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I would hardly hold up Whole Foods as an example in Ethics

I hadn't seen that before, thanks.

I would hardly hold up Whole Foods as an example in Ethics

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Nonetheless, isn't there some kind of an economic argument that if insurance companies paid for people to avoid one big illness, with their longer lifespan they would end up costing the company more in smaller illnesses over time?
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I think you're referring to this recent study by the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment:
Boston Globe Article

Consider that the National Association for the Self-Employed...

...is a front for MEGA Life and Health. Though they certainly try to hide it, NASE is not an actual indepentent "association", but the marketing arm of MEGA. Fortunately, the high-pressure sale techniques of the agent I encountered were enough to tip me off that something was wrong, and I Googled before I bought and so learned how bad the "coverage" MEGA provides actually is.

Avoid NASE. It's a scam.

Website ordered closed over documents dispute
A federal judge has set off a free speech tempest after shutting down a US website ... Dynadot agreed to shut down the site and bar Wikileaks from transferring the domain name to another host.

When will people learn how the Internet actually works?

Rush would be the first to condemn the poor to suffer and the first in line for welfare and unemployment if he needed it.

There have always been girls and women in gaming. Gamers have always come in different races and ages and income brackets.

When you talk nuclear reactors, you've stepped into the realm of one of the most corrupt of all the Bush cronies, but yes the neo-cons as a whole are really are both this corrupt and this incompetent. For example, Paul Wolfowitz... the guy who was on camera on news outlets 24/7 before the war pushing the lie the Iraq War and Iraq reconstruction would pay for itself with Iraq oil proceeds, and was chased out the position of Pres. of the World Bank by all of Europe for corruption was just given another government job by Dubya last month.

"Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and former deputy secretary of defense who was instrumental in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, has been named chairman of a panel that advises the State Department on arms-control issues..."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/01/25/wolfowitz_appointed_chairman_of_arms_control_advisory_panel/

US Government Contractors low-balling (low-balled, low-balling - To underestimate or understate (a cost) deliberately) bids is standard operating procedure with US Government Contractors, and the worst of them lined up to donate campaign money to Dubya and his neo-con cronies. Bechtel is consistently one of the worst of the worst. Bechtel has been getting singled out for corrupt practices since the Truman Commission in WW2.

"Veteran observers of the klepto-plutocracy that has, lazar-like, long encrusted the American body politic were not surprised to see the hoary name of the Bechtel Group bobbing up in the swill of sweetheart deals now being doled out by the Corrupter-in-Chief for the "reconstruction" of his new fiefdom in Iraq. Decades before its comrade in cronyism, the Carlyle Group, made its meteoric, Bush-assisted ascent to global prominence, Bechtel had already perfected the dark art of milking intimate government connections for fat, risk-free contracts.

Last week, while the notorious coward George W. Bush --who walked away from his National Guard duty during the Vietnam War, a criminal act known as "desertion" when committed by lesser mortals --was basking in the man-musk of a shipload of sailors, reciting his usual lies about al Qaeda's "alliance" with Saddam Hussein, and weasel-wording his "victory" declaration to avoid taking full legal responsibility for the consequences of the war of aggression he had unleashed, Bechtel was quietly pocketing a secret, closed-bid, open-ended Iraq contract that could give them almost $700 million in taxpayer money before the 2004 election --with the alluring prospect of untold billions to follow, Mother Jones reports.

What's more, as the New Yorker reports, this public largess will also fill the coffers of a key Bechtel partner in Saudi Arabia --a well-connected global conglomerate that has also been a long-time financial partner of both George Bush I and George Bush II: the Bin Laden Group.

Bechtel, which has served Saudi royalty for more than 60 years, bristles with heavyweight kleptoplute connections. During the 1980s, current Bush warlord Don Rumsfeld acted as a paid shill for a Bechtel pipeline project in the Middle East, operating with the blessing of the Reagan-Bush administration's secretary of state, George Schultz --Bechtel's former president (and now "senior counsel" to the company). Rummy conducted a passionate two-year courtship of a certain Saddam Hussein, plying him with trinkets, blandishments and sweetmeats to win his lordly favor for a Bechtel-built line from Iraq to Jordan, according to national security archives obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies.

Rumsfeld's strenuous attempt to lay pipe with Saddam happened to coincide with the latter's most extensive use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war --gassing carried out with the exemplary assistance of U.S. military intelligence and technology provided by the Reagan-Bush administration and its "special envoy" to B

Perhaps because Brazil is murder-tastic. Check this out...

