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We dunno pay taxes but plz help us make more money.

Self-replicating space habitats that could duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore were a long favorite "ark" idea of mine to deal with the risk of global nuclear war (although JD Bernal proposed them first in the 1920s it turns out). Anyway, arks are just another option to umbrellas -- given umbrellas may not work depending in the size of the storm. For me, the idea of a basic income is also a sort of an "ark". But I've tried others -- like helping people be more self-reliant with growing stuff via the garden simulator or helping people with making stuff with OSCOMAK (not to say how successful I've been, which is not much, especially for OSCOMAK, pretty much a big nothing except others are doing related ideas now in a smaller way like Thingiverse or Appropedia).

I agree there is a tension of where to invest your time and other resources. You have to find something that works for you and your unique interests and abilities. It;s true though that when you invest in yourself, or your family, or even your local neighborhood, you have a much better sense of whether the investment is paying off than doing general advocacy for something to contribute to global change. As I say on my site when I talk about five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned and theft): "The particular balance a society adopts is going to reflect the unique blend of history, culture, infrastructure, environment, relationships, mythologies, religions, and politics of that society." I guess the same goes for individuals and families, too?

Anyway, I had my kid around age 40. I've come to learn that being an older parent has its pros and cons. My dad had me around age 50 though. So, good luck if you want kids!!!

And don't let worries about the future stop you, or no one would have kids, since even for billionaires, money can come and go. Example (and kind of makes your point about techies vs. legal sharks, plus mine about a basic income to support inventors):
"Goldman Sachs Not Liable for Failed $580 Million Deal"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
"Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) defeated a $580 million negligence suit over its role as adviser to speech- recognition pioneer Dragon Systems Inc. in a doomed merger, one of its biggest victories in a string of claims by dissatisfied clients since the financial crisis.A federal jury in Boston yesterday rejected the claims of Dragonâ(TM)s founders Jim and Janet Baker and two other shareholders that Goldman Sachs failed to properly vet Belgium-based Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV. The all-stock deal in June 2000 was rendered worthless months later when the fraud at Lernout & Hauspie was exposed and the company filed for bankruptcy. The verdict relieves Goldman Sachs of responsibility for a sale that left its clients with worthless shares in a failed company. The four Dragon founders sold some Lernout & Hauspie shares for $11 million before the stock collapsed and the Bakers lost the technology they spent decades developing."

I met Janet once at a trade show and she and her husband were also students of my college adviser They lost about most of their wealth, but worse, they lost access to all the Dragon speech recognition source code that was in some sense their "baby".

We all have our personal choices to make. And they are often hard ones. A book I just ordered:
"In Good Company: The Fast Track from the Corporate World to Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...
"From the Wharton Business School and a secure place in corporate America to a $35-a-month allowance and the insecurity of a life of faith. This may seem a precautionary tale of downward secular mobility, but as we follow James Martin through his life and Jesuit training, we find it is all about ascent -- to God and to true happiness. (Paul Wilkes, Author

Kaiser users his charities as a tax write off and then funnels money back into his for profit businesses from them.This guy spent much of the 80's-90's "buying" dead and dying companies so that he could use their losses to offset his gains and pay zero taxes on his profits. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Yeah, that article contains good arguments in the sense that they're worth talking about, unlike the stupid denial of basic physics you have been professing. The scientists recognize the greenhouse effect and recognize the basic validity of climate models. They are trying to find an explanation for an observed inaccuracy in past predictions (the famous temporary slowdown in warming - please do note that the trend is still warming). Their explanation consists of slight inaccuracies in the data that have been fed to the model. Other explanations have subsequently been proposed , and while the topic is still subject to debate, heat getting trapped in the depths of the pacific ocean currently seems to be gaining traction as the most prevalent hypothesis, which is worrisome because once this finite heat reservoir is saturated, the heating will pick up with a vengeance (see links at the end of this post for mainstream media reports that quote the authors on making this same point).

To corroborate what I said, the article you're linking to was published in the "opinion & comment section". "Commentary articles are opinionated pieces that focus on a topical issue in climate research that is relevant to policy, the economy or society". In other words, this part of the journal is to stir up discussions. And discussions there are. Here are two articles in the same journal that cite yours:
This one says that even though the heating is slower, it's still getting hotter (yeah, it's also a commentary).
This is the famous paper that proposes a mechanism behind the observation that heat is being stored in the Pacific at an increasing rate (full peer-reviewed article).

