So wait...

... you just wasted an entire article on something written by PRAVDA? I mean, really, who takes that rag seriously? The only time anyone ever believed what pravda published was back in the days of th soviet union, and even then it was only the loons who thought the USSR was some sort of paradise.

Is Paris a vegetarian or a vegetable?

Bass Ackwards as usual?

Would it not be more likely that jihadist types would try and recruit people who actually know how to make bombs?

The bigger question is, what proportion of jihadis raise funds from downloading music?

Terse and impenetrable, sure...

But not exactly creative. My favourite still remains Commodore's "Guru Meditation Error". It was very zen.

Tux, because the other day I actually was able to read a kernel panic and understand why it was panicking.

"There should be a law"

If there's *anything* that should strike terror into the hearts of the average man it's when someone speaks those five words, since they mouth often spill from the mouths of people who haven't a clue how to go about it. It's as if legislation is some sort of magic bullet that solves all the world's ills.

Let them explain how it will be done, in detail and in language that anyone who isn't a lawyer can understand, before they're allowed to submit even a green paper on the subject. Then when everyone's finished laughing the edjit in question can go away and cry in the corner.

That shark jumping moment...

Everyone hits it sooner or later.

@Ian McNee

If they offered the same level of service I wouldn't *have* to go to these dodgy outlets.

@Try Pritt-Stick

"If you sniff at a Pritt-Stick for long enough, interesting things start to happen. Go on, try it."

Yes... the men in white coats give you a nice new jacket.

@Steve Roper

Ozone is a good thing in the right place - up there. Down *here* it's a very potent poisonous gas which is why people make such a fuss about it.

Edison and Swan

Actually both men invented the light-bulb independently; not one nor the other, but both. Edison and Swan went into partnership in Great Britain and Europe because Swan held British patents.

They both invented it. Great minds and all that.

Nothing good can come of it.

Where will these people be when the first old lady dies because some twit on a "visit" to their new socially cohesive fire station got in the way and tripped up a pump's driver, delaying their departure by 30 seconds?

It makes all the difference...

It's possibly ironic...

It's very likely that the clay tablet in question is a receipt or bill of sale. A large number of the tablets dug up in the middle east are receipts, stock lists, shopping lists and inventories.

Might even be a receipt for a dodgy auction...

What next, losing the entire MoD's employment database?

Oh wait, losing that one would set back organised crime by decades it's so inaccurate...

Without wanting to be flippant...

I can't read GWT as anything other than Global War on Terror these days.

Yes, the one with the american flag on the lapel, please...

@Steve

Mythology? Well, I suppose a mythos would have to be called that wouldn't it?

Anyway, the best explanation I ever heard for the Trinity was in Nuns on the Run, when Robbie Coltrane's character relays the way his Father (priest, not biological) used to describe the trinity. "It's like a clover. Tree leafs, but one leaf." Which later got translated in to "small gree and split three ways"...

Damn good film.

It's not quite apt, of course. The church fathers spent almost a century in the 200s AD (or CE if you prefer) defining what the words meant before they even started trying to describe the concept to each other (and consequently it's not a surprise that the word most often used for legalistic, impenetrable hierarchies is "Byzantine", since that particular empire was where about half these word-wibblers lived at the time...).

Like quantum theory, anyone who claims to understand it hasn't really grasped the implications.

@Svein

One nitpick: Norway is in the EFTA, not the EEC. Technically speaking the EEC doesn't exist and, again technically speaking, the EFTA is a seperate entity to the EU. However the EU has a lot of clout on the EFTA and, in any case, has bilateral agreements with Norway and Switzerland (another country that is starting to wonder if its relationship witht he EU is really worth it thanks to the EU's attempts to interfere in their tax laws).

At least you lot have the option. There isn't a single party in the UK that even mentions the EU anymore, despite the fact that it's doing most of the work now.

@crashIO

You just paraphrased about half of the New Testament. Just thought I'd mention that... :)

I find it odd that Dawkins has railed against the christians in particular and not met with much more than blank indifference, a lot of shouting and... not much else, and now the supposedly secular government of Turkey is talking about banning his book. The world has gone insane. I think I might just buy a copy out of spite now.

The hungry terrorist is often the most committed to his cause.

