The famous "few attempts that have been made" originated in foreign countries, not in the USA. You admit that there is a "lack of effort". Huh. You'd like us to believe that this is because "teh TSA am stoopid" or something that amounts to that, but in fact it very well could be that the bad guys have decided that the likelihood of getting a bomb on a plane is not "100%" or close to it like you seem to believe but quite a bit below that. I'd say maybe a 5-10% chance of getting through security successfully. Suicide bombers are a limited quantity and the chance of failure could be a disaster because if the would be bomber gets caught by the TSA, the US government now has access to the type of bomb being used and may be able to get the failed terrorist to talk. This is exactly what happened with Richard Reid.

People have car alarms not because they believe that it makes their car impossible to break into but because it raises the bar so that it may be more trouble than it's worth. Actually I think the TSA is working because if it was truly as bad as you and other complainers claim, there would have been a successful attempt already. I think the bad guys have decided that the risk is too high that they won't get away with it and the success would not be worth the risk of getting caught.

I wish I could find out when the last time is that you even flew to/from/within the USA. I had a friend a few years ago who would go into a full blown hissy fit and rant about the TSA, making pretty much the same arguments as you. He last flew around 1998 and he is very likely to never in his life get on a plane again. It has nothing at all to do with the TSA - he has no reason or desire to ever travel by plane. Yet from all his complaining you'd think that he was some kind of hard core road warrior who was at a different US airport every week. I have found that in general the people who complain the most about the TSA are the people who fly the least.

There's also the possibility it's there to help Russian companies (and the economy).

Facebook wants to operate in Russia? Well then they need to open up a Russian server farm and put all the Russian data in there, or pay massive arbitrary fines, or get blocked. Lots of Russian companies probably use Amazon's EC2, now Amazon either needs to put up a region located in Russia or those Russian companies need to use a Russian cloud company.

It's the same fundamental reason why Putin has been working so hard to keep Ukraine away from the EU. Russian companies suck and can't compete against the west, if cheap high quality EU goods can flow into Russia then the current Russian industry won't be able to compete. Similarly if high quality tech companies can serve Russians then the Russian tech companies can't compete. Solution? Screw with Ukraine to try and keep the EU physical goods out, and pass data laws to keep foreign websites out.

I did read the details of the case and I have to disagree. He's not ranting, he's fantasizing, but there's no evidence that he ever planned to go further.

He offered to kidnap someone, he never did kidnap them, nor did he or anyone else complain when these plans didn't happen. He said he built a pulley in the emails but he didn't actually build it, nor did he make any chloroform. Surely if you're making a criminal conspiracy involving chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system then actually obtain chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system.

Ok, here's another scenario.

You really hate John and claim you want to kill him on FB. You look around for information on poisons because you're curious, or you're fantasizing about how you could kill him. And because the guy really pisses you off you become mildly obsessed and gather information using a work database (even though doing so for this purpose is unauthorized and illegal).

Yet under no scenario could you actually imagine yourself doing so much as punching John.

I wouldn't, not because he's a criminal, but just because he'd creep the hell out of me.

This is a guy who might commit a serious crime in the future, perhaps even wants to. But he has never done so, nor has he specifically planned to do so. All of his previous plans were merely elaborate fantasies that he never took a concrete step towards implementing.

Personally I'd recommend a mandatory psychological evaluation. IF that suggested he could take the step towards moving those crimes into reality then I might consider watch and mandatory counselling. Otherwise he's innocent of everything except the misuse of the database.

Local legends suggest that Rheithrosciurus, which is thought to mostly eat giant acorns, can be savage. Hunters say that the squirrels will perch on low branches, jump onto a deer, gash its jugular vein, and disembowel the carcass. "It sounds pretty fantastical," says a skeptical Roland Kays, a zoologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. "Even more than its fluffy tail."

This sounds far too awesome to be fact checked.

Then pro-life scientists are abusing scientific terminology to justify their philosophy.

Yeah, and everyone know that broken down oil was completely harmless.

Whatever components that plastic is breaking down into it likely contains a lot of molecules that aren't found in nature. When those molecules enter an organism there's no telling what the hell they're going to do.

