Doesn't London have about four cameras trained on each resident 24/7? Last I heard, England was supposed to be a free democracy, too. Where are your protests and riots?

An AC basically just said the same thing -- Slashdot seems to have a very large contingent of "Libertarians", some rational, some unhinged. How this happened continues to be a subject of discussion among my techy friends. This isn't "News for Nerds" but it does cater to much of the Slashdot readership, both the Libertarians and we who are interested, but not convinced, by their arguments.

I see that you already responded to the question I just posed to you. No need to reply to mine. I'm not sure that climatology is quite to the rigor that astronomy is due to the complexity of the field, but that doesn't mean it isn't -- I just don't know. It is certainly at the point where the argument for AGW is easier to make than the argument that all the observations in favor of it, "just happened to fall in line at this time in history". Maybe that's not enough to be actionable at this time, maybe it is; that is really probably an argument for the risk management experts, whoever they are.

By your definition astronomy, paleontology, and any part of geology which hypothesizes the formation of rocks and major landforms are not proper science. There are sciences which are not experimental sciences but still make testable predictions. The predictions are along the line of, "if you make the following observation, you will observe this..", or, "if you build this type of instrument and look in this place, you will observe this phenomenon...". The theory of the big bang cosmology made a testable prediction that the cosmic microwave background radiation would be observed, if someone would build the right radiotelescope and look for it. As it turned out the CMB was first observed accidentally but soon was recognized as the observation predicted by the big bang theory. Since then there have been other predictions made by the big bang cosmology theory such as cosmic helium abundances and structure in the CMB spectrum; all were subsequently observed. So was this speculation or science?

"And the same data tells us that this is far below the carbon or temperatures that Earth experienced during most of the time that mammals and primates evolved and that there is no reason to believe that higher CO2 concentrations are anything but favorable." -- true but those conditions (CO2 and temperature) are not the ones under which Human Civilization evolved over the last several thousand years, and so is almost certainly best adapted for. Doesn't matter what was better for the tree sloths and lemurs before us.

1, as the multiplicative unit in the algebraic ring of integers, has a special significance and does not work like the other integers in almost all number theory discussions. Same goes for 0 as the additive unit. These two "numbers" have special properties in most algebraic constructions (groups, fields, rings, etc.). A legitimate question you ask there, but the answer pretty much is just that 1 is "special" and doesn't "count" for this issue. Perhaps a better answer might be that because of 1's special properties in the ring of integers, including it in many theorems, formulas, etc, causes the construction under study to collapse to a trivial subset of the complexity of the actual problem and so become not useful in studying the general problem -- not sure what I just said there!

To all the uninformed -- being on the State Dept's Munition's List just means that the US will not allow US developed technology to be exported without a license. The US Government has no issue with items or technology developed by OTHER countries which fill the same function. So anyone in Canada, Russia, Somalia, whatever, is free to develop their own commercial manned spacecraft and launch them as much as they want, unaffected at all by this State Dept decision. They just can't do it using US parts or technology without an export license and in some cases they can't do it from US territory without a license. So, all you non-USians upset about this, get off your butts and develop your own, independent manned spacecraft, and show the US up! Or quit whining.

Let's examine the event -- a private citizen associated with a group which opposes the party in power (remember, this is Progress KENTUCKY) secretly records a powerful government official and then releases the recordings for public review. So far, this sounds like the exact OPPOSITE of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. What unpleasant things will next happen to Morrison will determine how close the analogy turns out to be.

Right you are, good point.

For one example, thousands of Japanese-American citizens interred during WWII can tell you all about bypassing the Constitution. Everyone has their underpants in a wad now bemoaning the recent "shredding of the Constitution". Well it was no better in the past and if anything, the abuses were worse before -- try the Anti_Sedition laws of WWI or Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus. So, yeah, these NSLs are a problem, but no worse than what came before and the Constitution is as strong as it ever has been, for what that is worth. Eternal vigilance is required to keep it that way. The previous abuses were eventually recognized for what they were.

Native Texan here -- all those places in Texas where people are moving to for those jobs -- Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas -- what are the politics there? They are all blue (lefty). There is a real dichotomy in Texas -- the bastions of 'conservative Texas values', -- East and rural Texas aren't doing so well, especially with the drought in the central and western parts of the state. The fracked oil and gas boom has given some parts of rural Texas a reprieve for now. As the big cities become even more dominant in the state, I don't see Cruz and his tea party throwbacks lasting much longer.

Damn, when I said "not white enough" was not socially popular, I meant it was a division made by the racists at the time and they decided it was "not socially acceptable" for people they didn't like to be in certain places, not that it is or was really "socially not popular". You know what I 'm trying to say here...

Ok to all who jumped on me, I was being a bit facetious in my reply, hence the exclamation point, but ... if there is a real danger of someone being beaten up just for a legal but not socially popular act then we either need an effective, real-time police presence to prevent it or people really do need to defend themselves, I notice you said the cost of beating the glass wearer is too high for MOST people to consider. No difference in this case from looking "gay" or "not white enough", etc, all socially unacceptable acts which got people beaten up or worse in certain times and places. I don't want to be the guy they name a law after in memory of my gruesome demise.

Don't know why you got modded down -- you are probably right that some people won't take it well and will feel they can take the law into their own hands to express their disapproval. This is a case where handgun concealed carry and 'Stand Your Ground' laws become handy. And with Google Glass you can quickly check the details of the laws in the jursidiction you will be walking around in so your story will be straight when the authorities come to investigate!

The first Soviet A-bomb was practically a copy of the US 'Fat Man' design. From the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDS-1) about it:
" At Lavrenty Beria's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed as an implosion weapon similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan; RDS-1 also had a solid plutonium core. The bomb designers had developed a more sophisticated design (tested later as RDS-2), but rejected it due to the known reliability of the Fat Man type design; the USSR having received extensive intelligence on the design of the "Fat Man" bomb during World War II."
"Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", by Richard Rhodes, includes a good account of the USSR development of their first A-bomb as part of the book's H-bomb story. After this first one, Soviet nuclear technology developed rapidly independently from that of the USA, but at the very beginning they got a lot by spying.