SSgt Viljuri

No, it's not. And actually a negative result might be as informative as a positive one. Essentially, validating theoretical propositions is as valuable as invalidating them, sometimes even less so. And no, it's not probably going to see Higgs, but something else, with a trace of Higgs, admixture of the sorts. So close at first and then going even further! But let's hope that something totally unforeseen happens, like some non-local spacetime anomaly near London, England, resulting a land sinkage of several hundred meters.

Is eating the Sun harmful to your health? Meaning about the Tabloid, not the central star of our Solar System. Inquiring minds want to know...

Hardware and software related technical or legal solutions aside for a moment, PC games should be marketed differently, an aimed to different demographical groups than Console games. Favoring PCs and the whole culture associated with them instead of Consoles, or iPods, iPhones or iMacs, the freaky cult-like oddball stuff bordering Scientology and New Age, is a reliable societal indicator about the potential consumer in question, PC-users tend to be productive and intelligent members of their societies, whereas Console-users are just kids or somewhat immature adults, slackers, who can be entertained by farts, quite basically. Seriousness to a point of "Englishness" is not a good thing what comes to hobbies and stuff, but are Consoles oriented games lowering the bar too much, into a point where potential customers in their right senses reject the Console-based 'Fart-o-Manias' AND their adaptations to PC-environment? Majority of 'PC games' today are designed for Consoles at the first place, and not vice versa. For a game developer and marketer, PC-games should reflect those differing choices of what people are doing at the first place, what ever the marketing trickery. Of course there are illegal substance abusing types on the PC-side as well, and they are partly responsible for some of these problems industrial property right holders and game developers are encountering. But to overcome these 'free riders', majority of PC-games should be designed from the beginning as the works of art, treats for the intellectually oriented minds, challenging simulations and alike, quite simply, standards must be higher, regarding the goals game developers set for themselves. PC gaming should be a part of the High Culture whereas Console Gaming is an event in the Special Olympics, and not that it is relevant in most instances, but in a similar vein, Mac gaming is a part of the "I want to believe movement' and could be interpreted by using parapsychology.

A dastardly thing to do! [Removed a long joke involving a Kiwi sheep, some urine produced by the aforementioned creature, a very adorable social occasion involving participants of this noble pursuit they like to call Crickets, a little chit chat, more mingling and refreshments, most likely tea, perhaps a loveably Australian slacker and ex-convict pouring something into a cup belonging to an Englishman (wombat piss, if Bruce drank all the urine by himself for some peculiar antipodean sounding reason), a sip, highly esteemed English gentleman swallowing his tea quite laboriously and audibly, the Ozzie filibuster pointing his pinky and asking innocently: What's the matter, old chap?]

The study of gunnery is pure mathematics, it can be counted tube by tube basis how many pieces of artillery is needed to inflict a wanted outcome upon the opposing infantry, ranging from slight discomfort and ill feeling towards the enemy, to a total destruction of the opposing troops, whether field fortified or not. Basic doctrinal stuff in the former Soviet Sphere, in which the Georgians and their military and political leadership are well versed of, I'd believe. Actually nobody cares what the Georgians themselves did, short of genocide, of course. And there's no independent or official backing for these pre-conflict Russian claims of the Georgians perpetrating ethnic cleansing or genocide in a vein of Slobodan Milosevic or Radocan Karadzic. Quite frankly, it's a prefabricated falsehood by the FSB/SVR machinery, meant for their internal rabble-rousing purposes and international "useful idiot" consumption. As immature as Mr. Saakashvili, his cabinet and his nation as a whole may be on their path to democracy and 'rule of law' in the Dworkinian sense, they have done more in just ten years than the whole Russian ethnocity during their thousand year history. There should be no misunderstanding about this key point, at the very core of the international system. Even if hampered in their quest because of internal strife and conflict, of which a large part can easily be traced back to former KGB and subsequently to FSB/SVR operations to destabilizete the Region. Business is business, of course, but I think Mr. Putin has outplayed his hand in this sense. All indications seems to point to that direction.

You heard it almost instantly and personally when first Vikings established Kievan Rus, so IMHO, that's not a big deal, yet. Maybe it will become so in two thousand years, though I doubt it, but who knows?

India should and would rise in ranks, like China did, when they start some kind of program to get some results from the Games. Obviously, drawing talent from such a large population can't be that hard, and with some financial incentives and pharmacological knowhow, a total Medal count from forty to hundred medals per Olympic Games is a certainty. For their credit, they haven't done it yet.

A horse, of Norwegian origin among three others, was tested positive for doping yesterday. Sigh. One could only hope that horses would learn to play it "fair", to keep their sport clean. A substance abusing, cheating Norwegian horse is never a pretty sight.

Civilian contractors hired by Navy? Destination Tbilisi, from your local Naval Station with love? (Air delivery)

IMHO, one of the greatest athletes ever is Paavo Nurmi of Finland with nine (9) Olympic Gold Medals. Who knows how many he would have had got, if not our Swedish big brothers gotten too envious and quite crookedly schemed to ban him for participating in the 1932 Games in Los Angeles, California, USA. (And seeing Nurmi winning was probably against what Statens institut för rasbiologi stood for the Swedes of the time, funnily enough.) As was evident from the movie titled "Chariots of Fire", taking part to the Olympics was a gentleman's business at those times, performance enhancing herbal remedies were not common (as they were during the early "early days", or after the Nazi and Communist athletes took over) and spirit of the competition was not yet corrupted, because of selfishness, petty national rivalry or commercialism.

