Slashdot Mirror

Additionally, Silicon Valley, as an example of "it's not the government!", is interesting, given that recent research suggests that Boston, Mass. could have been what Silicon Valley became... if it weren't for Massachusett's laws enforcing non-compete aggreements. (See: these articles.) In other words, sometimes it /is/ the government.

Look; McCain no longer doesn't know how to use a computer. He's busy learning how to get on himself. Why, he's already been using a google. I think that by the time all is said and done, he'll finally understand economics and bring the Republican party into the modern age.

My definition of speaking would be expressing something more than you can express with simple body language.

For example, you can easily show when you are angry or sad. As such, grunts that just have a tone to show your mood isn't really speaking. However, when you can say "The birds are flying low, I think that rain is coming soon", it's speaking.

As to animals... The difference is much smaller than many people seem to think. As a parrot owner and someone interested in this kind of stuff, I know that there have been atleast two parrots who have known a lot of words (other one was something like 60+ when he died recently and the other one is going in the hundreds) by their meanings. So they have been able to converse with whole sentences that they have never heard before.

One of them died recently. You can google up some info on Alex and his death if you are interested.

I recall to have heard about another parrot knowing even more words (by meaning, not just by being able to say them) but can't remember the name so if someone can, fill me in.

Why are people so worried about Google selling them out?

Who said obeying a subpoena is "selling out?"

But, since you brought it up, INSTEAD OF ANSWERING THE QUESTION ASKED, here is the abridged response: Privacy is like pandora's box, once you let your personal information out of your hands you can never, ever put it back - even if circumstances change such what you thought was harmless is no longer harmless. If there is no compelling reason to let your personal information out of your hands, then why do so? For some people a chocolate bar is enough of a compelling reason. For others it is convenience, like ease of using toll roads or shopping at the supermarket. Some of us take our privacy a little bit more seriously than that.

And I think the telcos might be a bit more likely to divulge information than Google.

The telcos, as a rule, do not operate a business that is focused on targeted advertising. They do not have a business incentive to build up profiles of their users that could be vulnerable to subpoena or theft, they make their money by charging their users for services. Google isn't charging you a dime now are they? So it is entirely reasonable to expect them to build up as much of a cache of information about their users as possible because it means more accurately targeted advertising which means more revenue for them.

why does the CA legislature even care about this?

Because they trust doctors more then patients apparently.

See here:

Last Monday, the state's laboratory field services group issued thirteen cease-and-desist letters to genetic testing companies including personal genomics companies 23andMe and Navigenics as well as DNATraits.com, which gives would-be parental couples information about genetic disorders their children could inherit...

Health Department spokeswoman Lea Brooks responded to Wired.com's request for comment saying that the businesses would have a chance to come into compliance with California state law, which requires that a doctor sign off on any laboratory testing.

"The cease-and-desist letters direct the businesses to submit a plan of correction to the California Department of Public Health 14 days from the date the letters were mailed," Brooks wrote in an email. "Each plan of correction must show how the business will come into compliance with California laboratory law. CDPH will review the plans of corrections and respond accordingly."

Or here:

California regulators warned 13 genetic testing companies, including Knome Inc. in Cambridge, to stop marketing their products in California unless they comply with state licensing and testing laws.

The California Department of Public Health warned the companies that they must obtain a clinical laboratory license before conducting medical tests for Californians. In addition, the agency said the companies cannot offer laboratory tests directly to California consumers without a doctor's order.

"Knome is in violation of California law," the agency warned. "Genetic tests are not exempt" from rules requiring a physician's approval, it said.

And that captive market is... The US Department of Defense, which is consuming 16 gallons of fuel per day per soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq by their own accounting.

Yeah, yeah, let's blame OPEC.

On the other hand, if your architecture degree doesnt teach you to consider drainage...

There's no such thing as a flop in the pharma industry. If they spend the money to do research, they sure as hell spend the money to get the clinical trials come out the way they want.

Think I'm exaggerating? Check out the latest research regarding Prozac.

Besides that, $1bn is chump change for research these days. Gillette claims to have spent $750 million on R&D for the Mach 3 razor, and these were pretty reasonably priced, even when they were introduced. Pharma pricing is all about inelastic demand, and it needs to either be moderated through collective bargaining at the national level or outright regulation.

I'm willing to take the hit "thru" my 401k.

Timelapse movies of clouds are a good way of filling up disk space. They are easy to make and just a couple of hours recording will fill up several Gigabytes of data.