And to close, for those who don't like to dig through highly technical papers or simply don't have access, here are three mainstream media reports on that last article. This is science at work, people. It advances through hypothesis and counter-hypothesis, and you cannot just go cherry-picking one report that seems to confirm your political bias without following the further developments of the story...

Let's see. You might check on the Koch Industries environmental record. http://www.polluterwatch.com/k... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... Perhaps the Exxon Valdez disaster - still not repaired for Exxon or the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico for BP just a couple of years ago. The numerous leaks on the Alaska oil pipeline? These folks make billions (trillions collectively) and leave a trail of destruction. They actively fight most every attempt at regulation and disaster prevention. They fund global warming denial web sites and groups. Mountain top removal for the coal industry? How about strip mining. Do you think that's good for the environment? How about your drinking water? Duke Power and the pollution in the Cape Fear river some weeks ago? The spill in West Virginia weeks before that? The spill in the Tennessee river valley a few years ago? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... Would you say none of that was preventable? Their very business is the destruction of the environment in order to obtain fossil fuels. The use of these fuels is also the primary contributor to the global warming we've been witnessing. What part of this do you not get? Are you an astroturfer? How much are getting paid to pretend to be this dumb?

Japan is nowhere near able to feed itself. It produced under 40% of its caloric needs in 2011. It does produce all the rice it needs (thanks to ridiculously subsidized and protected farmers), but is the world's largest importer of corn.

I would also be surprised if it had any significant textile/clothing industry; everything now comes from other countries in Asia.

The article is irrelevant since the ocean floor around the pings is still being searched.

Since the article can't even get a basic fact correct, I don't even trust their analysis.
FTA:
But now the search of 154 square miles of ocean floor around the signals has concluded with no trace of wreckage found. Pessimism is growing as to whether those signals actually had anything to do with Flight 370. If they didn’t, the search area would return to a size of tens of thousands of square miles.

The link the article uses to "prove" that says something different:
The hunt for a missing Malaysian passenger jet entered a new phase as an international team abandoned its aerial search and said efforts to find wreckage on the ocean floor may take as long as eight months.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

It looks like slashdot just linked to another conspiracy theory. Please quit doing that.

From: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... - "The pilot said it appeared the drone was a high-end model built to look like a fighter jet and powered with a small turbine engine, according to the FAA. Such model planes are capable of reaching higher altitudes than drone copters and may cost thousands of dollars. "

Check out this Forbes web-article re: "The Way Americans Die" as (what I beliueve) is a fastastic way to convey (boring!) information in a web-based compelling way: @ http://www.bloomberg.com/datav... If you view-source they are using D3.JS to do the charting (in a great way, I proclaim) Thats what guys like me 'do' if you need help in creating such a thing. I say this is how 'all' info will need to go to management, eventually (but inside a mobile-tablet app) over a secure connection will become the norm over time. Just my 2 cents. Cheers //GH

'The scientists behind the work at the Scripps Research Institute have already formed a company to try to use the technique to develop new antibiotics, vaccines and other products.'

Step 1: Use public funds to do innovative research into expanding the genetic code in microbes.

Step 2: Patent everything to make sure no one else can build on your discoveries.

Step 3: Create a company that promises all the keywords for a biotech e.g. antibiotics, vaccines, etc.

Step 4: Get bought out

Step 5: ? Profit was Step 4.

Remember when science was about discovery and standing on the shoulders of giants?

Using these numbers here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

The difference in fraction spilled is within 10,000ths of a percent. But that's different than barrel-miles of course.

I've shown my numbers, now show me yours!

> Let's say if a big bank (i.e. HSBC, or Santander) got caught, certainly hundreds of people would go to jail, right?

. /sarcasm Yes; Oh wait ...

In October 2001, Birkenfeld began working at UBS in Geneva, Switzerland, handling private banking, primarily for clients located in the United States. In 2005, he learned that UBS's secret dealings with American customers violated an agreement the bank had reached with the IRS.

He resigned from UBS in October 2005 and provided written whistleblower complaints to Peter Kurer, Head Counsel for UBS, and other UBS senior executives regarding the illegal practices of U.S. cross-border business.

He is the first person to expose what has become a multi-billion dollar international tax fraud scandal over Swiss private banking Despite his unprecedented, extensive and voluntary cooperation, and registering as an IRS whistleblower, Birkenfeld is the only U.S. citizen to be sentenced to jail as a result of the scandal in March 2012.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Eventually justice is rendered

... As a result of the financial recoveries facilitated by his whistleblowing, Birkenfeld received a $104 million award from the IRS Whistleblower Office in September 2012.

