I dont really care about the specific approach. The point is someone should show some leadership in the EU and do something, anything else than pushing austerity.

It's not a threat, since after all it's not like I have the power to make it happen. Currently austerity seems to be on this path:
1. Greek finances are ever more strained and closer to collapse
2. Confidence in Spain and Italy weakens as a result (60+ billion capital flight from Spain in March reported today)

If Spain falls further it will affect confidence in Italy and either country will strain France which is a big lender. If France, Italy and Spain get into serious economic trouble Germany will take a hit that will dwarf any amount of money the Greek elite could waste. It's not a threat, but rather a serious risk of the dominoes falling.

The past Greek governments have done a terrible job and now the country suffers for it - this is undoubtedly true. It is also true that the German economy has been much better.

However, Germany has benefited enormously from sharing a currency with them. Being one of the world's largest exporters, they benefit from a relatively weak currency. If they had their own currency now they would be like Switzerland - a safe haven in the crisis, with a very strong currency and problems with exports.

But currently the problems in the other countries devalue the euro, meaning Germany gets to export at great prices. Meanwhile the crisis-hit euro countries have an over-valued currency, and they can't do anything about it. Basically, Germany gets a huge boost for free and pretends it's all due to working hard.

Germany is resisting money-printing and collective eurobonds which would give the crisis-hit countries an opportunity to grow again. They want the others to sort their own things out - but if the others run out of options and crash, Germany might end up wishing they had done something.

FWIW I'm in one of the rich and balanced euro countries. Doesn't matter, I still think we need something else than "tough love" to solve this.

Haven't spam and spam countermeasures already made the effort of running your own mailserver unreasonable? At least I've heard that you'll be basically blocked either by default or after a while.

Add to that malware which just loves the idea of a spare mailserver whose owner works elsewhere most of the time and the fact that it's hard to even get ONE static IP these days and suddenly the current system is already the domain of large organizations (and a few super-nerds who are there mostly through inertia.)

I don't think anyone is lobbying against v6. But even if they were v4 will run out soon, we'll have a small crisis and at that point v6 adoption will explode no matter what anyone says or thinks. After that we won't be able to remember IPs but everything else will be better.

The little bit of political science I've read contradicts this, although I admit it's so little that I can't dig up any sources on short notice.

But the basic thing is this: if you have a lot of nukes you tend to build up a huge army precisely so that you'll never have to use them. You know nukes probably mean mutually assured destruction, so you never go "oh no problem, I'll just lean on the nukes".

Now, even though I live in Western Europe I think it's not that important: the Soviet Union was the only superpower to defend its home turf in Europe. It had a huge army. The US also had a huge army, but it didn't have its capital in Europe. The fact remains that both nuclear armed to the teeth superpowers also had strong conventional arms.

Also a quick check with unreliable sources gives
350,000 US troops in Europe in 1980. Add different national armies to this and the fact that the defender tends to be in a better position and the certain Soviet victory starts looking a lot less certain. Not to mention that 350 000 troops mostly standing guard far away from home hardly sounds like defence is cheap.

Not a bad point, and Chernobyl should figure in most radiation data comparisons due to its nature. However, radiation levels vary wildly in the area: the animals could have eaten their food from a hotspot even if the background would have been tolerable (which we don't really know either.)

No we don't. But, I'll say this much: the DOE is involved with coal power. The DOE is involved with nuclear power. Clearly, they're simultaneously plotting to replace coal with nuclear and nuclear with coal.

Also this was funded by both MIT and the DOE. This is just basic research, so cool it with the conspiracy theories.

Progressivism because (1) flag burning and riots and meeting with the North Vietnamese in Cuba tends to transmit to everyone else, no matter what your pious words are, that you hate your country, thus breaking societal cohesion and (2) TV and movies -- of which all/majority of the writer were Progressive -- starting in the 1970s coarsening the culture with ever increasing amounts of foul language in movies and TV while eliminating cultural norms like good manners: children saying Please, Thank You, Sir & Ma'am, thus destroying the social lubricant

I think you have cause and effect reversed. If there was such great social cohesion, then where did these society-destroying people come from? Where did the riots come from?

Social change had already happened. The societal cohesion you talk about was already gone, and had perhaps been a faÃade in the first place - Middletown pressured everyone into behaving 'properly', but that everyone really was like that doesn't necessarily follow.

You can't have perfect social cohesion and riots at the same time. Some liked the old order and some didn't, and both groups were citizens. Both groups were also equally led by leaders and ideologies - there wasn't one group which "followed its heart" and another that was brainwashed by media.

I agree completely about the super-category part.

I wouldn't change the orbit definition, mostly because another huge can of worms would be opened then. : )

I don't see what would put Ceres and Pluto in different categories under any system. Neither has cleared its orbit (I too think this is a silly criterion.) Both have the hydrostatic equilibrium thing going. Both orbit the sun directly.

Well, there *is* one peculiarity about Pluto: the barycenter of the Pluto-Charon system is outside both. While I dislike the clear the neighbourhood criterion I think this system is actually the strongest proof of the current planet definition being temporary: Pluto-Charon is a binary (dwarf) planet, yet no one has bothered to even mention Charon. Instead one of our current dwarf planets orbits an empty piece of space.

Apart from it being a shame system there are also other problems.

This is a form of measurement system, and sociological studies have shown that those are growing increasingly common in schools. The problems is the same as with most such systems: the thing being measured isn't necessarily anywhere close to what is thought.

In the case of a list of who completed things first, the probability is high that it measures who took the most shortcuts and did the least amount of work possible relative to their own capabilities.

Instead of focusing on measurement and rivalry studies have shown that focusing on equality and everyone in class doing a good job lifts the entire group. I do not know if this carries over to work environments, but I'm sceptical about using rivalry when there could be co-operation instead.

(Further reading: sociologists who have written about the culture of measurement in schools include David Hargreaves and Risto Rinne.)

What the fuck are you on about?

That story is *all over* the net. NBC, ABC, Washington Post, Fox, Reuters, and numerous smaller sites. The paper itself is to be published (if it wasn't already published) in Cancer, which is the journal of the American Cancer Society.

If you actually honestly think that story or this Russian story will somehow disappear you're most likely paranoid, and not in the colloquial sense either.

And who was stupid enough to moderate the quoted comment up? It's just paranoid rambling with little connection to the story above.

It's not human nature, it's your civilization and its institutions.

Not every culture has had organized violence, humans are perfectly capable of keeping murder a purely personal affair.

War is not easy to do away with in the situation we're in, but don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that we are doing the only thing possible. Apart from comparisons with other cultures I'll also throw this in here: wars with conscripts involved require strong measures against desertion. Often the death penalty is necessary to keep everyone in line.

You don't need a death threat to attack someone you're angry at. But in war it's suddenly needed. It's really the societal institution of war perpetuating itself, since human nature alone is completely incapable of carrying it. Violence is human nature, war is not.

Man, it's been too long since last time I saw a proper old school Slashdot troll. It even uses homosexuality as the point of interest! Refreshing.

Now I just want some hot grits.

The yield is lower, but was energy input taken into account?

If fewer resources are required organic could still win out.

Although I suspect it will still be like the summary says: both will have their place. It's a small miracle we're feeding about seven billion people, and it was achieved through hard work and using all the tools available.

Add some more billions and we'll likely have organics, conventional agriculture and GM crops side by side, since we'll have no choice but to use all tools again.

I'm confused, what does this make Futurological Congress?