The Israelis descended on the boat empty-handed with paintball guns on their backs. The "peace activists" acted like a pack of murderous savages, attacking the men with long knives and iron bars before their feet touched the deck. A DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE, I would say.

Whose fault were the deaths of nine activists?

Consider:

• Israel offered to transport the aid that was on board to Gaza Arabs by land, which is the normal means. (The "blockade" allows a nearly constant stream of trucks loaded with tons of humanitarian aid and supplies to Gaza. The blockade's purpose is mainly to restrict materials used for building weapons.) The activists refused.
• Israel warned them by radio and told them to turn around. The activists refused.
• Israel sent commandos to peacefully thwart the ship's course. Their only lethal weaponry were pistols intended only for emergency use. The activists refused an opportunity for civil discourse and brutally assaulted the Israelis as soon as possible. This caused the Israelis to feel that their lives were in imminent danger (five IDF soldiers are still hospitalized), and thus were forced to defend themselves with their emergency pistols.

I don't see Israelis being evicted and having their homes and land demolished to make way for Palestinian settlements.

Where were you in the summer of 2005?

See it here: The Expulsion of the Jews from Gush Katif (Gaza)

Palestinian police getting ready to take over after the Jews are expelled

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the expulsion of thousands of Jewish residents from their homes in Gaza. This was against the will of the people. He denied the country a chance at a referendum on the issue when he saw the polls going against him.

Here's what happened: IDF troops clad in ominous black uniforms, some mounted on horses (as if to purposefully evoke associations with Medieval inquisitions), literally dragged Jewish families, with wailing women and children, out of their homes. Jewish Gazans were bloodied during the destruction, including Member of Knesset Aryeh Eldad, whose head was gashed when he was trampled by a horse-mounted soldier. Entire communities were demolished. A beautiful synagogue was buried under sand. Graves were dug up and relocated. All so that the Palestinian Authority could set up its terror state in the Gaza Strip, aka now Hamastan.

During the 1930s, Jew haters in Europe used to tell Jews to "Go back to Palestine (Israel)!" What could they say in 2005? The Jews were in Israel!!

Here is the web site created by Israelis of the former Jewish communities in Gaza.

It's no coincidence that the expulsion was originally (accidentally?) scheduled for the 9th of Av, then delayed an extra day when the red-faced authorities realized their mistake. It's also not a coincidence that Ariel Sharon very soon afterward fell into a coma, which he is still in today. It's also not a coincidence that the last name of George W. Bush, who had been pushing the Saudi-devised Two-State Solution and then congratulated Sharon on the expulsion, means "to be ashamed" in Hebrew.

At some level, we as scientists trust one another to not fudge things

Well, we have evidence of fudging the data. Confessions of fudging are in the code! From a report by the Science & Public Policy Institute: Climategate: Caught Green-Handed! (PDF) See Page 8, Example 2.

and the peer review process should take care of most of that.

Peer reviewing does nothing for integrity when you ignore the peer reviewers' comments, or you get to choose the reviewers!

Whoa! Welcome back, Zack! Haven't seen you here in a long time.

I'm glad you haven't had to use your bomb shelter, B"H.

It should be noted that "Christian Science" (with capital letters) is the name of a religious sect. It is not really Christian and not especially science-minded.

Some people want to read only confirmation of their existing opinions. Some other people want their opinions challenged. In both cases, they'll find more material they like online than they ever would in a newspaper.

No, you're confounding skills with ethics here. A hacker can both be skilled and be a blackhat; by the same token, a driver can be skilled and be an asshat. (Of course there is not necessarily always a positive correlation - cf. script-kiddies)

Ubuntu still needs to change a lot (scrap Upstart/clone FreeBSD init, get rid of DKMS, ideally get rid of crapt-get and clone ports, revert to OSS for sound, get rid of the insane scenario where GNOME is irremovably fused with virtually the entire rest of the system)

Or you could just run FreeBSD, rather than trying to turn Ubuntu into it...

I smell a meta-conspiracy. The TRUTH is that the Chinese are ginning up this fear so that Americans will buy more (China-made) electronics.

No, it's just PRE-PAID. And overpaid. And if you didn't pay for your education, that means that the government robbed someone else to pay for it. It's a totally immoral system. How do you socialists sleep at night?

and Jesus Christ.

[Citation does not support the claim]

Refutation:

The "crime" that was posted on the cross above Yeshua's (Jesus') head was "King of the Jews." That's not a crime. The religious leaders wanted Him dead because they were jealous of Him (His independent, authoritative teaching and wild popularity undermined their positions) and He did not overthrow the yoke of Roman imperialism like they thought a real messiah should've done. He was not a criminal.

Moreover, the innocence of the Messiah is a requirement for being the "Passover Lamb," as Believers call Him. Just as the lamb for the Passover sacrifice had to be examined for four days (according to Torah - Leviticus 23), so was Yeshua examined by the authorities for four days, after which, having been found unblemished/innocent, He was slaughtered on the eve of Passover.

To "young"-earth creationists, what we see here is certainly not "impossible," or improbable. In fact, it is to be expected!

That planet is "impossible" because their "science" is impossible.

Orbital dynamics "settled" science for 400 years? The age of the universe (ballpark figure) had been settled for a lot longer than that until modern, naturalist scientists decided to unsettle it. Look who's doing the backpedaling now... (Not saying they'll return to Genesis for answers; they'll just devise even more wildly contorted naturalistic hypotheses to explain why reality discombobulates their "settled" teachings.)

That video is awesome! Bill Whittle flashes the light of truth on the latest contemptuous dishonesty of the liberal media and educates on the conflict-mongering, anti-America roots of the American Left. It should be required viewing for every American.

No, the creators of this ballot will implement the browser ballot.

I agree with you about the use of "czar" or "tsar." Freedom-loving countries should not use that as a title for a political position. The spelling, in particular, links it to terrible regimes that are anathema to the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

However, on a geeky note, the etymology of the word branches out to more than just "Caesar." There are many personal titles that are or may be related, and most are positive more often than negative: Sire, Sir, Sieur (Old French) leading to Monsieur (lit. my lord), Senior (Latin; disputed), Kaiser (German; the original pronunciation of "Caesar" in Classical Latin), etc. Most interesting to me is sar, which is a Hebrew word that appears hundreds of times in the Bible. To emphasize a positive use of the word, "Sar Shalom" is a prophetic title for the Messiah (Isaiah 9:6; 9:5 in Tanakh).

This page just about covers it all.