HSBC had to (eventually) pay:

* http://www.salon.com/2012/12/1...

Greed knows no bounds ...

* http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

The ironic thing is that we were warned exactly about this situation:

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered ... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies ... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson

Agreed, it is clearly not optional on the part of the banks. This has a very chilling effect on activities where the regs can't actually prosecute for wrongdoing. If they could, they would, and they wouldn't be going this route. This sort of tactic is contrary to the principles of a free society. Banks will "choose" to decline to do business with certain people and companies if they feel they will get sued or have to spend a fortune on a governmental investigation. If there is truly evidence of illegal activities, authorities should go after the people allegedly engaged in those activities, not the banks. But in these cases, often times the activities are not really illegal, even if they are activities not loved by everyone in society. Because the government can't prosecute, should it be allowed to strong-arm banks into doing the dirty work? What does that sort of logic lead to, especially when things like banking are akin to breathing in modern society.

There are plenty of nefarious behaviors going on at banks that regulators would be wise to oversee, but this is a case of overstepping IMO. Regulators are forcing discrimination. Is it okay for banks to be choosy based on certain parameters (I don't like your business because it's porn and I think porn is ruining our society) and not others (I don't like your business because it supports, say, charter schools, and I the bank president happen to think charter schools are ruining our society)? That's discrimination. At the very same time, regulators would bring proceedings against these very same banks for refusing to do business with certain people/organizations just because they choose to.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

"PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (PNC) received a subpoena regarding the return rate for its payment-processor clients from the U.S. Department of Justice. The department’s consumer protection unit is seeking information “for certain merchant and payment processor customers with whom PNC has a depository relationship,” the Pittsburgh-based bank said today in a regulatory filing. “We believe that the subpoena is intended to determine whether, and to what extent, PNC may have facilitated fraud committed by third-parties against consumers.” "

It's really quite simple: The FAA controls ALL US airspace, from the ground up.

Sounds like more "settled science" BS.

From the earliest days of Common Law, up to and including the present, landowners control the airspace above their property.

The FAA has lawful authority only over interstate and international flights. It might claim authority over more than that, but that doesn't mean that authority actually, legally and Constitutionally, exists.

This judge understands that. Apparently you do not.

Which is of course why the denial. Does anyone actually believe that denial, not for a second. The US government and it's agencies have all already be caught out repeatedly lying about everything they do, the only things they don't lie about are the ones the keep secret. Now if one were to take those lies into court and count each and every individual criminal action and each and every individual affected and then lied about, you are talking about hundreds of millions even billions of fully automated computerised lies. The NSA is definitely well within the boy who cried wolf stage, with not a word to be believed about anything until such time as their is a legal and public cleansing and that will never happen.

So whom to believe the NSA or http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... or http://rt.com/usa/google-nsa-h.... So likely the proof is in the pudding, how many NSA secured sites were affected by heartbleed, hmmm?

It also doesn't mean it can't be better. We're seeing metabolic diseases at younger ages; we're able to keep people alive longer but they're not healthy. Life expectancy is even starting to drop; not dramatically, but there's reason to think we can do better.

Too little food is definitely bad, and leads to malnutrition. But we're getting people who are malnourished because they have too much food, and of the wrong kind. It's not that hard to do better, but people need to pay attention.

Unfortunately, non-profit hospitals are, in many cases, a sham. Yes, the "hospital" is losing money, while all the doctors working there are pulling in substantial incomes at the same time.

You do realize that med school leaves you with student loans of around 300k and the real money doesn't start to flow before you're 35-40 – by which time you probably have kids and should start to save up for their education? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... And the very high suicide rate is probably not because of the 80-100 hours a week and litigation threats but because they can't afford to have both their Porsches waxed twice a week.

So the EFF is a bunch of paranoid speculators?

https://www.eff.org/issues/pri...

What about scanning e-mails in possible violation of wiretap laws? http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

How about the EU, are they a bunch of paranoid people? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

How about Google's latest land grab in Chrome, forcing third party developers to put all their apps into Google's Web Store under the guises of making Chrome more secure? Envious of Apple I guess?

Google's business model is making money off of you, you're the commodity so you either go along with it or you just start saying Moo like all the other cattle. I prefer to opt out of Google's practices wherever possible. If that means ripping out Google Search, Maps and other apps that's fine because there are alternatives to them that don't come with all the hidden strings. The whole thread here was based on Cyanogenmod which has provided great ROMs ( I have 6 devices running Cyanogenmod ) without all the bloat and the pure android experience are now creating a phone with, drum roll please, Google bloat and tracking. Sorry, that's not a step in the right direction.