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

• the plows can not clear as large a traffic lane as they otherwise would, and the streets become less passable
• the plowed in person digs out the space, and when they leave place a chair or similar in the space to "claim the spot".
• due to the spots that did not get plowed back to the curb or shoveled out between cars, there wind up being less spots available, and those that are available are difficult to get close to the curb in, so traffic is impeded further.

The Patriots had broken a rule that had recently been explicitly laid out by the league. (See article).

Pats fan here. Yes, the Patriots broke the rules and were punished for it, but let's put this into perspective:

1. It's not against NFL rules to steal signs
2. It's not against NFL rules to steal signs using video cameras
3. It is against NFL rules for clubs to use video-recording equipment outside certain designated areas during games.

The Pats got in trouble for #3, not #1 & 2.

Of course #3 apparently contradicts league guidance on shooting from end zone positions ("but there are no restrictions on shooting from both upper end zone positions as long as the opportunity is provided to both teams") which apparently means there is some room for interpretation.

The incident happened in the first half of the first game of the '07 season. In the prior year, the Jets were a playoff team that beat the Patriots in November '06 (which I remember because I was there). There was every reason to expect that the Jets would have been a strong contender this past season.

Next time you hear a politician bragging about how he/she pulled in "jobs" via tax breaks and the like, check out The Great American Jobs Scam (http://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Jobs-Scam-Corporate/dp/1576753158 ).

Basically, the job figures are always exaggerated and the whole thing is a ripoff for the taxpayers. If you want an example of a different "save the jobs" schtick, check out the massive half a billion dollar bill for Connecticut , or more specifically, for Electric Boat.

The article talks about "saving" jobs at Electric Boat (along with a bunch of bullshit about Keeping Up With The Joneses, aka the Chinese. Yup, you have Connecticut to thank for keeping us protected from those evil Chinese and their subs.) How many jobs at Electric Boat? 7,600. $500M divided by 7600 is roughly equal to 65 million dollars a person.

There are 3.4 million people in Connecticut, so $147/head. Isn't it a shame that Connecticut residents couldn't pony up that $150/person, themselves? Is anyone really stupid enough to think that even the slimmest percentage of that $500M will go back to the Connecticut state economy, when all EB does is slap stuff together that was made elsewhere?

I think the closest they'll come is in the form of taxes on the property taxes of Electric Boat executives' multi-million-dollar homes.

Just today, I read an article about a new treatment to prevent rejection in transplants, that mirrors this story almost exactly.

Except that the treatment involves explicit transplantation of the original donor's bone marrow into the recipient, in addition to the organ being transplanted. Mostly for live-donor transplants from related donors.

Do we see a pattern here? Not just with this administration, but in general.

Some authority engages in controversial, borderline activity that might be illegal. It transpires that the activities were recorded (taped, logged, written in memos). Investigator tells entity to save those records. The mills of justice grind slowly. It then transpires that the records have been shredded, deleted, bulk-erased, recycled, whatever.

Authority's spokeperson smirks*. Everybody knows darn well that the destruction was deliberate, but everybody knows darn well that there's absolutely no way to prove it.

Nobody even needs to tell subordinates what to do in any detail. In many cases, all that's needed is to do nothing. It takes exceptional action to stop the janitor from emptying the wastebasket, stop the operator from reusing the tapes, whatever.

In the Boston area there is a controversial school, the Judge Rotenberg Center, which uses electric shocks to train kids with behavioral problems. Recently, a kid at the center who had not done anything disruptive was subjected to a long series of shocks, on the basis of telephoned instructions from a "prank" caller. The shock treatment was taped. State investigator ordered the center to preserve the tapes. Surprise, surprise: they were destroyed. Because, in the opinion of the head of the Institute, the investigation "seemed to be finished."

I don't think there's a thing to do about this sort of stuff. But I just hope that once, just once, one of the bastards gets taped in the act of ordering the destruction of those tapes, and--

--destroys that tape too?

Oh well, never mind.

*OK, I'm just imagining that smirk.

The consensus from the above links is that when you control for town size and a few other factors, vote-counting method (Diebold or hand) still correlates with the outcome (Clinton or Obama) to a non-trivial degree. The remaining question is whether there's some still unknown demographic variable that accounts for the correlation between a district's vote counting method and who came out ahead there, or whether monkey business was involved. I personally am leaning toward demographics as the final explanation, for various reasons that, in the end, are so vague as to not be worth going into here.

The "few other factors" are really crucial to proper statistical analysis. Ideally, you'd be controlling for a variable that reflects the actual preference of each town for a particular candidate, so you'd know more about the underlying choices. Town size seems completely irrelevant to vote preference, but perhaps 2004 primary vote totals would work, for example.

