Dak

mm-hmm. and, is there any reason to believe that the sun is responsable for this rise? is, for example, solar activity increasing in such a way that could explain the warming?

afaik, it was done by counting sun-spots with telescopes. the chinese did it, not sure if others did. do you mean the little ice-age? afaict, it's currently debated that the sun was a cause of that, tho it co-insided with a decrease in observed solar activity (lending weight to the idea that 'the sun did it')... is there any such current increase in observed solar activity to lend weight to the idea that the sun is currently reponsable for the rapid increase in temperature. Which, btw, is more sudden than the drop in temperature going into the little ice-age.

hmm, i suspect sarcasm. geodude, how do you explain the recent spike in temperature?

I dunno... i'm still not convinced on this. iran would be absolutely foolish to launch nukes on anyone, given the ferocity of the responce that that'll illicit from foreighn powers, and the countries that they're most likely to want to nuke (israel and the US) have their own nukes, and so could retaliate. Letting them have nukes would probably not result in a nuclear holocoust. I think the main consern is probably iran making nuclear suitcase bombs and providing them to terrorists. And it's still hypocritical to threaten to nuke a country to avoid a nuclear war I'd feel much better if the US would actually state that they wouldn't nuke iran even if they thought that they were making nukes.

Well, my bad. i was sure i saw somewhere that at the very least russia supports iran's bid for nuclear weapons, but it seems they just oppose the use of military force to solve this -- they're still against iran owning nukes. Still, my point still stands, just not against only the US -- fair one with, eg, germany not wanting iran to have nukes, 'cos iirc germany don't have any nukes -- but the us, uk, france, russia etc do. It does seem a tad hipocritical... actually, I only said some of the eu were against it, tho it seems my info might be out of date (i know it used to be that the EU blocked the US's attempts to get the UN to take action). irreguardless, the EU aren't clamoring to resort to military action, which makes me think something: The EU are iran's largest trading partner. Iran have no debt, alot of trade with the EU, and so the US is relatively powerless to whallop it's economy -- it's the EU that can do that. Mayhaps the US's threat of violence is more a threat against the EU -- empose proper, damaging sanctions on iran or we'll bomb them? I wouldn't be surprised if that worked.

hmm... my beer and inpending pizza makes me disinclined to read your links untill tomorrow! Untill then: I didn't mean to say that the US was acting alone, just that paranoia's statement that there was an 'international' desire might be slightly off -- that the international oppinion is split, rather than that iran shouldn't have nukes (tho, by the looks of your links, i might well have been wrong). Sorry, forgot who the axis were ... my point was just that the US (and others) have invaded iraq, and are specifically focusing on iran and N.korea, so no doubt iran are quite uneasy atm. but yeah, my perception is that, justified or otherwize, the US has been threatening iran more than iran has been threatening the US, public we-hate-the-yanks demonstrations notwithstanding.

Well, not really. iirc, there's some EU countries disenclined to get involved. Russia supports iran, as do (iirc) most other middle-eastern countries. correct me if i'm wrong, but the iranian stance is that they want them as a deterrent against israel, who it is generally accepted have nukes. Not only is this identical to the US's stated reasons for having nukes (just swich 'russia' for 'israel'), but they point out that the US is the only country to have ever used nukes, and the only country to ever threaten being the first to resort to using nukes (against iran, no less). Also, the US have labeled iran as an 'axis of evil' state, and the other two in the axis have allready been invaded, no doubt scaring iran somewhat. So the 'spouting off about wiping out the people down the street' bit isn't a very good analogy. well, no, i'd agree with you on that last bit. But then, israel have nukes, and iirc the iranians tend to persieve israels actions as ethnically cleansing their state for theological reasons, and being aggressively militaristic (which is mainly why they don't like you, as you fund israel). So, for the same reason you don't want iran to have nukes, iran doesn't want israel to be the only one in that region with nukes. otoh, the US could go about this differently? maybe all the nuklear states getting together and agreeing to nuke whichever country uses nukes first would act as a true deterrent to ALL countries, and might mean that there's less incentive for iran to get nukes? and the US could allways promice not to be the first to use nukes in a conflict?

