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Click and clack have done 25 years of persuading Americans that the American suburban culture built around the gasoline burning passenger car is OK.

As the years of the program went by, the program went from saying something serious and important every now and then to never saying anything of a serious, important or critical nature. They never had any guest of any status ever: No Ralph Nader, no critics, no real mechanic.

That is the nature of mass media. Car Talk has been facilitating the acceptance of American automobile based culture for 25 years.

Despite a series of really big cultural shocks, and ignoring some small and constructive changes in cultural direction, Car Talk has been selling acceptance of the status quo.

I have been fixing my own car and my family's cars for 40+ years. I do everything except tires and smog certificates. I operate with a split between a radical '60s social change interest and accepting compliance with the status quo and it's comfort. The time and money economics of automobile based society are really hard to beat. http://lessco2essay.blogspot.com/2010/03/found-linear-regression-data-from-los.html

Do you wanna watch live sports.Watch your live sports here http://www.bestonlinelivesports.blogspot.com/

If a woman does something there must be a demeaning word for it: http://schroedingerstabby.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-tell-male-from-female.html

made the same point in his book Micro Trends.

> I don't see Coke suing Pepsi over the shape of their bottle.

You don't see Coke suing Pepsi over the shape of their bottle *headlined on slashdot* because slashdot is a us-centric tech news site which seldom features news about the sugared-water industry and because Pepsi has already been throughly slapped down in the US on the matter.

Worldwide, however, it's a different story. To this day, in other jurisdictions Pepsi continues to try to glom onto Coke's designs:
http://ipwars.com/2010/10/22/coke-pepsi-and-the-shape-of-the-bottle/

And Coke continues to work, in those jurisdictions, to stop them.
http://class-99.blogspot.com/2010/10/real-thing-coke-sues-pepsi-over-bottle.html
http://www.managingip.com/Article/1450469/How-Coca-Cola-protects-its-rights-in-Asia.html?Print=true

The only difference is that this is less common in tech because until very recently, few people in the tech industry though design was important, the mainstream tech crowd liked to denigrate those who did, and large swaths of the tech crowd has had a preconceived "Let's find a reason, any reason, to mindlessly bash Apple." bias pretty much as long as Apple has been in business.

But like I said, outside of tech, trademarks, trade dress, and design patents have always been part of business as usual.

And just like Coke isn't trying to sue every manufacturer of sugared water everywhere, just the ones that shamelessly imitate its protected designs; Apple is not suing every cellphone manufacturer over every cellphone. They're just going after the specific manufacturers and specific models that bear an uncanny resemblance to the iPhone.

No, that was Bill Clinton.

You're assuming that it will require a human to grade the exams. And extended coursework is becoming more come in lieu of a thesis. The time required for a human to teach a course isn't what it used to be. And why should it?

The bigger issue is the honor code. But Udacity just entered into an agreement with Pearson testing centers to allow students to test in a recognized environment.

I admit, I'm a bit biased after taking the Robotic Car class, but I think it's time for a change in our educational structure. Costs are increasing much faster than inflation, yet technology is clearly there to make it cheaper.

There are also male promotional models. Lots of them.

http://www.newfaces.com/blogs/2011/05/14/abercrombies-101-shirtless-male-models/

They'll become more common as women come to dominate the buying power (since they are getting degrees at a higher rate).

http://thequeerofallmedia.blogspot.com/2012/01/english-male-model-sam-way-super-hot.html

Most appear to be selling speedo's. :-)

It doesn't bother me that men are exploited this way. We are all exploited in different ways until we become financially independent.

Thomas Merton.

Nice info thank http://kerjawa.blogspot.com/

LinkedIn also takes contact information from your Gmail account: http://privacylog.blogspot.com/2008/12/privacy-fail-linkedin-steals-private.html

But design patents and copyright do not last hundreds of years.

The Chinese developer has every right to do this. For fucks' sake, Disney's castle rips off castles from all over Europe and nobody says a peep.

