They are wasting our time and money on this obviously stupid stuff and because it is so stupid, they slap "super secret" on it. Just because something is "secret" does not mean that it is in the best interest of the public to not know about it. The real national security issue is that some jackass got on a plane with a bomb in Nigeria, and then made it through Amsterdam and all the way to Detroit before trying to blow up the plane. Making passengers sit still with their hands in the air for the last hour of a 12 hour flight doesn't address how the bomb got on the flight to Detroit in the first place. The TSA has a tough job: keep the bombs off the planes without making air travel so odious that it doesn't work. But when the TSA does something like this proposal - something so obviously not related to fixing the actual problem, they want it to be secret because everyone will think, and rightfully so, that Colonel Klink and Sergeant Shultz of Hogan's Heros are running airport security.

To me, this leak falls under the whistleblower laws. This type of stupidity is negligent.

But of course, the TSA thinks that all of its requirements and lists must be secret because the "Bad Guys" will get through much easier if things are known. But then, secret laws and secret rules with brutal enforcement are fundamentally unfair and ineffective. Far too easy to catch the ignorantly innocent rather than the nefarious. The TSA has a history or trying to hide their rules and go with arbitrary requirements, and by golly they don't want ANYONE to talk about it.

Forget you. You are not valuable. You are an expense. You are a necessary evil that cuts into the profits. Why do you think the company stock goes up when a bunch of you are laid off? If you were valuable assets, then the company could borrow against your value like it can against inventory and accounts receivable. You could be sold or traded like inventory or the old company car.

Right now there are fifty guys in line for your job. Your manager can replace you with another monkey in clothing faster than you can say "But I like music." IT does not matter what your experience or your skills or education, you are a cog in a machine and when you squeak you get replaced with some less squeaky cog.

That's the nature of companies in our day in age.

So what you are saying is simply that the climate will change. There is NOTHING that we can do to stop climate change. If we spend trillions of dollars to do something the climate will change. If we do NOTHING the climate will change. Which is how this planet's environment has been working for billions of years. The climate changes. Duh.

Raising a hullabaloo over the climate changing is a very good political game, but it is not very good science. Should we study how the climate works? Should we learn to model and predict the weather? Sure. These are worthy goals. But that is NOT what is going on here. At this time, there are conflicting models about how changes in the various components of the atmosphere will change the climate. Some predict high temperatures, some do not. Some think that the high temperatures will trigger an ice age, some do not. Some predict that the Sahara Desert will become green, some say that the desert will expand. Many of these models, based upon reasonable science lead to mutually exclusive results: they cannot all be correct.

The arrogance of man is obvious to those who look for it: we THINK that we are so IMPORTANT that we can and should control the climate. The truth is that we do not understand our climate to any significant degree. We cannot predict next summer's weather any better than our ancient ancestors despite reams of data and sophisticated models. Scientists make fools of themselves and their profession by making predictions that do not come true. How many Atlantic hurricanes again? How many droughts predicted in advance? If you could predict such things, you would make a killing in the markets, by the way. The incentive to make accurate climate and weather models is extreme. Think of the things we could do if we knew that the monsoon was going to be bad next year; or how many hurricanes in the Atlantic, Typhoons in the pacific, what the winter in Siberia was going to be. How well are the rains going to fall in the Midwest? Trillions of dollars in damages and untold consequences in human and animal suffering all because we can't predict next years regional climate.

As to the certainty of catastrophe, none of the models predict a climate that is inhospitable to life on our world. None of the models are even going outside the boundaries of known, past behavior for our planet. So what is this catastrophe? That the arable land will shift around? That humans will have to adapt to a changing climate? That we will face the political and economic difficulties of mass human migration? That is not a catastrophe of an environmental nature. That is a POLITICAL problem caused not by man's technology and emissions of carbon dioxide, but by the artificial walled gardens we created called countries. That changes in our climate can lead humans to kill each other over food is NOT a CLIMATE problem but a problem of human BEHAVIOR. Tossing trillions at a moving climate isn't going to the root of the problem: human behavior. And when those predictions do not lead to catastrophe, the science will be discredited like the boy who cried wolf. THAT is the real impending catastrophe.

But of course, by 2050, the scientists making the predictions will be long gone. They will have spent their grants and retired, and perhaps even expired. Kinda like religion where the priest promises you paradise after you are dead, so if he lied you can't complain, can you?