At any rate, since there's already a recount underway, it's probably best to just wait and see what they find.

Okay, just so you don't have to find it, here's one source, scroll down to Sutton.

Alright, here's my research:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/05/whats_foul_about_the_fairtax/
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002245.html
http://www.pafairtax.org/facts.html#C

And I actually spent the day going much farther then that. What I've found isn't very surprising. Those that want the Fair Tax 2005 (or AKA HR 25) to pass are willing to lie and leave truth out and those that don't want it to pass also lie and leave some truth out. So now I'm going to mesh it all together and just tell you what I think will happen with the Fair Tax if it is passed:

First off, your qualm is two parted. First, the poor people aren't keeping enough of their money. Secondly, the rich people will be keeping too much of theirs. I hope I am not out of line when I say that your aim is to make it harder for successful people to get rich easily. Perhaps that is too harsh and probably not what you would say, but I do think you'd agree with me if I word it such as to say ... you'd like to have the wealth spread out a bit more evenly; however, I'm sure the word bit is actually and understatement.

So lets look at a more detailed stab at the tax system. The current tax system taxes people that make over $6500 a year at about 13-15%. People that make around 35k are taxed about 20-22%. 75k is around 25%. And much higher then 150k and you are up around 35% (unless you use some of the easily reached tax loop holes that give you discounts). So in actuality, I'm betting those above 150k a year that are using the current tax loop holes are only getting taxed about 25% of their earnings. Only those that are unmotivated to actually exercise those loop holes are getting taxed at 30-35%. Now from what you are saying it sounds like you'd love to forget getting rid of those loop holes and just raise that 150k tax bracket to about 40% but leave those loop holes there so really the tax is only 30% for the rich.

Now lets look at the Fair Tax. You say it's really a 30% tax right? Okay, well I'm not going to argue. Lets stick with that figure.

Lets talk about the poor first. Now in the more negative argue about Fair Tax (What's foul...), they mention that a childless couple gets about $391 per month on this prebate. Now they never mention how much this couple makes. Now according to the Fair Tax the poor should pay zero tax on this. 12 * 391 = 4692 so I'm going to estimate that this couple makes about 15.5k a year. So the couple just got bumped up to about 20k for the year. If they are poor, then they are probably in rent free or reduced housing. But even if they weren't, with no kids, they could easily fit in $500 a month rent. And still have almost 15k for food, transportation, and even entertainment. Under the current taxes, they are losing about 15% of their 15.5k a year. So in the end they only have about 13.1k to play with. Under the Fair Tax, they would have almost 20k. So what about that 30% you were talking about? Well, I'm sure you want to apply that 30% directly. So if you've been reading those articles, you know you multiply the total by 23%. So if they were to spend their entire year's worth of money (20k) on taxables at 30%, then they would have paid 4600 in taxes. Now lets be reasonable, they will probably save a little if not for the bank, then perhaps for education (which is NOT taxed under the Fair Tax). Housing is also not taxed under the Fair Tax. So lets say they didn't save anything and they spent 6k on housing. 14k was spent on taxables. So in the end they paid 3220 on taxes and actually MADE over 1400 on the prebate. So how is the Fair Tax 2005 system not better for the poor even at the 30%?

Now if they were planning on having kids, a smart couple would think a

actually Bush said:

      "Space is ours to decide on."

insinuating that select nations
would face active denial
to space access by the US.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/19/bush_asserts_right_to_deny_space_access/

and the Chinese said:

        Think again.

It is still a lot cheaper and easier
to take stuff down than to get it up
in the first place.
Jerry Pournelle has understood this
quite a while ago.( and used it in his
CoDo Novels and still boasting to have
advised Reagan on Star Wars )
And the US is quite a lot more dependent
on Space Comms Structures than the Chinese
are or anyone else at that.

G!
MACC

About 4 seconds of Googling shows this kind of thing has happened before and can happen, e.g. this incident. Not really a commercial airliner in that case, but it could just as well have been.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/06/br_r_r_where_did_global_warming_go/

Facts from this OpEd:

2007 was predicted to be warmest ever
The world grew bitterly cold in 2007
Snow for the first time in 89 years in Buenos Aires
Snow in Daytona Beach
Chile saw worst winter in 50 years
Australia has coldest June ever
New Zealand's vineyards lost most of 2007 harvest due to record cold spring
44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire breaking over 120 years of records
Canada is predicting the coldest winter in 15 years
"Greenhouse gas" CO2 levels are up 4% since 1998 but temp remained flat
Dissenting views have been dismissed - seems like religion to me
Debate isn't over

