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Submission + - Terrorist flies around no-fly list. (reuters.com)

Submitted by narcberry
narcberry writes: Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab flew to Detroit with a bomb on board. Incompetence guided the design of his trigger, and our government agencies that didn't register him on the no-fly list. So what did Big Brother do? Well they did put him into a database of suspected terrorists.

This whole mess, and the thousands preceding it, begs one big question. How far does big brother have to go to actually make us safe? And at what point can we say it isn't working?
Government

Submission + - WSJ: Time for a Climate Change Plan B (wsj.com)

Submitted by sl149q
sl149q writes: Whether you believe in Climate Change or Climategate the problem is that no one in the first or third world is really willing to actually pay enough to change things fast enough to make much difference. The bigger question is whether it is better to spend money to mitigate one problem (CO2) or solve other problems.

This from an article by Nigel Lawson in the WSJ article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107604574607793378860698.html) : "The reasons for the complete and utter failure of Copenhagen are both fundamental and irresolvable. The first is that the economic cost of decarbonizing the world's economies is massive, and of at least the same order of magnitude as any benefits it may conceivably bring in terms of a cooler world in the next century."

And: "The reason we use carbon-based energy is not the political power of the oil lobby or the coal industry. It is because it is far and away the cheapest source of energy at the present time and is likely to remain so, not forever, but for the foreseeable future."

And if we do need a conspiracy theory it is helpful to remember that 27 out of 50 of the worlds largest oil companies are state owned or controlled (http://www.energyintel.com/DocumentDetail.asp?document_id=245527).

Comment Re:Put him away... (Score 1) 1079

by narcberry (#30410954) Attached to: Sci-Fi Author Peter Watts Beaten, Charged During Border Crossing

Take control? Yes, take control of a situation. Yes, they have guns. So do I. So do a lot of people.
Cops are trained to control a situation, if cop killings are rare, maybe this training has something to do with it?

I know you're enlightened and all, heck I've been saying "acquiesce" ever since I saw Pirates of the Caribbean too; but the dude was Canadian. He isn't standing up to fascism by arguing with a law enforcement officer from a different nation. His place is to say, "thanks for letting me enter your country, even if I have to wait in my car."

Comment Re:Put him away... (Score 1) 1079

by narcberry (#30410890) Attached to: Sci-Fi Author Peter Watts Beaten, Charged During Border Crossing

Sounds poetic, but ignores the special groups that love to break the rule, "don't get into fights where you don't stand a chance."

1. Drunks
2. Druggies
3. People that feel entitled (like, oh, a Canadian crossing the U.S. border and arguing with an officer.)
4. Kids
5. Other

Tally them all up, and it's no longer a rare case.

Comment Re:How can they tell... (Score 2, Insightful) 746

by narcberry (#30198908) Attached to: New Research Forecasts Global 6C Increase By End of Century

Actually, it's ridiculous to believe that scientists have done their due diligence. Science is not a belief system. The scientific method requires rigorous scrutiny, not your kind of blind faith. Being told that thousands of scientists have reached consensus is not science.

GP asked some very good questions. Answering them would give credibility, ad hominem will only get you mod points.

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