The Austrians should be happy it's just a developer copying it and not the Chinese military, who have copied a section of a Kashmir (Aksai Chin) for military training purposes, specifically, tank training.

http://pruned.blogspot.com/2006/07/huangyangtan-or-tactical-geoannexation.html

--
BMO

Top 20% creates jobs for the people in the bottom 80%. The myth of immigrant labor taking jobs is pretty much busted. Wall St Journal reported last month that Mexico is a NET EMMIGRATION country since 2006. If you add up all the "lost jobs" since they started broadcasting the "lost jobs" statistic, the developing world would be an empty desert. The jobs that are lost are not jobs we want. What we want are the top 20%, and we want those companies to excel with the best workforce possible. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2012/04/mexican-immigration-solved.html

You really have no idea what you are doing.

Your variable, stuff is, in fact, an Array with literal strings for its first three indices. But calling stuff.foo = "bar" does not add to them. Instead, what you have created a new property on that instance called foo, which joins other Array object properties like length. Any half-intelligent JSON serialization routine will notice the object has type Array and will go about looking only at the indexed values.

Why you would ever want to do something so confusing as combining indexed and mapped values in an object this way is beyond me.

By the way, you can very easily iterate over object properties.

for (var property in object) {
    value = object[property];
}

Seriously, learn the tool before you start criticizing it. And, as it happens, this is one reason JavaScript has developed such bad reputations: clueless hacks like you apply the language in utterly bizarre and foolish ways, and then go on about how “LOL Javascripts are Teh SUX0R d00dz, it's sl0w and lAaMe. U shuld all codez teh Ruby.”

Ah, yes moving the goalpost and god of the gaps.

There are hundreds of examples of macro evolution.
http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2009/02/macroevolution-examples-and-evidence.html

http://www.windows2universe.org/headline_universe/olpa/whales_20dec07.html

And so on.

" when the continents themselves would have worn down (and been replaced) in a fraction of time."
also, stupid.

I'm not sure where you are getting your science information, but I'm pretty sure it's from no where.

What a few people in the ID world have done is conflate several issues:
Origins and Evolution.
Evolution and speciation.
God v. Science.

They have spread the idea that understanding evolution is the same as not believing in God.
This is false. Evolution is a fact.

I guess that Samsung will have to rename it's S2 Evolution smartphone. I know a lot of US Koreans and some of them can out thump our best homegrown bible thumpers,

I'm afraid all I can see when I look at that picture is this.

It's just lucky we humans aren't that tasty. Oh - wait...

