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We have something similar to chavs here in the States. They are generally known as "wiggers", a portmanteau of white and you can probably guess the other word. I had a wigger roommate, and spent several months dealing with both him and his friends that he would invite over to our house. Here is what I learned: Some general characteristics: - Of low moral fiber and thus generally somewhat criminal - Generally unconcerned with the well-being of others - Not typically concerned with their physical hygene (like their moral hygene) - Highly unintelligent and easily confused by complex concepts - No long term plans, simply drifting through life leeching off of others or the system whenever possible in a completely directionless, oblivious manner - Aggressive: Likely to instigate physical conflict over matters which are better settled with a simple "Pardon me", or simply for no reason at all - But cowardly: Likely to lose in a direct physical confrontation with your average male, so more likely to pick on the weak, female, or to use the element of surprise (followed by a quick escape) - Enamored with (US) black culture, particularly rap/hip-hop. Likely an enthusiast of rapping themselves. Listen almost exclusively to recent top 40s hip-hop / gangsta rap - Place extreme value upon ostentatious valuables and liquid wealth, with little care for long term assets. Generally bad with money. - Enjoy wife beaters (as in the article of clothing), doo rags, and baseball caps worn backwards or sideways. Sometimes donned in various combinations (doo rag and a baseball cap or multiple baseball caps) - Generally untrustworthy, exploitative people Do these qualities describe chavs? It seems like in the UK there are also female chavs. Do they exhibit similar qualities? In the US wiggers are exclusively male. There are female hangers on to the crowd, but in general they are simply vain and unintelligent girls who like rap/hip-hop and black culture but otherwise are not identifiable with the subculture.

I think brain-computer interfaces are going to revolutionize the world. Since the dawn of man our conscious experience has been limited by what our senses have been able to observe and what tasks our bodies have been able to perform. Brain-computer interfaces have the ability to blow away this barrier. With it comes the potential that our consciousness may literally expand outside our skulls, that we will be able to directly partake of information without some intermediary sensory translation interface, and that we will be able to directly elicit change in the outside world without involving muscle movement. I reel at just the idea of a brain-computer interface that can replace the keyboard and mouse with thought alone. Once it becomes bidirectional all bets are off.

Can you name a toxin present in cigarette smoke that's demonstratably more carcinogenic than polonium-210? According to the Wikipedia article on the health effects of tobacco smoking, polonium-210 is by far the most potent carcinogen. Next is nitrosamine, which can be eliminated to the point of undetectability by drying tobacco with indirect fire curing. Following that is benzopyrene, which can be eliminated by vaporizing cigarettes rather than burning them. The other 16 known carcinogens in cigarettes exist in negligible quantities, arguably insufficient to induce cancers. Why? After some 40 years of anti-smoking campaigns the population of smokers is still on the rise. Is it better to just let them succumb to cancer? People are dying because they're willingly consuming a product that contains poison. Two options here: Convince them to stop, or get rid of the poisons. We've tried the first option with increasing intensity for the past 40 years with negligible success. Why not try the second? I'll again quote the Martell paper, with the relevant points you're ignoring bolded: And again, there's a single, common, known source for the radioisotopes in tobacco. They all come from phosphate fertilizers which are contaminated with compounds from the radon decay sequence. In 1980 Martell proposed a solution: switch to fertilizers which are free of radioactive compounds. The tobacco industry said this was a "valid but expensive point": http://tobaccodocuments.org/youth/CgHmPMI19800402.Me.html As the Cap'n said... radioactive heavy metals and their compounds are readily absorbed by your digestive tract... while there is minimal exposure, it passes through your digestive tract and is expelled by natural processes. Your lungs have natural processes for clearing foreign objects as well, but these processes cannot clear insoluble, radioactive polonium compounds. Instead the polonium sticks to your sensitive internal lung tissue and bombards it with extremely hazardous alpha radiation.

