nashoi

"In practice vastly more UK citizens have been extradited to the US than vice versa" Do you mean this precisely as you've written it, or are you referring to the total number of people extradited to the USA from the UK and vice versa? The majority of people we extradite from the US are UK citizens. Either way I think the term "vastly more" is inappropriate given the numbers we are talking about. The total number extradited to the US is less than double the number coming the other way. Given relative population sizes you can hardly say that constitutes imbalance. "the lack of prima facie needed is above and beyond a joke." Care to be more specific? The removal of the need for prima facie evidence is said to have removed an imbalance in the opposite direction. The same rules apply to New Zealand, Australia and Canada, are you suggesting the US is less democratic or trustworthy than them?

Though I have a great deal of sympathy with anyone who has friends or family facing extradition to a foreign country, last year an independent review of the UK's extradition arrangements found no evidence that the UK/US arrangement was imbalanced. You can download the full report here.

A bit obvious maybe, but Mike Oldfield or almost anything by Jeff Buckley.

Roger Waters - Piddle in perspex

El Pibe, have you ever come across the Pygmalion Effect? In Rosenthal's original experiment an entire school year had their IQ's tested. Teachers were then lead to believe they had been given the names of those obtaining the highest scores. In fact these children had been chosen at random. At the end of the year they were all given the same test again. The children falsely identified as gifted, obtained scores on average 15 points higher than the rest. I also came across The Perils and Promise of Praise recently all of which pretty much backs up what you're saying.

What's the betting on a novel coming out shortly, based on an heroic and missunderstood journalist and his fall from grace, then a stint in next years bb house?

Quite so El Pibe. If you read the book just skip the first 100 pages.

The Crooked Well is the stand out winner for me. The Palmerston also very good. The Rosendale is good but I last went on the New Year Bank holiday and they were clearly overwhelmed, it seats a lot of people, so choose your day.

Slightly OT, but along a similar theme, the link is to a prediction made in 1900 about what life in 2000 will be like. (Warning to Huguenot, it was written by an American so you may want to avert your eyes) Predictions for the next 100 years

I thought the current fashion for single speed bikes started in Kingston (Jamaica, not upon Thames) where it was about cost, then spread to New York and London via the courier scene.

Does the Jon Ronson book have a chapter on the 'real motivaton' of people who write books seeking to expose conspiracy theorists to the 'real motivation' behind their arguments?

I've found the free diagnostic tests, advice and the forum on PC pitstop.com to be very useful in the past.

I was under the impression it was India leading the way with thorium, it has abundant supplies and, due to the non proliferation treaty, uranium has historically been in short supply. Coincidentally I was reading about India's plans on this site recently and have just looked up China's. What struck me was looking at where the technology is coming from, the Chinese are mostly buying from the USA (Westinghouse) and France (Areva), India from Russia. The Canadians are heavily involved in thorium research, but UK plc? Nowhere to be seen.

Open the new PC, pull the power supply cable and the IDE ribbon cable from the back of the DVD player and plug them into the hard drive. When you start the computer the letter in My Computers previously assigned to the DVD player will now be the second hard drive. Just copy the files across. This is how I've done it in the past, but don't leave it like that, it's a short term solution.

Huguenot did you read the attatchment? It's not saying the EU has not been an economic benefit as a whole but it has had an effect on economic geography.

I suspect it's wishful thinking to assume unemployment in the north can be kept down without government investment. Apart from all the more obvious causes such as the swap from manufacturing to services and outsourcing to China, membership of the EEC has had an exasperating effect.

I rather liked it although I think Maxxi makes some good points. It reminded me of a story Hunter S Thompson told in The Great Shark Hunt about how Lyndon Johnson first got elected to Congress. 'It was 1948 Lyndon was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go... He was sunk in despair. He was desperate... he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference at two or two-thirty ( just after lunch on a slow news day) and accuse his high-riding opponent (the pig farmer) of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children... His campaign manager was shocked. 'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he said. 'It's not true.' 'Of course it's not,' Johnson barked at him, 'but let's make the bastard deny it.' I think the TV show would have been interesting had he not gone through with it and he'd just suffered from the association.

Sorry if it caused offence Loz, it was meant in the spirit of the usual banter between our countries, but in the more sober light of day I'm happy to a knowledge the Aussies are at the forefront of a number of technologies we're going to need, desalination for example.

Thomas, why so worried? We already produce enough food to feed 11bn people and waste a third of it. In India a third of food rots before it gets to market because of poor roads and refrigeration and this is where most population increase will occur. Hardly beyond the wit of man to sort that out surely? Talking of the wit of man (or woman) does separating carbon from oxygen really sound like the hardest challenge we've faced? Some bloke in Australia already reckons he's got a way of doing it using the another byproduct of power generation, steam. So burn coal, of which we have abundant supplies, and end up with oxygen and graphite which can be dumped anywhere. If not coal, why not trees? Farm them, thus absorbing carbon already up there, then in the furnace you go. So that's global warming and population expansion taken care of and I'm not even that pissed. Yes, you did read me right, I said an Australian, so probably bullshit, but if not him then someone soon. The added advantage of producing graphite is you can produce graphene from it and that Thomas, is what your generation are going to build the future from. So go and get pissed eat a big steak and stop worrying it's all being taken care of. Anyone wishing to comment on any of the above please remember nitpicking is such an unattractive habit.

MM Whether something is generous or not, is not a mathematical argument.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Can people be banned for being mad? just wondered > like By your own estimates this could have a significant impact. Admin Am I imagining things, or did you recently post another warning along these lines, was it on a deleted thread, as a I can't now find it and am starting to wonder if I'm in the 25-30%

It's difficult to know how much talk of the singularity is Californian new age cobblers. It does seem to have adherents quoting specific dates (2045 commonly) much like a cult. However, there are some interesting and credible contributors speaking here.

Honda's robot, familiar from the TV ads, recently updated. iCub An open source project backed by the EU. These are just two examples of the latest in robot technology, there's plenty more on the Plastic Pals site. In the past, fears that technology will lead to structural unemployment haven't been borne out, population rises and an ever increasing standard of living have helped fuel increasing demand. The other factor is the switch from manufacturing, which machines are good at, to services, which machines aren't so good at. We appear to be on the brink of producing machines which can out perform us at pretty much everything though. I have two questions for the Drawing Room: Firstly, can an economy function with machines producing all the wealth and humanity merely consuming it. If so how will that wealth be distributed if not in return for labour? Secondly, http://www.jeffbots.com/twiki3.jpg Was this the worst prediction of the future ever? 25th century my arse it hasn't even got fingers.

Really Reggie? On page one of the inequality thread ???? asks what is actually meant by equality, 34 pages and over 1000 posts later I'm not sure any clear answer has emerged.

Cherry pick the following quotes, wilfully misinterpret them (it is the EDF afterall) You have to ask Are Detroiters reading the EDF