So, what they are saying, really, is that even after a referendum they will have to use common sense and work out a deal with the Scottish government. Stranger things happen at sea.

Today? I'm ALWAYS grumpy grampy!

No, I just want to see scientific fact presented as if it is scientific fact. Telling about science doesn't need to be pepped up - the subject is already exciting, as opposed to the disturbed love lives of Big Brother contestants, and people on /. are interested in "News for Nerds", or so I've heard. There was once, when a nature program on telly or a scienticif article would be exactly that: exciting facts about nature; compare David Attenborough standing waist deep in a swamp to todays programs with repeated slow motion replays of lions downing a baby gnu and an idiotic soundtrack. Now, if you tell me you prefer the latter, you might as well seek treatment at Dignitas in Switzerland.

Could we flag this kind of articles with a warning, please? I'm getting tired of glossy gossip that's more suited for a write-up about soap-stars and Big Brother. Give us a hex-dump or a wall of equations to look at, not chatty nonsense trying to invoke a sense of "Woooh, mysterious!!!!"

China - the country as a whole or its government - can not be held responsible for crimes committed by private companies or individuals. In fact, these things happened because there was not enough governmental oversight - IOW too much freedom, rather than too little. This is what used to happen in the West, when companies were similarly unrestrained by legislation; things like adding chalk to bread and water to milk. Regulation is not all bad.

As for their official justification, they don't owe us any, but it seems likely that they are worried about the behaviour of the GM companies. Although GM holds huge potential in terms of nutrition, there are many things that give cause for concern: patented genes that spread to neighboring fields, genes that provide restitence to weed-killers spreading to wild species, modifications that hinder the production of viable seeds, so the farmers have to buy new GM seed from the producers rather than growing part of their harvest on next year, etc etc. I'm sure GM would be welcome in most countries if it was not for the companies producing them.

Another thing is that the Chinese are fully capable of developing or buying the technology themselves - so why should they allow in American companies that are only intent on siphoning off as much profit as possible to their share holders?

- and what is silicon made from? ;-)

A football match is a commercial entertainment show - somebody has invested money (lots of it, in the case of football) in producing the show, and therefore has at least a legitimate claim to the content. I don't necessarily agree with the whole copyright thinking, but if it illegal to film in cinemas, theatres and at concerts, then the same holds for a sports match; why would it be different? It is not something that happens in the public space - these venues are privately owned.

Personally, I think it is a petty attitude to get up in arms over small clips; I don't think people sharing these things online translates into lost revenue - on the contrary, it is likely to make more people want to go to the next match, whereas making a fuss like this puts people off.

The question makes little sense - for one thing, egalitarian is not the opposite of totalitarian - to quote Wikipedia:

- "Egalitarianism ... is a trend of thought that favors equality for all people"

- "Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible".

Arguably, the opposite of egalitarianism is elitism; there isn't really a good word for it that I could find. The same holds for totalitarianism - no good antonym, but democratism might be close enough. These concept occupy two, independent spaces, although it may be that totalitarianism is found more with elitism than with egalitarianism.

The other problem with this question is that they are not binary concepts, but define a continuum - IOW there are different degrees of both scales.

There is nothing new in this. Even back in the day, when we can imagine that humans lives like the other, large apes in small groups, there would have been leaders - alpha-males or -females. Or in family groups, one or both parents would have been in charge. This makes sense, since a more experienced, older adult makes better decisions than a younger one, and a physically stronger individual is able to take what he/she wants as well as offering better protection against attackers etc.

But what recent research of the Egyptian culture actually shows is, that hierarchical society developed, not because hierarchy is inherently better, but because the alternatives were worse. If Egypt hadn't been surrounded by desert, people would have moved away, and hierchical society wouldn't have been established that early. Compare to North Europe, where it is possible to live more or less everywhere, and hierchical societies seemingly didn't arise until much later, when population density got high enough.

Of course - it is a great achievement for any mathematician. However, the gender imbalance in Maths is a real thing, and it is a shame - not because it is unfair to women, but because I think mathematical research would benefit from having more women contribute. Mathematical research is highly dependent on creativity, and it seems quite likely to me that women might bring a slightly different perspective.

I don't think it is about women being pushed out - it is probably more about perceptions. Mathematics is often being seen as 'a high and lonely destiny', something very dry and focused on the achievements of single individuals, which probably appeal a good deal more to men than to women. And it doesn't help either, that the Fields Medal is only given to researchers under the age of 40, when many, especially women, feel they have more important things on their minds; perhaps that should be revised upwards, not least because we now expect to live productive lives far longer.

Well, let us start with the expression "racial differences": here, you presuppose the existence of a meaningful definition of "race". Looking back over history we can see that philosopers and scientists have done everything they can to justify, scientifically, a definition of race based on things like skin colour, and when that didn't really work, on other physical traits. We have had very good reasons to think that the concept didn't actually refer to a deeper reality for a long time, and this is now corroborated by genetic evidence - the genetic variation, even within a single family, is normally far wider than the average variation between supposedly different races, which means that based on the gene map alone, it is not actually possible with any certainty to place any individual in any race, whichever way you define it.

