Just out of curiosity, exactly how much money have you paid Google for their software?

IANAL, but for my money the Fourth Amendment won't be any help to you Americans either. The authorities will argue that since the search is not mandatory (you have the alternative of not getting on the plane), and since you know at the time of purchasing your ticket that you may be scanned, your purchase of the ticket represents tacit consent to be searched, and the search is therefore not unreasonable.

Surely, though, an EEC Directive can only govern issues pertaining to trade between EU countries? I can see how under this directive other countries in the EU could be freed of the requirement to comply (or at least, protected from prosecution if they failed to comply), but I don't understand how non-notification would invalidate the law itself.

True or false: If I, a British Subject, today sold an 18-rated DVD to a 12-year old, I could not be prosecuted because some civil servant forgot to tell Brussels that they changed the law 25 years ago.

Basically, I'm asking: is this bad lawmaking or just bad reporting?

If we were only talking about a requirement that made the law unenforceable when applied to importers from elsewhere in the UK without notification, you would be right. But in this situation, application of a law domestically becomes impossible without reference to an outside party. You don't think that limits sovereignty?

I'll admit it's a subtle difference, but I don't think a country can truly be considered sovereign when its internal laws can be invalidated by a failure to notify an external party.

Can a British lawyer please tell me at what point notification of the European Commission became a requirement for an Act of Parliament to become legally binding? Surely such a surrender of sovereignty was exactly the sort of thing Thatcher opposed?

Yes, because all aliens are of course extremely well-informed about the geo-political landscape of Earth, and would therefore naturally land their broken down spaceship in an affluent first-world country with a successful film industry rather than, say, the first place they found.

Typical Alcohol Side Effects:

Most of yours...

Plus...

• Risk of liver disease
• Increased agression and irritability
• Dizziness
• Vomiting
• Chemical dependence
• Depressed immune system
• Weight gain

According to the Lancet journal (simplified graph on the Wiki), alcohol is both more addictive and more dangerous than cannabis. If adults can be trusted with booze, they should be trusted with weed.

I'm sorry about your friend, I really am, but I can tell you a thousand stories of lives ruined by alcohol and tobacco, two products that are medically more dangerous but legally more available. If you want to learn from your friend's example and never smoke weed, good for you. But you don't have the right to make that decision for me, or for any other adult.

If a man is not free to chose wrongly and irresponsibly, he is not free at all.

Like all fans of dreadful puns everywhere, I'm looking forward to the day we first see a robot yellow carded for simulation.

The thing is, though, the wealthy's affluence doesn't cause the poverty of the poor. Think about DSG again. Imagine a world in which DSG didn't do all their manufacturing in the far East. They'd have slightly less demand for their goods, and considerably higher costs. So, yes, they'd make less money. BUT, there would be a lot more unemployed workers in the far East. Lacking the expertise, capital and equipment to start their own electrical goods industry, those far Eastern workers would now be unemployed, or employed in jobs that pay even less. Everyone loses.

Maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I can see, DSG's decision to set up a plant in the far East benefits both sides. The fact that DSG benefits more from the arrangement doesn't mean that the far Eastern workers are somehow being exploited. They're better off than they would otherwise have been, and no one's forcing them to take jobs at a DSG plant.

My point is that when these arrangements are voluntary (as opposed to the sort that is "negotiated" at the point of a gun), both sides win. And when they are negotiated at the point of a gun, it's unfair to (as the GGGGP does) call it the "evils of capitalism". A mugging is not a capitalist exchange.

Economics 101: A company's profit is the product of two factors: The number of items sold and the profit margin on each item.

Let's imagine that the far East was far richer than it is now. For DSG, this means labour costs go up. But it also means that they have millions of extra people who can now afford to buy DSG products. The increased cost narrows the profit margin per item, but they're selling more items. So it's more or less a wash, even before you take into consideration the economies of scale that reduce per-item costs as total output increases.

At the same time, we have the added blessings of increased wealth in the world: more people can afford to educate their kids, so there are more thinkers, more scientists, more inventors. Consequently, we get better and more efficient ways of doing things, which in turn help to create more wealth.

To think that keeping the poor poor is in the best interests of the rich is to succumb to extremely short-term thinking. A rising tide floats all boats.

So DSG would love a richer far East. But that wealth won't just appear overnight. It has to be created, and the only way that's going to happen is by companies like DSG continuing to do business, transferring money paid by customers in Britain to workers in the far East. And if a Malaysian worker is paid half what a British worker is, then good: hire two of them, feeding two families rather than just one, and getting twice the output in return. How can that be thought to be immoral?

You're being unfair. No one (or nearly no one) is saying "you can't have", they're saying "this is mine, get your own". Wealth isn't a fixed pie to be divided up; it's something that's actively created by people's actions. Your wealth does not cause my poverty.

Money isn't the root of all evil; the desire to get money without earning it is. And that moral failing exists irrespective of the dominant economic system; it just expresses itself in different ways. Under capitalism, it's unfair and exploitative trading practices. Under socialism, it's welfare parasitism and government corruption. Different symptoms of the same disease.

I doubt it. Not when the packaging calls it "complimentary soap". I think it's fair enough to consider the soap to be a gift from the hotel to you, much like the little chocolates on the pillow.

It's a flawed metaphor anyway. If you take the soap, it's gone, whereas when you download an MP3, it's still there. A better comparison would be dodging your fare on the Underground - and Transport for London levies a £50 fine for that, which is less than a parking ticket will cost you.

Not surprising, since the term "marijuana" was only co-opted into English by prohibitionists in the first place.

In English, that plant is called cannabis. "Marijuana" is a piece of Mexican slang, which was aggressively used by prohibitionists because they found that it linked the drug in people's minds with the Mexican immigrant community. This allowed them to take advantage of the existing anti-immigrant (racist) prejudice of 1930s America to gather public support for prohibition.

See the Wiki.