ouiouiwewe

I guess it is only considered ethnic cleansing when the operation was successful and against an ethnic minority.

That's a good point. However, given the silence of the Uighur in regards to the genocidal acts their mobs committed, aren't they also concealing information? On the other hand, the Chinese government demonstrated record openness to foreign media (at least compared to the past) and this is why the Western media has any substantial news on the table. I wouldn't necessarily say the Uighur as a whole are an oppressed minority, given the extensive priviliges they enjoy over the ethnic Han especially in terms of law and education. A major reason for this uprising to occur is a result of disparity between the socio-economic status of members of the two ethnics. With this said, there's also much parallel between this particular riot and that of the Paris back in 2006. On the other hand, although the notion of religious freedom seems to play a significant role, it is not something that is specific to the ethnic minorities in China. Let us recall the brutality shown towards the Fah Lung Gung religious groups - The vast majority of them are ethnic Han and many of them were butchered like pigs after their phony leader angered the the communist leaders. Anyhow, I find it difficult to sympathsize with the Uighurs if they are willing to condemn others but unwilling to take responsibility.

Your point would have been reasonable except: - It occurred only a few days ago and stories about Xinjiang's riots started weeks ago - It occurred to ABC but did not appear to have occurred to other major Western news outlet (correct me if I am wrong) At the same time, not all journalists are out in the field. Many of them sit in their home offices writing articles based on existing data. So, the concept of disposition and 'sucking-up' shouldn't have mattered. Even with this aside, if a news outlet is to selectively ignore important elements of a conflict because some members of one side attacked their reporters while members of the other acted all sad and pitiful to them, do you think there are reasons to question the objectivity of their analyses? By the way, I do consider the attack on reporters by the Han mob to be quite disgraceful, if it was unprovoked.

The interesting thing is there are other similar Western report, some of which featuring similar angry mobs that are consisted of the Uigur ethnic instead of the Han ethnic. So again, what allowed the Uigur's actions be overlooked whereas the Han's actions be scrutinized when both groups had been reported to committing hate crimes against each other? Would the scenario be evaluated differently if it was a riot in Chechnya between the Russians and Chechens?

Indeed, I did stress that issue in my OP too. However, there are indeed independent news coverage by the Western media this time around. But the puzzling thing I find is that the media's interpretation of the issue is generally not consistent with the evidence they mined. For example, why aren't the Uigurs not given any blame outside of the Chinese media? Why weren't any sympathy given to the Han Chinese whose families were slaughtered by Uigur mobs and looters (as reported by NYT)?

With all this strife going on in the world on a regular basis, the riots that are taking place in Xinjiang is not something I'd normally consider interesting. However, since I generally read 8/10 yahoo top stories per 12 hours, I have read about 6-7 articles about it in total, over the past few days. For pretty much all of them, the story follows the same idea: - Report of unrest - Casulties - Countries barking about human rights - Locals telling their stories However, one thing that catches my eye in this topic is that while there are numerous reports (based on both Chinese and Western sources) on the brutality of the Uigur attacks, such as burning down stores, slaughtering other ethnic people, and causing fear, (as well as the Han ethnic group's retaliation) while a lot of articles expressed/cited condemnations on how the Chinese government is cracking down on this ethnic group and committing genocide. I tried googling for sources that support this claim, but there doesn't seem to be any other than some exiled Uigur leader's (in the U.S.) claim that the casulties on the Uigur side was exaggerated. While I generally place a great deal of doubt on information released by the PRC's media (namely Xinhua), one thing I do find interesting is that very few (if any) Western journalists dwelled on the ethnic cleansing committed by the Uigur side. In fact, some articles even claimed that the Uigurs and Tibetans (from 2008) were simply protesting peacefully despite evidence on the contrary. Then some others accused China of cultural genocide when the melting pot ideology is the foundation of the United States's culture. Anyway, this is a big question mark I have for this news topic. Either I have missed something or there is a lack of objectivity in the Western media when it comes to China. What's your opinion on this? P.S. This article contains an interesting citation of some director of Democracy and Human Rights at the Foreign Policy Institute . Notice the term "peaceful protests": http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/19420/

I am not sure if hand-sanitizers actually help against viruses...

keep in mind it is not just the US nor just the bush administration. this was just the period in time in which specific methods (and those involved) were actually uncovered and discussed publicly. taks Oh, I'm fully aware there are far worse bodies out there (both in terms of methods and frequency of use) - especially North African states, Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, etc. Still, it's disconcerting that a US administration would have a hand in any sort of torture. It makes it a lot harder to criticise the aforementioned states for the same, for instance. It's difficult to imagine how one can be surprised. If a government is willing to go to war and bomb hostile civillians to protect its interests, then it is not much of a stretch for it to torture enemies for that end as well. Some people still think this world is a lala land.