Exotic locations are an added bonus

Probably since the Cape Cod and Martha's Vinyard wind-power projects kept running into trouble because of very politically well-connected people opposing them at every turn, because for whatever reasons they didn't want them in sight.

The Kennedys -- who own a massive family compound on the Cape -- were a big part of getting the Cape Cod project scuttled, or at least set back; Ted Kennedy apparently even connived with Ted Stevens (everybody's favorite!) in order to lessen its chances of getting a funding bill through the Senate. cite That sort of underhanded, backroom dealing is clear proof that his reasons for opposing it are personal and not something that would hold up to actual debate or scrutiny.

(Something to keep in mind if you ever hear that slimebag talking about alternative energy.)

...it's not anywhere close to where a member of the Kennedy clan can see it.

RSS feeds for the photographer geek:
Strobist http://www.strobist.com/
Off-camera lighting, and possibly the geekiest popular photography blog around. Give this site a serious look.

Joe McNally http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/
National Geographic shooter, photojournalist extraordinaire. Less about the mechanics than Strobist.

Flash Flavor http://www.flashflavor.com/
Insights from a very popular wedding shooter.

The Big Picture http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/
A blog attempting to fill the shoes of LIFE.

Library of Congress http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/
The Library of Congress has been putting their archives on Flickr. Some are slightly dull, but it's an interesting exposure to first half of the 20th century.

These all link to the main site, where you should hopefully be able to find the RSS feed.

The worry is that they'll accidentally tap a high pressure area, and cause a blowout (e.g a small volcano). Or that the water that they inject into the ground (so they can harvest the energy from the steam) will "lubricate" a fault line, and cause a plate to shift. Or that some of the steam will come out where you don't want it to come out, or form pressure elsewhere, causing a rupture.

I don't know enough about it, but there are valid concerns. There was a deal a few years back in Indonesia where a gas company accidentally sparked a nasty mud volcano thru exploratory drilling.

A lot of it though is that whole, "We've never done it before, so as far as we know it could do anything." There was a percentage of scientists, who, at the time of the detonation of the first atomic bomb, weren't quite sure that the bomb wouldn't ignite the atmosphere and end life on earth as we know it...Like the people at CERN who aren't quite sure we won't spark an Earth devouring Black Hole with the LHC.

Not to say that the geothermal concerns are that implausible, it's just that no one really knows.

Yes, that's a great source. According to it, there are apparently absolutely no convictions in the US either, or less that 167 at least.

How about this link:

http://www.unece.org/stats/trends/#ch13

Please take a look at 13.3. According to it the US has gone from a homicide rate of 9.4/100K to 5.5/100K from 1990 to 2000. While many of the countries that have more favorable rates have actually increased. Denmark went from .8/100K to 4.0/100K. I was actually surprised Holland and Sweden ranked as high as they are.

According to: http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2006/09/25/brazil_murder_rate_similar_to_war_zone_data_shows/

Brazil had 55,000 homicides in 2006 compared to a population of 184,184,000 http://population-of.com/en/Brazil/

Frankly I don't have a lot of faith in statistics like these. The US is a country of immigrants, all with different beliefs and backgrounds. I'm surprised we get along at all, let alone as well as we do. How do you take that into account in these figures? And even if you don't, those numbers don't tell me that I live in a nation of murderous heathens and the EU is some kind of Utopian paradise because they have better gun control laws. Something else that rarely gets mentioned; What is reported as a murder? How many countries with dictatorships are there that report very low murder rates, but sanction the killing of their citizens? How do you quantify that?

Nuclear Cat crawling out of the bag? The US seems busy throwing the Nuclear Cat everywhere.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/03/26/warhead_fuses_mistakenly_sent_to_taiwan/

There's plenty of info on making nukes already in the "wild". So if you give people more details, I'm sure it helps a lot.

Ok as this article states, Congress did pass a law explicitly giving the Attorney General this power in 1997, because the courts ruled their previous eavesdropping was not legal. Basically, they were committing illegal acts, then when the got called on it, passed a law to make it legal. The law really hasn't been challenged yet in court.

No, the Constitution that he swears to uphold says that when he upholds it, he must faithfully execute Congress' laws.

The president is not the judge of whether a law is un-constitutional. The Supreme Court is the only judge of that. So if a president thinks a law is un-Constitutional, the Constitution says he has to ask the Court, and they decide. Which is what in fact happens all the time, when the president is not violating the Constitution.

