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See, there are two sides to this story and they always talk past each other. One side says drugs are cool, and everyone should do a little, just to see what it's like and if it's not your thing then it's OK. They only see the positive effects. The other side works in emergency rooms and treatment centers and only sees the negative effects, and warns everyone to stay away, don't even try drugs once because we hear that story everyday of the guy who tried it once, liked it, and ruined his previously promising life.

Love it. To put it in a comparative context, I had the same experience with my fire art piece. People who have seen it at Burning Man, in a context that is extremely supportive of fire art, immediately want to build one without grasping that if you do it wrong it explodes and kills people. When I showed the video to my local fire chief he went on a five minute very serious lecture about how fire kills and only crazy people think fire should be used for entertainment.

Like so many things in public policy debate, it boils down to freedom versus safety. Me, I think our society is too safe. I'd rather have more freedom and more risk. I've done my best to reach that conclusion objectively, testing my views on risk with empirical data like this. Not saying I'm necessarily right, just sharing one of my methods for testing my preconceptions.

With the billions poured into "security"...

Security is for the little people. Corporations, small, medium, and large? Not so much.

Your comment makes no sense.

Oh, AC... you poor thing. I understand your confusion: Words don't make sense without context.

If you are a "little person" then you might think all this talk about "national security" is about protecting you and your interests, ensuring your safety. That's wrong. Only you are responsible for protecting yourself. Congress has ruled the police have no obligation to protect you, they are enforcers of the law against those who break it (if they're "little people").

If you are a corporation then "security" means ensuring existence of your socio-economic status, and influence over politics, despite the will of the people. That's what "national security" is, except under that label they don't have to worry about pesky FOIA requests exposing such actions.

You don't have "national safety" you have "Security theater". It's not just harmless bureaucratic waste, it's actually preparation to keep you from organizing any activism enough to change anything. Just like the stuff they did under COINTELPRO; Thus, their ability to maintain the status quo is "secure". Any real threat to life is pretty much ignored unless it's not really a big deal and can be heavily monetized by the state -- See: War on Drugs. The important thing to note is that the electronic spying apparatus has been in operation for decades. PRISM's spying was in place pre-9/11 and yet failed to protect us; There's no evidence it's ever protected us, since that's not what it was meant to do. The powers that be have no real interest in your safety, just that you are "secured". They're actually hoping for another disaster. Four hundred times more folks die every year from heart disease and accidents than a 9/11 scale attack, yet we still drive the kids to get a happy meal -- Compared to nearly any other risk, even falling down in the bath or lightning, the terrorist threat is pathetically small. The scaremongering threat narrative is only needed to push through more draconian legislation, like the PATRIOT Act, by manufacturing your consent.

Now, once you've educated yourself, you too can lament the state of things. Welcome to the discussion.

When you're sick enough to (feel you) need medication, stay at home. Don't spread germs all over the workplace / auditorium / public mass transport.

Nice idea, but almost useless....

The typical incubation period for influenza is 1—4 days (average: 2 days). Adults shed influenza virus from the day before symptoms begin through 5—10 days after illness onset. However, the amount of virus shed, and presumably infectivity, decreases rapidly by 3—5 days after onset in an experimental human infection model. Young children also might shed virus several days before illness onset, and children can be infectious for 10 or more days after onset of symptoms.

What this basically means is that you are infectious the day before you show symptoms.....therefore you will not be able to ever stop the flu, at least not without a better vaccine (no, don't go pulling that Jenny McCarthy shit or I'll have to slap you); we can just mitigate some of the spread. It is incumbent upon the uninfected to keep from getting infected, as those who are will not know they are until its too late.

The science is that fever is an adaptive response to an infection. Yes, fever is what makes you feel like crap, but it changes the kinetics of viral (and bacterial replication). Ever notice that microbiological (especially bacterial) incubators are set to 37 deg C? That's the sweet spot for replication....change it and you put the invader at a disadvantage. Modern medicine unfortunately has taken on the dogma that: "If it ain't right, it needs to be fixed", a few (and growing) are starting to learn that not all that is wrong is bad....I continually rally against treating fevers less than 40 deg C (above that is concern for brain injury), but I have an uphill fight against an entrenched culture.

My personal strategy? I take the anti-pyretics so i can sleep or function, but reintroduce the elevated temperature by bundling up and keeping my core above 37 deg C. This is not scientific, just what works for me, YMMV and I won't be held responsible if you up and die from the flu as this is not my official advice.

Most people that want "rights" have very dirty laundry.

0. Sensational "journalists" who tend to blow things out of proportion only likes censorship when it exposes their closet skeletons.

1. Drug users who don't care whether or not the state says it's OK to use Heroin, Cocaine, Marijuana, Tobacco, Tylenol, Vinegar, Sugar, Catchup, Water, etc.

2. Young folks who can't see why failing business models based on artificial scarcity should be propped up by the state and breech of civil contract elevated to a felony.

