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It's been several years since I bought an opener...and even then I can't remember seeing a major brand that wasn't a paired-system remote.

Argh, damn you Slashdot, get out of my Amazon purchase history!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

I guess 1993 was about when the garage door companies standardized on the the rolling-code thingy that has to be paired to each remote.

Though now I'm kicking myself for not just building my own https garage door opener using
http://www.instructables.com/i... so I can let the kids in remotely when they forget their keys.

Where did you find that? The lowest price I found is $176.97 for the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB.

For your reference:
NewEgg
Amazon
eBay

You don't want to be a criminal? Well, you ARE one, dearie. Should have thought of that. I hope you spend your entire life behind bars. It will give you time to think about your fail.

So are you. Assuming you're a non-hypocritical law-abiding citizen, please do the right thing and turn yourself in for Federal incarceration (and don't drop the soap).

If you need help identifying a felony for which you ought to confess, please respond here and we'll be happy to help.

Looks like a three body problem: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Bo...

I believe you. On the other hand, an acquaintance of mine in his 60s has spent the last 30 years or so trying different foods made from plants that grow naturally without any sowing, tilling, weeding, etc... stuff in books like "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" ( http://www.amazon.com/Stalking... ). He's a vegetarian and he said he gets over 90% of the food he eats from mid-spring through mid-fall just by going for a walk through the wood by his house and picking edible items as he goes along. For the rest of the year he goes to the grocery store just like everyone else.

Of course it's possible he's lying, or that the wild foods he eats are awful and he's just grown accustomed to the unpleasant tastes, smells, and textures.

You can already basically get a flame thrower shipped to you house for very little, and there is nothing stopping you from getting it. As far as poison gas goes it has been know for a long time that mixing bleach and ammonia is a bad idea.

You can apparently make a 9mm submachine gun (albeit with unrifled barrel, so effective range is under 50m) with plumbing parts from the hardware store.

(We know that it's a real thing because the author of this book was imprisoned for actually making one after publishing it.)

The biggest problem with vaccines was their unbridled success. Because vaccines eliminated those terrible diseases and all that remains are distant memories from a dying generation; you have functional retards that publish crap like this: http://www.amazon.com/Melanies...

I don't know if your internet get's blocked but check amazon for ar parts. I can buy barrels and bolts.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb...

Do you mean something like this? How to stop cats pissing on your car, The best cat video ever!

I'm pretty sure it could be scaled up for a complete lawn.

I've had good luck with one of these.

http://www.amazon.com/Beats-XL...

A Kohler San Tropez Bidet.

Because I'm worth it.

http://www.us.kohler.com/us/ca...

Why would you go for that when the Toshiba SCS-T160 is far cheaper and can be installed in a US home for $30 in parts (excluding the electrical outlet)?

I rarely use the water spray, but the heated seat and no-slam lid are very nice.

There aren't many appliances sold today, that would accept the DC input directly. Ripping the converting power-supply out from each one to wire it directly into your DC-circuit will void warranties and ultimately cost a lot more than the "20% losses".

I do find the ability to charge USB-devices without the annoying "black bricks", but that's easily achieved by simply replacing the power outlets with something like this (I have four such in my house already).

If he simply runs CAT6 (or better) Ethernet cables to every room, he can later use some of them as simple DC-electricity conductors...

Ther are sonic devices for driving away critters : Big list from Amazon

The right type of "Classic Rock" may work on unwanted human visitors under the age of 40

Wait for the next Nexus 5 then : http://www.androidpit.com/nexu...
Or buy the current Nexus 5, you can still find it online brand new : http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer...

Read Trust me, I'm Lying -- it is a book by a self-confessed media manipulator who got depressed and [...]

Especially read the Amazon comments about that book, including the one that claims that right there on the Amazon page are patterns of manipulation of reviews and ratings of the book that suggest he is cynically trying to manipulate people to make a pile of dollars, and hasn't actually:

[...] left the industry.

Read Trust me, I'm Lying -- it is a book by a self-confessed media manipulator who got depressed and left the industry. He worked for an apparel company. One example tactic was to take sexually explicit photos of porn stars, and then complain about said photos to feminist groups. And then: OUTRAGE!!!

