This is not an issue of the US government wanting information and needing a shill to send it to them. It is simply a matter of Microsoft, as a U.S.-based corporation having to turn over information on all its dealings with extra-nationals at the U.S. government's request. Euro privacy law would prohibit some of that and since Microsoft makes use of European systems, this falls under Euro privacy law. It is a horrible mess but the U.S. law will trump the EU law because...

Microsoft is a U.S. company. Would your solution help smooth things over for Microsoft? Yes. Is it necessary? No. Safe harbor, as noted in the article, lets MS transfer everything to the U.S. anyway (meaning the data is now on U.S. servers subject... only to U.S. law). If MS gets sued, one of their in-house counsel will waltz over to the EU and say, "hi, we're subject to U.S. law first... didn't you guys see that in the terms of service and eula? Oh, and ... the data is also in the U.S." If the EU bothers MS over it, there will be several amicus curiae from virtually every other company based in the US and likely the US gov't as well. ... if it even gets that far (and it won't).

On the contrary, Christians are called to live changed lives. The impact of failing to do so on the community and on the individual is huge. The claim is not that Christians are not to do good actions (we are), but rather that no amount of good action can make a person "good" - the world has too many problems to ever stop. The standard is not lower but higher (even though the price has already been paid).

If after taking the flame for my child (having received the punishment, as it were), my child were then to jump past me to touch the flame anyway, despite warnings against it as I stand there with a burned hand, there would be a natural consequence... I would also agree that there are unfortunately a number of sects that are entirely focused on rule-following. This is not, however, what is traditionally considered normative Christianity.

You have neglected a far more likely scenario. In the 23rd century, a satellite comes down on earth and starts broadcasting a message specifically for North Atlantic Gray Whales being a distinguished satellite and not wanting to deal with the riff-raff in the Pacific despite their common cultural and linguistic heritage. Finding no response from them, the satellite boosts the power to its communicator, not having a built in... a "woops they must all be dead or deaf" switch, to avoid killing them via atmospheric turmoil if in fact they were still alive.

From there, humans, also affected by the issue, took a conveniently stolen cloakable warship back in time by surviving the crushing nature of a singularity and traveled back in time to 1986 / *1586* and stole one out of the ocean using a conveniently developed waterproof hold... made out of steel-glass / *pig iron* (what?, it was developed in the early 18th century... convenient accident?--no way!).

On a related note, html tags are generally what I use when typing stuff on this site... why no strike-through?

Interesting. So, if the gray whale used to exist in both the Pacific and the North Atlantic, we should not be concerned so much about global warming as how well we are managing in the midst of what is surely a natural process (whether or not we are speeding it up or slowing it down or doing nothing). Why? If gray whales are native to both... they had to have access to both at one point or another via a water route or Klingon Birds of Prey or something (and if wikipedia is to be trusted here, by the time the gray whales existed, we already had most of our current continental structure intact).

As a Christian, I would agree that we are unfortunately hypocrites in the sense that we do not live up to a model of perfection that we claim is the standard--and I include myself in that. We are imperfect. Our claim is that because of that imperfection, Christ took our punishment on himself. We don't instantly become perfect after this, though we are called to look for ways to change thereafter. This quickly brings up the issue of justice (how could one man be killed on behalf of others?)--but Christianity affirms that the guy that made the rules took on the punishment. It would be kind of like if I were working with a friend with a torch and my child came out running under our legs towards the pretty light after having been told to remain inside. I would be responsible for the rule, for the scenario behind the rule, etc. Breaking the rule could cost him big (life, use of a limb... sight, at the least, a trip to the hospital for burns). If the timing were such that either he took the fall or I did, it would be an easy decision--I would step between my child and the flame... even if it caused fatal damage. Christianity claims that this is what God did for man through Jesus.

I am a bit curious as to whether or not this would even have made the news in a year that didn't have a Japan-style nuclear accident. As near as I can tell ... (and please note I am reading this in light humor)

(1) The river is flooding a bit

(2) The material used to keep the flood away from dangerous radioactive goo (tm) has partially failed

(3) No one is in the least concerned about the river flooding enough to actually get at the dangerous radioactive goo

(4) The news needed something to report on that might cause public concern and attention to their channel

(5) Stating that there was no concern about the river getting at the radioactive goo will immediately cause some people to be concerned that the river might get at the radioactive goo

(6) If the river somehow magically got at the radioactive goo, the river would become somewhat radioactive but though a lot of problems might result for local waterlife, it would all wash out in the end. ;)

I stand corrected. Thank you.

Exactly--and there are even some things that probably couldn't be translated into another language at all at one point or another in a given language's evolution. Consider that "snow" as a concept to a Tahitian islander in the mid-1700s probably would have been complete nonsense as would "ice"... water is always wet... and what does "frozen" even mean?

If not for the colder parts of our planet, our understanding of chemistry might have lagged for thousands of years.

VUE - from http://vue.tufts.edu/ might be a helpful mix of directory tree and mindmap. It allows for content tagging and linking (local or on the Internet). Search by hierarchical (or not) ontologies is possible.

This has bugged me for a while--creatures on earth with copper blood don't bleed green (you end up with a blue tint--think certain kinds of seafood). ...

I think that I would fair fairly well, as the microbe in question would have only a small amount of resources to colonize me. Arsenic based life requires a substantial amount of arsenic to exist--same with sulfur based life or anything else (though there is much more free sulfur available than arsenic in the earth's general environment). This reference may be helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_on_Earth#Abundance_of_elements_in_the_Earth (there's also a section on the human body on this page).

I am happy to live on a planet where carbon is one of the most abundant elements--it means I have to put up with carbon-based bugs, but then, I am used to most of those I am ever around.