Which is why nearly all terrorist attacks since the 1970s - what you might call the dawn of modern terrorism I guess - have been carried out or organised by educated and relatively affluent men. I include the IRA in this assessment.

Poor people can't afford the equipment to blow shit up. It's as simple as that. Remove the funding and you remove the ability to blow shit up. It's as simple as that... the Palestinians weren't able to blow stuff up until they started getting huge funding from Iran and Saudi Arabia, the IRA weren't able to mount effective campaigns until they started getting large monetary donations from wealthy east-coast Americans, and they ceased to be able to do so when those same americans suddenly stopped funding them in the aftermath of 9/11, which forced them to finally acquiesce once and for all to the Good Friday agreement. The Taleban was completely bankrolled by Saudi oil money through Bin laden. The attacks in the Maldives began after Saudi oil money started pouring in to the country through third-parties and "charities".

Take away the money and the large-scale terrorism stops because they can't afford the equipment to blow shit up.

It's really that simple.

But I suppose that makes me a bigot...

@Anthropic principle?

Not enough data.

Never enough data. :)

As a christian...

... I would, of course, love to jump on this as proof that God exists, that the world is designed for us speshul people and that everyone should get down on their knees and beg, BEG for forgiveness for ever doubting that.

However...

It strikes me that these scientists are making rather firm pronunciations with very little evidence to back it up. So far we've only observed one planetary system with such a planet-moon configuration of the type they're pronouncing on: this one. Ours. Consequently they're working with a very limited set of data and that will inevitably prevent them from forming a rational theory. Basing a theory on a single data point and a few simulations is not science. It's not even a joke.

@Silly Idea

Well the Wets on the tory front bench would feel right at home with that.

@Nuclear blast proofed?

How on earth are they going to test/accomplish that?

Easy. Put it on a south-sea island and wait for the French to get itchy again.

@Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Ever heard of "till death us do part"? I think all he expected was for his wife to stick to the promise she made on their wedding day.

@At least with ID card data, there's no financial records or bank account info present.

Ahh, but you neglect that an ID card scheme would inevitably become *the* single means of identification for all financial transactions of any kind. It already is in countries with ID cards; open a bank account? Need your ID card. Make a large money transfer that needs a special permission? ID please... setting up a new credit card? Can we see your ID please? Claiming your pension... got your ID card with you sir?

You get the idea.

If someone breaches the ID system once it's in place they will not simply have your bank details, they'll have your entire life. You will be screwed in ways that are not imaginable to even the continental systems, because those at least have the virtue of admitting that the card only identifies the holder as the one holding the card, and they don't keep all your identifying details in a single, easily manipulated central location.

So...

Not content with tying the economy in knots while chancellor with his convoluted taxes and money-grabbing schemes, he's now going to issue the coup de grace by basically making just about every sort of productive work so costly in this country that every sane industry will either leave or shut down and on the say-so, not of science or necessity, but bloody loudest most incoherent scaremongers around.

You're all wrong!

It's Jar-Jar Binks!

The destroyer!

What sort of world...

What sort of world is it where a liberal (in the classic sense) party that calls for reduced government powers can be called fascist? SD want to return immigration control to the swedish government and let the swedish people decide on it, rather than have it dictated to them by the EU. That's it.

All very interesting, but...

... where's the Cleopatra angle?

Rubbish!

Studies like this are scientifically worthless simply because they massage the numbers and then massage them again, splitting things up and boxing them off into smaller and smaller sample sizes until patterns start to emerge. The problem is, these patterns are false.

Lets take an example, following the sort of methodology used in these studies. Take a group of 100 men and split them up into people who have cancer and people who don't. Now start to split them up by age and look for apparent factors. Already you're experiencing a problem, because you won't have an even spread of men across your age groups. You'll have another problem too; your samples are tiny. Still, you press on, because it's for the greater good, right? So eventually you find out that a lot of your men who do have cancer in specific age groups are also bald...

Baldness MIGHT cause cancer!

Probably not going to fly though, but you persevere... and then you also find out that a "significant" number of your men in specific groupings were wearing nylon underwear (god knows why, but they do).

Nether-region exposure to nylon MIGHT cause cancer! What's the mechanism? Who knows! But feeding lab mice large amounts of the chemicals that are used to make nylon gives those mice cancer so it must be true!

Anyway, of the women I know, all the smart ones have narrow hips... not that I'm looking, you understand.