Read her blog. She sounds insane: http://attorney4specialneeds.blogspot.com/

"Isn't it ironic? Atty4kids' suffering began when a crafty Houston Chronicle Help Desk Guy, Jay Lee asserted what appeared to be false claims for copyright violation against her, wiping out this and 13 websites 8 days before the primary, under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Why do I believe it was false? A litany of facts suggesting Jay has very naughty. "Fair Use" Doctrine. Jay Lee and his outrageous lynch mob media printing lies to smear Candice have gone so over the top, there's simply more to the story. I've never met anyone so masochistic, begging to be smacked, as Jay. Call in the lynch mob! It goes all the way to Scotland! what's really up? Why would grown men put on an act like this,assassinating the Character of the President & Founder of Attorneys for Special Needs Children? Jay Lee is a hacker and tech expert and knows everything imaginable about computers. He would certainly know how to take down 14 of Atty4kids' websites with a single accusation. He would also know that images can be purchased through licensing, if he did not truly own the image motivating him to slice her jugular. What was wrong with sites? Sheriff Garcia was called a cry baby and couldn't take it. Artsy people like Lee usually possess many talents. He is an Amatuer photographer. He had a right to file te claim if true, but Most people are kind enough to first notify the person going for the jugular. He did not. He whines that he didn't know this would occur, unlikely story. What I think he failed to anticipate was the devastation and anger he'd cause to a mom with three kids who is deeply committed to advancing the Civil Rights of Special Needs Children (Atty4kids) who is a force to be reckoned with. Realizing the damage caused, he withdrew his sworn infringement claim immediately and practically begged her ISP to restore service quickly. Whether her suspicions are right or not, HE SHOULD HAVE HIT THE ROAD After she apologized, offered payment, permitting him to NAME HIS PRICE, he withdrew the accusation and the image was removed. He did not, but began stalking Atty4kids on Twitter and accused her of infringement AGAIN in fron of 1700 followers. Livid, she said "you better be joking" and he disappeared in abject fear. Coupled with the bait and switch game he played on Flickr, theres reason for concen. First, he scripted a drama for others to play that was enough to make you vomit. He wrote his pathetic sob story all over the photo with a frowny face as onlookers gawked ooh, aah, and spoke of the money he should have been paid on Flickr, UNAWARE that he could have NAMED THE PRICE and FAILED. 10 seconds was my limit. I left ad clicked the link a short time afterwards of curiosity, POOF! GONE! A magician like Sheriff Garcia? With the Chronicle Head Sheriff Garcia's crafty weasly Campaign Manager, free lessons? What are the odds that less than 24 hours after calling Garcia a cry baby and 8 days prior to primary, her VERY POLITICAL, HIGH RANKED blog, Chicks and Politics, would be suspended by a hacking pro employed with the Chronicle! If you knew Bernie's influence with the Chronicle, you'd laugh. She traced the Twitter stalker immediately, finding Jay and his Chronicle association she knew before even looking. Media Libels Atty4kids & Violates Her COPYRIGHT (DMCA) Jay milked the horrific tragedy for 4 days at which time Atty had enough and demanded he remove all of his libel, infringement and harassment from the web within 2 hours. Several cease and desist letters were sent, but this one hit a nerve. Maybe it was Atty's advice, "Get a lawyer," for 4 days, every parasite imaginable seeking to cash in (they are collecting funds for Jay's Defense), not yet realizing they'll need one too, is defaming her too. Theyve republished a BS atiry to inflict damage. Keep it up, morons! Damages are looking great! Atty has given 1000 hours in our fight foe justice for disabled kids. She

Check out Scenic Map from GrangerFX. Totally offline 2D/3D maps. http://scenicmap.blogspot.com/
I use it for search & rescue where we're in the middle of stinking nowhere with no cellphone coverage.

Check it out

http://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/mobility_program/index.shtml

http://fastest-android-phone.blogspot.com/2012/03/nsa-built-android-phone-for-secret.html

Gallup and a few others have consistently gotten numbers between 40-48% for this data, but for reasons I don't fully understand, CBS polls on the same issue get slightly higher results. They get routinely in the 50-55% range http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-965223.html. I'm not sure why this discrepancy exists, but it isn't a single yearly issue and it doesn't seem to be connected to how the questions are phrased, which suggests there's some more subtle issue going on.

The data for both this years Gallup poll and previous years does show some fairly predictable patterns. For example, by most of the previous polls, around 60% of Republicans are Young Earth Creationists while a little under 40% of Democrats are Young Earth Creationists. http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx. This should not however be taken as general evidence that Republicans or conservatives are dumb or uneducated. The GSS as part of their regular survey does a set about general science knowledge, and that data suggests that when not asking questions about evolution or age of the Earth, progressives and conservatives look very similar, and there's some evidence that the people with the least science knowledge are self-identified moderates http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/03/the-republican-fluency-with-science/ although exactly what is going on is not clear. http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/2011/04/political-affiliation-and-scientific.html. This is part of a general trend which suggests that moderates in the US are often not very well informed.

Also, while Gallup says that the fraction of people who reject evolution has stayed roughly constant, there's a potentially more interesting trend in the data, over the last 30 years there's been a steady increase in people who say that evolution occurred with God taking no part in the process. http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationism.aspx. Most of that is movement not from the strict creationists but from a reduction in the size of the group that thinks that evolution happened with God guiding it. This may reflect the general decline of the moderately religious, especially so called "mainline Protestants" or it may be due to other effects such as general increases in partisanship.