Yes, first past the post voting is not as good as proportional. But what is recommended in this article is just the frosting on the cake. Before you can put on the frosting, you have to have the cake. America does not have the cake. THe approach espoused in this article is like a mechanic who, when presented with a car that does not start, decides that a paint job will fix the problem. The problem is that america is NOT a democracy. And where democracy is crippled, money rules. The lack of democracy in america creates a vacuum, filled by Big MOney. We have a choice--democracy or plutocracy. If you do not have democracy, you have plutocracy. the solution must return power to the voters by changing the constitution so as to empower the voters. How do you do that? The same way they do in Europe, canada, oz,etc they use governmental infrastructure to empower voters. They empower by parliamentarian democracy. Look to western europe. There is a reason why they have universal healthcare, progressive taxation, less police brutality, a small war machine, etc etc. You see, THEY have democracy in the form of parliamentarianism. We do not. The founding fathers were ANTI-DEMOCRACY. THe reason they illegally installed the present constitution is because the several states under the articles of confederation were becoming parliamentarian democracies, and then passing laws that were helpful to working people and harmful to the rich people like the founding fathers, e.g. debt relief laws and progressive taxation. The founding fathers hated democracy. James Madison, the father of the American constitution, said that democracy is not right for America. Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the COnstitution, said that there was an "excess of democracy." Read all about how america is not a democracy: How did the FOunding Fathers stop democracy in America? Primarily with strong checks and balances and the Presidential System. Read these articles and this online book to learn more about what I am talking about. These articles are written by Phds in history and political science (or are articles reviewing books by those PHDs). http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/10/31/taxation_revolution_and_some_other_rebellions/ and here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1023/p13s01-bogn.html and here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4026/is_200607/ai_n17187913/pg_1 and here: http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:u1pjfiO0X_8J:www.historycooperative.org/journals/wm/62.2/holton.html+woody+impera&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=opera and here: http://cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/

THE SAFEST airline in the world, it is widely agreed, is El Al, Israel's national carrier. The safest airport is Ben Gurion International, in Tel Aviv. No El Al plane has been attacked by terrorists in more than three decades, and no flight leaving Ben Gurion has ever been hijacked. So when US aviation intensified its focus on security after 9/11, it seemed a good bet that the experience of travelers in American airports would increasingly come to resemble that of travelers flying out of Tel Aviv.

... Screeners at American airports don't usually engage in conversation with passengers, unless you count their endlessly repeated instructions about emptying pockets and taking laptops out of briefcases. At Ben Gurion, security officials make a point of engaging in dialogue with almost everyone who's catching a plane.

... Israeli airport security, much of it invisible to the untrained eye, begins before passengers even enter the terminal. Officials constantly monitor behavior, alert to clues that may hint at danger: bulky clothing, say, or a nervous manner.

Your ass is correct. In 2006, the USA spent $23.5 billion on official development assistance, and $100 billion on the war in Iraq. (Iraq is currently the largest recipient of American aid, and one could debate whether that portion of the aid budget should actually be counted as part of the cost of the war. Before the Iraq war, the largest recipient of aid was Israel.)

You don't even need internet to get fired for what you do off job.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2005-02-16-pregnancy-bias-usat_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-22-pregnant-teacher_x.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4636907.stm

http://businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2007/09/27/employees-fired-and-fined-for-smoking-obesity-and-blood-test-results/http://www.digg.com/health/Employees_getting_fired_for_smoking_or_being_obese
http://www.workerscompinsider.com/archives/000587.html
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/11/30/off_the_job_smoker_sues_over_firing/
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-28029.html
google for more

By "small minority" you mean almost 18% of all iPhone owners.

Clinton and her team exude a divine right to the Oval Office, a sense of entitlement, and that damn youngster Obama didn't "wait his turn." These latest foibles follow last summer's string of Clintonian hits against Obama's supposed "naïve" and "inexperienced" qualities, and her top staffers' condescending complaint in November about Obama's young supporters, that, "They look like Facebook."

But the money point is how the Clinton hostility toward younger generations has now reached the extreme of corrupting her policy positions, with Clinton and her staff openly seeking to suppress and demonize young voter turnout in Iowa. (That's also strategically stupid: the best way to get young people to do something is to tell them they shouldn't or can't do it. And Obama responded by touring five major Iowa universities on December 4 and 5, reminding the standing-room-only crowds that Clinton seeks to discourage them from participating in the caucuses.) -- Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Character Assassination By AL GIORDANO

More from Clinton:

Hillary Rodham Clinton recently gave a speech about how "a lot of kids don't know what work is" and young people "think work is a four-letter word." These were not renegade words, but rather an expression of the prevailing attitude among her fellow baby boomers. The boomers mistake a rejection of their American dream as a rejection of reality. But here's some news: Young people know that work is a reality for everyone. It's just that everyone needs to work toward something, so young people have a new American dream. -- Boston Globe: Crafting the new American dream

Detainees not given access to witnesses: But in one case, 3 quickly found -- Farah Stockman, Declan Walsh, Boston Globe -- June 18, 2006

This is not an isolated case. The DoD didn't take any steps to verify ANY of the captives' alibis.