Heartbleed affects clients, too. Android phones running 4.1.1, for example. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

A federal judge recently ruled that the FAA has no authority over "small unmanned aircraft." Which effectively kills the FAA's regulations that said commercial drone use in the US was illegal. As far as liability in case of death is concerned, it'll probably be handled similarly to any other accident. If it is determined that malice, negligence, or recklessness is involved then there will probably be jail time. If it's just an unfortunate and/or unavoidable accident then probably not.

Don't doubt they're concerned about the environment, but Google also has a financial stake in energy. From Google Reaps Tax Breaks in $1.4 Billion Clean Energy Bet: "The Galt solar farm, 20 miles south of Sacramento, is one of 15 alternative-energy projects that Google has funded since 2010 as part of a more than $1.4 billion investment in clean power production. That makes the Internet search giant the biggest backer of U.S. alternative-energy projects over that stretch, excluding financial institutions and utilities, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance."

Even if the pipeline was canceled, it said, the oil sands crude was likely to be extracted and brought to market by other means, such as rail, and then processed and burned.

Hmm, I wonder if our beloved President 1% knows any 1%ers who, say, owns a railroad company?

Oh.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

I wonder how Burlington Northern's doing on this latest news.

NCAA Approves Unlimited Athlete Meals After Hungry

Which is complete crap, by the way. Scholarship students get meal plans, and cafeterias let you eat as much a you want and don't really pay attention to students sneaking out food (especially if they are star athletes). Hell, when I played football in college and had 2 a days during camp the team would even feed us after the evening practices. And yeah, sometimes when we got out of practice during the season the cafeteria would be closed. But we had a grill and a little convenience-store type plce that sold frozen or boxed/packaged food that you could buy with your meal plan. And this was at a tiny university. Larger colleges will have multiple cafeterias, multiple on-campus restaurants/grills (which take meal plans), and usually have deals with just off campus places that take meal plans as well. I played with rich kids and poor kids, scholarship and non-scholarship kids, and I can guarantee you that none of them ever went to bed hungry.

NCAA Approves Unlimited Athlete Meals After Hungry

If you make $80k and save 10% every year in your 401k, you'll easily be a millionaire in 30 years.

http://www.bloomberg.com/perso...

Furthermore, things don't magically get better with defined benefit plans; if you were to get a pension for the same amount, you effectively have to save up the same amount of money somewhere, except that other people likely will take a substantial chunk of it away.

Do the math here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/perso...

Saving 10% of your salary is going to give you a lot more than a million dollars over 30 years, even in constant dollars.

What they want is control over global industry, insane amounts of unaudited "international aid money" and absolute moral authority.

Solve the problem and you take away their power, their money, and their claims to moral superiority.

This is something they will never let die.

If we fixed the climate tomorrow they'd still be harping about it.

That's always the case when special interests have their hands in the cookie jar whether it be environmentalists (who can't agree with each other sometimes) or the fossil fuel industries. And yes coal and petroleum get subsidies. Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the U.S.. CATO again, Clean Coal Subsidies, Energy Subsidies, and T. Boone Hard-Wired for Subsidies. From Bloomberg, hardly an environmental sympathizer, Fossil Fuel Subsidies Six Times More Than Renewable Energy.

FalconWolf

http://news.sciencemag.org/hea...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
http://thebulletin.org/threate...
http://armscontrolcenter.org/E...
http://thebulletin.org/unaccep...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.pathobiologics.org/...
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1...
http://news.sciencemag.org/sit...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/n...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
http://thebulletin.org/threate...
http://armscontrolcenter.org/E...
http://thebulletin.org/unaccep...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.pathobiologics.org/...
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1...
http://news.sciencemag.org/sit...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/n...
http://news.sciencemag.org/hea...

If the FAA doesn't have rules on it, they are not or should not be allowed to regulate it. The entire concept of freedom in the US is that we are free to do whatever unless a law stops us or we encroach on others freedoms. It is not that we have to look to some government authority for permission when they have nothing banning or barring it.

At least one court thinks the same too That article will probably explain it better then I can.

Bloomberg reports NSA has been using this exploit for two years. This looks a lot less like an accident now.

Venezuelan government is running a surplus, not a deficit

Hahahaha. Oh the hilarity. Venezuela, progressive paradise.