Could you list all the products Google had out a decade ago that now require you provide a phone number and real name to use, that didn't then?

Does Google search require this, for example? (Answer: no)
What about GMail? (Answer: no)
Google groups? (Answer: no)
Google maps? (Answer: no)
Google news? (Answer: no)
OK, well, iGoogle? (Answer: no)
Youtube? (Answer: no)

OK... so what are we talking about here?

I know that the generic Google account system recommends you give it a cellphone number, so you can recover your password more securely. But you're not required to. In fact, the only tool I'm aware of that requires you give your phone number is Google Voice, which it's required you do since its inception, because it needs it in order to work properly.

What about real names? Well, there's Google+, but that's new. And it has plenty of competition. And in fact, the real names thing is probably why Google+ hasn't taken off. So that pretty much kills that argument.

Real names are also required for... well, anything that uses payments (Google Play, for example, if, and only if, you buy something, and AdWords), because, well, credit cards are difficult to charge if you don't have a fucking name. But that's ALWAYS been the case, since Froogle.

AdSense does too, but again always has done. (Yes, Google knows who I am)

So, really, what's your argument here?

Google has always had services that require real names and/or real telephone numbers. They're pushing the latter recently solely to help you recover lost passwords, and they're pushing the former only in relation to one service that, by no stretch of the imagination, can remotely be considered to be having monopoly power, and whose primary competitor, which pre-existed Google+ by many years, has always had the same policy.

I would agree with this, except I would put classical music and/or binaural music above silence, as both have been shown to improve concentration and reduce learning and recall times.

I would not mind this being true as I quite like classical music but I consider this rather dubious.
Especially when one considers that these types of claims pop up once in a while often with very little to support them.
For instance the oft quoted study that found that certain types classical music improved test scores when listened
to prior to an exam looks to be bunk.
A follow up study was done and found that the type of music you listen to was unimportant; the only thing that appeared
to have any bearing on the test results was whether or not you liked what you heard.

The two links you used don't appear to be showing any major evidence in favor of what they claim.
They are not quoting any proper large scale investigations into the matter like a large double blind study.
Instead they appear to be enthusiastic recommendations by artistic people who play and enjoy classical music.

silence > music > office noise

I would agree with this, except I would put classical music and/or binaural music above silence, as both have been shown to improve concentration and reduce learning and recall times.

Hmmm... I can't believe I've made it this far into the comments and nobody has mentioned trance (and related electronic genres). Unlike classical, you don't have the dynamics leaving you straining to hear over your co-workers one minute, deafened by a crescendo the next. The repetition and lack of lyrics keep it from being distracting. Just pick something fairly textured and it sublimates all those inane conversations going on around you (as you wonder why you're in the middle of a call center while idiots paid less than you have quiet, private offices so they can do serious intellectual work like making PowerPoint presentations).

It makes sense for "Homeland Security" to secure power grids, and critical infrastructure.
They know nothing of computer security, botnets, or doing much more than confiscation.
The BSA knows even less.

I would be excited to see a team of REAL security experts (Schneier and Kasperksky)
working together with the folks at http://garwarner.blogspot.com/ to eliminate the real threats.
Grandmothers, breastfeeding mothers, little girls with insulin pumps, and people who copy
Windows 98 are _NOT_ the real threat.

Ehud

silence > music > office noise

I would agree with this, except I would put classical music and/or binaural music above silence, as both have been shown to improve concentration and reduce learning and recall times.

A quick google showed that that this is indeed the chip, but the claims are "slightly" overblown

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2012/05/bogus-story-no-chinese-backdoor-in.html

Bogus story: no Chinese backdoor in military chip

"Today's big news is that researchers have found proof of Chinese manufacturers putting backdoors in American chips that the military uses. This is false. While they did find a backdoor in a popular FPGA chip, there is no evidence the Chinese put it there, or even that it was intentionally malicious.