Those espousing the position of Senator Lugar see the goal as being unwinnable for all intents and purposes, or one that can only be achieved after thousands of sacrificed lives, decades of invested time, and hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars spent. By all accounts the situation has progressively worsened since the war began. International terrorism has increased. Iraq has continuously tended towards civil war. Civilian deaths have fluctuated but more or less continued a downward decline. The situation is not improving. Senator Lugar's suggestion is to call for an international summit between the Iraqi government and the surrounding nations in order to propose the withdrawal of US troops. The goal would be to find a regional solution to the problem of the Iraqi insurgency, one which does not require Western involvement which is just as likely precipitating the situation as resolving it. Clearly any change such as a troop withdrawal will have immediate negative consequences. However, the goal of Senator Lugar and others like him isn't to mitigate immediate consequences, but rather find a sustainable, long-term solution. In the words of T.E. Lawrence, Arabia for the Arabs.

So you're saying that Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) is lying to the American people, and actually supports the war, but is just playing to his base to get reelected? It's not a war. It's a military occupation. The benchmarks set by the administration to measure the effectiveness of the Surge are not being met. The strategy we've been attempting for the past 6 months is not working. It's not "fantisizing about defeat", it's coming to the realization that the potential negative consequences of our continued presence in Iraq outweigh the potential negative consequences of a withdrawal. Clearly you feel differently, but both are valid, defensible positions. Strawmanning the other position as an irresponsible fantasy, without providing any relevant details as to why is a classic example of how the other side likes to frame the debate. Who needs facts when you have fallacies? I suggest you watch the Richard Lugar video. He discusses the current situation within the context of benchmarks put forward by Congress which are not being met: And also note how Tony Snow flat out lies about Lugar's position to downplay a shift in Republican opinion.

So your argument is why not leave a radioactive compound in cigarettes because cigarettes contain other carcinogens? You also seem to be assuming that the other carcinogens are also not preventable through changes in the manufacturing/consumption process, and exist in quantities sufficient to cause cancer. Can you substantiate either of these assumptions? Cigarettes are the #1 cause of preventable death, at least in the US. Anti-smoking campaigns and smoking bans are one approach to curbing the problem, but meanwhile America's smokers are still inhaling radioactive smoke. From the Martell paper: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/80/5/1285 That would be a strawman which confuses a fatal dose with a carcinogenic dose. Polonium-210 is also found in some food products. There's a combination of factors which make cigarettes different: - Tobacco leaves, which are processed for direct consumption, are sticky and retain dust which blows on them from the fertilized topsoil - The leaves are smoked rather than eaten. This deposits the polonium compounds along with a sticky tar which binds them directly to lung tissue. - While insoluble polonium compounds can be naturally cleared by the digestive system, it can take months for the lungs to clear insoluble polonium compounds - Cigarettes are addictive and addicts typically consume 20+ per day

Here's a New York Times article on the same story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/washington/09prexy.html?ei=5090&en=3f1d31aa3c783295&ex=1341633600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1184040900-VwcJ7YNwMJrbEMWiVCKcJQ And some excellent Tony Snowballing: And let me say right here and now: I agree with Dick Lugar. In my opinion the consequences remaining in Iraq outweigh the consequences of a withdrawal.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3359764&page=1 A recent spat of Republican mind-changing regarding the situation in Iraq has the White House in "panic mode", according to ABC. Do you feel like public opinion on the situation in Iraq is finally changing to the point that a drastic departure from past strategy is on the horizon, or will the "crack in the dike" among Republican opinion be patched up by more Tony Snowballing?

In systems with universal healthcare there's an added incentive for the healthcare system to bring costs down by promoting healthier lifestyles.

Polonium enters the cigarette production process through phosphate fertilizers which are made from calcium rich rock which has been contaminated with radon and radon progeny. This fertilizer is placed on tobacco fields. Wind kicks it up and causes it to blow around. However, unlike most other plants the leaves of tobacco are sticky. The polonium particles deposit and accrue on the leaves, until the plants are harvested. Washing the plants doesn't help. The polonium is stuck all over the leaves, which are in turn processed and sold as cigarettes. I contacted the United States Environmental Protection Agency regarding why this is allowed to happen and they responded that they have not been given regulatory authority over polonium levels in tobacco. I wrote my senator and asked why they did not have this power, suggesting they should, and got some boilerplate back about how he's working to stop smoking. Awesome.

Yes, many years ago I hopped on the 6bone for the purposes of seeing the dancing KAME (KAME is an IPv6 implementation used by several different operating systems) However they didn't exactly do a good job of hiding it That said, my point specifically pertains to the core routers, not to leaf nodes. Address lookups in BGP routing tables will be substantially slower if the address can't fit in a CPU register, and the core routers are and have always been under considerable load. Hardware is barely improving fast enough to support the infrastructure. That said, it looks like something needs to happen soon. We're running out of IPv4 addresses quickly.