++ It doesn't hurt to be careful, but right now the outbreak isn't that bad and the pathophysiology of the virus has not really been thoroughly analyzed. On the other hand, SARS was scary because it was something that's significantly different to other prominent types of viral pathogens.

The biggest problem with that is that the virus is especially tough on young people, because of their good immune system. It causes cytokine storms, a negative feedback loop in the immune system, and in essence means that the better your immune system, the more likely you are to die (if you get the virus). But yeah, if this thing gets loose then the poor countries will be hurt the most.. You mean positive feedback?

Still haven't watched the episode. I wonder if they include poison into the equation.

The question should be about whether or not the means justifies the ends and I'd say it is very tough to judge - both sides have their merit. On the other hand, questioning the effectiveness of torture methods is silly and should not be something center to discussion.

I have not seen the episode yet, but I bet it is the Ninja because he is prominently featured in the introduction video of the show and is Japanese. Spartan, on the other hand, will likely not be given a sufficient long range weapon because he, like Viking and Gladiator, is famous for close range combat and thus the producers would naturally be slashing bows from his arsenal.

Agreed. Mythbusters is a hell a lot more scientific than Deadliest Warrior (despite having a computer scientist and a biomed engineering on board). My favourite one is the one with teaching the fish how to get past obstacles.

The difference is that Neo-Cons want to force their views on others and take over, while I do not. I think the world would be better off if everyone just left everyone else alone and minded their own business. I am a fiscal conservative, but on many social issues I have a liberal bias. Of course, placing a label on a person is a lot easier than actually doing a breakdown issue by issue. I mean Neo-Liberal... >.> <.< What's liberal supposed to mean anyway? I see Americans throwing the term around with such disgust that it sometimes become confusing to read political journals and blogs. Now, here's a definition of the term "liberal":

Just watched the samurai episode while I was cleaning my house. Again, it is all about people gloating at each other (objectivity anyone?), punching weapons into gelatinous torsos (as if most weapons do not kill in the hands of a trained warrior), and appeasing minority cultures by giving them the long bow, which is the most general of all weapons in the world. And no, it wouldn't change my opinion even if they give my very own minority culture a lick on the boot. It will be quite a pleasure to see a real scientist to just walk up to the show and rip apart their methodologies bit by bit, starting with that simulation software they have. That's not going to happen of course. </QQ>

I had been working on a website that hosts a documentation of a program that I worked on. The documentation, naturally, is written in MS Word and the website is written in PHP, XHTML, CSS, and SQL, with dreamweaver. So I got a relatively reasonable layout and proceeded to use include_once() on the documents. Then BAM, MS word's HTML ****ed up with my <style>. I ended up having to include_once() on my master style sheet again to reintroduce the original style which drags down the loading time and creates a 1-sec phantom. Stupid ****. I wonder why people over at Microsoft can't ID their tags and direct the styles at those tags only. QQ

It's not so much a prequel as it is a spinoff and a soapy drama spinoff at that. (From what I have heard) "The Plan" will be the real prequel, explaining what the Cylons and Cavil were doing while Galactica was doing it's own thing. Heh, "The Plan" is also written by Jane Espensen, a writer who wrote some of the worst episodes in BSG (like Deadlock). Besides, even if it is wonderfully done, the BSG ending pretty much killed most of the appeal of the show (i.e. all of the juiciest mysteries are basically just done by an unknown supernatural entity who doesn't like to be refered as God - biggest Deux Ex Machina ever).