Furthermore, the Actel ProAsic3 FPGA chip isn't fabricated in China at all !!

Doctor Hackenbush, I presume?

Not any longer.

The question is - what industry exactly we will lose?
I still find this article insightful - http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/01/selling-paper.html

It would do us well to get somewhat used to the idea of bartering for the things we need. When economies collapse, everyone falls back to the barter system. Not saying that the U.S. economy is on the brink or anything (although it's certainly a lot closer than it was 30 years ago) but most younger people seem to have no concept of bartering for goods and services or look at it with incredulity. My uncles, all older tradesmen (carpentry, electrical, plumbing) all worked on the barter system occasionally over the course of their careers, especially with other tradesmen, where it's a lot more common for people to work out deals like that under the table. They're retired mostly, now, but they still do the odd job here or there, usually in trade (my carpenter uncle, for instance, recently did a small job for someone in exchange for a few cords of seasoned firewood).

While I can't ignore the tax-dodging aspects of arrangements like this, it's hard for me to see a negative in reviving the barter system to a certain extent in the collective consciousness. Maybe it would even have a positive impact on wastefulness, when people realize that the stuff they're tossing might be worth something they could actually use in trade to the right person. This guy started trading with a single paperclip and ended up eventually getting a house. Obviously not typical, but still demonstrative of the value in trade.

I want to eat GMO's.. How do find out which products have them.... I say put in BIG LETTERS on the front of the box or BOLD it on the ingredients label. What would be the harm in that? Really, Monsanto says they are good for us. So tell me where I can find more of them.... or are they afraid of something?
Ken
http://hairstylesstar.blogspot.com

A few years ago I was in the Whitehouse and things were going bad. The economy was flopping, support was going, and even Michelle wasn't satisfied. Then I came across MyCleanPC, and things turned better. Michelle was happy, supporters rallying, the economy improving, and Michelle was getting what she wanted. Unfortunately I tried the advanced configuration options of MyCleanPC, and things got switched round. Michelle was growing instead of the economy and the country was well and truly fucked.

Tell me then, where can I freely, and relatively easily find food products that do not contain genetically UNmodified corn or soy?

About everywhere.

Your statement that this information is "non-essential" is strange.

No it isn't. Knowing if something has peanuts is essential. Knowing if something has gluten is essential. Knowing the details of the variety of an ingredient is not.

Roundup ready crops have been modified to be resistant to the broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup. They were created basically for the purpose of selling more of Monsanto's best selling herbicide.

First, I know that, second, so what? Really, so what? Do you have any idea how agriculture works? People use herbicide with plants that can tolerate them, GMO or not, deal with it, and they've been doing this since long befor eGMOs where a thing.

Roundup is toxic, it is an endocrine disruptor, and it damages DNA. In addition is has a profound negative ecological impact.

Yeah, I'd love to see a strong source for that in the amounts of Round Up you get in your food, preferably several.

Well because direct manipulation of genetic code is very new

First GMO crop: tobacco, China, 1988. How is that new?

very radical

Any more radical than a doubled haploid four way hybrid, or something cultured from an irradiated blob of callus cells? Ok, you're binging in DNA in a new way, as opposed to more traditional methods, which do some pretty unusual things sometimes. So what?

only sparsely tested

Bull. Shit. Unless by sparely tested you mean have been studied for decades with hundreds of studies done across the world and millions of dollars spend to reach the widely held scientific consensus that they are safe.

Each of those criteria is worthy of making an exception and forcing monoplistic predatory corporations to disclose what they are feeding to the public.

No they don't, and even without getting into the Monsanto thing (which is usually overblown anyway), labeling should not be based on non-scientific things. I want to know if my food is picked by migrant farm workers laboring under abusive exploitative conditions being paid an unfair wage, but that doesn't merit a mandatory label.

