As a UK citizen I only ever see Glen Beck in satire shows, the first thing that struck me after watching this was how insulting the spinning fox news icon in the corner of the screen was. Could anyone point out a single factual piece of news in that entire piece? Everything he said was qualified with clauses like "it seems to me" or simply forming his babble in questions.

How on earth can this tripe be paraded on a news channel, giving it a faux sense of authority over the facts.

I have no problem with political opinion pieces on tv but don't try masquerade it as news as that simply insults my intelligence.

A Drop in the ocean

As a plumber I used to work on housing estate building sites a lot, having music helped keep my sanity and also helped my productivity, when doing very similar tasks on one house after another, it helped having music as a time reference as in, I know last time I piped up so many radiators whilst listening to Kid A last time, this time, lets try and do more. It gave me a time scale to my work without constantly checking my watch.

Without music I'd have quitted that job much sooner than I did.

I did research what Daniel Hannon said, context and all, he's a twat of the highest order and if I had any say in his electorate I'd slap him something stupid.

As to princess Di to be fair it wasn't just the BBC that created that hype, the Express took care of most of that. The BBC just took part in what became a feedback loop of hyped grief

As a UK TV license payer I have no problem whatsoever with how the BBC spends my money. A media network charged with producing quality independent broadcasting is fine in my book.

I find their news to be far more balanced and fair than any commercial operator I've encountered, as they're not beholden to their advertisers and contributers and rather to their audience. A perfect example being the current debate in America about socialized healthcare.

First we had reports about how the NHS was being used as an example of how socialized healthcare doesn't work, then reports on the anger this caused in the British populace (my God I was angry), then reports on the isolated incidents where the NHS has failed people.

Nowhere else have I found a more balanced and fair news outlet and I'm eternally grateful that we have our wonderful British Broadcasting Corporation.

It says a lot that James Murdoch has felt he had to attack the BBC to protect his business interests.

I do spend more time driving from place to place than anything else. The area I cover is huge, from Chester to Bangor to Brecon and everything in between. Plus I live in Telford so on average I do about 6 hours driving in a day!

After reading the parent article, one thing I noticed was that welding torches and angle grinders seem to create a sense of well being within your average geek. I have to say, as a plumber who also has a keen interest in all things technological, there's nothing more satisfying than breaking into something with either a blow torch, angle grinder or a drill. I love my job, that I have to use these tools every day gives me great satisfaction and makes me feel like a real man :D

When going through higher education I was originally aiming for a career in IT but half way through decided I didn't really fancy sitting at a desk all day. Becoming a plumber has definitely been the best decision I ever made, I get to work with really cool tools every day, plus I'm at the top of my profession having started plumbing about 6 years ago. I'm one of only 3 people qualified at my level in Mid Wales, and so am in incredible demand. I mainly work on servicing/maintenance on commercial/industrial heating and ventilation systems and see some incredibly cool tech every day. Sorry to brag, but as a self confessed geek, I have to say, plumbing is freaking awesome!

Kinda off topic, sorry about that. I don't often have any connection with anything posted on /. but like to read about it anyway.

Having just tried this for myself it seems to be no longer the case.

Looks like someone at Microsoft is keeping their ear to the ground

Many scientists believe that if the earths climate warms by more than 2 degrees Celsius then we move beyond a tipping point that leads to exponentially warming, killing off almost all life on earth.

There's already enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere now to warm our planet 0.7 degrees Celsius. What's stopping this temperature rise from being immediate is the worlds oceans acting as a massive heat sink buffering the effect.

If such an effort ever took place it would end up pumping huge amounts of warm water to the cold depths, basically stirring up this huge heat sink. Theoretically it could prove to be quite effective in the short term, but it will only make the problem worse as next year there's more warm water to fuel bigger hurricanes.

In the end it could seal our fate

This is something I've never really considered before, but seems to make sense.

When people stopped competing on who could keep eating enough for survival and as social interaction between people increased, the evolutionary battle moved from being physically based to one based on knowledge.

Though this is really a different way of thinking about evolution, there are a lot of parallels I can think of between classic evolution and a knowledge based evolution.

I'd say that as knowledge became more important this evolutionary race moved from just being about independent people a common pool of knowledge grew, almost as an ant hive has a swarm life of it's own, all building for a common purpose, the advancement of that race as a common goal.

Just my 2 cents, as I said I've never really considered this before so I'm only just getting my head round it