Priority over oncoming traffic when passing green light

As I understand it, a green traffic light says "you are no longer forbidden to proceed", but you are still obliged to follow the normal rules of precedence, eg. if there's oncoming traffic to wait in the middle of the road to cross it.

However, I think (?) it is increasingly common for there NOT to be two lanes that cross green-lighted at once. To the extent that people are surprised when a right-turn is green-lighted, but they have to wait for oncoming traffic to clear to take it.

And I think (?) it is rare or non-existent to have a lane green-lighted when ALL directions from that lane have a further give-way. You could, in principle, have a T-Junction which also had traffic lights, where the side road ALSO had a give way instead of or as well as the traffic-light-controlled stop-line, and the traffic lights toggled between "do not pass" and "give way", but in fact, no-where does have that, because people would assume that if it was green they could just drive forward.

If my understanding is correct, should we go a stage further, and specifically sign any green light direction where you don't have SOLE priority?

Artificial biological life; Diasterous oil geyser; Israel DF kilsl European civilians; World Cup

Four items for those not watching the news:

Artificial biological life

We somewhat-routinely splice genes between species. In a true living-in-the-future way, one of the most common genes is a "make it glow" gene. [1][2]

Craig Venter, famous for instigating a private attempt to sequence the human genome, now reports having replaced the DNA of a bacterium with something entirely combined from different species, making a creditable claim to have made the first artificial life. Obviously this is a somewhat debatable definition, but is hopefully somewhat of a landmark[3]. Obviously bacteria turning sunlight-into-fuel and vice-versa are nowhere near, but it's good to be at least raising the prestige of the possibility.

Specifically, I don't know how cobbled-together his genome is: how big it is, how many different places it came from, etc. There were lots of news articles, but my molecular biologist friends (and lovers) have yet to helpfully read more about it and then explain it to me in words of five or fewer syllables :)

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=craig+venter+artificial+life

Footnotes about living in the future

[1] SO SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR FLYING CARS ALREADY! :)

[2] Charlie Stross reports that police investigating stolen virtual-reality property is now so old news that people have got bored hearing it. While writing about near-future science, technology and politics is a laudable goal, you may simply have to accept that you may find yourself selling books about cutting-edge technology instead. Given the way most media totally fails at correctly depicting technology from up to a decade ago, this is pretty good :)

[3] John Scalzi: "real-life scientists have merely been about to coax a single-celled organism whose genes had been partially human designed into dividing and forming a small colony. [though] it should be noted that my 'merely' notation here is like saying Orville and Wilbur Wright merely flew a couple hundred feet on that first flight of theirs"

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

A BP oil well in the gulf of mexico blew the top off and has been spewing oil ever since. Eventually relief wells will be drilled which will stop the flow, but in the meantime it's the second or third worst spill ever (I think?)

There are all sorts of secondary arguments about it, including about whether BP (or humanity in general) were negligent in the way they drilled. The most bizarre I saw was that, once the US government was involved in the clean-up, apparently Obama's 11-year-old daughter asked him about it. And apparently some people portrayed this as some sort of scandal. I can't even tell WHY: presumably the implication is that either (a) he was stupid for not having magically fixed it, and she pointed this out or (b) she was stupid for not understanding it without asking, despite being, you know, 11.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

World Cup

The world cup[1] starts next week. Obviously I support England. I normally support Scotland as second choice, as being closest to England (though I know not all Scottish people would approve), but they're not there, as aren't Ireland (after a referee very controversially didn't see a goal-scoring hand-ball in the qualifying match they lost against France). So, I suppose France have to be my second choice.

The initial seeding seems not too bad for England. They apparently succeeded well enough in the qualifying to be seeded (?) and don't have any other previous winners or finalists in the same first-round group. Obviously that's not an accurate indicator, as my analysis is based on how good these teams were 45 years ago, not now, but it's always embarrassing to be tipped to win the tournament, then seeded into a group with two previous finalists, and get knocked out in the first round.

An optimist might even hope we get to the semi-final before playing anyone who's won the competition more than once, or more than twice. On the other hand, the last time I saw England playing it was last week in a warm-up match in five minutes on a tiny TV in a nice pub at the middle of a hill in Mow Cop, and they were losing to Japan 1-0. Apparently they played abysmally and only won because Japan defenders knocked it back into their own net twice before the end of the game. So, we'll see how it goes.

[1] The football one[2].
[2] The association one.

Israel soldiers kill European civilians

A number of aid ships sent from Turkey and other places sail to Gaza, defying the Israeli blockade. The Israeli blockade refuses to let them through without being inspected and shipped on land by Israeli forces, and eventually boards them. People are killed.