While it is certainly the job of science and those who profess to be scientists to provide the rest of us with data and interpretations, that is clearly NOT what is going on here. The data is being cherry picked. Criticism suppressed not with facts and data, but with political machinations - something that has clearly lead to disaster in our past. The truth, while painful, is liberating to all of us. That is NOT what is going here, people with vested economic and political interests are suppressing and manipulating data to support a pre conceived conclusion. Here we are seventy years beyond the dawn of nuclear power still relying on coal and gas for our energy. Not because nuclear power is more dangerous than coal and gas, but because of the politics of fear. People with vested interests in preserving their own territory came together to suppress the use of nuclear power by using the fear of accidents and nuclear war. And now, how much of this climate change would not be an issue if we had gone down THAT road? If we were using nuclear power and electric cars instead of natural gas, coal, and gasoline would we now be talking about carbon dioxide regulation?

Humans cannot see very well into the future. We cannot see all ends. Thus the Law of Unintended Consequences applies. What ever we decide about climate will not be the best decision and will be unenforceable by political means. And there will be consequences that we cannot predict. It is in technology that the changes to carbon dioxide levels can be made, but the current approach is not one conducive to developing such technology for global use. The advanced nations can do this, but the rest of the world will not follow suit because it will cost too much. It's easy to say to the European and American, we'll cost your family another $4000 in taxes to boggle up the climate a bit, but when you live in Kenya and your family makes $1300 per year, you can't saddle them with another $4000/year.

Now we can regulate how much carbon dioxide we produce in industry. But we can't regulate the concentration of the gas in the climate because we are not the sole source. Global temperature is the same. We can regulate how much heat we produce in industry, but we can't control the sun. In fact, we really don't know what the effects of higher carbon dioxide level will be, just like we don't know what the effects of higher temperature will be.

So the climate will change. What should we do? Where should we go? If we do nothing, the climate changes. If do something, the climate changes. We really don't know in which direction the climate will go or what the changes will do to any particular region. Which is exactly where we were a hundred years ago before we gathered reams and reams of climate data and tons of computers to model our climate. Now some scientists demand that we spend trillions on climate regulation to prevent an impending disaster of global proportions. Except that the details of this disaster are rather vague, and tend to sound a bit biblical: the seas shall rise swallowing the coasts, droughts and famine, war and pestilence, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! Or maybe just a bit to much like a line from Ghost Busters, except here, if nothing happens, the scientists will have spent their grants, retired, and probably expired before anyone realizes that we've been conned.

Scientific decision making is not fear based, but fact based. Fear based political manipulation using some vaguely defined threat has lead to some of the worst decisions humanity has made. A brief historical review: Fear of the Jews in Nazi Germany lead to world war. Sure that was a made up fear, but it whipped up German support for the political goals of a small group of people. Fear of Communists gave the United States McCarthy, the Vietnam war, and the cold war. Fear of terrorists gave us the Patriot Act, the War on Terror, and two largely unwinnable wars: Iraq and Afghanistan. The debate on climate change has gone from science to politics with certain scientist banding together with other interest groups to whip up a frenzy of fear of impending global catastrophe in the far future that we must ACT NOW to prevent. This is EXACTLY the same fear mongering used to sell some very stupid policies.

And yes I am CERTAIN that the climate will change, and that I and my children are up to the challenge of surviving in this brave new world.

First off, being "in love" with someone is a pretty messed up mental state which often blinds people to the faults and realities of the other person. This state of being "in love" can last a couple of years - though it does last far longer for some folks. The biology of this emotional state is to get two people who would otherwise not hook up, to have kids. Essentially, love blinds you to the faults (large and small) of the other person so that you are willing to make an eternal commitment to the other person.

1. Sex in relationships often diminishes regardless of the honesty of the people involved mostly because the female does not have the same sex drive as the male. Other factors contribute to the decrease in sex: medications (such as the birth control pill, anxiety medications, etc.), time stresses (got married and now you are both focuses on earning money to pay for the mortagage), and the negative emotional baggage that builds up over time. Sure, you love her now, and the fact that she won't do the dishes until the last dish is dirty doesn't bother you, but it will bother you a lot three years from now when you come home from an exhausting day of work related hell to find that all of the fucking cups are dirty. You won't get confrontational about it then because you are TIRED and it's a small thing. But sand is a small thing, and it can irritate the hell out of you. And after you have kids. . . sex is a challenge because nothing on earth kills the moment like the sound of your offspring opening the door for . . . a drink of water.

2. Weight gain happens because your metabolism changes and as you get older the work you do becomes less and less physical.

3. You money stops going where you wanted it to go when you were single. That causes resentment because no matter what, marriage does not change WHO YOU ARE and WHAT YOU LIKE. Don't expect her to change either. The only thing that changes people of either sex is trauma - emotional, physical trauma.

4. Relatives . . . mine are strange and insufferable. I like my in laws better.

5. My spouse drives the vehicle I don't want to drive. Right now, I drive the new truck and she drives the old civic. When we bought the SUV, she drove it, because I liked driving the protege better, of course she wanted to drive it.