3. Traffic commuter who travels at the speed of surrounding cars even if they go above the mandated limit during "rush hour" wants an app to show simple facts like the publicly available location of traffic congestion.

4. Tinkerers who create things in their own garage without government supervision, and even sell some without being sued because they stumbled upon an obvious solution to a problem that someone else figured out first.

5. Sex crazed individuals don't want to have to get permission from the state to have long term partners and/or be gay want to screw the government out of license fees they change to change your relationship status.

But life is dangerous, everyone should be prevented from opting out of protection they don't want or need -- The state should be responsible for the economy and well being of every individual -- Or else you might die someday!

"More than 2.3 million adult drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments as the result of being injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2009." --- Motor vehicle stats

So what? Accidents happen. In 2010 Accidents (unintentional injuries, automotive and otherwise) killed 120,859 people. We should implant RFIDs in all the humans? Heart disease killed 597,689 people in 2010 THIS IS FAR MORE DANGEROUS THAN ALL ACCIDENTS! We should outlaw Freedom Fries!!!

Go swim a tar-pit, you're hindering the herd.

It's not so much driver's rights, as it is property owner's rights.

Rights that are apparently so important, they used to be the main criteria in deciding whether or not you were allowed to vote.

Most driver's that want "rights" have very dirty laundry.

What a cute way to re-word "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide." Aside from the fact that, thanks to a little phenomena known as overcriminalization pretty much every single American over the age of 6 is technically guilty of committing some sort of infraction, the point of it all is that the government does not have a right to search or seize your personal property without a fucking warrant. "Search" up-to-and-includes spying on, a statement which has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court.

"More than 2.3 million adult drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments as the result of being injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2009." --- Motor vehicle stats

Over 9 million Americans were treated in emergency departments as a result of an unintentional fall in 2011.

So the point you're obviously trying to make here is that driving is four times safer than walking, right?

Um, we do that here already. Condoms and free birth control pills are ridiculously easy to get, and even cheap if you have to pay for them ($12 for the pill at Walmart. Get them while they last, its like 2 trips to Starbucks!)

And, as you can see here, the average is 25.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db21_table2.pdf

Maybe the problem is we have incentives to extend adolescence behavior.

According to Stewart and Trussell, there are about 3,000 pregnancies from rape that couldn't be prevented with timely medical care post-rape. Compare that to 1.6 million births to unwed mothers. It seems that abstinence really would work a lot better to lower low-income births. At least if you cannot afford to support the potential child that could result...

Abortion in 1981: A total of 1,300,760 legal abortions were reported to the CDC, with 358 abortions for every 1000 live births, and 24 out of 1000 women have abortions.

Abortion in 2010: A total of 765,651 legal induced abortions were reported to the CDC from 49 reporting areas, with 228 abortions for every 1000 live births, and 14.6 out of 1000 women have abortions.

As for STDs a cursory search indicates AIDS is down, syphilis bottomed out in the early 2000s but is resurgent, the clap is on the rise, and gonorrhea is flat.

Abortion in 1981: A total of 1,300,760 legal abortions were reported to the CDC, with 358 abortions for every 1000 live births, and 24 out of 1000 women have abortions.

Abortion in 2010: A total of 765,651 legal induced abortions were reported to the CDC from 49 reporting areas, with 228 abortions for every 1000 live births, and 14.6 out of 1000 women have abortions.

As for STDs a cursory search indicates AIDS is down, syphilis bottomed out in the early 2000s but is resurgent, the clap is on the rise, and gonorrhea is flat.

Compared to all the other ways you can die, murder doesn't look like anything special.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/acc-inj.htm

The truth is most of these deaths are black on black murders done with illegal guns.

The truth is most of these deaths are suicides. You have to watch your gun statistics pretty carefully, because some people will exclude suicide by firearm when they present their gun violence statistics. Considering a gun owner (legal or illegal) is twice as likely to kill himself as any other human, I don't see any reason to restrict them.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm and http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

FBI statistics, that is. Where offender race could be identified, 5,486 were murders by blacks, 4,729 by whites, and 256 by "other." As blacks make up 13.1% of the population, the inescapable conclusion is that a wildly disproportionate share of U.S. murders are committed by black males. The fact that 72.5% of all black children are born out of wedlock might have something to do with that, which in turn may be due to greater welfare dependency among blacks than whites.

Now go ahead and tell me how my government statistics are racist...

Snowden has mainly revealed metadata -- what info collection programs exist, rather than actual data -- what was collected.

The NSA has emphasised what it does is benign as in mainly collects metadata.

Metadata -- no harm. no foul on either side.

Why do you purposefully remain ignorant? Metadata collection is far more powerful than is warranted.