Absolutely among the best athletic performances ever! And his physical appearance is not that of Ben Johnson's, which tells us that he is not better than the rest solely because of anabolic steroids.

Bulk of the forces were from the South, Chechnya and so on. They are not equipped with same stuff than Leningrad military district's forces are, but are still among the best operationally tested units they have. On paper there are hundreds of units that just don't exist any more, what ever the readiness level assigned officially.

Absolutely not. Forces assigned were fully/mostly professional parts of the Russian military, most with tours of duty already behind them, so no conscripts at all. Units like the 76th Airborne (Pskov). "Volunteers" are a different matter altogether.

I think the Georgians and NATO should ask Finnish official/private consultancy how to set up a good conscription based force for territorial defense. As we have found out, counterinsurgency forces are nice, but not nearly enough to deter the Bear from violating anyone's territorial integrity. Or maybe it is already happening through Estonia/Poland, I don't know, but main point is that even if any planning should be done according to the NATO standards and procedures, there are many very important things that the US/NATO way of doing things would not normally address, for a small country in the proximity of the Bear. Anyways, clearly the Georgian force structure and cohesion was not acceptable, and their performance dismal, and it could not be helped with some delivery of additional Javelins alone.

Chit-chat aside, this article offers some of those ultimate causes mentioned earlier: Why is Vladimir Putin so scared of Georgia? / Daily Telegraph

Like these? One of those soldiers looks to be wearing Finnish camo (model 2005), "dressed up to kill", I recon?

In the Second Chechen war, there was a rumor about a whole unit of female(!) Estonian volunteers fighting against the Federation. Obviously, imagination runs wildly whenever fighting breaks out, stress and anxiety being present in the troops involved, but those factors are only a partial explanation, I think.

'Sir' Penguin given Norwegian knighthood / CNN Boldfacing unnecessary, but I was wondering, how come Norwegian Navy has not raised any Cod to the nobility, or at least on the frying pan?

Dunno, but it could be Ordinary Garden Gnome too, though he's (it?) a rather passive member, even with that fondness to ethanol.

I guess it must be Emrys, he was present at that same famous room where Al Gore invented the Internet and was able to register an account almost instantly thereafter.

Does anybody know any credible Ukrainian sources about recent events and their significance on the World Peace?

Heh, the difference is between proximate and ultimate causes. Most people above average intelligence are interested about the latter, because searching them can widen their understanding. The proximate causes presented in the article, are based on obsolete views about power politics, and even if we would accept such views as our guiding principles, let's say for academic exercise, we should recognize that Russia's military is not even close of becoming a real threat or factor, apart from her aging nuclear deterrent, many observations about it on the popular media are grossly exaggerated and despite of the raw materials trading she has recently engaged herself into, Russian economy is not even close of becoming diversified, let alone self-sustainable, meaning that she would face almost an instant collapse and social turmoil without imports and other key services from the West. Russia needs the West more than vice versa. Only a salesman belonging to a military-industrial complex would try to imply otherwise. Or a tabloid press reporter. Russia has not developed infrastructure to either sell or buy enough to keep her economy going with Asia alone. One cannot eat balance sheets or foreign financial investment. Aggression and propaganda is something that can quite easily turn against its sender. The CSCE was not about committing the Soviet/Russian' Empire to eternal perpetuity, let alone rest of Europe's borders, it was about Human Rights. Ironically, the Soviet/KGB planners missed this CSCE's true meaning, and once again it's quite likely that such unforeseen happenstance is waiting Mr. Putin and tabloid press analysts, on all sides of the political spectrum. Back to proximate causes: Serbia captured and extradited Mr. Karadzic, a war criminal, recently. Why did they do that? Especially if we were somehow to believe that the Russian Empire is back with a full throttle and vengeance?

IMO: Doesn't look very intelligent, nor particularly knowledgeable at all. Basically it's level looks to be a little short of newspaper editorial, with a somewhat fascist sounding apologist bent, all in all which doesn't really convey anything special or valuable for any reader with an IQ over 100 and capability to think critically. It contains several grave factual errors that if it should be produced as a short essay or somefink, it would get an F grade from any self-respecting high school or college. I have seen better High School essays than this. Makes one to believe the writer is an academic fraud, or getting deranged lately, given he should know better from that background. If his views/writings are somehow connected to ufology/conspiracy theories, I retract my comment, as I lack qualifications of the area (medicine, psychology).

It is to be noted that any country worth living has two (2) elements in it: 1) Democratic system and 2) respect for "rule of law", or rather "checks and balances" in place, to protect individuals from the state's use of power, which among other things requires a functioning court system. Written laws are nice, but if they are not enforced and honored, there's no point of talking about "rule of law". It is especially number two where the Russian system is lacking, not that their democratic side is situated on the top of any shining hill either, practically they are a one-party state, but with several power centers, the most important being people associated with the former KGB and the current structure of FSB/SVR. This includes people like Putin and Medvedev, both of them spent lots of time in Finland during the Yeltsin era, to point out the interesting tidbit here. Then there are industrialists/ogliarchs (some of which shares the western beliefs on democracy and market economy), traditional chauvinistic nationalists (they tend to stress the role of the Russian Orthodox Church) among some armed forces people and the members of the ROC. It is not a multi-party system, all of these elements work inside one party and one power structure.