The story of ACORN is a perfect example of how media manipulators manufactured a scandal -- literally creating reality for movement conservatives -- in order to shut the group down. To this day, some GOP congress critters are unaware that ACORN is defunct. The interesting thing is, the more outraged a person is (politically), the easier they are to manipulate. It is all rather ironic.

How to negotiate for a better salary.

This.... because for some ridiculous reason, the salary for your next job is based upon the salary of your current or previous job.

That gets right back to how to negotiate for a better salary.

Many HR drones are taught their side of salary negotiation. Tactics like asking you right up front about your previous pay rates and what you expect to be paid for the new job -- all of that done BEFORE you have even discussed what the new job is to be. Before you have talked with them about the duties and responsibilities. Before you have decided if the company is a good fit for you, and before the interviewers have determined if you can be a good fit for them.

Most people are terrible at salary negotiation. Based on various studies with some degree of variance, overall they suggest about 55% of men do not negotiate their wages, and about 70% of women do not negotiate their wages. That is NO NEGOTIATION AT ALL. HR departments have learned that most people will accept whatever low-ball initial offer is made, and companies take advantage of that fact. Of those that do negotiate, most of them do a poor job of it, using the lowball offer as the starting point for negotiating.

Get yourself some salary negotiation books before changing jobs. Ask for more, and use it to negotiate rather than demand.

As someone who has done more negotiation than I'd like with a roughly 3-year layoff cycle in my industry, I've had more practice that I want at this. In one job that I took, there was the initial lowball offer, which I laughed off and said "No, really, we both know that is a low-ball value, try again". Their second offer was a bit better but still below prevailing wages. So then, using negotiation tactics, I reiterated all the things I had done, all the benefits they were likely to see from me, and suggested a much higher value, about 3.5x their initial lowball. After a few more back-and-forths, and we settled on a good wage. Later in leadership when I was in a position to see everyone's salary, I could see how many of the people in the company -- notably most of the non-confrontational people and mediocre performers -- had wages similar to the initial lowball offers. Most of those who were assertive or high producers tended to have much higher wages. I don't understand how they are related, but they are clearly correlated.

Learn to negotiate. It is an important life skill. It applies directly to salary negotiation, but also to many other facets like getting the good projects and pushing back on corporate demands, including for software development learning to negotiate features from a bad list of requirements to a good set of easily producible items.

My GTX680 pushes my 4k just fine* in games.

*Obviously for varying degrees of 'just fine' - I set my AA really low (like 2x) or sometimes even off because doubling/quadrupling (depending on how you're counting) the resolution (over my 1080p) I find it still looks way better than 1080p + 8-16x AA. My 4k is also 24" (price came down since I bought it, dang it!) so that helps, I'm sure. Oh, and yes, it is gorgeous for Photoshop :)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi...

Bullshit. You really think someone who steals for a living will decide to flip burgers instead?

Yes. You should read Freakonomics. It is a superb book, and in one chapter he explains the economics of crime. Teenagers selling crack on street corners were making $3 an hour. Many of them asked the researcher if he could get them a "good job" as a janitor at the university. I think many criminals would be glad to flip burgers if such jobs were available in their neighborhoods.

They'll just find another crime that pays.

If the other crime paid, then another criminal would already be doing it. Expertise in one type of crime doesn't automatically help in other crimes. For instance, burglary skills are of little use to a Wall Street investment banker.

But then how would StartsWithABang put food on the table? His blog clearly can't survive with every single post being reblogged on slashdot.

Why not? It is enough to keep each post below the pace that energy decreases by.

I'm not clear whether unnecessary thoughts consume the same amount of energy as necessary ones. As new as Dyson's statements are, I'm still missing a good textbook modeling how Sun's radiation created intelligence on Earth, assuming the Solar system is fairly closed —no, wait, maybe this?

I use a battery eliminator with my GoPro Hero 3+ Black, together with an external (11500 mAh) battery pack. The combo will power the GoPro for far longer than the (maximum supported) 64GB microSD card has video capacity. Perfect for long cross-country flights that exceed the ~1.5-2 hours of internal battery capacity (the internal battery is 1150-1200 mAh, so the 11500 mAh external is good for about 18 hours of video recording; a 64GB microSD card can hold about 7 hours of video).
 

http://www.amazon.com/A-Boy-Ba...