I don't understand this fantasy that some people cling to that we can dump endless streams of random crap into the environment and mother nature will just magically take care of it with no consequence. People would sure as hell notice if you started dumping garbage into a lake and screwing up a beach where people swim once a week, why do you think the things that actually live in the polluted water won't be affected?

Let's get this clear - it's not illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba. Not at all.

Got that? Good. Now what is illegal, thanks to President Kennedy, is for Americans to spend money there without prior authorization from the US Department of Treasury. This is how the US government "gets" people who go to Cuba without permission. See, Kennedy signed the order during the Cold War and to prevent the Communists from arguing that the US was repressive and taking away the freedom of its citizens to go to Cuba, Kennedy simply made it illegal to spend money there unless you got special authorization to do so. Very rarely are US citizens truly forbidden from traveling anyway. I think in the past there may have been a few places where we actually legally couldn't travel to, but I'm not sure if any exist any more. I suppose it's worth mentioning that generally it's only when a Republican is president that the US government gets interested in prosecuting citizens for spending money in Cuba without prior authorization. This has not been a high priority of the Clinton or Obama presidencies.

Granted the bit about being able to travel to Cuba legally but not able to spend money there without prior authorization is a fine line and essentially the legal cases against such travelers have involved the US government arguing (probably without proof) that the traveler couldn't go there and not spend money. It's all a crock. It's not well known but my understanding (I have no personal experience here) is that the Obama administration has made it much easier for US citizens to go to Cuba legally via authorized cultural travel groups so there's not really a reason to just skirt the law and go without permission. The Bush administration had much tighter restrictions on travel to Cuba and a history of prosecuting citizens who got caught going there without prior authorization.

Don't be too hard on Hume.

I heard about a guy who went through multiple marriages and divorces, did multiple stints in prison, and eventually got some political offices.

I'm naturally talking about Nelson Mandela.

Even if the facts are true and presented impartially the selection of which facts to present or emphasize can give an inaccurate total picture.

I don't know enough about libel law or the guy in question to know if the case is legit, but you seem to have already formed an opinion of him as a scam artist based on the Wikipedia article which may not be a reliable source.

I'm really curious if this guy is a legitimate businessman with a valid suit or some shady character trying to whitewash his reputation.

*goes to check his bio on Wikipedia*

Whoa! That guy looks pretty shady! The lawsuit must be a scam!!

I'm not sure if it will smoke since according to the article the stuff won't actually "burn"'

There, it will be heated in a low-oxygen atmosphere. This will cause its chemical bonds to break (without the material actually burning), releasing their carbon and hydrogen content to form what's known as syngas. This will in turn be cleaned up and converted into chemical products and biofuels – such as methanol and ethanol.

Either way if the emitted chemicals are what you're looking for you're not just going to dump them out a smokestack.

The province is conservative but Edmonton is fairly liberal (as are most cities). I actually took a tour of the waste treatment plant a few years ago and it was pretty impressive (and smelly). Back then they were talking about grinding up the non-recyclable/compostable bits and using them for asphalt filling as a way to get over 90% non-landfilled, I'm not sure if this is any of the same material they're talking about here, I don't think I'd want my highways degrading.

On the contrary although this plant is new they've been doing stuff like this for years, and it makes economic sense.

The problem with garbage is you have to put it somewhere. Landfills fill up quickly and use up otherwise useful land, and the further you ship it the more expensive and polluting it is to transport. The waste reclamation centre drastically reduces the amount you need to dispose of.

Eco-stations claim a lot of the electronic waste, the company that gets the material actually turns a profit on breaking them down.

Compostables get turned into topsoil, traditional recyclables get pulled out and turned into economically useful items, etc.

If your city thinks shipping wealth away burying it with all the resulting externalities is a better alternative then they can keep with their current setup. I prefer the Edmontonian model.

We also treat our sewage rather than dumping in raw into the ocean like some coastal cities.

Great news if you want to live in the holocene.

Not so good of news if you think a significant environmental change in the middle of a mass extinction is a bad idea.

So what is the appropriate role for Obama in this? It seems odd that he would be expected to act as a passive administrator when he was elected with a policy based mandate to a much greater degree than congress.