You should brush up on your own history. As much as I despise the Inquisition, the Crusades (where massacres were indeed common), and other depravities of Christendom which are real - I must protest when imaginary depravities are added to the list.

The Catholic Church never burned Muslims at the stake. They burned Christian heretics at the stake. Thus self-proclaimed Christians, suspected of being Muslims or Jews in secret, were burned alive (if they confessed to being secret Muslims or Jews, then they received the 'mercy' of being strangled before being burned). But the execution was not for being Muslim or Jew, it was for practicing Christianity in a heretical manner. The Inquisition had no authority over non-Christians.

Also the assertion that "through the inquisitional killed all muslims that did not convert to Catholicism on the spot" is flatly untrue. Muslims were actually permitted to stay for a time after the Reconquista's completion, then once the monarchy (not the church Inquisition) decided that Muslims would no longer be tolerated, they were given the choice of conversions* or expulsion. The mass executions of Muslims you imagine never happened.

*A bad choice as it turned out. Any self-proclaimed Christian in the lands controlled by the Iberian monarchies who had Jewish or Muslim ancestors was perpetually suspected of heresy, and in danger of persecution/prosecution by the Inquisition.

I have actually read Van der Waerden's books on Mespotamian mathematics and astronomy (I have copies of them at hand). His "belief" is not evidence of any kind. He is simply supposing, without any supporting evidence.

And Boyer, who wrote his history of mathematics 50 years ago (1991 is a reprint, he died in 1976), was no expert in ancient mathematics. He has been called the "Gibbon of Mathematics" which is a very good analogy, since Gibbon's work represents a compilation of everything known and believed about the Romans, written from the perspective of an 18th century European, complete with moral interpretations drawn from contemporary cultural viewpoints. It was a work that says at least as much about Gibbon and Europe of the time, as it does about the Romans. Similarly Boyer's beliefs represent the assumptions of a western scholar trained in the 1930s.

No one has yet shown any evidence at all that the suryas actually draw from Mesopotamian sources. Saying it doesn't make it true.

You are confused. Pluto was not "demoted". It in its old (inaccurate) classification it was the smallest and last planet to be discovered, a Johnny-Come-Lately.

What Tombaugh really did was discover the first of a whole new class of objects - the Kuiper Belt Objects that extend far past the planets. And Pluto is its king - it is the largest and most prominent of all the KBOs (Eris, is queen, having the exact same diameter as far as we can tell, but is more distant and dimmer).

Discovering a whole new class of objects beats discovering yet another planet.

Says the AC who does not know the Abyssal Plain is covered with clay not sand! Your knowledge of the ocean evidently begins and ends with a day at the beach.

You make a good Exhibit A why scientific study of the Universe is necessary.

While I agree that it is a bit frightening to start with Earth - we are already doing it in a vast unplanned, unregulated experiment.. The purpose of these proposals is to evaluate techniques to offset the world-wide climate modification experiment already in progress. Not doing anything about that current experiment that is still accelerating as releases of the the major climate modification chemical increases year after year is a lot more frightening.

According to this analysis the time could be as short as 200 years, if we cut off all sunlight falling on Venus so that it radiates heat away as fast as possible.

This assumes though that there is no problem with having 460 C rock only 30 m below the surface. The upheavals that will develop as the crust shrinks, creating fissures, may complicate this optimistic scenario.

Thanks, you hammer my point home. This is the kind of crony "regulation" when you have local communities regulating a major corporation. And if they try to strike too hard a bargain that might impact profit margins, the cable company will simply give service to that area low priority to teach a lesson to other communities. This actually happened in my town with Verizon which has the cable/broadband monopoly, and which halted FIOS roll-out (never to be resumed) when the city wanted to negotiate a better deal.

Internet access at competitive speeds is an essential service, which cable companies have effective monopolies on in most places.

Worstall has part of an argument against the Times opinion piece, but he makes an even bigger whopper with his "proof" that no one wants taxes raised, because people aren't voluntarily gifting their wealth to the Federal Government by the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

The real problem with cable companies is not that they "bundle" to create fixed service packages - it is that they are effective monopolies providing an essential service, that escape any meaningful regulation that such a model absolutely requires for to protect the interests of the public. As long as this situation persists any service pricing scheme is going to gouge the customers for Internet access as well as TV access.

The weakness of regulation is nicely conveyed by the the FCC itself:

Your local franchising authority - the city, county or other governmental organization authorized by your state to regulate cable television service - legally may (but is not required to) regulate the rate your cable TV provider can charge for "basic" cable service. The rates you pay for other cable programming and services, such as expanded cable channel packages, premium movie channels and pay-per-view sports events, are set by your cable TV provider.

So no regulation by any government body for "non basic services". And "basic service" regulation is entirely optional, and left piecemeal to lower levels of government where it is always ineffective in exercising oversight for national corporations which practice cartel-like collusion to protect their margins and market share.

I would also recommend the more recent work (2005) of scientific popularization 1491 by Charles Mann. He also has a good section devoted to the Maya.

Here is the relevant part of the exchange:

QUESTION: What kind of probability do you think exists that they currently have a nuclear device?

GEORGE TENET: I think we've unclassified the fact that they probably have one or two plutonium-based devices today.

QUESTION: And how about their, they fired missiles over Japan, what is the likelihood that they currently have a missile capable of hitting the west coast of the United States?

GEORGE TENET: I think the declassified answer is yes, they can do that.

QUESTION: So in all likelihood they have nuclear warheads and an ability to deliver them to the west coast of the United States. Obviously very, very troubling.

LEIGH SALES: Mr Tenet didn’t elaborate further, although US officials admit the ballistic missiles haven't been flight tested, which raises questions about how effective they would be.

Tenet confirmed that North Korean has a missile that could hit the West Coast. He did not confirm that it had a missile that could carry a nuclear warhead. The fact that North Korea has placed a payload in orbit indisputably shows that they have a launching system with intercontinental range that can deliver some sort of payload, so Tenet's comment is hardly surprising. But a limited technical capability does not an effective weapon systems make.

First up. Sony voluntarily suspended enforcement of the contract clause. The theaters would have real difficulty arguing in the court that "Sony forced them to show the movie" when Sony publicly declared they did not.

Second. Are you trained in contract law? I would be quite surprised to learn that if both parties in a normal two-party contract agree to temporarily suspend enforcement of one clause in a contract they are "breaking the law" in some way. What would be the aggrieved party that would bring suit? Who would have standing? Or are you saying this a criminal act? Cite a statute please?

More like a case of China with Alien Hand Syndrome. North Korea is geographically an appendage to China, a fact that cannot be changed. The problem for China is that the Kim dynasty runs North Korea and is not going away, it has no choice to deal with it. China supports the North Korean regime, but the regime knows how to manipulated the relationship to its own ends. All of the other options are much worse for China, outright collapse of the state and attending flood of desperate refugees into China, etc.; loss of a buffer state with a U.S. ally, etc.

The U.S. has had lots of experience itself with unruly client states that learned to yank the "puppet master's" strings and make him jerk.

Yeah, we have them on the ropes! Another 55 years should do the trick for sure!