      You can do what used to be a simple project for an 8-year-old, take it to a "makerfaire" or some other such nonsense, and be hailed a modern genius among the nitwits thus gathered!

Honestly, if you're thinking of solutions for hurricanes where you might be without power for longer than the portable batteries will last ... see if you can't find a hand-crank generator or something.

This looks interesting, but other than the google search for "hand crank generator" I know nothing about it.

A bunch of years ago my family spent a week without power after a major storm. A few weeks after that my father had a Honda generator wired directly into the house so they could keep the fridge running for short periods and run the well pump. Flick a switch, and you have limited power and a single AC plug. My in-laws have a much bigger generator which will generate a lot more power.

And then there's really cool things like this which is a campstove, but which also powers USB .. so you can cook and generate electricity from wood, which is pretty neat.

Similar thing in this power pot which charges USB while you boil water.

So, wood-burning USB power is a real thing.

With some googling, you can find a ton of ruggedized things which both charge from USB, and, and which generate power to charge USB devices.

The question is ... what do you need?

I use this, for the pi:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

get a 12v SLA battery (as you'd find in a computer UPS box) and that sits on one set of leads. your 14-18v filtered dc goes into thee main non-battery input, and you get one 'logic OR' output.

now, its either the battery voltage (12) or the input module voltage (could be 18v). so, I then pass that ups module output into a dc/dc to bring it down to a clean and reliable 5v for the pi:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

this ensures you always always get 5v into the pi, even if you lose mains power. it can all be built into a single box, too, even the 12v battery.

just fyi. (I built all this and its been working well for months, so far)

https://farm9.staticflickr.com...

HTH

I use this, for the pi:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

get a 12v SLA battery (as you'd find in a computer UPS box) and that sits on one set of leads. your 14-18v filtered dc goes into thee main non-battery input, and you get one 'logic OR' output.

now, its either the battery voltage (12) or the input module voltage (could be 18v). so, I then pass that ups module output into a dc/dc to bring it down to a clean and reliable 5v for the pi:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

this ensures you always always get 5v into the pi, even if you lose mains power. it can all be built into a single box, too, even the 12v battery.

just fyi. (I built all this and its been working well for months, so far)

https://farm9.staticflickr.com...

HTH

Well, with the magic of Google I've got:
A one can fridge:
http://www.kleargear.com/usb-refrigerator-desktop-12131.html
Something that looks like the Borg got you:
http://www.kleargear.com/usb-head-massage-12527.html
This I really like for the voltage detection:
http://www.craftsman.com/shc/s/p_10155_12602_00919337000P?sid=IDxCMDFx20140801x001&KPID=00919337000&kpid=00919337000
And this is along the same lines:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O13K9JY?tag=price106300d-20&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I bought one specifically for recharging my Estes ProtoX micro quadcopter. http://www.amazon.com/Estes-Pr...

http://www.amazon.com/Carejoy-...

If any of these kiddie code-camp dingbats were serious about getting kids interested in coding, they'd see about getting Big Trak re-resurrected. They had a modern version available for about five minutes around 2009. Add a WIFI interface to the the thing and Bob's your uncle.
While they're at it, make available add-on modules for a camera(s), and a freakin' lazor, maybe a robot claw.

No kidding. How about we outsource something good like overpaid CEOs or Congress? :)

Should be pretty easy to do.

The SATs and GREs are not state tests. They are run by private companies.

Distinction without difference — in this case.

Besides, cheating private companies — if they are sufficiently omnipresent to be thought part of "the system" (you know, maintained by "The Man" to keep you down) — is part of Americana since, at least, the hippies.

If it is Ok to squat a bank-owned house or to loot and burn a pharmacy, then cheating on a nationwide standardized exam is Ok too.

Chinese students in particular can further legitimize their case by the racism of American college Admission Boards, which favour Whites over Asians (and Blacks over Whites). This article, for example, provides a table from this book, which calculates the SAT-points benefit/penalty for different races: if Whites are treated neutrally, being a Black gains you 310 points, while being an Asian penalizes you by 140 (out of 1600)!

Cheating to protect oneself from such mistreatment would seem rather acceptable...