6. Neglecting your spouse because you play HALO, or WOW 80 hours per week will cause just as much trouble as if you spent 90 hours per week working came home and watched football. It's the not being fair to the other person and forgetting that they need you to participate in their emotional well being part that cause the trouble.

7. Yes, she will ask. You will lie about it.

8. Learn to cook well.

9 & 10. Love is blinding so you'd better be sure she's being honest. If she likes to do the same things you like to do then you're doing pretty well. Otherwise, you'll need some win-win negotiations.

Honesty is the most important factor. If a person is brave enough to be honest with you, and very much wants to be a part of your life and vice versa, great. Beware though, the deceiver, because like a cheater, a liar keeps on lying.

Been there, done that, have the tee-shirt.

Actually, that's wrong. It's not the public. The government and the lobbyists around the current political military industrial complex do not care about the moon, or the rest of the solar system. They are make heaps of cash and taking control of vast territories on earth and have no interest in spending billions on going to the moon. The US has already spent more money than it would cost to land men on Mars and bring them home on the war in Iraq. As soon as their is a tangible military advantage to owning the moon, it will be colonized.

We had comcast and the connection speed and reliability was a real problem especially during that 7 - 10 PM range when many people are accessing the internet. We switched to DSL, which has it's own set of quirks, but the speed and reliability are much more stable than comcast was. I expect that the various cable companies will be awful until they roll out a "much better" service at a premium rate - something that takes the core of the internet and tries to turn it into AOL with TV channels and an expensive version of Skype. SO you could have the internet with a totally shitty experience or the premium TV-Phone-"Internet" service that costs a bit more but generates a ton more revenue for the cable ISP. You'll get your streaming movie, music on demand, World of Warcraft, and maybe even Xbox live, along with phone and lots of TV shows. But the access to the internet will be strictly controlled by the ISP - much like the early days of the internet back when it was all Compuserve and AOL or Usenet. Sure you'll still be able to get to all of the regular internet, but the experience will be more and more painful until most people give up and go with the "Internet-3" controlled by Comcast, Charter, etc. Don't give me that "the internet routes around blockages" crap, the internet can't route around the ISP as customers of various ISP's in arguments with other ISP's have discovered.

You could also have technology that simply reported the location of the cow. My grandfather's cows had these colored ear tags that could be easily seen. I figure some interprising technology geek could come up with a durable, cheap, solar powered ear tag that simply reports to a scanner as it passes through a chute, or maybe one that phones home. The tags could talk to each other keeping a record of the other cows nearby. I imagine having a GPS locator on each cow could have saved my grandfather some time when a cow got lost.

- After people DIE, then it becomes a matter for the law - whether civil or criminal. Example: Peanut Corporation of America's failure to follow hygiene and food safety regulations resulted in 23 people dying in 2008.
          ARe you willing to die so that I can sue on behalf of your decomposing corpse?
          Corporations will lie to increase profits, they will break the law, they will kill people, they will over throw governments. These are facts not the idle speculation of a cynic.
          The case of the contaminated peanut butter: that corporation had a history of ignoring regulations and lying about testing results, and being sued for it. Sure, people will likely go to jail and perhaps even be fined, but that isn't going to resurrect the dead. Massive corporations get involved in nefarious things whether this be oil companies, agrochemical companies, finance companies, car companies. The larger and more global the less the members of the company feel responsible for what goes on in someone else's part of the world. The harder it is to hold the perpetrators personally responsible.
          SO yes, I want the government to TELL these people how to do their job. What tests to conduct, when to conduct them, where to publish the results for all the world to see. I don't want our food supply blindly trusted to the nefarious whims of greedy, evil people, who hide behind the protection of incorporation articles and skip off to other jurisdictions when the trouble begins.
          Any time your job can cause the death or imprisonment of another person, then I expect that you will be held to public standards and that I can look over your shoulder any time I wish to ensure that the job your are doing is correct. That includes programers who write code for say. . . breathalizers, or heart monitoring equipment.

Global warming brought to you by the same people who can't tell you what the temperature will be next week, yet they can tell you what it will be a thousand years from now.

The NOAA guys can't forecast the weather more than a week out, yet this "Global warming" requires urgent action to regulate human activities. Like the REST of the planet has NOTHING to do with the climate.

It is not supposed to be fair, reasonable, or logical. It is supposed to be frightening, frustrating, and impossible so that you will pay the money they demand, sign the Admission of Eternal Guilt, the Waiver of Salvation, and commit yourself to the eternal damnation of Hell as a minion of the RIAA in the afterlife, as well as this one.

Gleemax, the site for all of the Glee Club wanabees. I can just imagine the middle school crowd of undesirables.

Yep. The name did it.