Adopting a humble lifestyle does money must be rejected, it simply means its use should tend be avoided in want of expensive or unnecessary things. While I cannot expect us to eliminate our worldly possessions, we can take steps to minimize the amount of physical things we own such that we cannot be easily controlled with threats against them (direct or otherwise). If you are unsatisfied with your job and have a few vehicles and a large house to maintain, expenses for these things makes saving money difficult, and in turn make exiting that job difficult, which makes it more likely for you to accept frustrating management decisions at work for fear of not being able to afford the upkeep for your investments in physical products. Variations of this scenario may be adapted to fit the idea expressed here, however the general argument remains the same.

Yeah, I program for fun too.
But if someone wanted to give me an award and a million dollars for it, I'd take it.

This is one of those times where I really like wikipedia:
Supranational European Bodies

Norway is the red, white and blue flag that is part of EEA, EFTA and the Schengen area. It's our participation in the EEA which means that we must implement EU directives, to be part of the "inner market" there must be equal market conditions in all countries - a clause interpreted at least as wide as "interstate commerce" in the US constitution. Technically we have a reservation right, but we've never used it. As you can see, there's only two countries left in our bubble, and the other is Iceland that is tiny to begin with, has mostly financially collapsed and is now applying for EU membership. The initial agreement (1994) was good but since the renegotiation in 2004 we gain nothing by standing on the outside. The EU decides, and Norway follows willingly or unwillingly and there's no economic incentive either, we pay the same as if we were EU members.

1. Don't link to Fox News. Ever. Murdoch peddles an insidious mix of propaganda and fluff that's intended to neuter our ability to think. The less attention you pay to it, the better.
2. Silver poisoning doesn't just turn your skin blue: it also causes brain damage.
3. The story you mention is a cautionary tale about quack medicine in general. "Alternative medicine" that works is just called "medicine". What remains is ineffective, unsafe, or in the case of this poor man, both.

In the universe we are talking about, the legal system in question is an alien one, and not every legal case has to be argued that way (with the losing lawyer dying in the end at the hands of its victor), only the most important ones: in other less important cases, honor can be restored with some kind of settlement ...

You're mostly right up to this point: in the book (which is actually not Whipping Star, but The Dosadi Experiment, the second book in the series), a powerful alien faction commits massive (planet-scale, multi-generation) human and alien rights violations...

... except Jorj X. McKie, agent extraordinaire of the Bureau of Sabotage (a government agency outgrown of the need of curbing bureaucratc efficiency, if you can imagine that!), finds out...

... and takes on the hopeless endeavour of fighting the case on enemy ground (the byzantine alien legal system, of which he is the only registered non-native lawyer), knowing full well that he must win (for the sake of all what's good, but also love and revenge), and that if he wins, he'd have to kill his opponent (a female from the alien faction) and by doing this he'd be committing murder / stellar casus belli / trespassing jurisdiction / being rude or some other gross and terrible thing, I can't remember. How will he get out of this quagmire? ;)

Sorry to disapoint! :)

From my summary, you can see clearly all the pulp elements in the book (Rightful Retribution, yeah!), but they make for an enjoyable read, and really there is a lot more to it than that: in true Frank Herberts's style, the book has very typical themes that every reader of the Dune series should be familiar with (individual behaviour and adaptation under pressure, immortality, mind games, etc.) And of course it's also a book that makes you think, so I highly recommend it.

Hope this helps

Xavier

No.. I like itunes. I enjoy it as a player/library. It has a resume feature so I can listen to all my 4 hour long Opie and Anthony shows and Ron and Fez of course... horse.

I like when he beats me... I enjoy it.

Seriously, I do think itunes is pretty good at how it manages/organizes tunes etc. I'm not a fan of the format dictatorship but... I can live with apple lossless if i cant have flac.

XnView is being ported. Beta versions:

http://www.xnview.com/en/downloadunix.html

globally this decade has been warmer
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/ ( I know, this link is used bloody everywhere in this discussion - but noone seems to care to read it)

possible amnesty on its $1.27 billion Nevada tax maneuverings.

