Well, that is factually incorrect. There are still some people left in this world that have other motivations than worshipping the almighty dollar (or other currency of your choice). But I'm sure there is a reason we don't count.

Can you back that up with some proof? As far as I know the Geneva Convention was always a set of rules that civilised countries adhered to because they were, well, civilised. (And of course because they would want their own PoW to be treated in the same manner.)

And exactly what is `waging war in a lawful manner' supposed to mean? Is carpet-bombing `waging war in a lawful manner'? How about using agent orange? Exterminating an entire village? Bombing a restaurant because Saddam Hussein just might be there? Droning wedding parties and other ordinary meetings, repeatedly, because you're too stupid/lazy/careless/ignorant to get your information right?

And even granting some people somehow do not deserve to be treated as PoW, is there any legal basis for treating them any worse than normal criminals? And no, introducing some kind of mealy-mouthed new term like `enemy combatant' after the fact doesn't address this issue in any way.

In English, you can verb anything.

Huh? We're only talking about tax rates here. What does that have to do with 'government control of production'?

You're still allowed to earn as much money as you want, and anybody can pay you as much as they want. It's just that society wants a larger share of that money, since you can afford to contribute more. A tax rate of 90% would be a bit high, but I don't see anything wrong with 70% or perhaps even 80%.

But in fact it has worked terribly well in the past. In the booming years after WW2 top tax rates were considerably higher in both the USA and western Europe.

Note, however, that this requires an at least reasonably functional society, where a decent attempt is made to spend tax money on things that contribute to the society: safety, decent education and healthcare, safe housing, work, food, and infrastructure, fairness in labor, etc. If your particular society is too corrupt to provide that, that should be fixed urgently; government is not inherently bad, but corrupt government is. Fixing a corrupt government is a long and tedious process, but it can be done, as history has shown repeatedly. A populace that is well-educated and well-informed helps a lot in this.

Considering that the US ranks about 25th on the list of highest life expectancies, and that plenty of the countries above it have public or strictly regulated healthcare, I think those dirty marxist communist hippie countries must be doing something right.

Or perhaps those countries simply have a lower level of corruption of their government than the US, allowing them to have saner and more efficient government regulation of life essentials such as healthcare.

Considering that this voting process has evolved in the face of thousands of years of intrigue and backstabbing that makes even politicians look like choirboys, why is this a surprise? The evolutionary pressure was most certainly there.

And of course this analysis overlooks the most reliable way of rigging an election, and one that is most certainly practiced here: hand-picking the electorate. Who appointed those cardinals in the first place, eh?

Wow, only one sentence, but a huge pile of bovine fertiliser.

• These poor people pay premiums for health insurance, so they're now covered. So they do get healthcare.
• Obamacare forces the insurance companies to accept people with preconditions, and not deny coverage for some kind of nonsense reason.
• Obamacare forces the insurance companies to actually spend the money they collect on care for their customers, or else they have to return the excess money to their customers.
• If people cannot afford the insurance premiums, they get a subsidy.

I'm sure Obamacare is flawed, but if you argue against it at least argue with the facts, rather than making up things.

You're talking about a net loss to society, but you're not doing karma bookkeeping? You've completely lost me here.

Perhaps it is because of the contents of the movie? Wilders' movie was just a collection of lies and distortions that had two goals (1) piss off the people he hates (2) stroke the egos of his followers. In other words: he is just a schoolyard bully, a troll. Any talk about `opening a discussion' was just sanctimonious posturing.

It would have been nice if everyone would just have ignored him, but sadly he did manage to piss off a few too many people. Don't feed the trolls is a hard lesson to learn for many people.

Given all that, I can't say that I blame other countries if they don't want him, although it does mean that we `enjoy' his presence in the Netherlands all the more. Fortunately, his 15 minutes of fame seem to be drawing to an end. He has to say more and more outrageous things to get attention, and his support is fading.

The big flaw in this argument is that he could just as easily have spent his money on exclusive cars, bling, hookers, and donations to moronic lobby groups. There are plenty of rich people that have made this choice.

Instead Bill Gates is doing his sincere best to spend his time and money on doing good for world society, and he now has a long history in this. Moreover, he does a lot more than just write a cheque now and then, he is deeply involved in many of these projects. I think he deserves a lot more praise for this, not the acid comments he normally gets here on /.. No, the man is not a saint. However, if the evil things he has done still deserve to be mentioned after all these years, I think it is only fair to also remember his long history of charity. Has he done more evil than good? Personally I prefer not do get into karma bookkeeping; I think it is pretty arrogant to do so, especially because we don't know the full story, both of his charity and of his evil deeds.

Exactly what crimes are you talking about? The rape charges he denies, and leaking secret US documents is not a crime for an Australian citizen.

Come on, predicting aircraft behavior is far more than just 'CAD design of a piece of machinery'. It involves predictions of aerodynamic behavior, which also requires far-from-trivial computer models, and it involves predicting 'flyability', which requires careful modeling of human-machine interactions.

Nobody is claiming that whole-world climate models are already as robust or as accurate as these aircraft models, but they are getting more and more sophisticated, and they are certainly far beyond the stage where these predictions can be dismissed as random, meaningless numbers.

But exactly what are you grumbling about? You think the error margins in their results are too large to draw any conclusions? From the quoted fragment of their conclusion it doesn't sound like that. You think they are too optimistic in their error margins? Can you give a specific reason for that? Yes, not all mechanisms that influence the climate are fully understood, but exactly why do you think the authors have underestimated the influence of these mechanisms? Or perhaps you simply think that the journalists are misreporting the results of this scientific paper?

Computer models are nowadays also used to design aircraft, and they are so good that new aircraft routinely perform nearly perfectly on first flight. Modern highly complex ICs in bleeding-edge processes are supposed to work at first tape-out, all design and verification is done by computer. As long as you know the limitations of your model, computer modeling is a very valuable tool.

And look here, the authors of this article do know the limitations of their model:

The uncertainty is due to variation in the global models and the complex seasonal and topographical features of the L.A. regional climate.

Doesn't sound like hubris to me.

Ok, that's an easy answer: yes, predicting the weather is still hard, although modern predictions are actually very good most of the time, and certainly not as bad as common `wisdom' thinks they are.

However, climate models are about climate, not weather. They predict average weather, and that is easier than predicting the weather on a particular day. In a very similar way you cannot reliably predict the next roll of a dice, but you can very reliably predict the tallies of the next hundred rolls.

When predicting the next rolls of the dice you can even predict the expected error in the prediction: the standard deviation. The climate model of this article is apparently so good that they can also predict the expected deviation, which allows them to predict that there will be these hot spells, even though they are not able to predict the exact days these hot spells will happen.