Previous arguments of dupe have always failed when the differences are as glaring as this-Maatc's is more entertaining:

In the one, the guys running his finger over his lips and humming and in the other the cat spontaneously improvises what could pass as the supreme being's language..You know..Leeloo?? Leeloo Minai Lekarariba-Laminai-Tchai Ekbat De Sebat?

Not a dupe by any stretch

Way to improvise! (or was it "spontaneous?" fnord)
http://youtu.be/maF9WGLrj2Q

Love all the "spontaneous" poses people hold for several seconds. Phonies.

I think that you will find reactors don't produce weapons grade plutonium, rather, they produce a grade of plutonium known as reactor grade. Weapons grade plutonium is upwards of 95% Pu239. Reactor grade plutonium is what is known as weapons usable, not weapons ready. This is because of the high contamination factor of Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242. These heavier breads of Pu have both high spontaneous fission rates (bad for your fission weapon), and considerable heat, enough so to make weapons fabrication a problem (is it bad when your closed weapons device needs ventilation to not melt itself). While these problems are addressable in advanced weapons platforms, outside of well established nuclear weapons programs, making weapons from them is very challenging.

The main trouble, however, I think is economics, and nuclear is forced to internalize many of their impacts where as other solutions, mainly fossil fuels, do not. That is a pretty key competitive disadvantage.

Also note that electricity is only a fraction of total power, total power includes many non-electrical uses, most notably motor vehicles via liquid fuels. When you look at solar in this light, it represents a sub-fraction of a percent. So 5% of annual solar electrical generation is only a small part of a larger energy picture, and picture which also needs to be weighted against the rest of the world for which solar provides very little power. This isn't an attack on solar, it is a bringing to light of how vast the gulf is to address climate issues with any one technology.

So I think you will find that he isn't off by orders of magnitude, rather, he was being pretty generous to the total amount of energy produced by solar and wind world wide, and climate issues and emissions are world issues.

Key World Energy STATISTICS IEA:

http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/kwes.pdf

(I trust the IEA's numbers)

But I share the sentiment that we need to reduce coal and gas to address climate concerns. The fact that German emissions have risen for 2 years in a row is troubling to say the least. I consider France and Sweden to be better models, lower CO2 per capita and electrical prices in both cases compared to Germany, and both heavy nuclear users...with Sweden using a fair deal more hydro power than France. Nuclear and hydro are the proven heavy lifters in the area of CO2 reductions, which is why I think his criticism of environmental groups in addressing climate issues is justified as they generally oppose both.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND NUCLEAR POWER 2012 IAEA:

http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/Pess/assets/12-44581_ccnp2012_web.pdf

Look at shinyblurry- smart but clearly crippled by unhelpful dogma that has exacerbated rather than reduced the inherent existential trauma in being a conscious organism apparently spontaneously existing in a mindbogglingly vast and uncaring Universe (even these minimalist words are necessarily reductive). He can justify bombing, spreading aids and even openly destroying the environment for personal economic gain to accelerate the 'day of judgement'. (No joke, all in HIS posts on THIS SITE).

Also, you should learn more about the Jonestown massacre before speaking so causally about people desperate enough to knowingly drink poison and give it to their children in the hope that it will somehow make things better.

You need to start making more sense fast Yogi or those with brains are going to consider you a fool and stop wasting time on you.

None of the passengers had to pay, since he doesn't have a taxi driver's license, and in fact 5 of the 14 were paid to take part in the video!

"They're five ordinary people who were asked if they wanted to take part in a video for the Labour Party and who knew nothing else, except that they were going to be picked up in a taxi," party spokeswoman Pia Gulbrandsen said.

"Their spontaneity was real when they realised that the driver was the prime minister."

Improv is what it is-It has to be fresh, spontaneous. The shows been on for too long and the formula worked best with Carey. Glad to see Wayne Brady still has a job as well as JC's sidemen from his series, all funny guys.

Live improv is best, go catch their gig in Vegas and you'll enjoy at least one more night of it. If you wanna see Carey you'll have to petition Burbank for a couple for tickets to Price is Right.

