I think that what a galactic princess sticks into her droid in private is none of your business.

> The Pirate Bay Founders Go Legit

Bwahahahahahaha

For those who don't know, we just had a federal election up here in May. The conservatives, led by a radical right winger, took absolute power (a majority of seats in the house of commons) with only 39% of the vote. 61% of Canadians voted for more centrist or progressive parties that - for the most part - have a fair amount in common, but because the vote was split between the other parties, the conservatives cleaned up.

The system is utterly broken, but the decline in voting rates over recent decades (mostly in younger voters who recognise how appallingly unjust the system is and are disenfranchised by it) won't improve much with online voting techno-fixes. If you want people to engage in their democracy, we need a proportional representation (or at a minimum a ranked-ballot) voting system that makes people feel like their vote won't be wasted because depending on which party you vote for, or chance of where you live.

Ah yes, the "trickle down effect". Consider your understanding of economics downgraded to AA+

Simple: The author of the article is a well-funded climate denier working for the Heartland Institute. Same folks who tried to convince people that there was no link between second hand smoke exposure and cancer.

Yes, but that changes nothing.

Previously, temperature shifted due to ice ages, and CO2 amplified that shift (CO2 being responsible for the significant proportion of the actual temperature increase). This time, we've kicked things off instead.

It's not hard to understand. Recommended reading: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

I enjoy your optimism, but...

...we need to be a little faster than that. Despite the current wars and recession, we live (historically) in a period of unprecedented wealth and global political stability. If we don't sort out our energy use before 2030, we aren't going to have the global stability necessary to mess around in space much longer.

I don't doubt your good faith, but you didn't check .com (or if you did, you didn't check back to the originating dns servers). It's certainly been seized, whereas the article says it hasn't.

I have no idea if you're correct about his specialties, but let's say you're right, what makes you so sure Obama isn't hiring him because he expects the policies he's about to enact are so progressive they will get the government sued by those who would advocate draconianism?