When some of these crops turn out to be really bad, all of society will have to bear the medical costs.

Yeah, I'm sure that will happen right after it turns out that vaccines cause autism. I'm interested, what could possibly be the biochemical basis for how the cry genes, nptII, c4 epsps, bar, cspB, prv cp, and/or cmv cp (the transgenes used in presently approved GE crops) could possibly in any way be harmful to humans? Because for all the accusation, no one ever wants to talk biochemistry to back their musing. I wonder why? Could it be that the accusations have no scientific merit whatsoever?

Now in the case of GM foods, it is illegal for a food to be labeled as non-GMO food.

A number of people have said this, and all I can say is, do you people go to grocery stores? There are quite a number of items that say this on them. It isn't illegal, the FDA just frowns upon it because it gives the false impression that non-geneitcally engineered foods are superior, and because the term GMO is not technically accurate (as GMO means genetically modified organism, which every crop is, and the term should really be GEO).

You argue that there are way too many types of genetic manipulation for us commoners to be able to know the difference

No, I'm saying there is no meaningful argument that can be applied to one but not the others.

There should not be a presumption of safety, genetic tinkerers should bear the burden of proof before their crops are sold to the public or released into the ecosystem.

Ge crops are safe, also, see above.

Roundup-resistant crops and crops which produce their own pesticides.

You mean just like every other herbicide resistant plant on the planet? And as for producing their own pesticides, all plants do that. In fact, most of the pesticides in your diet are natural poisons.

Roundup-resistant means that astonishing quantities of Roundup were used on the crop to kill weeds.

And it also means that much harsher herbicides were replaced. Herbicides are pretty common.

Roundup which was touted as safe by your agribusiness "scientists" is turning out to be pretty bad for us. Roundup is teratogenic, and endocrine disruptor, and causes genetic damage.

I'm sure if you drank the stuff, but in the levels present in your food, not even close.

The second common type is even scarier since we know that you can't wash the pesticides off of these, they are inside!

See above. Plant physiology 101: all plants have pesticides in them, so that is not something innately worrying, and especially not when we know exactly how this pesticide works. You body treats it like any other protein, it works by binding to receptors humans just do not have, and it isn't even active in acidic environments like the mammalian gut anyway.

I usually fall on the science side of arguments (evolution, climate change, etc.) but there are currently two areas of science that have been totally corrupted by money and corporate influence: Pharmacology, and agricultural biology.

Ah, so you're liberal unscientific then. Accept the science of climate change and evolution, but reject that of medical and agricultural science. Sorry, but that's no better than rejcting evolution or climate change.

Anyone who follows this story knows that new GMO crops are invented all the time and the FDA rubberstamps them because the FDA is a captured agency.

Nonsense! It takes so long for new crops to get on the market. That is another anti-GMO talking point that falls flat. There are tons of crops in development that get stuck at the regulatory process because of how strict is is. It took years to get DroughtGard approved, and look at the rough time the AquaAdvantage salmon is having.

There is no way that the kind of large scale long-term studies have been done to validate the safety of GMO crops.

Take your pick.

So I call a hearty BS on your vilifying concerned people as being anti-science. Shame on you for resulting to name-calling.

Yeah, that's what the creationists, climate change denialists, anti-vaxxers, and every ot

Saw an article comparing the owner Elon Musk to a real life Tony Stark. So, I did this: :^) http://earth2eddie.blogspot.com/2012/05/tony-stark.html

And what about scientists who say it is harmful

Depends on whether they actually publish their results in a peer reviewed journal or not. I looked for that study in NIH and darnedest thing, couldn't find it. As far as I know, the Ermakova study was never actually published in a peer reviewed journal. If you want to case doubt on the safety of GE crops, you're going to have to do better than that. even Andrew Wakefield managed to get his study in NIH. And for that one study, here's a couple hundred more to look over. Fact is, GE crops have been extensively tested, and there is no convincing evidence whatsoever to suggest that currently used GE crops are harmful to human health.