Captives were allowed to request any witnesses they thought could provide exculpatory evidence. However, this was a shameful, shameful charade.

When a captive's witness request was deemed "relevant", the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants would send a request to the State Department. That letter requested the State Department to send a request to embassy of the country they thought the witness lived in. The embassy was requested to start the process to give permission for a representative of the USA to take a statement from the witness. The embassy was was requested to get the country's civil service to supply the contact information for the witness.

Not one embassy replied to the these requests. Personally, I suspect those embassies never got those requests.

The OARDEC rules only allowed three weeks for the letter to flow from Guantanamo to the State department, to the embassy, to the country's foreign minister, then to the country's interior ministry, and all the way back. If that had ever succeeded then presumably a State department type would have humped out to whereever the witness was.

Even witnesses who were US citizens weren't locatable. OARDEC couldn't even get the cooperation of other elements of the Defense Department. About a dozen of the witness they said weren't available because they were "off-Island" were actually ALSO captives in Guantanamo. One Tribunal was told that the witness was in US custody in Bagram -- but the Bagram authorities wouldn't cooperate.

There were occasions when captive's requests for documents they knew were in Guantanamo were met. But, in general, OARDEC was not able to get the JTF-GTMO evidence clerks to find exculpatory evidence in the evidence locker, like the captives' passports, which would have shown that they were not in Afghanistan on the dates they were accused of being.

JTF-GTMO couldn't even figure out how to spell the captive's name consistently.

I am sorry to disillusion anyone who thinks that the secrecy the DoD wants to wrap around Guantanamo helps preserve US security. All this secrecy is protecting is the DoD's reputation. It is preventing the public from learning how truly, appallingly, amazingly, bizarrely incompetent it has been.

The unfortunate side effect of this shameful, truly shameful deceit is that the public is much less safe. The DoD laughably claims that the Guantanamo interrogations are continuing to produce "invaluable intelligence." This so-called invaluable info has absolutely, completely, irredeemably polluted to pool of intelligence.

Making sensible decisions about how to allocate our counter-terrorism resources requires reliable information. When we trust unreliable information about what is and isn't a threat, we will make bad decisions allocating those counter-terrorism resources. We will allocate it guarding against non-existent threats, while leaving real threats unguarded.

This is the real cost of the DoD's deceit and incompetence.

This is what those JTF-GTMO public affairs kids should really be ashamed about.

"Where else but China can we get lead toys for our kids?"

Maybe Mexico?
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2007/11/29/mattel_destroys_leaden_toys_in_mexico/

You realize that these fucked up goods are the result of American companies able to operate without restrictions in foreign countries? The factories are making everything according to spec, and it's Mattel who chooses to cut costs everywhere. Chinese companies are now suing Mattel for making them look bad.

I do think that these American internet companies need to stop being pussys though. If china really does start blocking access to google, or yahoo, or whatever, then more and more people in china will discover how easy it is to get around the firewall, and that's the last thing china wants.

I was stunned when my first child was born how many acquaintances (including medical doctors) had latent anti-vaccination opinions. I've literally had people say to me: "Oh what a beautiful baby...I hope you're not vaccinating her."

But the shocking thing (to me) was that these folks have pediatricians who support zero vaccinations. One grandmother told me that none of her children had been vaccinated and that her grand children's pediatrician was a very careful man who studies all the outbreaks of various diseases and would only vaccinate her grand children if there was a nearby outbreak.

It's my understanding that these unvaccinated children cannot attend public schools - legally - but they do.

The reason it is unlikely we will have a vast deadly outbreak of, say, measles is that the vast majority of parents do vaccinate. (Although you can find recent outbreaks in American cities: http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2006/06/10/measles_outbreak_shows_a_global_threat/).

And so as long as the percentage of non-vaccinators stays very small, few of their children will die.

Despite the dozens of posts in this thread (many at least partly in jest) this is not darwinism, yet.

Further, some childhood diseases (most notably autism) show signs of onset some time during the rather lengthy vaccination cycle (often beginning at around 18 months of age).

With little hope of cure, even intelligent parents may be tempted to grasp for vengeance, even if the data is quite shaky.