Which Bush has indeed done every time he's written a Constitutional "signing statement" that says "I will disobey this law". Which Bush has done hundreds of times.

So you just take your un-Constitutional signing statements and shove them up your traitorous ass. We've had enough of you Republican traitors destroying the country and lying about the Constitution.

Obama on signing statements

4. Under what circumstances, if any, would you sign a bill into law but also issue a signing statement reserving a constitutional right to bypass the law?

Signing statements have been used by presidents of both parties, dating back to Andrew Jackson. While it is legitimate for a president to issue a signing statement to clarify his understanding of ambiguous provisions of statutes and to explain his view of how he intends to faithfully execute the law, it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability.

I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law. The problem with this administration is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation. The fact that President Bush has issued signing statements to challenge over 1100 laws - more than any president in history - is a clear abuse of this prerogative. No one doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president's constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that.

1. Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?

The Supreme Court has never held that the president has such powers. As president, I will follow existing law, and when it comes to U.S. citizens and residents, I will only authorize surveillance for national security purposes consistent with FISA and other federal statutes.

It's worth noting at this point that while Barack Obama has said that he is against the wiretapping, he has stated that he is for the use of Signing Statements whereby a president issues his own commentary on a bill, and in the process, indicates what aspects of a law he will and will not follow. Bush has used these to circumvent bans on torture, among other things, and they would be a useful vehicle to override congress-enacted bans on the extension of presidential authority. McCain has said that he will not use them.

On this score McCain wants to extend the powers of the executive to spy without oversight upsetting the balance of powers among the branches. While on another score, Obama has said that he will extend the power of the executive to just ignore laws he does not like.

Two parties perhaps but I see no daylight between them.

The fact that Obama doesn't have lobbyists in his campaign, but McCain's campaign is filled to the brim with them, is a good start.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/05/obama_slams_mcc.html

Obama does still have some vague ties to lobbyists, unfortunately. But it's a step in the right direction.

You obviously haven't been to Wendy's (or McDonald's doallar menu which has had a lot removed from it) recently. A lot of the value items have gone from 99c to $1.29. Chips that used to be .99c are now 1.29 as well. Heck, have you read about the rising food prices?

Reasonable people do not believe dissent is always treason nor should they believe that dissent is better than consent. Both concepts require information and reason.

It's not just PCI fines that a merchant needs to think about: a bunch of banks sued TJX over the breach.

'Huge' is now defined as 3% now?

They may be the world leader, but I'd argue that it's not helping them as much as nuclear power is helping France, which, on average is a electricity exporter.

Well said, and to reiterate what someone said in a post above, your best bet for critic reviews, is to find a critic who shares a similar taste in movies as you. For me, that would be Ty Burr of the Boston Globe, and this is an interesting article he wrote a few years ago about the problems with star ratings.

The promise and peril of movie ratings
Writing movie reviews is simple. Translating their nuances and subtleties into a one-dimensional star rating is where things get tricky

By Ty Burr, Globe Staff | January 4, 2004

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves."-- "Julius Caesar" (Act 1, Scene 2)

Pace Cassius, sometimes the fault seems very much in the stars. I speak of the movie critics' bane: the star rating that sits atop each film review in this newspaper and that functions as a neon-green directional signal diverting the reader away from thought.

It's not an exact science, those stars. I gave "Mystic River" three, but maybe that was low; in my heart of hearts it felt like three and a quarter and perhaps I should have graded on the curve. That no-star rating for "Gigli" back in August? Too easy, I agree; I mistook the total absence of pleasure for the presence of the actively toxic.

Every reviewer I know hates the fiendish things, for the same reasons readers, editors, and publicists like them. Star ratings boil down critical analysis -- the careful weighing of pro and con, the appreciation for the nuances of camerawork and performance, the baited hook of scorn -- into a snap judgment that can be instantly grokked by a harried parent or slapped across a two-page ad spread. Gripe though critics may, unless we're one of the dainty pashas at The New York Times or The New Yorker, the stars -- or some system of dingbats like them -- are a fact of the workplace, like spam or carpal tunnel.

Here at the Globe we use a system of no stars through four, in increments of half-stars, depending on whether a movie is slow death with overpriced popcorn, average twaddle, or "The Godfather." Some newspapers use five stars. The San Francisco Chronicle has a cartoon of a little man -- called, inventively, "the little man" -- who reacts in five stages of enthusiasm, including comatose, bemused, and erupting out of his seat in hyperactive movie-geek rapture. I'd suggest something similar to represent the Boston moviegoing public in the pages of the Globe, but I'm afraid our little man would just sit there, dour as a parson, even if he were happy.