Her Blogspot site ...

http://attorney4specialneeds.blogspot.com/

Has the same logo as ...

http://activesportfitness.co.uk/

Someone seems to have copied it from the other.

Thanks to Google Goggles for that quick research!

Here's an example of the kind of graffiti you could expect. (scroll down to pictures 4-6)

folders (very important for me, very useful, and not present at all in Gmail)

Labels are strictly more powerful than folders especially now that gmail has nested labels: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/06/superstars-and-nested-labels-now.html.

Spend at least 5 seconds googling, or, umm, yahooing, before complaining.

Those "smart tags" make gmail a pain to use over IMAP, since you have lots of autogenerated folders, and deleting an email won't delete it, and moving it sometimes copies, sometimes moves. It's really a pain if you use any client which is not their own.

keyboard shortcuts (something Gmail doesn't support at all)

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6594

tabs on the interface, so I can have several messages composing at once (again, no such thing in Gmail)

Click the button in the upper-right to detach the "Compose Mail" dialog into a new window, then click "Compose Mail" again and voila, you will be composing two messages simultaneously.

folders (very important for me, very useful, and not present at all in Gmail)

Labels are strictly more powerful than folders especially now that gmail has nested labels: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/06/superstars-and-nested-labels-now.html.

Spend at least 5 seconds googling, or, umm, yahooing, before complaining.

Not really. Developing new plant varieties is hard work that produces a unique and beneficial to society end produce, and developing a new plant variety is much like developing a new anything in that regard. From Luther Burbank (who was one of the early proponents of what eventually became the Plant Patent Act of 1930 and later the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970) to modern breeders and genetic engineers, they deserve some control over their work, and it helps innovation. My favorite variety of apple, SnowSweet, is patented & illegal to propagate and would likely not exist were it not for patents on life (and it is not, by the way, genetically engineered).

The cutoff is when you've done enough rigorous and open testing that nobody in the professional scientific community can raise any particular concerns.

Well, good news! Fact is, scientific consensus is that GE crops are safe and effective. Don't believe me? Go to your local university's agriculture, plant biology, genetics, or molecular biology/biochemistry department, or contact your local extension office (if you are in the US, you do have one). I have, and have yet to find a single person saying otherwise. Like evolution or vaccines, his is much more a popular controversy than a scientific one (discredited papers like the Pusztai study or the Séralini study notwithstanding).

The people producing the GMO's have, for example, claimed there is no risk of their product escaping into other fields, which has been proven false over and over.

Who? When? Plants cross pollinate. Everyone knows that, and problems from cross pollination are nothing new. That's why I put cheesecloth on my flowers when I garden. I grow stable lines and I don't want the to get cross pollinated, and others who grow open pollinated (or heirloom if you will) know the importance of preventing accidental pollenation. Or think of people who grow seedless fruits. What happens if you have a seedless citrus or persimmon orchard and someone decides to plant another variety? Seeds. Or what if you grow sweet corn next to field corn? The endosperm will be affected by what pollinates the corn, so your sweet corn will be ruined. So lets not act as if GE crops are the only thing where cross pollination occurs.

Each time it happens, these assholes sue the farmers whose crops get contaminated for "illegally" using their patented product.

No, they sue if you have an unnaturally large number of the transgene present, which is to say, when someone knowingly selects for the transgene (the morality of which is somewhat debatable, but lets not act as if it simply happens by accident). Can you show me a single case where they sued someone for simple cross pollination?

Then we have some very recent evidence that the rash of Colony Collapse Disorder among honey bee populations is being caused by a somewhat new pesticide. This just so happens to be the same pesticide which is integrated into the Monsanto corn, and preliminary tests indicate it DOES affect bee populations.

Absolutely false. CCD by the way occurs in areas where GE crops are not grown. The problem may be due to farming practices (like monoculture), or certain other pesticides, but there is no evidence to suggest that Bt crops are responsible in any way.

