I find it stupid. My problem is, I can't quite figure out who is being stupid here, except that it doesn't seem to have much to do with N Korea, if I'm any judge. They may be idiots, but they have been clever enough to hold on to power for decades in the most astonishingly ridiculous circumstances - a bit like the goings-on in the declining Roman empire. But it clearly doesn't add up, the idea that North Korea are somehow able to threaten the US into submission. I would be very interested in knowing the actual truth of the matter.

I think, if you actually read what the GP wrote, you'll see that he is expressing the same opinion. But let me tell you about how it is in my home country, Denmark:

- Nobody carries fire arms, except some criminals. In fact, most police officers aren't armed either.
- Gun shots are being fired so rarely that it makes the headlines when it happens. I don't actually recall last time that happened.
- School massacres? What is that?

In fact, one can argue that since nobody carries firearms, even the criminals don't feel they have to; they are not likely to be shot when they are 'at work'. You know, it isn't because Danes are particularly good-natured, or because we are a homogenous society; it's just that no firearms means less risk of gun related violence. It may be that you prefer to pay the price for everybody having high-powered guns, but if you argue that it somehow makes your country safer, you'll just end up looking silly. Again, you may prefer looking silly to the truth, but hey, that's your call.

Ah, yes, this is obvious to us in Europe, who have lived privatisation of public services. Here's an anecdote to illustrate how these things go:

I used to live on a small country lane outside London. The roads, water pipes etc are supposed to be maintained by the local council. In the past, the work was carried out by people who were employed by the council, but then, along came privatisation with the golden promise of cost savings. Now the work is all carried out by private companies. Strangely, though, the water mains seem to burst at least 3 - 4 times a year now, where it was almost unheard of before. Why can that be? My theory is that since the council always give the job to the same company, and they profit every time they carry out this work, they deliberately do it poorly, so they can come back and do it again. Thus, the council may save some 10% for the work each time it is carried out, but they pay 4 times as often. How much did the tax-payer save on that, then?

It no doubt works the same way with health care, which is why I think we would be better off with public health care, as well as state owned medical companies.

You are probably right, in many ways. As far as I can see, it all comes down to the particular, bone-headed attitude and complete disconnect from reality that somehow seem so iconic of America. If I remember correctly, there was once a saying - 'The rain will follow the plough' - that illustrates it well; I mean, how can anybody even get that idea?

And then there are things like placing a large city in the middle of the Nevada Desert, and the farming, that you mention. You see it so often in The States, it's like everything has to be so perversely over the top. I once stayed in a hotel very near to Oracle's tin-foil silos in Redwood City; the area is what one would describe as semi-arid, I suppose, but Oracle in particular was surrounded by a 10 inch thick lawn, carefully manicured and soaking wet from constant irrigation - it just struck me as blind idiocy. Or take the hotel room I was installed in - all alone: a huge, triple size bed, an enormous fridge with two doors and room for a sperm whale, two TVs, etc (not paid for by myself, I haste to say). Or the lunch restaurant I was taken out to - I just ordered a modest sandwich, which turned out to be a huge slab of bread with 2 inches of stuff of and gravy poured over, served on a manhole cover.

The point of this tedious rant is - why? What is the matter with America and Americans? It's like the whole nation is obsessed with wilful, stupid, obscene over-consumption on every level.

Cheer up, mate :-) I was boldly attempting a joke. Alas, once again I fail....

Much as I despise the so-called Islamic State, I think in the interest of truthfulness, it bears mentioning, that this incident is almost certainly not organised by them. By all accounts - including the official statements from the police - this is a mentally disturbed individual acting alone. Make no mistake - I would happily vote in favour of capturing the IS fighters, flaying them alive and rolling them in stale manure, but we only play into their hands if we refuse to know the facts.

Well, to be honest, what you describe here is what we used to do not long ago - us Europeans, when we were playing more openly at imperialism. As you will note, Islam was not a dominant religion in Europe at the time. What I'm trying to say is, let's not get carried away by how evil the opposition is; chances are that they learned a good deal about it from us.

All banks can do this, of course. However, when the money leaves an account, there is an interval when the interest on it can be harvested, legally, until it enters the target account. Given enough bank transfers every day, that adds up to enough profit to give a bank manager an erection (ie. more than $1), and that is why they keep pretending it has to take a whole day or whatever. It used to be the same in Europe, but the evil communists in government forced the banks to give it up.