So, Washington is proposing that Microsoft get amnesty on a completely legal activity (yes, the Nevada activities are completely legal)? And here I thought we usually gave amnesties for criminal acts, not legal acts.

Note, by the way, that NOT giving them amnesty on their perfectly legal past activities amounts to an ex post facto law - which is perfectly unconstitutional....

Only fundamental research into particle physics. There are plenty of equally fundamental research areas (genetics if you are practically-minded, math if you're not) which don't require billion dollar budgets.

Personally, I see the whole "physics is the ultimate science" as a con to graft in more grad students.

I have located an even more recent paper, written by a scientist working for NOAA (a reputable scientific body), using NASA's own data, that shows that the lower stratosphere is not in fact cooling as the greenhouse models call for. Rather, it is warming. Which in turn means the greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed...

Interesting paper. Of course, it doesn't say (or even imply) that "greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed." The stratosphere cools as CO2 increases because the "emitting layer" moves higher into the troposphere, so it emits less long wave radiation because temperature decreases with altitude in the troposphere. Because that radiation normally warms the stratosphere, the stratosphere cools. But other factors can warm the stratosphere, like anthropogenic methane and water vapor. Also, increased ozone warms the stratosphere, which is why the paper you cited actually suggests that "the reversing trend may relate to a possible recovery of stratospheric ozone concentration."

In reality, global circulation models (GCMs) are validated in a more robust fashion than examining a single variable in a single paper. After running an initial condition ensemble to average away the weather, and a multi-model ensemble to average away non-systematic errors, GCM output is compared to paleoclimate reconstructions and instrumental records (though the mean climate can't be independently verified because of model "tuning"). The GCM response to forcing events such as volcanic eruptions can be compared to reality. The CO2 sensitivity implied by the GCM can be compared to independent estimates from the last deglaciation. Chapter 8 here is a good source for background information concerning climate models and their evaluation.

I could go on about this for hours, pointing out reams of data and studies that do not support the idea of man-caused global warming... but I have already made my point: the plain FACT is, nowhere near "all" our evidence points to man-caused global warming. There is a great deal of counter-evidence, and much of the evidence on the "pro" side is now under suspicion because of some questionable practices used.

Maybe you understand the physics behind these arguments better than I do, but the overwhelming majority of the evidence I've seen says that abrupt climate change is happening because of anthropogenic greenhouse gases like CO2. Considering that this conclusion has been subjected to extensive independent verification, I also don't see any reason to be concerned about any questionable practices that have been floating around the tabloids. The few stories that weren't complete nonsense simply showed that scientists are human-- that countering the never-ending deluge of misinformation from nonscientists is stressful enough that they need to vent to each other privately via email.

I can sympathize. If every one of these climate skeptics put as much energy into getting a graduate physics education as they do into reading crackpot blogs and hurling insults at me online, maybe I'd have more time to work on my actual research...

This follows from my finding that, on the evidence and on a proper interpretation of the law, a person makes each film available online only once through the BitTorrent system and electronically transmits each film only once through that system.

This is a very strange argument. If I torrent a movie and let it seed indefinitely, I will almost certainly have distributed more than one copy of the film. Did the justice really believe that torrenting is a one-for-one kind of activity where a downloaded work is uploaded once and only once? I haven't read the decision, but I wonder how much of it concerned downloading versus uploading.

These comments don't really alter the basic thrust of his decision, but they do give one pause to wonder how much the justice really understood about the mechanisms of the "BitTorrent system."

I'm on 3 in Australia and got my Nexus One yesterday. Loving it - just gotta make sure you disable data while roaming (which is an option luckily) because 3 are evil bastards and charge you 50c/mb while roaming which just happens often due to 3 being crap.

I haven't RTFA but maybe this update will improve the 3g....

So they're concluding that performing a complex multidisciplinary task requiring thinking, planning and problem solving skills, but that is also fun improves student performance and learning?

I'm shocked!

As an Earthling I get more spam from the US than anywhere else...

Stats (so as a Briton, I should probably keep quiet about spam-by-country.)