There are other ways to go. Ebert and Roeper (formerly Siskel and Ebert) have their famous thumbs, waggling in phases from down to "way, way, way up!" Clearly, they need to consider other digits. Before I arrived at the Globe, I spent many years working at a national entertainment magazine that you may have come across in the fancier airports and dentists' offices. We used grades -- nay, we pioneered the use of grades. (Oh, all right, the magazine's founding editor stole the idea from "People.") The nicest aspect of this approach is that it puts the whole exercise back in school, where it belongs.

Iconic ratings are a utility, in other words -- a pure service play. Just as a poor grade alerts parents that their child is dogging it in math class -- no matter the cause -- so one or two stars advertises a movie's failure. Whether that's a failure of nerve ("The Human Stain"), of skill ("Party Monster"), or of concept ("Beyond Borders") isn't important unless you read the review -- and who wants to read a lousy review? Who in this coddling media culture wants to willingly hear the bad news?

That's the genius of the star ratings: They spare readers the pain of negativity, be it subjective or deserved. They're like a doctor who says, "This is going to hurt," and then points out the available exits. They're there so you don't

that is, in my mind a quite acceptable false positive rate

There are 300,000,000 people in the US (and yes, I'm counting kids, because the government counts them too) Do you think that in the current culture of fear the government would hesitate before rounding up a quarter million (3000*80=240,000) "terrorists"? Imagine the sound bites President Bush could produce, if his war on terrah was working that well! And just think, he could keep showing results when next month they round up another 239,000 from the remaining 299,750,000 people in the US.

Don't worry though, 49% of the public are democrats, so it'll probably be a few years before your name is called.

FYI, Obama votes in favor of Iraq war appropriations.

Obama defends votes in favor of Iraq funding

my understanding is that all the offshore drilling is off the Gulf Coast: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, etc

There's drilling or potential drilling sites along the US Atlantic coast as well. The Sierra Club has been trying to block exploration and drilling off the Atlantic as well as off California. Meanwhile drilling's picking up off the coast of Latin America, Africa, China and Taiwan, and in Australia especially in the Timor Gap, between Australia and East Timor. The high prices of petroleum makes drilling in these places economically feasible.

Don't trust everything your professors (or lawyers) tell you.

A genetic predisposition for a disease in a currently healthy individual is not the same as having the disease. According to HIPAA, genetic information in the absence of a current diagnosis of illness does not constitute a pre-existing condition.

But HIPAA is just the beginning of genetic information protection. The real deal is something called GINA: Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which recently passed in the U.S. Congress and is pending in the Senate. President Bush has openly supported this bill. So it has some decent momentum.

Further reading: Navigenics provides some good resources about legal rights regarding the use of your genetic information, and there was a good article in the Boston Globe on this in Sep 2007.

I think it is completely irrational. There is simple evidence against the link, but obviously that didn't get through. Thimerosal was removed from most all child vaccines in or around 2001, but the autism rate kept increasing during 2004-2007 (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/08/autism_rate_in_calif_increases/). There is additional evidence, but this is pretty strong evidence. I should note, all I did was a Google search for "autism rate" and chose the second link. I hope any lawyers reading this don't want discovery of my financial records, although, as a student, they are pretty simple and can be summarized by a single digit: 0.

They've realized their future in the Operating System market is pale at best.
Remember the EU court's decision about Microsoft being a monopoly? Well this was on Sep 2007. Is it a coincidence that less than 5 months later Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo!? I think not.

Sooner or later Microsoft would have to lift the veil on the APIs for their most popular products, and *anyone* (including GPL software developers) can read them. Microsoft knew this day would come, and their desktop market dominance will be destroyed sooner or later. How to prevent the competition from making better products, if you can't hinder them from being compatible? You can't.

So Microsoft was cornered into getting hold of an existing successful market: Internet services - that's the only way they can survive in the long term. But if they offered to buy Yahoo! after they released their APIs, the public would realize Microsoft's disadvantage. So they first offer to buy Yahoo, and THEN they release their APIs.

The fact that Steve Ballmer wrote that open letter only shows Microsoft's struggle against extinction.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. This is the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Congratulations.