Unless they are or become a sizable minority, the chances of any individual unvaccinated child dying a preventable death will remain pretty small. My question is not how many videos there are on youtube, but how many people don't vaccinate their children. The unvaccinated population may be quite significant already.

And, at the end of the day, that is why I know I made the right decision in vaccinating my child.

Gitmo is the place where the worst of the worst are kept. [...] Our soldiers are not going to send some poor farmer to Gitmo just because his neighbor said he was a bad guy.

Your blind faith is amusing. That might well be the intention, but according to the Boston Globe, 146 detainees have been released from Guantanamo by late 2004 (because I'm too lazy to track down more recent numbers). Clearly, either Bush is soft on your "worst of the worst," or the system make lots of mistakes. Deal with that fact before you consider denying people their right to be fairly tried.

The article I cited actually points out that seven of the released detainees went back to fighting the US, which you should probably also consider as mistakes.

According to a Groklaw article, it is a design patent, which is a patent on how it looks, not how it works. The article also says that the copyright on the design appears to have expired.

The Nigerian OLPC Dispute - How Does It Look? - Updated

According to a Boston Globe article, Negroponte said the lawsuit is without merit, because OLPC uses a keyboard programming technique developed in 1996, long before the Nigerian patent was filed. The article also mentions that the founder of Lagos Analysis Corp., Ade Oyegbola, was convicted of bank fraud in Boston in 1990 and served a year in prison.

One Laptop Per Child orders surge

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the parent didn't have this link. It seems to clarify Oyegbola's position, which are not those I'd have believed from reading previous comments alone. (Hey - it was such a bad day, I tried to RTFM, couldn't, and tracked it down. So, I'm not ragging on anyone for their comments, I'm just saying about how I things came across, today.)

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/11/28/laptops_for_kids_group_sued_over_keyboard_design/

Anyway, it's an interesting article. I'd be curious about how much of it is actually true, but it is interesting.

I see FTA that they will use 'advanced cryogenic fuel'.

I hope they start with Paris Hilton.

...in contrast to Google's vow to protect its users' privacy early last year. Although this is a very different situation...criminal libel instead of general aggregate use data. Perhaps Google cares about its users as a whole but not as individuals.

Yes. I don't think we live in the same Boston as this responder. Investing 3 hours of time for an apology?

I've been witness to incessant abuse in Boston given my position (attorney). This is the same PD that killed a girl after the Red Sox won.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/10/22/postgame_police_projectile_kills_an_emerson_student/

They are aggressive and inflammatory. A great deal of interactions I have had with them go like this, even though I am being professional. (This link is a recent case in Utah.)

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fae_1195587967&p=1

Even during the recent celebration, 37 arrests (sorry for the fox news link.)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,305690,00.html

Of course not all cops are bad, but the culture of the PD in Boston is terrible. I keep far, far away and avoid all interactions with those jerks.

Because he wasn't doing it safely. You want to hang off the side of a highway and get yourself or someone else killed hanging an electric sign for an advertiser, go ahead. But if the city or state agency sends an employee to do that without the proper safety precautions and that worker (or an innocent bystander) gets killed, that agency will be held accountable.

And unfortunately, accidents do happen.

The Cape Cod case is a classic example of rich people adopting an "environmental" try to justify opposition that's almost solely based on the dropping of their property values. It's almost always groups created solely to oppose a particular wind farm, whose members are almost exclusively wealthy property owners.

Seriously, read your own article. Kennedy (a wealthy landowner whose the spokeman of the "environmental" group founded specifically to stop the wind farm, "Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound", because he's one of the only people in the group with any sort of green cred. Yet, as the article notes, he's constantly being protested by real environmentalist groups and famous environmentalists. Greenpeace, 150 environmental advocates -- including global-warming authors and activists Bill McKibben and Ross Gelbspan, Bluewater Network founder Russell Long, and youth leader Billy Parish, and so on. I mean, check out this para:

"Signers of the letter also included "Death of Environmentalism" authors Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, who made the quarrel far more personal -- and nasty -- in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle last month. They called on Kennedy to step down from his position at NRDC, and took a swipe at his famous family by criticizing "the privileged patricians of a generation for whom building mansions by the sea was indistinguishable from advocating for the preservation of national parks or big game hunting in the wilds of Africa."

