd lean towards saying can his ass for teaching lies. In the words of the Onion... what do you think?

Theoretically, a plasma bubble could be used to block radiation from reaching astronauts on long journeys. If so, then the heavy protective shielding currently necessary could be replaced by a lightweight plasma shield. When traveling into space astronauts fight against cosmic radiation, from the sun and from outside the solar system. For current trips to the moon, the Earth's magnetic field can offer some protection. But if a journey to Mars were undertaken, the astronauts would be vulnerable to radiation, possibly causing cancer. Heavy metal plates would offer enough protection, but they're weight creates complications and makes them impractical for use with regards…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060729/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_foreign_words The Iranian President issued a decree today banning foreign words that have crept into the language, among the 2000 words to be replaced pizza is being replaced with "elastic loaves". Apparently they are less sensitive to arabic words that have moved into the language as the koran is written in arabic. now if it isn't fascism when the government tries to control what words you can use I don't know what is.

We are ruled by politics, which, for all intents and purposes, is the art of compromise. Sadly, this includes compromise with illogical people. Therefore, politics can't be purely logical until everyone doing the politicking agrees that all arguments for a position should be free of logical fallacies. Thus politics remains a haphazard, illogical decision making process. It is my belief that a logical government would govern best, and that law should represent a consistent formal logic system with prespecified and universally agreed upon axioms (which can change over time) from which every law can be derived through logical argumentation. I'm not saying this is pra…

This has a bad smell to me. I am very supportive of Israel's position but I'm not sure that the PM's position hurts Israel considering our support. Snubbing the prime minister of Iraq at this time seems almost calculated to disrupt. It has the smell of blatent politics triumphing over national security. Instead of making his own serious foreign policy statement, here's Schakowsky making the most hay possible against the Bush admininstration: I'm sure it will help this fledgling democracy if their Prime Minister is humliated before the world. Let's never forget that national security is about blasting Bush. Nothing comes before that primary goal. …

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/14/mideast/index.html I was pretty blown away and didn't see this coming at all. Do you think we'll get sucked into a larger war now with Syria, Lebonon and Iran? I am more than a little nervous this could get out of control.

"A controversial alternative to black hole theory has been bolstered by observations of an object in the distant universe, researchers say. If their interpretation is correct, it might mean black holes do not exist and are in fact bizarre and compact balls of plasma called MECOs. Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, led a team that observed a quasar situated 9 billion light years from Earth. A quasar is a very bright, compact object, whose radiation is usually thought to be generated by a giant black hole devouring its surrounding matter. A rare cosmological coincidence allowed Schild and his colleagues…

the policy of every country to my knowledge when faced with a terrorist group has been to not negotiate with them for fear of inviting more terrorists. My question is this, is this policy correct? While I understand the reasons behind not negotiating with terrorists, particularly the fear tha it legitimizes their actions as an effective means of protest. However when faced with terrorists groups on the scale of hesbollah and hamas, is there any other option than to negotiate?

This has been an interesting story to follow here in South Florida. As you all probably know we have a large community of Cubans, known collectively as the "exiles", who are very sensitive to anything along these lines. Recently it was discovered that schools in Miami-Dade County have a book on their shelves called "Vamos a Cuba". No, it's not an instruction manual about how to leave Cuba on a raft! (But that title sure sounds like it, doesn't it?!) It actually translates as "A Visit to Cuba", and it's about life for people (especially children) in Cuba. It's part of a larger series of children's books about social life in various countries of the world. No…

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/11/budget.deficit.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories Bush is now saying tax cuts are responsible for a reduced deficit: This harkens back to the Reagan-era "Laffer curve" argument, that decreasing tax rates boosts the economy and in doing so generates greater tax revenue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve Is this sort of fiscal policy sound? Here's one argument that it's not: http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/economist/4065?p=1

With the way things are today and with the middle east does anyone think that there will be a draft? (Mod Edit: This question refers to American politics.)

Survey taken from June 14-June 24, 2006 with 2,849 valid interviews of total sample of 3,120 in 18 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Margin of Error - +/- 3% Do you feel tha Iraq is generally heading in the right direction or wrong direction? Right: 41% Wrong: 35% Don't Know: 19% No answer: 5% Baghdad, Kurdish, Mid-Euphrates and South areas had less than 25% wrong direction poll numbers. Northern Arab = 86% Wrong Direction; Sunni Areas = 63% Wrong Direction. Note that the Right Direction numbers start at 51% in 5/04, peak at 67% in 4/05, dipped to 30% in 3/06 (the first poll ever where the right direction number dipped below the wrong direction) before goin…

I thought we might share some of the more interesting local political spots from our various areas. My favorite is from a dark horse governatorial candidate in Oklahoma by the name of Jim Evanhoff. I've only seen it once because the guy probably has no money. The spot starts with two folksy farmers talking about high gas prices and illegal immigration. One of the gentlemen farmers says something like, "Bud, did you know Jim Evanhoff has a plan to stop illegal immigration?" Bud, visibily excited, replies, "Well then I'm going to vote for Jim Evanhoff!" The camera flicks to Jim who promises that he does indeed have a plan to solve these problems. He concedes th…

http://www.physlink.com/News/102605NuclearPetition.cfm The DOD is requesting nuclear first-strike capibility against non-nuclear targets. Over 470 physicists have signed off in opposition.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1689438.htm