Especially when viewed in light of the other claims Monsanto has made about their product and have been shown to be false.

Which is why farmers keep buying their seed, right? Which is why we are actually seeing problems because farmers aren't planting enough non-GMO refuge area?

There just hasn't been enough testing of these products.

Everyone says this, but never says what would be considered sufficient testing. I think it is so the goalpost can keep moving.

I've been watching as this meme has been created and spread over the past few decades by the US Right. This idea that the US isn't a democracy. Initially it was seen only in the far right extremists, popularised by the founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch. But over the years it has been moving further and further into the mainstream ideology (and increasingly the cultural "Shibboleths") of the conservative movement. You can now see it on posters at most right-wing rallies or protests.

It seems to be based on a bizarre notion that "democracy" can only mean mob-rule, and that "republic" can only mean a system where the individual is protected from mob-rule. (Poster 1. Poster 2.) And the even more bizarre idea that democracy is some kind trick being played by the left-wing to destroy America, and anyone who says the US is a democracy is part of (or victim of) the liberal/socialist/fascist conspiracy. States have even passed laws banning schools from teaching that the US is a democracy. Likewise, they play on the idea that Democrats want a "democracy" (which is bad), and Republicans want a "republic" (which is good.)

Google "US is a republic" and instant-results suggests "...not a democracy" without any further prompting. It's a major conservative meme. And it certainly isn't irrelevant, since it would be where the AC got the notion in the first place.

The US is a republic. It is a democracy. It is a federation. It is a commonwealth. It is a nation. It is a sovereign state. It is a regional union of independent states. These words describe different aspects of your nation, not different nations.

[Weirdest is the tendency of proponents to appeal to authority of the founding fathers. Weird because Jefferson's party were called the "Democratic Republicans", suggesting that they weren't quite as dark on democracy as the proponents of the meme would like to suggest.]

A lot of the commenters here have forgotten their history with this case. This is one case where, in fact, the punishment fits quite nicely.

This is a punishment for illegally sharing music pretty much in name only. The actual trial could be described as a textbook case of "how to alienate a jury."

So, first, Tenenbaum hired a lawyer who acted very eccentric: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/07/tenenbaum-trial-opens-following-last-minute-dismissal-of-fair-use-defense/

Then, Tenenbaum - after eight months of legal proceedings - admitted that he had been lying under oath the entire time. When counsel asked him why he had basically played the entire court system (and, for that matter, his own lawyer) for chumps for the last eight months, he replied with the equivalent of a shrug and "it seemed like the best response to give": http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/07/tenenbaum-takes-the-stand-i-used-p2p-and-lied-about-it/

At this point, he had acted enough like a sociopath that the $675,000 judgement against him was self-inflicted. Then, having done all this, his legal team put out an appeal to the Internet to pay his fine for him. I'm not kidding - the appeal was removed after the backlash included Ray Beckerman himself: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2009/08/please-do-not-contribute-any-funds-to.html

And now, he's trying to weasel out of the consequences of his actions. I'm sorry, but I think the punishment fits here. This isn't some poor fool who got caught sharing a few songs and got extorted by the RIAA for it. This is somebody who perjured himself for eight months, alienated what would have otherwise probably have been a sympathetic jury, and tried to get everybody else to pay his fine when the jury - understandably upset when it learned it had been lied to and the entire system played for chumps - handed down its sentence.

The Supreme Court was right to not spare this man any of its time.

You didn't google for "spacex merchandise"? http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2012/04/spacex-swag.html (which is also a pretty good blog about KSC stuff, with lots of photos to give you a serious nerd boner) I suspect that JSC Houston probably has a visitor complex with merchandise too.

Maybe a tech work-around: like mormon (bubble) pron?

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DC 190

In the past, Microsoft used to take the bashing alone!

That was before we learned that Microsoft and Apple are really Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Apple is just better at it.