As I stated before, in the State of Pennsylvania private roads cannot be used for personal or commercial purposes without the express permission of the landowners. This may be different then you are used to but it is the law.

http://www.williamsscheetz.com/newsletter/PASP07.HTM

But if you read the article:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/04/05/google_sued_over_street_view/

It wasn't a private road in the first place, it was actually their private property: "The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labeled "Private Road," and that violated their privacy." This means that the Google van drove up their driveway, onto their private property from the main road and took photographs of their home from their own property. I fail to see anyway that this can't be seen as tresspassing and invasion of privacy.

In the State of Pennsylvania private roads cannot be used for personal or commercial purposes without the express permission of the landowners. This may be different then you are used to but it is the law. http://www.williamsscheetz.com/newsletter/PASP07.HTM But if you read the article: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/04/05/google_sued_over_street_view/ It wasn't a private road in the first place, it was actually their private property: "The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labeled "Private Road," and that violated their privacy." This means that the Google van drove up their driveway, onto their private property from the main road and took photographs of their home from their own property. I fail to see anyway that this can't be seen as tresspassing and invasion of privacy.

The Federal government is covering these collapsing banks with money it gets through taxes and selling Federal debt (which is repaid by taxes and more/renewed Federal debt).

The richer quarter of Americans might pay over 3/4 of the taxes, but they've got a lot more than 3/4 of the income.

You've really got a lot of nerve claiming that the poorer half of Americans pays no Federal taxes, in the month when we're all staring at the tax bills. And those are the bills artificially lowered by instead buying Federal debt, which just means bigger tax bills later (or, for a while, bigger debts, until eventually it means the biggest possible - or bigger - tax bills).

But maybe you've somehow managed to pay no Federal taxes, without being in the top 50% of Americans by riches (without being a corporation, which usually pay no taxes), let's hear the secret to your success.

• Tax Break Prompts Millionaires To Create Private Foundations: Many of these same "feel-good" workers, though, have their own opinion about private foundations. And it isn't pretty. In the best of all worlds, they say, private foundations, like their public counterparts, would help address problems like hunger or illiteracy; in truth, they charge, such charities tend to address the whims and agendas of their benefactors, whose motivations don't always fit the notion of "charity."
• The trustees' perk that keeps on giving: The foundation's accountant, Martin Logies of Sunnyvale, Calif., defended the benefits, saying they had been approved by the foundation's board of directors. But he acknowledged that Sara and Anders Kierulf are the board's only members, and that they approved the benefits for themselves. As to the work the Kierulfs perform for their pay, Logies demurred. "I couldn't give you that information," he said.
• Deduction Ad Absurdum: CEOs Donating Their Own Stock to Their Own Family Foundations: Consistent with their exemption from insider trading law, I find that CEOs' stock gifts occur just prior to significant drops in their firms' stock prices, a pattern that enables the donors to obtain increased personal income tax benefits. This timing is more pronounced when executives donate their own shares to their own family foundations
• Tax Me If You Can: FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith investigates the rampant abuse of tax shelters since the late 1990s. Through interviews with government officials, tax experts, and industry insiders, Smith uncovers an avalanche of bogus transactions -- created by some of America's biggest and most-respected accounting firms, law firms, and investment banks -- that were then aggressively marketed to big corporations and wealthy individuals.
• How Tax Shelters Brought Trouble to Billionaire Clan: The panel's senior Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, has been probing offshore tax evasion and money laundering for several years. The panel is also looking into how the elite New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP provided legal advice on offshore tax shelters to wealthy individuals, people familiar with the probe say.

You break bulbs that often? If you do, clean it up, open a window, and carry on with life. Not a big deal.

Collusion is the word for the day.

collusion |klo zh n|
noun
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, esp. in order to cheat or deceive others : the armed forces were working in collusion with drug traffickers | collusion between media owners and political leaders.
  Law such cooperation or conspiracy, esp. between ostensible opponents in a lawsuit.

Bet you didn't see this either:

President Weakens Espionage Oversight:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/03/14/president_weakens_espionage_oversight/

Theres this one too.

Had he been formally brought up on charges, and been dismissed ... would have turned into an absolute circus ...

You seem to be making up your mind as you type... Would you rather he had gone through "the circus"?

However, politicians frequently get away with much, much worse.

Yeah, you try that line in court for yourself. Especially, when Spitzer is in the prosecutor's box...

Immediately giving in to the mob is a very, very dangerous thing to do.