firstly, my points were just as a rebuttal of drDNA's claim that the US did all the dirty work. secondly, you did agree to it. it's not as if the UN is stealing your troops and money: these are troops and money that you have agreed to give. So, y'know, if your not happy about that, maybe you should blame your own govournment, and not the UN? it's proportionate to the earnings of a country (i.e., your country has the biggest economy, so is charged the most) but is also capped at a certain level (else the US would pay more) no, it just doesn't want to listen only to US concerns. it's a global organisation of virtually every country in the world, so cant really be US-centric. This isn't an america bash -- the UK acts the same when it can get away with it, and the UK, france, and italy acted the same in the league of nations -- but just because you're the more powerful country doesn't mean that you can get your way in every instance, and if the UN allows itself to be a 'do what US want's' club, the other states will leave. As demonstrated by the UK, france, and italy in the league of nations, which had some measure of success in preventing war, but ultimately fell because the biggest members wanted to get their own way whilst forsing the smaller countries to abide by their rules. You have to bear in mind that the UN is, by nature, one big compromise. we can't just, for example, go invade iran because western powers don't like the fact that they might be getting nukes, because russia and middle-eastern (sans israel) states are quite happy with them getting nukes. Similarly, we can't just go invade israel to take their nukes, or russia/the US to take theirs. The entire thing is set up as a compromise to enforse cease-fires, ferry aid, observe wars to make sure the armies follow conventions, etc. it's not their job to go bitch-slap aggressive countries, otherwize most countries wouldn't agree to be part of it.

back to the OP: what right does the US actually claim to deny iran nukes? when the US has so many, and (iirc) officially subscribes to the concept of MAD as a justification for having so many?

umm... can you support that claim? I'm taking 'dirty work' to be the military peace-keeping, btw. http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/fatalities/StatsByNationalityMission%202.pdf the Uk has suffered more fatalities on peacekeeping missions than the US. so have sweden. bangladesh, canada, france, ghana, india, ireland, nigeria, pakistan, zambia http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/contributors/2007/sept07_2.pdf last month, pakistan contributed the most troops (10,629) whilst the US contributed 307 (coming 43rd in the list of troop contributors) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Financing The US pays the most, but not much more than japan, and the EU pays more than the US, which is overlooking the fact that the US only pays a percentage of what it should: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_United_Nations#The_U.S._debt_issue so there

@DrDNA and ParanoiA: umm... iirc the UN is a peace-keeping organisation, not a peace-making organisation, and will only get involved in a conflict with the consent of both sides in order to enforce cease-fires etc. So, they're not going to threaten iran just because the US doesn't like them, but might help out if the US and iran ask them too

I can read what he types easily on the other hand, there's really no excuse for leaving the 'n' out of 'descision', or however it's spelt. macman: punctuation aids comprehension and is easyer to learn than spelling, and firefox has a built-in spellchecker. oh, and also please don't just post 'lololollllol', like in your post from "the selfish gene theory" that i've just deleted.

PM me or one of the other mods with your complaint, or one of the admin. Note that, as far as admin go, sayo and dave are both pretty busy, and mokole and in my memory haven't been around for a while. Otherwize, any of the admin/mods will do. Full staff list is here

YT, can't you test the purity of water pretty easily by measuring its electrical resistance?

I moved this one. I did so because it looked likely to derail the thread, even without following the phisics forum i know that 'i post proof and no-one reads it' is a lie, and, tbh, because i forgot that swansont can move posts himself. at the end of the day, if you continue to post unscientific stuff that 'refutes' accepted science whilst ignoring every critique of your work, then you'll end up in pseudoscience for one reason or another.

well, we can certainly unite to do war. WWI and II had little/nothing to do with religion, and it still involved all of europe uniting (admittedly, uniting across two sides) to do war.

if said academic subjects were stupid, then yes. Although, e.g., physics is as stupid and unintuitive as it is, and we can't really change it -- English, otoh, is within our power to change and make more sane and consistent. btw, ellipses (...) should have a space after them, and there's no '.' in 'etc' otoh, there's being shit, being shit in a way that is at least partially English's fault, and then there's not bothering. I'd be inclined to place most SMS/AOL-speak that finds its way into essays as 'not bothering', which is a bit irritating.