Not so fast! A banker was shot dead this year in Lichtenstein. Although, since it's a banker, maybe I would count this as a positive killing...

citing Al Gore on global warming, or Dick Cheney on "enhanced interrogations" .. hardly un-biased

We know that between 5 and 6 million Americans were kicked-off their insurance policies (this was well documented, all you had to do was add-up the numbers as they were reported in each state (many states have laws requiring filings for mass-layoffs, or mass insurance policy cancellations, or other things that can impact a state economy)) and we know that the Obama administration claims 7.1 million signed-up (but they claim they are unable to say how many have paid, or how many were just seeking policies to replace cancelled policies). The insurance companies are reporting that about 1/5th of the new signers have not paid any premiums. We also know that several (mostly Democrat-run) states signed-up prison inmates both to drive-up the numbers and to shift costs for prison inmate care onto the federal taxpayer. These are things we know.

There are many more, and arguably more-important things we do NOT know. For example, if you are currently uninsured you are in a place unique in American history thanks to a clause in the ACA legislation: you have no legal way to buy insurance during the next 7 months (unless you marry, or change jobs). Before 2014, any American could shop for a product like insurance on any business day of the year ... we simply do not know what the impact of new policies like this will be. We also do not know the costs of the employer mandate, because the President illegally extended the illegal exemption he gave them until after this fall's elections. (and before somebode rants about my use of the term "illegal", let me remind you that there is no law giving him that authority and the proper legal way to do it would have been to go to congress and ask for a law giving him the authority to act, which was good enough for all previous presidents). We also do not know what the 2015 rates will be, though all the insurance companies say (and the Obama administration itself admits) that they will be "significantly higher" (NOBODY's projections of "how much higher" should be believed at this time). The degree of increase might be driven-up more than expected by the president's many unilateral changes to the law (because insurance companies will have to make allowances for future potential changes) but again we cannot know the magnitude of this effect.

We need to stick to the facts and leave the extreme partisans like Limbaugh and Krugman out of it. Both supporters and critics need to face the fact that nobody is able to generate solid numbers on this stuff yet. It turns out that not only do we need to pass this law before we can know what's in it... we probably have to live under it fore several years to even see honest solid numbers.

Company A takes enormous write off when they finally admit they paid too much.
Company A valued at A + log2(B)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

wait till their party gets in

Which party is that? The one one with the richest congressmen or the one with the wealthiest districts?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Yes, truly on their last leg. I believe a Verizon employee tried to wash my car windshield at light the other day. Or maybe he was going door to door selling FIOS because it is incredibly profitable for Verizon.

Increasing the minimum wage will do a few things:

1) Drive the economics of automation and productivity increases which will create more unemployment of unskilled workers, not less. Although this might be good for the economy broadly but its not good for the group minimum wage increase advocates claim to seek to help.

2) It will raise costs which will be reflected in consumer prices, effectively raising the cost of living. Lowering the quality of life the slightly more successful enjoy. In otherwords its an attack on the middle class.

Nice try, except there is no evidence for either of those things happening when reviewing past minimum wage increases. Try using facts & real math instead of right-wing talking points.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

"The studies find minimum-wage increases even provide an economic boost, albeit a small one, as strapped workers immediately spend their raises. A 2011 paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that a $1 minimum-wage increase lifts household income by about $250 and increases spending by about $700 a quarter in the following year. The spending increase is driven by a small number of households that primarily buy vehicles. "

http://www.americanprogress.or...

"There is no evidence to support the claim that a higher minimum wage will lead to less employment. Businesses can easily absorb a higher minimum wage—with a small price increase or a small reduction in already very high profits, for example. The argument that a higher minimum wage will be a job killer simply doesn’t pass the sniff test of basic economic arithmetic, and is contradicted by reams of serious economic research."

> But the F35 is more or less combat ready in its basic form

As long as you don't try to land it in cloudy weather.

          http://www.alternet.org/fail-4...

Or on an aircraft carrier:

        http://theaviationist.com/2012...

Or landing on the $1500/each tires twice in a row:

      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Oh, and if the landing gear fails and the pilot has to eject, they can't safely eject over water. (See the first article.)

If we needed to build supersonic "launch-only" aircraft, we could have done so _much_ more cheaply.

Yes, if we continue to waste helium like idiots. However, one design for modern airships involves re-compressing the helium to control buoyancy rather than bleeding it off.

The future of airship transport looks pretty interesting to me:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

If every website had to be set up in a different data center for each country that they served, most websites would not bother setting up in most countries. They'd just set up wherever is most profitable, and forget about the rest.