@Kofi. It's pretty hard not to horrifically oversimplify Pakistan in only a few paragrahs. Pakistan only enjoys the third government branch of power thanks to very heavy American pressure. The ISI and military have dominated Pakistan's prior history, this years elections mark the first and only time in Pakistan's history that a civilian government there managed to serve it's full term and pass power on to another civilian government. Past governments like Bhuttos were dismissed by the military, and then saw Bhutto executed. Pakistan's road democracy is hardly secure yet either since for all the gains, Bhutto's daughter was assassinated before finishing her bid to run the exiting civilian government.

Kashmir is just the bone of contention between India and Pakistan. Within Pakistani politics the discussion is all about Balochistan and FATA. The internal divisions over those two regions was and still is being manipulated to maximum effect by Pakistan's enemies. Particularly, in FATA you have Saudi dollars building Madrassah's were Pakistan's government either won't or can't do anything about education for the tribal people. So on one hand it's giving a lifeline to a poverty stricken people, and on the other that life line is tied to a brick being thrown into the deep end of jihadist teachings and training. And when I say Saudi charities, I don't mean to suggest it's government backed. It is by all accounts privately donated monies by private Saudi citizens, the ones that give out candy to kids when parade worthy things happen.

"Plus, I can name many muslim nations that did not have spontaneous celebrations. Afghanistan for one"
You've got to be kidding on this, right?
I'd ask you maybe look at my point and counter more closely though. I was speaking to the comment that Al Qaida was wanting for supporters and didn't have peoples support prior to 9/11. I did not declare that all muslim nations were dominated by celebrations, I in fact stated that very few failed to officially condemn the attacks. I just asked how many did not see spontaneous celebrations, and yes even America saw spontaneous celebrations by the likes of Westboro nutters. My point was not paint entire muslim nations as celebrating, but that there existed elements virtually everywhere celebrating. Would you disagree on that, or is that essentially correct. As I see it, that is a clear refutation of the idea that groups like Al Qaida were starved for support prior to 9/11.

"The third point you seem to provide your own refutation. Drones etc do indeed fuel Al Queda."

Maybe read my statement more closely again. My position is that while on one hand Drones help recruitment, and on the other they hurt not only recruitment and retention, but larger scale operational planning as well. Drones have done more than drive some angry youth to join the fight against America. They have also killed a great many of the Taliban's top leadership. More importantly, they have driven a near permanent wedge between the Taliban and Pakistan's military which is a value that is hard to underestimate. IMHO the 100% sole reason for the Afghan war was to either drive that wedge between Pakistan's military and extremists, or failing that to provide a location for waging a ground war with Pakistan. I also believe there was heavy calculations that the Afghan war would prove sufficient threat and deterrent that Pakistan's leadership would make the "right" choice.

I think it's important to make a distinction here. I almost feel like talking about "Al Qaida" as the problem is Bush(jr.) league type stuff. The bigger picture is jihadist terrorism, and who cares what label it wears. The reality after 9/11 was that jihadists terrorists in the form of the Taliban, Al Qaida and many other groups had a strong foothold inside of Pakistan. They were close friends and allies with the highest ranking officials within Pakistan. After the 9/11 attacks were committed, it was decided that a line needed to be drawn between the two and it was no longer acceptable to just let Pakistan hold these jihadist terrorist groups as friends and allies. After all, how emboldened would they be if they got to launch such an attack while still maintaining their alliance with Pakistan's ISI and military. Suddenly Pakistan's military has a pseudo mercenary/spec op force that is capable of organizing attacks on mainland America large enough to kill thousands in one round. The implications of that were deemed bad and in no uncertain terms the decision was made to put an end to it.

...And Bush 'sold' it to his demographic by giving a cowboy speech declaring your either with us or against us. I'm confident though that in the most bizarre of ways, that speech was carefully phrased diplomacy giving Pakistan a flashing red message without the public embarrassment of actually naming them in the process.(or Bush stumbled onto something in blind ignorance too, I'd flip a coin on it).