The Tesla Powerwall battery packs is wired for a 350-400 volt range, and come bare bones except for some equalization circuitry, (no charger nor inverter). Any modifications to the battery pack itself would likely void the warranty. How ever adding a low voltage circuit does have it merits, but the Powerwall will not be a factor.

I have considered running a solar/battery backed up 32-35 volt DC supply into the house, and use a number of 5-pack LM2596S stepdown inverters. The adjustable nature of these DC buck converters can power DC fans, Security system, DVRs, Antenna amps, Sat boxes, night lights, laptops, LCD monitor, door bell, automation system, charging stations, etc. The higher distribution voltage keeps losses to a minimum while providing uninterrupted power.

.

I had to get a special shaped adaptor for my 01 civic to replace the head unit. As long as there's a market for aftermarket head units there will be someone molding plastic to fill in the weird panel shapes the manufacturer chose.

Without any programming experience it's not likely you'd get hired. While specific language doesn't matter, you have to have sufficient knowledge and ability to be able to have a detailed discussion about solving problems in software design and implementation, and prove that you can write clean, accurate code, and do it quickly.

My recommendation is that you first spend some time working through many of the problems provided by Project Euler, or the Top Coder challenges, or similar. Or maybe one of the coding interview books, like this one.

When you're comfortable that you can take on a not-completely-trivial software problem, design an algorithm to solve it, accurately characterize the big O time and space complexity of your solution (not prove it... though you should be able to prove it, given more time), explain why there aren't any more efficient solutions, code it up on a whiteboard, and explain how you'd go about testing it, all in the course of a 45-minute interview, then you're probably ready.

It would also keep us from precious vitamin D. We are currently not meant to live in the dark, while evolution is slow and gradual. Are you proposing that they would evolve faster on Mars than we do here on Earth?

Light bulbs, and vitamin D

"All proceeds from the book benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation", that's all I need to hear.

I'm buying a copy for Michael Rogers as well.

Jay Frank's Futurehit.DNA made many of these same observations six years ago.

The actual article seems to only say that one web site, titled "What really happened to the dinosaurs", appears in response to one particular search query, "What happened to the dinosaurs".

Well, I also have these on the first page of Google:

Dinosaur Fate I - Christian Answers Network

What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? (DJ and Tracker John)

There Go the Dinosaurs

The other results are recent articles and blogs about the current case. I had to go to the second page before I saw the first answers which are not related to all of this and which explained about the extinction event 65 million years ago.

And if you're afraid powerpoint is going to make you stupid, guess what? You already are.

Awful presentations were around long before powerpoint.
Awful presentations will be around long after powerpoint is a bitter memory.
Maybe the worst thing about powerpoint is that it amplifies people's ability to generate crap as well as awesomeness, so that overall the total number of lame presentations has increased.

I will just leave this here for anybody that might be interested in trying to raise their game: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter). I found it to be a good read.

Banning things does us no favor, but getting the message out does

http://www.amazon.com/How-Powe...
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
https://www.psychologytoday.co...
http://www.unc.edu/~healdric/P...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04...

The summary of all of these articles is that Powerpoint has a limit to how much information it can place on a slide, this is largely a function of screen resolution and visible font size

This limit is resolution results in 'high level' 10,000 display of topics that does not adequately represent the subject matter
The result is that people give presentations at a high level and then send out the powerpoint as the notes for the presentation, when in fact any real detailed information would be either omitted or glossed over at that high level

What we really need is to demand improvements to Powerpoint, like
1. displaying at legible resolution on a 6ft high by 30 ft wide screen (remember those old blackboards from college Calculus class, that is the level of information density that we need)
2. Providing linking and drill down like would would expect to see on an executive dashboard. Sure, start at the summary level, but allow the speaker to drill down to the details at any point in the diagram. Also, make this all print out as the 'notes' with footnotes and references to the linked information
3. Train the presenters to not be satisfied working at the outline level

I guess that we should not simply blame Powerpoint for making us stupid, when we are stupid for relying on it as it is

"Okay, I do have a minor quibble that there's no line-in port, but that's no big deal. "

Problem solved for $8.69 .

http://www.amazon.com/Maxell-C...

My 25-year-old Mazda* has a tape deck, and I'm perfectly happy with that. (Okay, I do have a minor quibble that there's no line-in port, but that's no big deal. At least it doesn't have a CD player instead; if that were the case then I'd actually have to get an aftermarket stereo.)