One also has to bear in mind that biological concepts like genus and family are abstractions that are only in use because because they help us understand the reality they describe. The concept of "race" fails in that respect - it doesn't aid our understanding of biology.

No - they just can't stand yet another, stupid row over something that is so obviously not useful and just reeks of prejudice.

I was being sarcastic - I have, over a far too long life, read, heard and encountered so much stupid stereotyping and bigotry: Jews are greedy money-lenders, Germans are humour-less 'Huns', Africans are half-apes etc etc. And drawing a line from "good at business" to "cunning" is not unreasonable. "Cunning" was one ot the characteristics that were often ascribed to the Chinese in the past (think of stories like "Fu Manchu"), and it is easy to see "good at business" as a euphemism for "cunning, devious, ...".

On the other hand, science does, and this book is not science, but opinion, if you want to be polite about it. Racist opinion, to be precise, which have been around in some guise or other since who knows when? This kind of racism-disguised-as-science was common throughout 18th and 19th centuries and generally went along the lines of 'Us White (North-) Europeans Are Better Than The Rest' and was used to justify why we had a moral duty to go out and 'civilize' the inferior races.

Science is not made by taking a hand-picked assortment of data, twist it a few times and going 'Look, I can make the data match my opinon' - for anything to be science, you must have a hypothesis, which suggests a logically coherent explanation of all observed facts, makes testable predictions - and which survives experimental testing. It takes only 1 failed prediction to kill a theory.

Correct me if I am wrong, but that is hardly the main point of this book, is it? To quote from the article:

So, black people are violent (meaning 'primitive'?), Chinese are cunning ('good at business') and The White Man is the epitome of civilisation? And this is not racism - how? This is just a worthless rehash of junk from the days of the colonialism.

Groan. Something about this reminds of the scene in Monty Python's 'The Holy Grail', where a rather pestilential peasant is yelling 'I'm being oppressed'. Look, it's not always censorship when some company or government service refuses to be the medium for somebody's political propaganda; or if you insist on calling it censorship, then I have to say that not all censorship is bad.

But I don't think it applies in this situation - nobody has a right to have things printed for them, not even in a news paper. And just like a paper can refuse to print an article or an advert for any reason they like, the postoffice can do the same, of course. They have to make a business decision - why should they print a postage stamp, if they have reason to believe it may harm their business or their reputation? Freedom of speech doesn't mean that everybody has to help you spread your opinions, it only means that the state guarantees that they will not punish people for doing so.

Ah, the good old supply and demand, you say? Whatever, but the article argues that because nuclear power is 'more economic' right now, we should stay away from the alternatives, and I think that is a bogus argument. What we should do is use nuclear in the short term, while working hard to replace both fossil fuels and nuclear, as well as minimising our waste of energy and resources, because that is far more sustainable, long term.

That last point is far more important than finding alternative energy sources, because it can have an immediate and dramatic effect, and there are so many easy ways that every person on the planet could employ to cut back on wastage.

Mayne will be reading this as saying 'there's a way cure Alzheimer'; actually it isn't a cure, it just covers up some of the symptoms of the still progressing disease. This is comparable to painkillers - they take away some of the pain, which is good, but the underlying cause is still there; not a problem if you have a passing headache, but it can be much more serious if it is something that slowly gets worse, like an infected tooth, a slipped disc - or cancer.

You seem very upset that I dispute your claims - I wonder why? Or are you going to deny that as well?

You're just trying to sell the myth that being pedophile is really just innocent, nothing to worry about. But that trivialises the problem to the extent that in fact, most people are 'pedophiles' because they can see the attraction in innocent beauty - what we call pedophilism is a much more sinister and harmful condition: when an adult for whatever reason steps over the border between seeing and doing. It is in many ways parallel to the phenomenon that is called 'paranoid schizophrenia': most people have at least sometimes, a conversation going on in their head - like a voice that comments on what they do and see. They are not called schizophrenic, because they are able to distinguish between their inner voice and what happens outside their own mind.

And being pedophile is not like being gay; pedophiles are made, not born. One can argue that honmosexual behaviour is something that strengthens male bonding and therefore would have been an advantage in a small hunter-gatherer community, whereas it is clear that children who have been sexually molested do not survive that unscathed. Whether the acutal damage is primarily due to the sexual element or the physical and mental abuse that accompanies it, or something different, is not really relevant - the bottom line is that pedophiles harm children; and in fact, one of the outcomes of child abuse is that the child is more likely to become a child abuser as well, which makes the problem all the more serious.

Playing the 'Evil Govt' card is just your form of voodoo. It is astonishing, the amount of power people can imagine "The Government" has; apparently they are also able to cover up all thes UFO landings all over the place.