The article notes that there are a "handful" of local and state groups who "have raised concerns", but "a number of major national environmental groups have been supportive". And when you start investigating, you find that this is exactly the case. In fact, the situation is even more biased in favor of Cape Wind than they make it sound. Let's look at the named groups. The Massachusetts Audobon Society is now supporting Cape Wind. The Humane Society's stance "call(s) on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Cape
Wind Associates to act responsibly by ensuring that possible environmental and wildlife impacts are adequately
addressed through the Environmental Impact Statement process. At the same time, we affirm that wind power is
an important source of renewable energy that will contribute increasingly to the production of energy in the
United States and therefore has the potential to significantly reduce carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen
oxide emissions, which are harmful to both human health and the environment." The last group they mentioned, the Humane Society, says, "The HSUS is also a vocal advocate for using the information garnered through this process to choose sites carefully to minimize harm to wildlife. This proactive approach would have minimized the controversy over Cape Wind's proposal, and it can still ensure that future sites are selected with an eye toward gaining the most energy with the smallest cost possible to wild animals and their habitats. We want wind energyand we owe it to our wild neighbors to make sure it's done right."

The environment is how the opponents sell the case, and it's really transparent. Example: a local regulatory commission blocked them/A> from running the cables from the turbines near a patch of eel grass. All of this panic about how they were going to destroy the ecosystem on this thin stretch of sea bottom by just going at the closest 70 feet away. Meanwhile, they didn't raise a squeak just a couple years earlier when a coal plant ran cables right *through* a big patch of the same e

> army fighting by the rules, against an enemy that did not
neither side fought by the rules. The Israel dropped cluster bombs on hospitals and residentual areas, which is clearly against the rules:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/10/13/unexploded_bombs_sow_fear_in_lebanon/

I'm a Massachusetts residence who's been observing the whole gambling thing over the past six months. I don't know exactly why Deval wants to criminalize online gambling, but I can give you some background into the whole debate.

First of all, why does the state want to legalize gambling in the first place? You guessed it: money. The state is facing severe budget shortfalls in pretty much all areas, but especially the transportation infrastructure (and for you non-Mass Romney supporters out there: remember this when Romney brags about his economic accomplishments. He didn't to shit except turn Massachusetts into the butt of his jokes). Some of the state's biggest cities (Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, Lowell, etc) have violent crime problems and these cities are looking for money to fund the police and outreach programs.

The state is trying very hard to develop new revenue streams by encouraging investment in biotech and green energy. But the problem with trying to bring those industries into Massachusetts is that land/rents in the eastern part of the state (with access to MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, etc) is very expensive. Costs in the western part of the state is significantly cheaper, but you don't have the highly-educated workforce like you do in the eastern part of the space. Also, these initiatives are long-term fixes, and we need money now.

So some Mass residents have been gazing longingly at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut (especially since lots of Mass residents spend money there) and have decided "we want some of that!" Hence the push to legalize gambling.

Of course the push toward casino gambling has created opposition with their concerns. Most of the concerns center around the potential for increased crime - some of the proposed locations (including Springfield) are dealing with crime problems and are worried that the casinos may create more crime, but since the state will be taking most of the money, the city/town will have to deal with the crime levels on their own. This isn't an unreasonable concern - western Massachusetts used to have homeless and public assistance centers all over the region, but they were consolidated by Romney into Springfield. Since western Mass doesn't have an extensive public transporation infrastructure, people on public assistance (and in too many cases, their deadbeat/criminal children/SO/spouses, etc) came to live in Springfield without a corresponding increase in the LEO/outreach budget which help cause our crime levels to spike.

Patrick (or his advisers/aides) spent some time meeting with people on both sides of the issues and researching the expected benefits and disadvantages to weigh the tradeoffs. Patrick finally recommended legalizing gambling at three casinos (eastern Mass, western Mass, and the Cape) after deciding that those three casinos could be prove beneficial, and create manageable problems.

That's where we are. So why the harsh penalties for online gambling? Maybe he is corrupt, but having seen how he kept his composure in response to a brutal campaign waged by his gubernatorial opponent last year makes me doubt that. My guess would be that it's a gift to casino opponents who are worried that unchecked gambling in the state might lead to increased problems in already high crime areas.

I can't say I'm all that happy that these penalties are in the bill, but given the various problems the state is

I'm a Massachusetts residence who's been observing the whole gambling thing over the past six months. I don't know exactly why Deval wants to criminalize online gambling, but I can give you some background into the whole debate.

First of all, why does the state want to legalize gambling in the first place? You guessed it: money. The state is facing severe budget shortfalls in pretty much all areas, but especially the transportation infrastructure (and for you non-Mass Romney supporters out there: remember this when Romney brags about his economic accomplishments. He didn't to shit except turn Massachusetts into the butt of his jokes). Some of the state's biggest cities (Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, Lowell, etc) have violent crime problems and these cities are looking for money to fund the police and outreach programs.