(*Don't knock it; it's very much on the "classic sports car" end of the spectrum, not the "old junky econobox" end.)

Feynman's take:

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Two more examples from Ignition! by John Clark.

James Dewar (later Sir James, and the inventor of the Dewar flask and hence of the thermos botde), of the Royal Institute in London, in 1897 liquefied fluorine, which had been isolated by Moisson only eleven years before, and reported that the density of the liquid was 1.108. This wildly (and inexplicably) erroneous value (the actual density is 1.50) was duly embalmed in the literature, and remained there, unquestioned, for almost sixty years, to the confusion of practically everybody.

Bill Doyle, at North American, had also fired a small fluorine motor in 1947, but in spite of these successes, the work wasn't immediately followed up. The performance was good, but the density of liquid fluorine (believed to be 1.108 at the boiling point) was well below that of oxygen, and the military (JPL was working for the Army at that time) didn't want any part of it.

This situation was soon to change. Some of the people at Aerojet simply didn't believe Dewar's 54-year-old figure on the density of liquid fluorine, and Scott Kilner of that organization set out to measure it himself. (The Office of Naval Research put up the money.) The experimental difficulties were formidable, but he kept at it, and in July, 1951, established that the density of liquid fluorine at the boiling point was not 1.108, but rather a little more than 1.54. There was something of a sensation in the propellant community, and several agencies set out to confirm his results. Kilner was right, and the position of fluorine had to be re-examined. (ONR, a paragon among sponsors, and the most sophisticated —by a margin of several parsecs — funding agency in the business, let Kilner publish his results in the open literature in 1952, but a lot of texts and references still list the old figure. And many engineers, unfortunately, tend to believe anything that is in print.)

For years people had noted that a standing drum of acid slowly built up pressure, and had to be vented periodically. But they assumed that this pressure was a by-product of drum corrosion, and didn't think much about it. But then, around the beginning of 1950, they began to get suspicious. They put WFNA in glass containers and in the dark (to prevent any photochemical reaction from complicating the results) and found, to their dismay, that the pressure buildup was even faster than in an aluminum drum. Nitric acid, or WFNA at least, was inherently unstable, and would decompose spontaneously, all by itself. This was a revolting situation.

All of this goes to show that even well-respected scientists and engineers are not immune to bad science.

Cute, and potentially deadly weapons of mass destruction! Note that your concern about germs has not gone unconsidered in history.

Excerpted from The Scientific Method by Louis Fieser:

The carrying power of a 10-11 gram bat is indeed amazing, some 15-18 grams; the incendiary bomb was in this range (17.5 grams). Bats can carry such loads for miles. And bats with dummy bombs released in housed areas dragged the loads into sites highly favorable for fire-starting. We released bats successfully at various altitudes both from the B-2 S and from an open Attack Bomber, in which flying was great fun. The smoke bombs functioned satisfactorily and provided further information. Col. Epler and the Qther officers all favored a full-scale trial with live incendiaries to be injected for a 10-minute take-off just before release. I considered a live test highly hazardous and likely to lead to disclosure o£ the project. I also thought it unnecessary. But the officers insisted that a report to the CWS and AAF chiefs would be incomplete without it and so, on a Saturday, a live test was scheduled for the following Monday.

Everything went off on schedule, and shortly after dinner the bomber flew in loaded with shrieking, kicking bats. The airmen had taken delight in a form of hunting which consisted in swinging landing nets at the mouth of an inexhaustible cave, and the crates were all jam full. The crates were loaded into the truck and the refrigeration turned on full tilt. But the howling went on without abate for a couple of hours, and it became evident that the refrigerating unit was not adequate to cope with such a large amount of body heat all of a sudden. So we mounted a series of fans in positions to blow air in over cakes of ice. Finally, about midnight, the noise ceased; hibernation had been accomplished. A night watch of soldiers took over, and we turned in.

The next day the bats were still nicely quiet and we started a trial with the lightest of the dummy bombs. A first batch of bats in hibernation with weights attached was dumped out of the bomber at a low altitude, 2,000 ft. as I recall. The ground crew scurried around in jeeps and eventually located a group of free-fallers large enough to show that few if any of the bats had come out of hibernation. Other batches were released from higher and higher altitudes, which made reconnaissance increasingly difficult. Eventually it was clear that the bats were not in hibernation but dead. Our cooling had been too efficient, too sudden.

