New Testingstan

well, that would depend on whether ze Germans would consider the collapse of the Euro to be an acceptable outcome, I think
I don't know if playing chicken with the economy of Europe would have been a good idea, though (I'd probably go 'lol fuck it' if I were the Greek government, but that's easy to say on a random internet message board with no actual influence)

Germany NEEDS the Euro to stay to maintain its economy.

Greece NEEDS to stay as strongly integrated into the european economy as it can in order to offset its structural problems.

No one wants to come to a point where Greece would be forced to leave the Euro, which would be the first domino to fall that could lead to a collapse of the European Union in its current form.

So everyone do grandstanding declarations of intent and try to please its own public opinion, but in the end everyone's got its metaphorical balls held tight in the grip of the invisible hands of the market.

Yeah Germany isn't gonna dump the reichmark anytime soon.

I'd like to see the bottom to come out of Germany's export economy eventually then see Thanas' face go from this to this .

yeah let's crash one of the strongest economies in the world to show a mod on a webforum what for who's in

Unbalanced economies eventually implode (in Germany's case high exports to indebted countries and low worker wages) and the UK will also pay dearly for its criminally insane property prices, nothing to properly replace collapsed old heavy industries, the increasing cost of essential living, decreasing wages, slashed social services, and mass immigration. North America and Western Europe are five to fifteen years away from major political/social upheaval.

And you'll look down and whisper

"Who knew Amirite"

zhaktronz wrote:And you'll look down and whisper

"Who knew Amirite"

Told ya so, hurr.

Try not to be too smug Big O, your quite likely to wind up dead should this come to pass. As will most of us, I should think.

US Supreme Court declare DNA un-patentable

though it is left unclear whether this decision will retroactively void all pre-existing patents on DNA sequences in the United States, or what possible loophole the decision could have.

TROLL ALERT

so I think Edward snowden is a government agent who leaked on government orders and greenwald is just a useful idiot acting as a mouthpiece for state propaganda (the irony, it burns!)

think about it. isn't the point of panopticism to modify behavior because people KNOW they're being watched?

so watching them in secret is meaningless. but now by "blowing the whistle" snowden has alerted us all thus making us change our behavior in response

thereby giving the state exactly what they wanted all along


why was it secret in the first place? now they can "stop" it, maybe even actually stopping it, but our behavior is changed nonetheless because for all we know there is yet another secret program in place that we just don't know about. it is all about the mystery so we discipline ourselves

:s/them/us/g

Oxymoron wrote:US Supreme Court declare DNA un-patentable

though it is left unclear whether this decision will retroactively void all pre-existing patents on DNA sequences in the United States, or what possible loophole the decision could have.

Naturally occuring DNA is unpatentable. DNA that doesn't occur in nature falls under patent.

Thanks for the clarification, Straha.

I'm pretty surprised that they can patent the DNA at all. I mean, isn't that like patenting... I dunno, sand? A process for collecting it, I could totally understand, but the stuff itself?

Is it any weirder than patenting a traditional invention with blueprints? You can patent a better mouse trap constructed by non-obvious combinations of existing things, so why not a better mouse created by combinations of existing genes?

Eh, I suppose. Seems like chemicals would be different for some reason

Aaron wrote:Try not to be too smug Big O, your quite likely to wind up dead should this come to pass. As will most of us, I should think.

Oh no, I don't want things falling apart like in Syria, but I get the impression that the current system of Globalisation is not working and could end suddenly, when its fatal flaws are obvious and the average UK citizen is becoming objectively worse off.

Big Orangutan wrote:

Aaron wrote:Try not to be too smug Big O, your quite likely to wind up dead should this come to pass. As will most of us, I should think.

Oh no, I don't want things falling apart like in Syria, but I get the impression that the current system of Globalisation is not working and could end suddenly, when its fatal flaws are obvious and the average UK citizen is becoming objectively worse off.

Ahh, I see. I agree, btw.

If Phant is around I'd be curious to hear how he feels about the ridiculousness going down in Quebec where they banned kids from wearing turbans while playing soccer.

The Eurocrisis with Germany and Greece and the over-industrialisation of East Asia while the West slides into ruin are examples of mission creep, with wealthy magnates from different backgrounds not really thinking things through when trying to cut corners to further their profit (like politicians lying to get into a seemingly bottomless new currency and factory owners not really thinking where all the consumer spending comes from). I don't there's evil master plan, otherwise I'd become a gibbering loon who thinks all the problems in the world begin and end with Anglo-American Imperialism.

Theobromine wrote:If Phant is around I'd be curious to hear how he feels about the ridiculousness going down in Quebec where they banned kids from wearing turbans while playing soccer.

That was a nice bit of bullshit, wasn't it.

man I'm loving the bullshit politicians are vomiting up at the moment with the spying thing
'we can trust the spy agencies'
ugh, surely by definition spies can't be trusted

Just like we could trust that Nigerian Yellowcake?