@lantern53 Where were Bush's apologies? Didn't he say that history would be the judge hence no need to apologise? Also, the government is not some mythical separate entity from 'the people". America is the bastion of democracy, don't you agree? How are we to separate the actions of its people from its government? Democracy, especially one as purportedly strong as your own, implies consent if not endorsement.

@bcglorf The first point just restates what I said which I think we both agree on.

The second point about Pakistan has been over simplified to the point of misdirection. There are 3 domains of power in Pakistan; the ISI (Intelligence), the military and the government. The ISI largely controls the madrassahs and although there is a huge amount of violence in Pakistan at the moment (something you won't hear about in Western news broadcasts) the main area of contention there is about Kashmir. It has little if nothing to do with the USA. In fact the USA aids the Pakistan cause by their alliance with Pakistan in an attempt to oppose Chinese backed India. Further, charities does not automatically mean state-based endorsement. Its quite a stretch.

Plus, I can name many muslim nations that did not have spontaneous celebrations. Afghanistan for one. Sure maybe a few in Kabul got wind of it but as a nation they are still pretty much in the dark about the whole thing. Some more, Turkey (secular yes but muslim by demos), Azer Baijan, Sudan, Bosnia-Herzogoznia, Burkina Faso, Chad, Comoros, Gambia, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Somalia.... I'm sure there were lots of other countries that had spontaneous displays of celebration after 9/11... France, Cuba, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venuzuela, Russia, Guatemala, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Serbia.

To paint any display of celebration with the brush of enemy eliminates any nuance or desire for understanding complex issues for the sake of post hoc raltionalisation of ones own immediate intuitions. Does the Westboro Baptist Church mean that America is no better than any of the Muslim nations you list? Of course not. To say as much as absurd. To see brown people doing the same is merely convenient.

The third point you seem to provide your own refutation. Drones etc do indeed fuel Al Queda. You admit as much. If the AL Qaeda aim is indeed about Pakistan and India (which I think you may be very confused about Al-Qaeda and its Pakistani brethren, two very separate entities with almost no commonality bar what we grant them). Al Qaeda in the Bin Laden days cared nothing for Pakistan. It was almost entirely focused on Saudi Arabia and only went to Afghanistan as a sort of Boys Own adventure club. They were the laughing stock of the Mujahaddin.

"Can anyone honestly say that the US has objectively done nothing to be ashamed of? At best more to be proud of than ashamed of but that does on abrogate responsibility for the latter."
Well said, just remember to cut both ways on that. The fact America has plenty to be ashamed of and apologize for doesn't mean it's fair game to ignore both the good that America has done, and more importantly, it doesn't abrogate the responsibility of all other nations and dicatators for their own crimes.

"You have to point out that Al Qaeda has very little support and would have WAY less if they weren't recruited by the Wars and actions of the United States. When 9/11 happened there was a ridiculous outpouring of support from the Muslim world even after we've terrorized them for decades."

Name a muslim nation that did NOT have spontaneous displays of celebration after 9/11. Yes, very few governments praised or failed to condemn the attacks, but even in states deemed American 'friendly' like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan there were people dancing in the streets and handing out candies for the kids. don't underestimate the support there is for groups with Al Qaida's ideals. Saudi Arabian 'charities' have been funnelling billions of dollars every year into northern Pakistan ever since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. That money is used almost exclusively for the construction of male only madrassahs. Not the good kind that teach reading and arthimetic on the side either. They are the bad ones that are there for brainwashing and training up jihadists for a war they are currently waging against the moderate muslims in Pakistan.