The state is trying very hard to develop new revenue streams by encouraging investment in biotech and green energy. But the problem with trying to bring those industries into Massachusetts is that land/rents in the eastern part of the state (with access to MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, etc) is very expensive. Costs in the western part of the state is significantly cheaper, but you don't have the highly-educated workforce like you do in the eastern part of the space. Also, these initiatives are long-term fixes, and we need money now.

So some Mass residents have been gazing longingly at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut (especially since lots of Mass residents spend money there) and have decided "we want some of that!" Hence the push to legalize gambling.

Of course the push toward casino gambling has created opposition with their concerns. Most of the concerns center around the potential for increased crime - some of the proposed locations (including Springfield) are dealing with crime problems and are worried that the casinos may create more crime, but since the state will be taking most of the money, the city/town will have to deal with the crime levels on their own. This isn't an unreasonable concern - western Massachusetts used to have homeless and public assistance centers all over the region, but they were consolidated by Romney into Springfield. Since western Mass doesn't have an extensive public transporation infrastructure, people on public assistance (and in too many cases, their deadbeat/criminal children/SO/spouses, etc) came to live in Springfield without a corresponding increase in the LEO/outreach budget which help cause our crime levels to spike.

Patrick (or his advisers/aides) spent some time meeting with people on both sides of the issues and researching the expected benefits and disadvantages to weigh the tradeoffs. Patrick finally recommended legalizing gambling at three casinos (eastern Mass, western Mass, and the Cape) after deciding that those three casinos could be prove beneficial, and create manageable problems.

That's where we are. So why the harsh penalties for online gambling? Maybe he is corrupt, but having seen how he kept his composure in response to a brutal campaign waged by his gubernatorial opponent last year makes me doubt that. My guess would be that it's a gift to casino opponents who are worried that unchecked gambling in the state might lead to increased problems in already high crime areas.

I can't say I'm all that happy that these penalties are in the bill, but given the various problems the state is

Americans aren't afraid of robots. They are afraid of brown and yellow skinned people and the occasional Jew.

It is illegal for peasants to leave their village without the headmaster's Ok (he is the one issuing them passports), and for all others to leave the country.

Those suspected of subversion are tried by secret courts -- either for the actual subversion, or (in the later stages of the Cold War) for "drug dealing", "gun possession", or homosexuality.

It is illegal to own "xerox" machines and other "publishing" equipment.

Cars are small, unreliable, polluting, expensive, but you can't get them anyway. Same is true of electronics and most other manufactured things.

Patently false -- the government is seeking access to one particular method of communication -- unencrypted e-mails. Whether they get it or not, you are a fool, if you expected privacy of that to begin with...

from tfa The problem is that ordinary citizens don't know what a real terrorist threat looks like. They can't tell the difference between a bomb and a tape dispenser, electronic name badge, CD player, bat detector, or a trash sculpture;
or Meatwad Shake and Frylock

You do know that the "Universal" in NBC/Universal is Universal Studios, don't you?

From Jeff Zucker's bio at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Zucker):

"Chief Executive Officer of NBC
On December 15, 2005, Zucker was again promoted by NBC, to Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal Television Group behind Robert Charles Wright, vice chairman of General Electric and chairman & CEO of NBC Universal. Zucker was responsible for all programming across the company's television properties, including network, news, cable, and Sports and Olympics. His responsibilities also include the company's studio operations and global distribution efforts [emphasis mine]. Zucker reports to Bob Wright."

I bet you drink a lot of Maalox in a job like that.

In the "old days" the FCC's "financial interest and syndication rules" (quick history) made it unprofitable for the big-three networks to own the content-production side of the business as well. The rules prohibited the networks from selling "reruns" of programs they produced (e.g, The Johnny Carson Show) to local television stations, a practice called "program syndication." Since all the risk capital in program development is upfront, a program's profits are not made on its initial showing but in "reruns" to cable networks, local television stations, and overseas distributors. By prohibiting the networks from profiting in this aftermarket, the "fin-syn" rules made owning the production studios uneconomical.

Nowadays, anything goes. CBS created Viacom and sold it off to comply with the FCC. Now Viacom owns CBS. NBC has merged with Universal Studios, and Disney bought ABC/ESPN by first buying a multi-market TV station owner. Australian-owned Fox has interests in newspapers, movies, satellite TV, US local television stations in the US, and many more outlets I'm sure. What were once strict divisions between media production and distribution have long since fallen by the wayside. In large part these pro-business changes reflected the opinions of new FCC commissioners appointed by Republican administrations. They also represented a change in the structure of television from a world where three networks commanded 90% or more of the viewers to one where they fewer than half that number. (http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2007/10/16/cbs_network_scores_another_ratings_win/)