I'm not sure you're understanding this correctly.
Google's problem, like many other multinationals, is that they set up a local subsidiary.
This puts their in-country operations under local jurisdiction, which means they either play ball or go home (like they did with China).

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/nsa-spying-allegations-put-google-on-hot-seat-in-brazil.html
2013-10-29

âoeBrazilian users would ultimately be harmed because they couldnâ(TM)t access new tools, new services,â said Marcel Leonardi, public policy director for Google in Brazil, in a telephone interview from Sao Paulo. âoeCompanies would choose to implement those services at a much later stage, if at all.â

This has been an ongoing process since last year, when the spying revelations were first made public.
Google may not be able to afford ignoring Brazil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS
It's kind of a big market for them.

I think it's cigarettes. The French do love their cigarettes.

you seem to underestimate the gravity of situation.

Russia was perhaps "loser" in the 1990s, but for over a decade Putin has done what he could to grow european dependence on russian natural resources and capital.

And Putin mastered the art of "dividing the EU". It is only a couple of years that EU finally decided to try to speak with one voice. Still, Putin knew what he was doing buying people where needed.

I heard a diplomat who spent some years in Moscow said, that Clinton's major failure was not making Russia democratic state. At that time Yeltzin was "a modelling clay". Even later, Putin at the very start of his presidency has even asked if Russia could join NATO. Clinton's error no.2.

Amazon sells most goods from China, but Alibaba will be able to underprice Amazon. It has direct access to the manufacturers in China.

Short term, no problem. Long term, Alibaba beats Amazon.

I wouldn't want to be hanging onto Amazon stock right now...

Except that Alibaba doesn't sell to the consumer, they are just a market place like ebay, buyers and sellers. Sellers set the prices, not Alibaba.

Amazon sells most goods from China, but Alibaba will be able to underprice Amazon. It has direct access to the manufacturers in China.

Short term, no problem. Long term, Alibaba beats Amazon.

I wouldn't want to be hanging onto Amazon stock right now...

The oil we used today is as cheap as almost any other time in life. Efficiencies in process techniques and new processes have made this so.

This is what I don't understand from all the we are out of oil doom and gloom'ers. They say we need to adapt and change because we are running out of a resource but refuse to accept that the industry harvesting that resource has adapted and changed to cope with decline in the resources.

The US is poised to become the top oil producing nation in 2015.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

If you consider all the other resources like Coal and Natural Gas, the doom and gloom will only be a slow transition to other resources over a period of several decades or more. And even the article I linked to is basing it's analysis on current tech. Any advancements or innovation can easily change it's predictions on the future output of oil.

Not impressed. We had a large outbreak of measles every year at school, when there was no MMR vaccination, the death figures were orders of magnitude smaller than the ones justifying MMR vaccination now (either the MMR disease got stronger, or we got weaker or somebody is making sh?t up again). I'd get vaccinated, sure, if I grew up without getting infected.
But of course this is just my opinion, IANAD.

This is a clear case of Washington Monument Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Threaten the most visible/popular projects to get more money.

Congress Makes NASA Finish Useless $350 Million Structure
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Government Blatantly Wastes $30 Billion This Year (NASA appears 3 times)
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/...

more if you have a problem with that publication:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

There are pages and pages and pages of links about the instability of this production method and these are just from the german project.

We can see similiar stories all over the world.

Wind and solar have a place in our total energy generation system. But until we have cheap storage for grid systems we cannot shift to these systems as our primary energy production method.

Cannot.

And if you try to force it, all you'll do is piss people off, waste money, and lose what support you have right now.

Environmentalists especially in Europe are doing very well. They have wide public support and political support. They are well funded and respected.

But if you threaten the German manufacturing industry... which is actually what this energy project is doing right now... You will lose it.

As it is, the Germans are drawing the project back in a way that meets the needs of their industry while at the same time saving face for their politicians and the environmental lobbies.

Understand, this is happening NOW. This is not a threat of what will come in the future but a current consequence.

Yeah, see that's where you have to take those green colored glasses off and realize that its not working in Germany and its not going to work in the US either.

Germany's green energy is
Generally
Considered
A failure.
It's not getting better
Any time soon

There simply isn't enough windy places to power all of the United States 24/7. The sun doesn't shine at night, and we can't build a grid to someplace where it does.

Grid is a substitute for storage and local generation. But grids simply aren't world wide, and aren't likely to be.