"Drones, Wars, Sanctions, and General Terrorism is what fuels Al Qaeda."
You are wrong. You need to understand that America is NOT their real target or goal. The jihad is within middle eastern nations and is currently an entirely domestic war. The only care for America is that it either not get involved, or only be involved in ways that benefit them. The war in Afghanistan and drone attacks may have helped gain them some recruits, it may continue to help for years even. It also lost them their years of support and connections with senior Pakistani leadership. They have come from a place where they had close friends and strong relationships with Pakistan's ISI and military, to a place today where they are nominally speaking public enemy number one. We aren't out of the woods yet there, but I think you miss the reason all of this has been centering near and within Pakistan's borders. Everyone always talks about the uneasy nuclear stand off between Pakistan and India. From the jihadists stance though, they had a devotedly Islamic nation with nuclear weapons, paranoid about it's nemesis, and were the leadership was heavily connected, infiltrated and indebted to jihadists or jihad friendly people. The jihadists desperately wanted to push the Pakistan-India conflict over the edge and those designs have been set back decades now.

Say it ain't so! The uplifting Californian couple that performed what was thought to be a spontaneous karaoke duet as part of Jay Leno's Tonight Show "Pumpcast News" segment may have actually been hired actors, according to The Smoking Gun. According to the hoax killers, Will Sims and his wife Monifa have been pursuing careers in show business for sometime with Mrs. Sims having appeared on the same "Pumpcast News" segment before more than two years ago. Monifa has since responded to the allegations, claiming it was just a coincidence that she ended up on the show for a second time.

I'm not sure it was spontaneous.

At the very beginning of the video the Speaker of the House says "there will be a waiata (maori song) after the clerk has announced etc."

So, probably planned, but awesome nonetheless.

True but the Atheist also holds the "belief" that there is not GOD. So which belief is more correct? For me to get into a biblical debate with you and the atheist sift community would be pointless. It's like the saying you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink. So this makes me search the web for other ways to argue the point. Here is 1 of them.

Mathematically speaking evolution falls flat on it face..
Lifted from site: http://www.freewebs.com/proofofgod/whataretheodds.htm



Suppose you take ten pennies and mark them from 1 to 10. Put them in your pocket and give them a good shake. Now try to draw them out in sequence from 1 to 10, putting each coin back in your pocket after each draw.

Your chance of drawing number 1 is 1 to 10.
Your chance of drawing 1 & 2 in succession is 1 in 100.
Your chance of drawing 1, 2 & 3 in succession would be one in a thousand.
Your chance of drawing 1, 2, 3 & 4 in succession would be one in 10,000.

And so on, until your chance of drawing from number 1 to number 10 in succession would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in 10 billion. The object in dealing with so simple a problem is to show how enormously figures multiply against chance.

Sir Fred Hoyle similarly dismisses the notion that life could have started by random processes:

Imagine a blindfolded person trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. The chance against achieving perfect colour matching is about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. These odds are roughly the same as those against just one of our body's 200,000 proteins having evolved randomly, by chance.

Now, just imagine, if life as we know it had come into existence by a stroke of chance, how much time would it have taken? To quote the biophysicist, Frank Allen:

Proteins are the essential constituents of all living cells, and they consist of the five elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, with possibly 40,000 atoms in the ponderous molecule. As there are 92 chemical elements in nature, all distributed at random, the chance that these five elements may come together to form the molecule, the quantity of matter that must be continually shaken up, and the length of time necessary to finish the task, can all be calculated. A Swiss mathematician, Charles Eugene Guye, has made the computation and finds that the odds against such an occurrence are 10^160, that is 10 multiplied by itself 160 times, a number far too large to be expressed in words. The amount of matter to be shaken together to produce a single molecule of protein would be millions of times greater than the whole universe. For it to occur on the earth alone would require many, almost endless billions (10^243) of years.

Proteins are made from long chains called amino-acids. The way those are put together matters enormously. If in the wrong way, they will not sustain life and may be poisons. Professor J.B. Leathes (England) has calculated that the links in the chain of quite a simple protein could be put together in millions of ways (10^48). It is impossible for all these chances to have coincided to build one molecule of protein.

But proteins, as chemicals, are without life. It is only when the mysterious life comes into them that they live. Only the infinite mind of God could have foreseen that such a molecule could be the abode of life, could have constructed it, and made it live.