Heh, I'd say the Deadliest Warrior is meant for casual entertainment and little more (well, it's cool to see the power of the weapons and moves). In terms of the scientific process, the whole show is a joke (and they have a biomed engineerer no less!). Due to the complexity of the system and heterogeneity of weapons and fighting styles, there's actually no conceivable way to come up with a model that is even remotely accurate short of getting doing a detailed FPS-like model or getting 1k real gladiators and apaches fighting each other. The final cut-scene alone raises questions on the way the process is done - the gladiator punched out the apache and let him catch a breath (guess hubris/idiocy is supposed to be a gladiator-only trait). Judging from what I saw on the screen, I assume their model works by entering probability coefficients and then do some sort of Markov process. How they got those probability values? Probably just made them up. Where do they condition those probabilities on? Probably just one environment rather than a set of different types of battlegrounds (enclosed, forest, grass field, etc). Aside from the modeling aspect, I think gladiators fight with long-ranged weapons. Though I am not sure if they actually used bows (despite the fact that Romans definitely had some very sophisticated bows developed back then), throwing spears were definitely used. Finally, the ego thing b/w the two types of fighters is annoying. But then again, it is SpikeTV - a station that promotes testosterone. I do hope they didn't fix the fights to just to please certain warriors though (i.e. native pride was so prominent in the first episode).

There still may be a chance that NK will go crazy in the recent future. Kim Jong Il had a stroke last year and he's pretty much nearing the age of passing on. Since he is a nut-case, it's possible that he'd like to achieve "something grand" before he finally succumbs to his health.

There still may be a chance that NK will go crazy in the recent future. Kim Jong Il had a stroke last year and he's pretty much nearing the age of passing on. Since he is a nut-case, it's possible that he'd like to achieve "something grand" before he finally succumbs to his health.

Yeah, it's actually not that funny despite the failure. This is like saying "ha-ha" to the Taliban for failing a suicide bomb attempt. Part of the world's problem are caused by angry people that will use any opportunity to use their resources on achieving whatever crazy goals they have (like striking out at their wealthier neighbours out of jealousy or sheer joy of destroying things). Even with inferior technologies, extremists from the middle east have shown us that it actually isn't that difficult to cause a high degree of casulties and collateral damage in developed countries. But in North Korea's case, it does have a very large standing army and sufficient capability in bombing the **** out of its neighbours. And yes, if M.A.D really happens, it wouldn't be like FO3. There wouldn't be permanently-preserved sugar pies packed in bombed-out Walmarts waiting for people to pick out and there aren't rad-aways to instantly cure people of all radiation exposure. On the upside, there shouldn't be any ghouls, rad-scorpions, and super-mutants roaming around 200 years after the holocaust. You should look up the definition of MAD. MAD is only relevant when you have two states which can wipe eachother out, not when you have one physically massive state that can wipe out another physically minute state that is woefully inept and has only a handfully of barely kiloton quality nukes at most. I know what MAD stands for, but Walsingham was talking about a nuclear holocaust so I went slightly off-topic to agree with him on how things wouldn't have been even remotely similar to FO3 should such misfortune befall us or our descendants.

Yeah, it's actually not that funny despite the failure. This is like saying "ha-ha" to the Taliban for failing a suicide bomb attempt. Part of the world's problem are caused by angry people that will use any opportunity to use their resources on achieving whatever crazy goals they have (like striking out at their wealthier neighbours out of jealousy or sheer joy of destroying things). Even with inferior technologies, extremists from the middle east have shown us that it actually isn't that difficult to cause a high degree of casulties and collateral damage in developed countries. But in North Korea's case, it does have a very large standing army and sufficient capability in bombing the **** out of its neighbours. And yes, if M.A.D really happens, it wouldn't be like FO3. There wouldn't be permanently-preserved sugar pies packed in bombed-out Walmarts waiting for people to pick out and there aren't rad-aways to instantly cure people of all radiation exposure. On the upside, there shouldn't be any ghouls, rad-scorpions, and super-mutants roaming around 200 years after the holocaust.

Heh, I suppose you voted Republicans eh. Well, even though I don't have much confidence in Obama, I can only imagine John McCain doing far worse. Sure, he may be good at bureaucracy (as do many politicians), but he already demonstrated how in-touch he is with the intracacies within the realm of economics during the election campaign. Anyhow, I would suggest you to wait a while before buying back in. At least wait till the news for GM to come out - it's likely to collapse.

Back in August-September 2008, I was finishing up my last Computer Science courses. I remember assuring my parents that I will have little problem finding a software job when I am done in December (because the demand was still high back then). Then suddenly, the U.S. economy turned to **** and by the end of the year my home province Ontario kind of went belly up as well. By the time I started to look for jobs in January, there are almost no entry-level jobs for software programmers and had to find jobs elsewhere (like web-programming industry or academic institutions). I guess I am one of the luckier ones in that I still have a job at my university writing code for researchers. However, the pay is still a distance from industry-standards and it is not a type of career that one would like to be in for long term. Anyone else got owned by the U.S. economy crisis?