Yes. Stop linking to that website. You've allready been told twice, out of your 4 posts here.

well, i dunno... if they didn't exist, there'd have been a power-vaccume to fill, and i'm relatively sure something else would have filled it to unite europe, at least in certain areas. it wasn't all that long after the church lost its influence that stuff like the league of nations and EU started popping up.

Bah, i hardly blame anyone for not being able to grasp English's shitty, inconsistant rules. e.g., if we're keeping "o'clock" on the grounds that it used to be "oF-THE-clock", why is it "shan't" and not "sha'n't" (what with 'sha' not being a word, and it coming from "shaLLnOt")? and why is "won't" still a contraction of "wo-nOt" despite the fact that 'wo' isn't a word anymore? But, yeah, as long as you remember how to structure centances in the archaic form (glider his post contains an error, does not it?)*, remember that 'will' becomes 'wo' when contracted, that "shallnot" doesn't follow these rules, and that "o'clock" is short for (the now stupid sounding) 'of the clock', and any other exceptions, then it's all rather simple as long as you also remember how to pluralise and possivify words that allready end in 's' properly. and that they can be used as scare-marks, and that when you're pluralising numbers or individual letters, you do use an apostrophy... don't get me wrong, i don't actually have any trouble doing this. but when people do, i'd be inclined to blame English, not them. actually, i just like complaining about English. don't get me started on its spelling [/rant] * or 'glider has post...' as i was taught

oh yes, sorry. it'd be an increase by a factor of 0.22, or of 22% well, it's alot, but it's certainly doable. maybe you'd need to up the minimum wage, or the non-taxable income limit (if you have such a thing) to protect the poorest, but otherwize it'd at least stop the debt increasing. slash defence and don't increase anything else, and you're starting to pay the debt off. It's like the environment -- you'll have to address this at some point, and the later you leave it, the harder/more exensive it'll be to deal with. tho good luck to anyone trying to get elected on the back of that statement

I think what he was getting at is that people would do these things anyway, but they tend to unite under the umbrella of religion when they do so. I got to admit, take the religion out of the above, and you get (respectively) forsing your beliefs on others, power-grab, forsing your beliefs on others, and people who think abortion = murder, none of which actually require religion (given the time in which they occoured, the inquisition and the crusades would have been hard-pressed to not have anything to do with religion, as there were virtually no atheists around back then). I left teaching creationism out, as that's obviously religious.

from your figures: I may be getting confused about US v UK meanings of 'billion' and 'trillion', but it seems to me that the annual interest on debt (0.2437 trillion) could be gained with a 0.22% increase on individual income tax, which would at least keep the debt from growing any larger. You could allways bump up personal income tax less, by bumping up corporate income tax as well.

well, i dunno. i agree that it's almost allways bad. but did you live with your parents till you were 40 and had saved up enough for your own place? Dunno what the country-scale equivelent of that would be, but i'm sure there's analogues. I agree with what you said about the general population's attetude towards money, tho. the 'correct' responce would arguably be to raise tax and/or spend less to pay off the debt. but people want things for free, and want them NOW. so, obviously, it's the govournment that promises increased spending without the increased tax rate that gets elected.

is it neccesarily the case that deficit spending is bad? after all, as people we often buy houses and cars deficitly, because it's simply better to, say, have a house then pay it off over 20 years, rather than save up for 18 years (interest and whatnot) before being able to buy a house. It makes extra sence if the investment will give a financial return (improving industry/economy would make collected taxes go up, etc); why save up for 20 years to impliment an improvement if you could borrow the money, invest it in the improvement, and then successfully make your country 'more profitable' to the point that it only takes 10 years to pay the debt back? iow, is this neccesarily bad deficit-spending, or could it be good deficit-spending? (i'll admit, that's one mother-****er of a debt, so i'd lean towards bad fiscal policy. still...).