Shoot to Kill, or simply "Kill."

When does anyone outside Hollywood <em>Not</em> Shoot to Kill? AFAIK, all forces say 'shooting to injure' is stupid, doesn't work and shouldn't be tried; you should either be prepared to Kill, and justify it, or don't shoot.

"Shoot to Kill", as in the euphemism used in Northern Ireland, simply meant

a "Shoot" policy. As in, don't even try to arrest them, just kill them.

Which is what happened to De Menzes.

Counter-argument?

Dan,

its the opposite way round: the existence of man-made climate change is effectively settled scientifically (not the _effects_, but its existence.). Most sceptics have been won over recently - eg. the last 5 years. Even the likes of Bjorn Lomborg, etc. no longer deny it -- hes changed his line to saying its 'not worth doing anything about' (shades of Bush).

However the political spin has been to _claim_ there is much more scientific doubt than there is. About 50% of the population think that the scientific case is unproven; about 98% think its proven.

Can you point for example to recent scientific literature that shows the case unproven?

Non-Darwinian life

Jokes are never funny when explained, but anyway ...

Theres an unexpected 'double entendre' when talking of looking for 'non-Darwinian life' : there is a planned space mission

Darwin (http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120382_index_0_m.html) thats probably

our best hope of finding extraterrestrial life in the near future.

Its looking for the signature of life on terrestrial planets similar to our own:

oxygen for example being a biomarker (gas, in the presence of

e.g. methane, unlikely to be present without life). So the Darwin mission

is looking for Darwinian life ...

CERN and the Science

Re CERN: The work done by Svensmark et al. has gone a part of the way to showing something that could affect climate: Cosmic Rays can create ions, which could cause water droplets to form.

They couldn't generate cosmic rays : the CERN accelerator can. Hence, CERN

can help prove this effect. It would be a worthwhile experiment.

From there to "Cosmic Rays explain all Climate Change", which Svensmark claims, is a huge leap: you need first to prove:

- the small molecules (DMS molecules of 0.1 um size, I think) do grow into large ones, large enough to seed water droplets.

- That water droplets then form, and this leads to clouds.

- That this leads to more clouds than you would otherwise get.

- That this leads to climate change.

Lots of work. You're far from there yet.

Svensmark claimed that the warming up to 1950 - 1980 or so was due to solar cycles, and that temperatures would decline as solar activity declined.

It didn't, as Lockwood shows.

Theres more to it than that, for a detailed scientific discussion, go to the "Real Climate" blog.

Lesson: don't add a graphical tour of new features

The advert mail for ubuntu 7.04 has a pointer to a graphical tour

of new features on 7.04. Suspected load issue?

The website is now failing over to www-static.ubuntu.com,

which doesn't include 7.04 release notes or the graphical tour.

Queuing in SL?

Hmm,

Does this mean I can have my Avatar do all my queuing and

hanging about in Airports for me? I wish.