Now I agree whole heartily with everything you said except:

This is wrong and it drives me nuts. People don't know how to merge. You're are supposed to drive at a consistent speed if someone is trying to merge into your lane. The merger is supposed to adjust their speed. Their supposed to decide whether to slow down or speed up to merge in front or in back of you. If both start slowing down and speeding up it becomes a confusing guessing game. Now if you mean by slowing down providing enough of an opening for the merger to fit that's another issue. Unless you're driving at a very slow speed if you're following so close that a car can't fit in front of you you're following too close. Tailgating is probably the second most leading cause of serious collisions (whether directly or as a result of reducing wiggle room).

The biggest problem with this argument is that our level of understanding of the "climate" system on this planet is miniscule when compared to the complexity of the system. This discovery is just another example. The other problem is that anything that challenges the theory of global warming seems to be either twisted to fit the current theory or ignored. The theory is supposed to be changed to fit the evidence.

You seem to ignore the fact that science is all about challenging the "verified" body of knowledge collected. That's actually the primary point of science: doing experiments to test current theories and looking for evidence that doesn't fit current theories.

The level of ignorance is astounding. "questioning fundamental assumptions" is exactly what science is all about. Nothing is ever settle in science. Major breakthroughs occur when you successfully challenge fundamental assumptions. And this gets modded up. It's no wonder the current climate debate is so off kilter.

See. An example of GP's point. Science doesn't agree on things. Science posits theories then performs experiments and looks for evidence that both support and oppose those theories. The problem with the current climate in the climate debate is that any evidence that might oppose current theories tends to get either twisted to fit the current theories or shouted down. It's supposed to work the other way around. The theories are supposed to be twisted to fit the evidence.

Wow. You could not have presented a more perfect example.

Nothing beats Ting.

If you really believe there is any chance of that you're seriously delusional. Clapper openly admitted he lied to congress.

Strange you claim this in defending the government officials who admittedly broke the law but have already declared Snowden guilty of a crime he should never even have been charged with.

Huh. No. You're wrong. The founding fathers believed in fair trials and so do I. And that is why using the Espionage Act to prosecute an American revealing illegal government actions to the American people is unconstitutional. But the Constitution means nothing in the US anymore. Also Snowden has not admitted he's is guilty of espionage. But by charging him with that the government gets to suppress any defense based on the fact that he was revealing illegal unconstitutional actions by government agencies.

What I mean is that the government controls what the news reports. They don't do it directly but rather by quid pro quo between the media conglomerates and the government. If they actually reported things the government didn't want them to they would stop getting all those obscene laws passed (e.g. copyright) that allow them to maintain control of their industries. As one example, the interview that 60 minutes, one of the more respected investigative news shows when I was a young, did with Keith Alexander was ridiculous government scripted propaganda.

I am by no means disillusioned as to the racist proclivities of the Western powers in the mid 20th Century. My point was the Western power's level of racism were fairly mild when compared to those of pre-WWII Germany and Japan. And the Western powers had governments that allowed those attitudes to change in the right direction.

That's only because those were the only other races they had access to. And it wasn't communists it was Slavs in general. They refused help from a fairly strong Ukrainian separatist movement that would have gone a long way towards helping the war effort against the Soviet Union simple because they were sub-human Slavs.

If your contention is that Hitler would have treated Indians as a race any better then they did the Slavs I would say that's pretty far out towards the extremely unlikely end of the scale. The support for the anti-British elements in India was simple a means of hindering the British war effort. Had Germany won there is little doubt the people of India would have been treated as the sub-humans Hitler's racial theories declared them as. The anti-British movement in India wasn't increased much by the minor support provided by the Germans. There is little doubt India was on an unalterable road to independence with or without the German support during the war.

Wow. I was not aware of the forced sterilization programs in Britain and the US.

Hmmm...guessing in your part of the world the Japanese started WWII. And we all know the Japanese were a paragon of racial harmony especially back then. Even the European part that started much later was primarily an effort to fight against an obscenely racist power. By no means were the Western Powers perfect but they're better than most of the alternatives. Think the British were bad? Try to picture India ruled by Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan.

If you're from India as I'm guessing, why is it the culture of rape legacy your country suffers from involves the high casts raping the lower casts? The Dalit existed long before the British arrived.

I'm guessing you follow the main stream media in the US. I'm further guessing you still believe it. Because most knowledgeable rational people who actually look for real news sources have come to the realization that the main stream media in the US is pretty much state-run. One only has to look at the reporting on Snowden to realize that. Everything the main stream media has published about it could have easily been government press releases. Al Jazeera is a far better new source than anything put out by the supposed free press in the US.

Hmmm...I'm guessing you mean the KGB won the foreign espionage battle. Apparently they didn't do so good on the domestic espionage front or they would likely still be here. What it seems you don't understand is none of these programs have anything to do with foreign espionage or counter terrorism for that matter. They're all about domestic espionage, that is spying on and controlling dissent within your own population.

You obviously don't understand the US patent system. The patent office basically rubber stamps patents (often helping the submitter reword things so they can pass it). The patent holder then uses it to shake down companies for money and/or destroy competition. Prior art or the validity of the patent is pretty much irrelevant when the system is stacked such that the cost to fight an invalid patent is outrageously expensive and completely unrecoverable. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting inventors or, heaven forbid, promoting the progress of science and useful arts. It's all about destroying competition or making easy money for patent attorneys and their ilk.

Am I the only one who remembers the Lovelace unit of measure for suckage.

"Intellectual Property" is never mentioned or referred to in the US Constitution. Article one Section eight has a line about promoting progress in the useful arts by granting authors and inventors exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries for a limited time. Nothing in there refers to "Intellectual Property". It's about physical items. The current "Intellectual Property" laws are a perversion well beyond the scope of anything authorized by the Constitution created by existing power holders to prevent disruption and to make money without having to do work.