Science, in attempt to calculate the age of the whole universe, has placed the figure at 50 billion years. Even such a prolonged duration is too short for the necessary proteinous molecule to have come into existence in a random fashion. When one applies the laws of chance to the probability of an event occurring in nature, such as the formation of a single protein molecule from the elements, even if we allow three billion years for the age of the Earth or more, there isn't enough time for the event to occur.

There are several ways in which the age of the Earth may be calculated from the point in time which at which it solidified. The best of all these methods is based on the physical changes in radioactive elements. Because of the steady emission or decay of their electric particles, they are gradually transformed into radio-inactive elements, the transformation of uranium into lead being of special interest to us. It has been established that this rate of transformation remains constant irrespective of extremely high temperatures or intense pressures. In this way we can calculate for how long the process of uranium disintegration has been at work beneath any given rock by examining the lead formed from it. And since uranium has existed beneath the layers of rock on the Earth's surface right from the time of its solidification, we can calculate from its disintegration rate the exact point in time the rock solidified.

In his book, Human Destiny, Le Comte Du nuoy has made an excellent, detailed analysis of this problem:

It is impossible because of the tremendous complexity of the question to lay down the basis for a calculation which would enable one to establish the probability of the spontaneous appearance of life on Earth.

The volume of the substance necessary for such a probability to take place is beyond all imagination. It would that of a sphere with a radius so great that light would take 10^82 years to cover this distance. The volume is incomparably greater than that of the whole universe including the farthest galaxies, whose light takes only 2x10^6 (two million) years to reach us. In brief, we would have to imagine a volume more than one sextillion, sextillion, sextillion times greater than the Einsteinian universe.

The probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance and normal thermic agitation remains practically nill. Indeed, if we suppose 500 trillion shakings per second (5x10^14), which corresponds to the order of magnitude of light frequency (wave lengths comprised between 0.4 and 0.8 microns), we find that the time needed to form, on an average, one such molecule (degree of dissymmetry 0.9) in a material volume equal to that of our terrestrial globe (Earth) is about 10^243 billions of years (1 followed by 243 zeros)

But we must not forget that the Earth has only existed for two billion years and that life appeared about one billion years ago, as soon as the Earth had cooled.

Life itself is not even in question but merely one of the substances which constitute living beings. Now, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. We would need much greater figures to "explain" the appearance of a series of similar molecules, the improbability increasing considerably, as we have seen for each new molecule (compound probability), and for each series of identical throws.

If the probability of appearance of a living cell could be expressed mathematically the previous figures would seem negligible. The problem was deliberately simplified in order to increase the probabilities.

Events which, even when we admit very numerous experiments, reactions or shakings per second, need an almost-infinitely longer time than the estimated duration of the Earth in order to have one chance, on an average to manifest themselves can, it would seem, be considered as impossible in the human sense.

It is totally impossible to account scientifically for all phenomena pertaining to life, its development and progressive evolution, and that, unless the foundations of modern science are overthrown, they are unexplainable.

We are faced by a hiatus in our knowledge. There is a gap between living and non-living matter which we have not been able to bridge.

The laws of chance cannot take into account or explain the fact that the properties of a cell are born out of the coordination of complexity and not out of the chaotic complexity of a mixture of gases. This transmissible, hereditary, continuous coordination entirely escapes our laws of chance.

Rare fluctuations do not explain qualitative facts; they only enable us to conceive that they are not impossible qualitatively.

Evolution is mathematically impossible

It would be impossible for chance to produce enough beneficial mutations—and just the right ones—to accomplish anything worthwhile.

"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 10^50. Such a number, if written out, would read 480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000."
"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10^50 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence."
I.L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong (1984), p. 205.

Sicker than sick!-Always reminds me of Larry Graham when I hear sick fat bass-lines all spontaneous psychedelic soul/funky n shit...

I think to be fair, we have to remember that upwards of 20% of all conceptions (depending on age group) result in spontaneous abortion (aka miscarriage). So we should probably add God to the list of those responsible for the death of all of these fetuses.