Not to interfere with your soapbox rant, but the birth rate in Brazil is declining, dramatically. It is actually lower than that of the U.S now.

The most common phrase used by Brazilian women on the subject of children is "the factory is closed".

Zimbra, Zarafa, Scalix

I can not recommend Ghostery enough. More pragmatic than NoScript.

You are being deliberately disingenuous. Abbas and his government are focused on a 2 state solution - for years now. The 2 states being Palestine and Israel, thus implying he is not trying to destroy it.

Ex-Israeli PM Olmert said he felt he and Abbas were close to a deal before he was booted from office. Do you think he would say that about a Ahmadinejad wannabe?

Do you really need this explained to you?
Are these facts getting in the way of your opinions?

Mahmoud Abbas is the most reasonable, most pragmatic Palestinian leader Israel has ever dealt with. Yet he has gotten no where in advancing the peace process.
The question is when will Israel show any interest in a peace deal. The answer is never.

Why, you may ask? (Or may not, if as I suspect, your prejudices are set in stone). Because a peace deal will invariably involve some reasonable compromises, and any pullback on settlements however minor will rip Israeli society apart.
Easier to keep the Palestinians bottled up and deal with their periodic tantrums.

I think your analysis would make a lot of sense in the Western context. In the Russian/E. European context the cultural differences are enough to make it useless.

Basically it comes down to this: you don't have to be a weirdo to do this kind of thing over there.

You could say the same thing about seat belts. Would you? Would all the people who agree with you?

Wrong! Wales became rich from trading options BEFORE starting Wikipedia/Nupedia

No, some came about because the U.S considered itself so strong that it felt the world affairs must go the way it wanted them to. i.e Vietnam and the whole Domino strategy in S.E Asia.

Post-Reagan the invasion of Iraq would have never have happened if the U.S didn't have so much military overcapacity hanging around. It wasn't a defensive war after all.

The problem is their rather loose definition of what constitutes their intellectual property.

Try Opera. Seriously.

-1 wackjob

In America there is enough land that wind can do 25% and solar can do another 25%

Wind is under a million per megawatt. Competitive with new natural gas or coal capacity - and without fuel input costs.

Solar is dropping fast. First Solar says its manufacturing costs are $.73 a watt or $730,000 per megawatt. Don't know what the installation & profit margin is but the point is alternative energy has a bigger role to play than you might think.

I see a lot of technological determinism on Slashdot. Talk about energy and everybody turns into a Soviet technocrat. They contrast dozens of elegant nuclear plants with the hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and solar panels needed and decide that former will be a better bet for the next 5 Year Plan. But the bottom line is nuclear is horrendously expensive. I recall the new Areva plant in Finland costing $5 million a megawatt. What a joke. Plus nuclear capacity is not modular enough. Utilities can't just plunk down 5 megawatts the way they can with wind or solar. The *financial* flexibility is just not there.

(The hyped mini-nuclear reactors are still unproven and undeployed after years of talk)

Finally nuclear requires a lot of smart people to keep it safe, and they are in short supply.

All of my objections to nuclear have answers, answers that depend on unproven technology, subsidies, or transformation of Congress into a bunch of engineers.

Meanwhile new wind, solar and nat gas capacity is coming online everyday.

Their hot water systems are getting efficient. Very efficient. See EcoCute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoCute

"The EcoCute derives two units of energy from ambient air temperature for every unit of electrical power it requires"

I heard it was because both diesel and electric motors have good low end torque. Not much benefit in combining them on a passenger car.
Whereas the torque profiles of gasoline engines and electric motors complement each other nicely.