Well, it was not exactly "the mob(ility)", but rather elected law-makers (nobility), who asked him to resign, or else they'll initiate a proper impeachment procedure. Impeachment over violations of both the State and the Federal laws... During the impeachment, he would have had to — as you point out — drop everything else and concentrate on defending himself. And then he would've lost anyway, because evidence against him is quite irrefutable... Up to 12 months in jail (although as a "first time" offender, he'll likely end up with merely a fine) and whatever the federal charge of "transporting women across state borders for sex" is carrying.

No, his admission of guilt, apology, and fast resignation are the only good things about the situation. One could only ask for him to disembowel himself with a sword, but we aren't in the place/time where/when that's practiced.

He may be able to recover in a few years, but, hopefully, as a law-maker only — not an executive. Standards are (ought to be) higher for people, who have the power to immediately affect — steamroll — our lives on their own fiat...

I misread it as "MIT Student Gets Arrested With LED Art" which is of course very exciting as it suggests LED Art is now illegal in Mass.

"Because of these, I've never had a building I've been in fall down on me."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/06/mit_sues_gehry_citing_leaks_in_300m_complex/

why is this modded flamebait? Truth as flamebait? Slashdot mods amazes me sometimes.

Prove me wrong, don't call it flamebait because it hurts your political views. Perhaps it is the nine year old needing a license to sell lemonade? That too is true.

http://damienkatz.net/2005/08/child_labor_ope.html

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/08/03/when_life_hands_you_lemons/

My basic premise was that licensing was a barrier to entry into the market. The proof is often absurd as it is outrageous.

Tell me again what licensing does? What qualifications does it take to open a lemonade stand?

A "Girlie Man" Supposedly Lacks Not Only Physical Strength, But Nerve and Guts Putting Schwarzenegger's "girlie men" remarks in context helps to illuminate the stereotypes they further. First, consider his attack on the California legislators. Schwarzenegger argued, "They cannot have the guts to come out there in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you. I want to represent those special interests: the unions, the trial lawyers'. . . I call them girlie men. They should get back to the table, and they should finish this budget."

A "girlie man," in this view, lacks "guts" because he is beholden to special interests. His "girlieness" is a kind of "wimpiness" -- a lack of guts, a lack of strength, and an inability to speak with an independent mind, and get things accomplished. Conversely - the phrase implies -- "real" men have guts, courage, strength, and the capacity for strong leadership that serves the People directly. So given the choice, the phrase implies, we should prefer "real men" over "girlie men" as our political leaders. .

As we drove our 2008 model across first the Tobin Bridge to the Zakim Bridge and into the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel, the driver of the older WRX took perverse delight in passing on the right, then letting me pass, before repeatedly dropping in behind me and zooming by on one side or the other. The invitation was clear. "Let's play in traffic and see what you've got." The unspoken slur was: "Your new WRX is a cop-out."

The Arctic was a place where Henson could contribute his full potential. Not because Peary or his white companions were civil rights crusaders, but because the environment of the north simply demanded too much to afford the luxury of limiting any person's contributions on arbitrary racial grounds. By contrast, Henson's life outside the Arctic was a struggle against diminished expectations and unspoken slurs at best and outright racial hatred at worst. But in telling the story, Henson focuses on the exception, the kindness of the sea captain who tutored him and taught him to read, as the defining influence in his life.

Wikipedia entry on disparities between way infant mortality is measured.
US News & World Report article on same (doesn't cite sources, though news magazines almost never do).
Slate article on impact of premature births on infant mortality rate.
Boston Globe article on rate of premature births in U.S.

It would appear there is something to the claim that better medical care can skew infant mortality rate upwards.

She also doesn't have a history of recurrent skin cancer, an enlarged prostate (treated in 2001) or bear the physical scars of his time as a POW. The latter, I discount heavily, but the former is entitely meaningful.

One thing I've heard floated (by McCain himself) is that he may only seek one term in office. Of course, this is the same guy who said he was opting in to the federal election campaign funding plan, took out a loan on the funds to be received, won a couple of states, then backed out, saying he didn't need the money anymore. This opt out ignores the fact that (legally) he can't opt back out after opting in, and that his claim of not receiving money =/= did not receive benefits. Using the promise of to-be-received federal funds as collateral for a loan is an indirect benefit. Gaining free access to the ballot in some states like Ohio (instead of having to spend funds on signature drives) was a direct benefit.

In short, McCain is as self-serving and sneaky as most politicians. He's not a maverick. He's status quo. If you like the GWB administration, you'll love his administration.