I think it may be a little more subtle than that. Taxi companies and their drivers have to be licenced in most countries - certainly in Europe and China, and I suspect it applies in the US too - and it costs a lot more than just the fee for getting a licence from the police station: insurance, driver training, criminal records checks, taxi meters (which are inexplicably expensive for what they are), etc.

Uber, on the other hand, sidestep all of these expenses by pushing it out to the individual drivers, is my guess. In many ways, they are similar to an organisation of rogue hire cars; if you get into one, it is up to chance whether the driver is an honest bloke trying to make a living, a rapist or simply a stupid lowlife without an insurance driving a car that is not road worthy. It is quite possible that taxi fares are too high, but fair competition would imply that Uber should be required to follow the same rules as other, legal hire care companies. Otherwise, what we do is penalising taxi companies for following the law.

On the other hand, he also starred in 'The Crystal Skull', one of the most appaling disappointments I've seen, after enjoying the first Indiana Jones movies. Harrison Ford had a wonderful self-irony in the first movies, but in the last one he seems to take himself so serious that it's impossible to enjoy the action.

So, you're implying that large corporations, like Oracle, IBM, Microsoft (or Redhat for that matter), are basically a bunch of commies? And the different churches, they are of course too? I think, maybe you have a different way of navigating through space from the rest of us.

Out here, in the real world, words like '(political) left', 'communism' and 'socialism', are about the idea that we might all be better off if we shared more of the burdens of life; that in order to protect essential freedoms, such as freedom of speech and self-determination, we need to agree on the rules, and because there are selfish bullies in the world, we also need to be able to enforce the rules. And the words '(political) right', 'capitalism' and 'free market' are about the idea that it is best to allow the individual to seek their own fortune in the way they believe is right.

We have had ample demonstration over the last century or so, that taken to the extreme, both of these ideas produce monsters, which ironically end up looking very alike, as fascism. An insightful person will realize that society, in order to be stable and functional, needs both of those ingredients to some extent.It is also not hard to see that the balance is not right in the US at the moment, which is why you are becoming more and more unstable.

Yes, yes, whatever. I'm not going to go into a futile exercise of trying to convince you or others who argue like this. You see, from the scientific viewpoint, words like 'discussion' and 'arguments' imply that you have reviewed the available data, formed an opinion based on this and whichever logical means you possess, and then you exchange views with an open mind, since you realize that your insight might not be perfect. I see no evidence of an open mind from the side you are on - you have decided, a priori, that you don't like what the science is saying, so now you are just trying to discredit in any way, and to hell with honesty, decency and logic.

I don't know if you have noticed, but the rest of us have left the subject long ago and moved on. The issue is settled, mankind does in fact cause global warming, and we are now considering how we best handle the situation we have brought upon ourselves. You may opt out of the discussion and you may try to disrupt any constructive dialog, but the fact is that you have been sidelined.

Aren't there enough statues of him already:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://www.cracked.com/article...

Oh stop being so condescending - toddlers repeat because they are in the process of learning, and so are doing far better than that.

I don't think you are going to get a simple, straight answer from anybody. One side, the scientists, are scientists and therefore always qualify their statements, for the simple reason that they want to give correct answers to some very complex questions, and the other side is not interested in the truth or correctness of what they say, they just want to make it impossible for the lay person to understand things enough to realise that we need to take action.

Try to step a little bit back from what you read in the papers and hear on TV and look at how the two sides present things.

The scientists present their data, they present their methods, and they tell you why they reached their conclusions. They also tell you which things they are not sure of and they quantify the uncertainty of their results, which is why you never hear simply that humans caused this, but instead hear that it is '95% certain' or something like that. The reason for doing it this way is that it then allows others to check the validity of your data, methods and conclusions - in principle everybody can do this, but of course, most people won't be able to; but as a layperson, you can still observe this process, and you can get an idea about the validity of the science simply from whether there is are other scientists that refute or support it. Another thing that tends to indicate sound science is that scientists don't keep repeating the same old mistakes over and over - they move on, they admit their mistakes, they correct their methods etc - which is why you hear that actually the historical data were wrong in such and such ways, or the models didn't take this or that into account.

The climate-deniers, on the other hand, keep bringing up claims that have already been adequately refuted, as if they either don't understand or simply don't care; after a while, as a scientist, one gets utterly weary of having to address the same falsehoods and simply start ignoring them - after all, reality goes on regardless of what anybody says.