I'd be much more interested in a challenge if it were open to more languages. I have something of a pet peeve regarding Java. However I do enjoy golf (i.e. writing the shortest program possible) and like to submit entries in multiple languages.

The water-fueled car is often the basis of stupid perpetual motion schemes. Typically this involves some sort of wacky electrolysis device, ones which are claimed to somehow release hydrogen in a way that has a positive net energy output. After all, that's the only way a car could run on water, right? Well, there's another way. Rather than using an electrical reaction, you can use a chemical reaction. In this case, with boron: http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/energy-fuels/mg19125621.200 The basic idea: fill your car with water... and boron. The boron reacts with the water to produce boron oxide and hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas can then be run through a fuel cell. After it's been passed through the fuel cell the water vapor produced can be heated and then passed through the boron reactor again. The boron oxide produced from the reaction with the water can also be collected and reused... a closed system! You returne the boron oxide to a processing plant to be converted back into boron. Here we've reacted a certifiable point of energy input into the system... the boron oxide is converted to boron through a series of chemical reactions, and the only energy input is... solar! A combination of solar heating and solar electricity generation fuels various processes which allow for a completely closed system to convert the boron oxide back to boron. Here's a diagram of that process: http://environment.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2562/25621201.jpg The end result is a 100% emission free way to power cars BRILLIANT!

So really quick... how do we tell crazy people from those who are legitimately a threat?

How about not having to battle with insurance companies over health costs? Not having to go to exclusively to in-network healthcare providers? Not having to worry about what happens to me in an emergency? Not having to worry about an insurance provider looking into what should be confidential medical records in order to disqualify me from care? Not having to sign away my medical privacy because otherwise I'm screwed? Being able to get care whenever I need it without worrying about my insurance sending me a bill for something that I don't consider covered? Being able to get effective antibiotics (e.g. levaquin) without $100 in copay? Or is that just a "cost" issue? Beyond that... letting Americans be more competitive in the international marketplace because they aren't expecting a health package? Do public grants stall innovation in other sciences? That's my view on health sciences. I'd prefer a publicly funded prize system spurring pharmaceutical research. I'd rather see medical science pursue cures for debilitating and terminal diseases rather than curing baldness or impotence.

So, Michael Moore's new film Sicko is out in theaters. I saw it an greatly enjoyed it. I've been an advocate of Universal Single-Payer Healthcare for quite some time, and find it refreshing that someone is finally thrusting it into the public spotlight. So, two questions: 1) For those of you outside the US who do have universal healthcare, what do you think of your system and what do you think of the USes? Generally people in America are under the impression that they are receiving the best care available (if you go to an in-network provider!) and are generally quite wary about the idea of a universal single-payer system. 2) For those of you in the US, what do you think about a universal single-payer healthcare system, and what do you think about other systems worldwide? According to a WHO survey conducted in 2000, Americans rate their healthcare system as being #37 in the world in terms of satisfaction, while they pay the most as a percentage of GDP. (and with the largest GDP in the world, that of course makes America the largest healthcare spender in the world) This means America ranks itself below every other first world country, and under many third world countries (Moore made this point by taking 9/11 aid workers to Cuba to receive healthcare). Colombia, Chile, and Costa Rica all rank their healthcare higher than Americans.

I really hate thinking about this... but as far as I can tell any Democratic success, and many failures, inevitably seem to lead to this According to the polls Hillary is set to claim either the #1 or #2 spot at the primaries. Even if Obama wins, she's likely to get the VP slot. About the only way out of this, as far as I can tell, is a Gore/Obama ticket (yeah, I'll keep dreaming) I think in all likelyhood we'll see either an Obama/Clinton ticket or a Clinton/Obama one. In the latter case, Hillary is the presidential candidate. In the former, either they win or they don't. If they win, then it would seem almost inevitable that Hillary, as VP, would seek the presidential nomination. If they lose, then Hillary would be in Edwards shoes now. This is perhaps the only scenario I can think of where she may fade to the background (besides an Obama/Hillary ticket getting defeated after 1 term), and it's not a particularly favorable one for me.