Imagine, then, a surprise attack on Tokyo in which a succession of bombers would operate at high altitude for about half an hour, say starting at midnight, each delivering a load of bat-bombs equivalent to some 3,700 fires. There would be no explosions or fire bursts to give warning, and the bombers would depart. With the activated mechanisms all set for a fourhour delay, bombs in strategic and not easily detectable locations would start popping all over the city at 4 a.m. An attractive picture? AU those working on the project thought so. Then, suddenly, X-ray was cancelled. I never learned the reason, but can make a guess. The bats would be vectors for bombs, but they would be vectors also for germs. Our side might be accused of initiating biological warfare. But the job was done very effectively by M-69s.

All,

I have worked in IT for most of my adult life. Before getting into IT though, I actually worked as a physicist and did grad work first in physics and then, believe it or not, in social psychology. That, plus a few art hobbies (think photography and writing), managed to get me into the people side of IT in particular and science and tech in general.

Back in 2006 I became a leader of a committee in the Governor's Workforce Investment Board in Maryland. I and my team learned a great deal about problems in aerospace in particular and tech fields in general. I have stored the written documents of my committee on my blog. My page Aerospace Initiative Home Page is a useful introduction to my committee's work. That page has links to my committee's work. There is a great deal there.

I also wrote a much briefer public policy paper Aerospace Workforce Issues that is a quick summary of what I and my team discovered.

Very briefly, poor, sometimes abusive management and poor work life balance is causing young people to stay away from tech fields in general. Worker abuse also causes projects to fail. Exhausted workers do not perform well. People here might try reading Stanley Coren's Sleep Thieves to learn more about this. Demarco and Lister in Peopleware bring this up as well.

Enough -- probably way too much -- for now.

All,

I have worked in IT for most of my adult life. Before getting into IT though, I actually worked as a physicist and did grad work first in physics and then, believe it or not, in social psychology. That, plus a few art hobbies (think photography and writing), managed to get me into the people side of IT in particular and science and tech in general.

Back in 2006 I became a leader of a committee in the Governor's Workforce Investment Board in Maryland. I and my team learned a great deal about problems in aerospace in particular and tech fields in general. I have stored the written documents of my committee on my blog. My page Aerospace Initiative Home Page is a useful introduction to my committee's work. That page has links to my committee's work. There is a great deal there.

I also wrote a much briefer public policy paper Aerospace Workforce Issues that is a quick summary of what I and my team discovered.

Very briefly, poor, sometimes abusive management and poor work life balance is causing young people to stay away from tech fields in general. Worker abuse also causes projects to fail. Exhausted workers do not perform well. People here might try reading Stanley Coren's Sleep Thieves to learn more about this. Demarco and Lister in Peopleware bring this up as well.

Enough -- probably way too much -- for now.

Most people are unaware that the Federal Reserve Bank (aka the Fed) is NOT part of the government; it's a super bank created and owned by big banks to which the Federal government has ceded enormous economy-manipulating powers. In the long dirty history of the institution, it has cause many bad economic cycles as side-effects of its attempts to manipulate the economy. For an eye-opening look, read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" .

In the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown, and throughout the entire Obama administration, the Fed has suppressed interest rates so severely that the only real place to make money with money was to invest it in the market (which explains why the stock market is now nearly twice what it was in 2002 while the economy itself is NOT). When you consider that the national debt which was outrageous before Mr Obama became president has now nearly DOUBLED under his watch (to over $18 TRILLION) we are now trapped in a bubble whose popping will be SEVERE

If the Fed tries to raise rates (which would slow the growth of the bubble by making places other than the market attractive again) the interest payments the nation must pay on its debts will balloon, probably out-pacing the cost of the pentagon (and further growing the deficits and debt).

If the Fed leaves rates low, it encourages the bubble to keep growing AND leaves itself with no way to push rates down to assist the economy in any future slow-down.

No bubble lasts forever, and this one will cause world-wide disruptions when it pops (more like 1929 and less like 2008).

You're being naive. Read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" and tell me that's not what we're seeing here.