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Comment Re:US (Score 2) 999

The question is, where is the best state to live in the US when the break up occurs.

It's obvious. The state with the greatest amount of natural resources: oil, metals, wood, rich soil, wildlife, and a low population.
Southern Alaska, close to the Pacific Ocean.
That it has a large supply of military weapons, including nukes, is a side benefit. It's big enough to be a nation on its own, and enough power to ward off potential invaders.

Comment Grasses producing cyanide is not new or unknown. (Score 3, Informative) 305

Tifton 85 was bred using PI290884, from South Africa, and Tifton 68, which is a cross between PI255450, from Kiboko, Kenya, and PI293606, from Nairobi, Kenya.

See Fact Sheet - Cynodon Dactylon

"Toxicity
Some varieties have the potential to produce high levels of prussic or hydrocyanic acid (HCN), especially when high levels of nitrogen are applied. However, instances of prussic acid poisoning in cattle grazing C. dactylon are rare. Although levels of total oxalate of >1% of the DM have been recorded, there is no experience of detrimental effects on grazing cattle. Frosted C. dactylon can cause photosensitization.
"

What happened at ELGIN, Texas, is just an example of a RARE event. That the field in question has been in production for 15 years, and no other sites using Tifton 85 have reported animal deaths from cyanide, proves how rare the event is.

Tifton 85 has nothing to do with the laboratory manipulation of DNA (Genes).

Comment Re:Next (Score 1) 100

Not any stranger than Westinghouse claiming that a non-existent reactor is the safest ever made. IF you had read the PDF you would have noticed that what was being pointed out was that the AP1000 reactor core has only a single wall of isolation from the environment, whereas previously built reactors had two. Yet, despite having two walls, past records show that the NRC was ignoring leakages and failures in other two-walled reactors in order to fast track approval for the AP1000. IF the documented leaks in two walls prove they lack sufficient safety it gives cause for concern about the safety of only one wall.

Comment Re:Next (Score 2) 100

He's never offered one genuine, unqualified note of concession about any of it. Everyone else is wrong. "I believe strongly in safety" is as close as he's ever gotten to an explanation. Turning the NRC board of commissioners into a snake pit is somehow supposed to promote safety. ...
  and he oversaw the certification of the AP1000 reactor.

Believes in "safety", eh? He should read this.

Comment Re:The Supremely Stupid Court (Score 3, Informative) 420

You can understand now how all those "Trips for judges" paid off for the RIAA and other corporate slim.

It's an old report, and things have gotten MUCH worse, but from the 2000 report on the Tripsforjudges website:
"The framers and attenders to our judicial system have taken many steps to help foster the notion of the integrity of its judges. Some relate to smoke and mirrors --the high bench, the black robe, the "all rise" custom when the judge enters the room. Some, like life tenure for federal judges, the codes of conduct promulgated for all judges, are intended to create the climate for integrity.

All of those steps become meaningless when private interests are allowed to wine and dine judges at fancy resorts under the pretext of "educating" them about complicated issues. If an actual party to a case took the judge to a resort, all expenses paid, shortly before the case was heard, it would not matter what they talked about. Even if all they discussed were their prostate problems, the judge and the party would be perceived to be acting improperly. The conduct is no less reprehensible when an interest group substitutes for the party to the case, and the format for discussion is seminars on environmental policy, or law and economics, or the "takings clause" of the Constitution."

Greed and corruption by our elected officials are destroying the infrastructure and liberties of this country. When the votes of millions can be negated by a "campaign donation" of millions voting because useless. The John Edwards court case illustrates the kinds of folks who are running for office these days, and the corporate donations are making it impossible for any without corporate funding to get elected.

All three branches of our system are corrupted and broken, and thus the "checks and balances" are broken as well. Both political parties are cesspools of greed. It is essentially impossible for a citizen to redress grievances, and those using civil disobedience to do so have a Socialist agenda as their goal, not the restoration of Constitutional principles, and all that really needs to be done is to shut down corporate (private or public, or 5013c) influence in politics.

Comment Re:That's nothing (Score -1, Troll) 216

The Chinese didn't do that, our Congress did when they passed NAFTA then opened the boarders so any remaining jobs could be farmed out to undocumented aliens willing to work for nothing and with no benefits. Either Congress did it deliberately to destroy the economic base of this country, or they were too stupid to realize what NAFTA would do to our economy. I believe it was the former.

Comment The NYT didn't read the Fed report either... (Score 4, Insightful) 197

They spent a year and tens of thousands of dollars "investigating" Google and couldn't find any violations of the law, so the make a bogus claim that Google "didn't cooperate". Why should Google? What the Feds wanted was for Google to unilaterally admit to some crime.

Those who claim Google was "stealing data" have no clue as to how wifi's work and what it takes to collect data with a "Street View" van. Mostly they are victims of Apple's and Microsoft's anti-Google FUD campaign, since they both collect the same kinds of data.

Most wifis have a radius range of about 300 feet. Traveling at 25mph a van can pass through 600 feet in about 16 seconds. It takes several minutes to crack a WEP and even more for a WPA encrypted connection. The van won't have enough time to crack into secured access points. That leaves OPEN access points. How many packets could a van collect in 16 seconds for an 11Mb/S connection? About 10,600. A typical 1500 byte packet has a maximum of 842 bytes of payload, which would total to about 9 MB of data. That "data" will be HTML code, web page elements, LOTS of graphics and tons of trivia. It *might" contain pieces of someone's email. All from Joe and Sally Sixpack who don't have enough sense to, in affect, close their blinds when they undress for bed at night, or shout all of their telephone conversations, or leave their cars and houses unlocked and the windows down or open. So, what are folks to do when they pass by, plug their ears and close their eyes for 600 feet?

Besides, ESSIDs can and often do change without notice, so they mean nothing. MAC addresses would identify hardware and Google could connect a MAC to an IP address, but gathering that information is not illegal. Besides, names, telephone numbers and house addresses have been linked together in phone books for a100 years. I can record your license plate number and look up your name and address in our state auto registration database after paying a registration fee of $50. Ditto for your house records: year it was built, how many times it was sold and for how much, the amount of taxes you payed and what is due, even a floor plan.

IF you don't want someone eaves dropping in on your wifi traffic then use WPA and/or encrypt your email and connect only with https websites.

Comment Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic (Score 4, Informative) 338

I see your Poe and Godwin and raise you Alinsky's 5th rule -- attack through humorous ridicule. As Saul said, it is almost impossible to counter with facts because the truth usually isn't as simple as a lie.

Take the ridicule against Palin. In an interview she said "There are places in Alaska from which one can see Russia." A TRUE statement. The Left "quoted" her as saying "I can see Russia from my house."., Being good researchers, some on the Left consulted maps and noticed that one can not see Russia from Palin's house. So the mockery began and was repeated endlessly and recycled in the forums and blogs on the Left. Repeat a lie often enough, Right or Left, and the faithful believe it as fact, even to the point of self-righteousness, quoting the lie as proof of their intelligence. It really gets interesting when psychological terms are thrown at "unbelievers". Terms like "denier", etc...

Comment Evil (Score 1) 372

Monsanto is the classic poster child of an evil corporation.

If the wind, blowing pollen from a Monsanto field causes the crop of an independent farmer to be pollinated by Monsanto's pollen, and the farmer is found guilty of theft, then why isn't Monsanto guilty of trespass for not confining its pollen? If a Monsanto bull left its property and fertilized the cow of another farmer then Monsanto would the court then rule the farmer guilty of theft of sperm?

Corporations have bought off all three branches of our government, which is now nothing more than a Cabal.

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