There was really only one thing that was in Apple's hands in this regard. Apple tried to make XQuery/XSLT-based applications available (i.e. Dashboard widgets) and couldn't get it certified. As a mobile device the software it runs must be certified for use on mobile networks. They went to Safari/AJAX as the least common denominator. What's noticeably missing missing from the iPhone is J2ME. This has been the standard route for allowing 3rd party developers access to your platform, and has been used quite successfully for some years. I don't know why Apple decided against including J2ME on the iPhone. Perhaps porting it to Cocoa like they did J2SE was too difficult an undertaking. As things stand it's a noticeably absent feature. But regardless, because of software certification requirements no cell phone is an open platform. The closest you'll get are sandboxed 3rd party apps in a certified runtime. My expectation is we'll see J2ME on the iPhone in the near future.

Realism is based around the brash assumption that there is a realist ontology separate from your first-person ontology. Unlike your first-person ontology, which is unique to your conscious experience, a key assumption about the realist ontology is that it is shared. Numbers are real in that they both pertain to real-world objects and can be symbolically codified in such a way that they can be communicated. In this statement you're questioning either or both of these things: 1) Reality exists 2) The signal-to-noise ratio of sense data is high enough that noumena are typically reliable representations of real world objects and concepts. It's pointless and entirely without merit to debate these concepts, since they are intrinsically unknowable. Arguing the contrary to either of these gets you nowhere. If 1 is false then I am an illusion and there's no point in even talking to me since I don't exist. If 2 is false then I may or may not be a hallucination, as is everything you experience, and therefore 1 is fundamentally unknowable to any degree. Therefore it's futile to try to learn anything, because there's no correspondence between sense data and the realist ontology. If you doubt either of these then you should really just stop trying to debate or learn anything at all, because your pursuit of knowledge is really either the pursuit of an illusion or a random walk through amorphous clouds of sensory noise which have nothing to do with reality. I believe the rest of us are quite happy to pursue knowledge under the pretense that reality exists and that what we perceive is realistic.

It's apparently being "spun" the same way by the House Oversight Committee: http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1371 The language comes from the Executive Order regarding the handling of classified information If he is an entity within the executive branch, then the executive order pertains to him. He's arguing it doesn't, because he's not an entity within the executive branch. If "Office of the VP" belongs to sets "legislative" and "executive", and a rule applies to set "executive", then the rule applies to the set member "office of VP", regardless of what other set memberships "Office of the VP" may have. I couldn't find the specific language Cheney's office used, but it's specifically claimed by the House Oversight Committee that he has asserted that he is not an entity within the executive branch, the only sensible way that he could claim the aforementioned executive order would not apply to him. Methinks the purveyors of the uncited conservative spin you're referencing lack a basic knowledge of set theory.

Considering that all studies into the matter have shown an increase in international terrorism following the instigation of the supposed "war on terror", I'd say at the very least it's a losing battle. That's not to mention the afforementioned problem of the lack of a specific opponent.

Please see this thread: Why do cigarettes cause cancer? Short answer: yes See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco_smoking

Cheney is claiming executive privilege but at the same time claiming he's not part of the executive branch... HUH?

Wow, you'd really like Kant. You're basically regurgitating his arguments about the separation of noumena and phenomena. Noumena, a.k.a. sense data objects a.k.a. perceptions are all your consciousness has access to. Objects in your head aren't real objects, they're just elaborate reconstructions of those objects in thought space. That's assuming there's any reality at all! Perhaps you're just a brain in a vat, being fed deceptive sensory patterns by a diabolical madman. Scientists make two brash assumptions: 1) Reality is as it presents itself (i.e. sense data objects are reliable models of reality) 2) Reality is comprehensible in terms of physical law/mathematics My question would be: do you dispute either of these? If so I have no answers for you, but I don't see that path as being particularly productive. I will call those that question either of these assumptions wrong, but I do that out of my beliefs. Those who do question these assumptions can just as easily call me wrong, but again, it's just a battle of words. There's no way to be conclusive about either of these topics. All I can offer up in defense of these assumptions is the massive explanatory power of science.

The main selection mechanism I'd see is universes incapable of producing black holes, or ones which lead to a lineage which is increasingly incapable of producing black holes. Is that what this paper is suggesting? To me a selection event occurs when an individual dies without reproducing.