Because you brought up automobile design.

And how do you know they have "zero know how"? Know how isn't a property of nations, it belongs to individuals who can be hired for a reasonable price.

If you mean "zero indigenous know how" that's something we can't take for granted either. The UAE is small (9 million -- just a bit larger than Switzerland), but it is very rich and no doubt has its share of talented individuals. What's more if they reached out to other Arab countries (as well as hiring a few key non-Arab personnel -- like we had Germans in the 50s and 60s), I don't doubt they could put together a reasonably "Arab" space program, which I see as a positive development. Such a program wouldn't build every jot and tiddle of their hardware right down to the nuts and bolts, but then we don't do that either.

Thought experiment. Suppose you're in charge of setting up a UAE and they give you a huge wad of cash to set up a space program. How would *you* go about doing it to maximize national scientific prestige?

Sure, but you've heard of King Saud University, right?

Really? You've never heard of Beijing University? Or the University of Heidelberg? Does "Max Planck Institute", "Moscow State University", or "Tel-Aviv University" ring a bell? Well then why not "King Saud University" or "Cairo University"?

As for the production of cars, that's not a measure of a country's intellectual attainment; it's a measure of a country's industrialization. Show me *any* region that has a resource extraction dominated economy that designs automobiles. I can name just *one* off the top of my head, and that's Iran.

There's an automatic assumption people make that when others disagree with them it's because they're stupid or ignorant. You can see that in the recent debate over the Iranian nuclear deal. There's an implicit assumption that the Iranian government is a bunch of uneducated, provincial hicks. Now I think Ali Khamenei is a terrible person, but it's not because he's ignorant. He is, in fact, superbly educated by any reasonable standard. As are many leaders in the Iranian government and opposition. The Iranian foreign minster Dr. Zarif holds three advanced degrees from US universities.

This kind of bigoted thinking is going to get us into trouble. Iran is not an Arab country, but it gets lumped in with Arab countries in American perception as an intellectually backward Muslim backwater. This is a dangerous attitude to take. Iran has substantial intellectual and technological resources to draw upon. Despite their names differing by only one letter, Iran is not Iraq. While Sadaam wasted his money on showy wonder-weapons like super-guns, the Iranians have built a fleet of advanced diesel subs that can operate in the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. They have formidable industrial capability, including indigenous aerospace, automotive and electronic industries. While there is little doubt we would win in an invasion of Iran, it's far from clear it'd be the kind of cakewalk we had in the Iraq invasion.

Americans need to write this down and paste it in their hats: just because someone doesn't think like you doesn't guarantee he's ignorant or stupid.

Seriously. Good for you.

It sounds like you've got really interesting research goals for this mission, and I wish you great success.

On what do you base this "probability"?

Pop quiz: what is the top Arab engineering school? Alright too hard. Name *one* Arab research university.

Now answer this question: does the fact that most people find these questions hard reflect on *Arab* ignorance, or their own?

So which party is it that wants the government to assume the risks and pay for the damages created by a de-regulated industry? I seem to remember going through this recently...

Quite wrong. Gradual climate change has been extinguishing civilizations since the Dilmun were driven out of Bahrain. That's the point.

As long we're taking the long term perspective, sure climate change happens all the time. So population displacements, economic crises, civilization collapses -- we should all regard them as a natural feature of human society. That doesn't mean you want to be around when that happens.

Forest fires are natural. That doesn't mean you should play with matches when you're camping in Yosemite during a drought.

No, the alarm is triggered by events on the ground. The models are just responding to those.

Gee, and who was the GGP who brought up sea ice in the first place? He sure seems confused.

If you're really interested, consider reading The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer. He makes the point that traditional conservatism in the US has been largely displaced by authoritarianism -- something that can happen on the right or left but in this case on the right. These aren't grandpa's thrifty, public-spirited Burkean conservatives we're talking about here.

We're not talking about Antarctic sea ice. We're talking about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is a totally different thing.

Do try to keep up.

Why not give diseases numbers, and refer to emerging infections people who don't know by name using the number? You could have a system where each number prefix tells you more or less the family of diseases you're dealing with.

I know it sounds bizarre, but people seemed to be OK with H1N1 for "Swine Flu", so why not extend that to any kind of infectious (flu, malaria) or environmental (Minamata disease) etc.?

Clearly we are living in a post-irony world.

I was reading an essay the other day by a woman who was against Mother's Day. She raised her kids not to observe Mother's Day because she didn't want to be one of those Moms dragging screaming toddlers into restaurants to have dinner with Grandma. My reaction to her was the same as my reaction to you, which is get a grip, for chrissakes.

Let me give you some genuine old-fart perspective. Everyone thinks they're more special than they really are, especially when they're young. This extends to having troubles. Everyone thinks they got a raw break; that their generation got a raw break. Hell, my generation thought so; I went to college in an era after The Pill and when there were no STDs that couldn't be cured with penicillin; the minimal standard of "do-ability" was at a historic low. And still people were miserable. And the funny thing was our parents had to pull themselves out of the Great Depression then go over the Europe to kick Hitler's ass and they thought of themselves as lucky.

Not getting goodies handed you you gratis does not make you special. Life costs you, just like it has costed every generation of humans since Olduvai Gorge.