We don't need wiretap spying. No serious threat can make a move against us without us knowing instantly. Seriously. Cars and Cheesburgers kill 400 times more than a 9/11 attack every year. We need no expensive War on Terror, DHS, or massive spying apparatus: The Flu kills 6 times more every year than a 9/11 scale attack -- Yet we still accept the risk in driving kids to get a happy-meal and let them play with other kids. If they want to spy they can get out of the damn basement and stand next to me or point a laser microphone at my windows. An encrypted chat/voip program on a burner phone illustrates why the massive spying is incapable of preventing any danger. Further, as a Scientist, I need evidence to believe a claim. Aggregate data of this size is harmless? Prove it.

A government without secrets is immune to spies. Snowden showed the NSA to be leaking worse than a sieve -- All of our taxes spent on data collection the enemy can easily leverage against us too. Tracking everywhere I go and what ideals I hold by what places and sites I visit is a perfect tool for terrorists and enemies to silence those who advocate greater freedom.

"No harm. no foul on either side" -- Grow up kid, you have some history to study.

And personally, if your infertility is the result of a medical condition then I think that insurance should absolutely cover you (as long as you don't already have five kids, you know? Be sensible)

I have ZERO kids, but thanks for assuming that all of us infertiles have tons of kids but want more to live off the government. We've been trying for five years with no success.

Just out of curiosity, do you think there are more people seeking help with infertility or women seeking contraception?

1 out of 9 women are infertile and must resort to either tens of thousands of dollars worth of procedures, or tens of thousands of dollars for adoption, or both. Meanwhile, 100% of people who choose to get contraception in order to have worry-free sex can choose to not have sex, absolutely for free.

Maybe it's better that you not reproduce after all.

Maybe it's better that you die of horrible painful cancer for decades that can't be helped by any medicine.

Yeah, now you know how I feel about your asswad comment.

Additionally: For decades Noam Chomsky has given us insight to the practice of Manufacturing Consent via Media. At the behest of corporate interests the state wages Disaster Capitalism
And all of this to control the socio-political landscape through silencing Women's Rights, Anti-War Activists, Civil Rights Activists, under the label "subversive radicals" in order to maintain the status quo: COINTELPRO. Note the NSA was complicit in COINTELPRO activities along with the FBI, and that they are still keen the practice now considering using PRISM to silence "radicals", e.g., exposing porn browsing habits -- I'm sure it has many other such uses. We can't really believe anything they say anymore because they'll even lie to their superiors in congress.

Scaremongers have ensured the land hasn't been free, nor the home brave, for a very long time. The cost in taxes, freedom, security, and privacy is too great. We don't even need TSA or DHS: Lightning is 4 times more dangerous than terrorists. Cars and Cheeseburgers kill 400 times more people than 9/11 every year, but we accept this risk, and drive to get the kids Happy Meals from time to time. We don't have a war on Freedom Fries or Sports Sedans, yet they are far more terrifying than the scaremonger's pathetic terrorist threat.

they would still have to justify their process for taking it from us. Last I knew, the constitution does not state "the ends justify the means".

They could justify their actions, but you wouldn't like the justification. Here's their justification: The NSA is tasked to silence "radicals" such as Privacy Rights Activists, Women's Rights Activists, Civil Rights Activists, and nearly every Anti-War Activist group to maintain the status quo. The cold war is over, the military industrial war machine was not dismantled, it fell into the wrong hands. These secret programs have been corrupt since their inceptions.

They'll point out where their counter intelligence is leveraged against folks you don't like, but fail to tell you how it's also used against good innocent people as well. Note that this NSA tactic is the same evil as their COINTELPRO justification.

What Snowden did was Patriotic and Honorable, not Treasonous because Treason is exactly how you would describe the actions of the wiretap surveillance agencies. I have no problem at present of the visual surveillance of all outdoor activity. However, since the cold war is over, and we have mutually assured nuclear destruction, we don't need wiretap spying. No force can make a move against us without our instant knowledge. Any war fought on our soil will not succeed against us. So, the Terrorist Threat was invented, meanwhile Cars and Cheeseburgers kill 400 times more people than 9/11 every year and we don't have a war on Automobiles and Happy Meals. We must end the government secrecy so we can trust our governments again. A spy can not harm a government without secrets.

The Snowden leaks illustrate that the NSA has become a huge single point of failure. State sponsored enemy spies have Far More access to the information than Snowden ever dreamed. The Stasi like spying has disgraced us and stripped us of any honor we would bestow. What soldier would answer the call to fight for a country who's actions are indistinguishable from that which we are sworn to fight against? The NSA is now, and has always been, an enormous threat to national security.

A scientist would say: Prove their evidence is real.

They lied to congress, and have a a long history of evil. It would be foolish to trust anything they say. See, that's the thing with secrets and lies: You can never trust anything they say to be true. "Oh we're strengthening security." Prove it -- Could be weakening security instead, we don't know because: Secrets. Oh, so they say these guys are terrorists? Prove it. You'll have to use independent evidence -- not like digital records can't be fabricated, what with all the routers and systems backdoored or exploited. They could have written the damn email from the guy's system themselves at a whim. These spooks are real creeps, tasked with socio-political control, not safety. What they do is target "radicals". They thought the Civil Rights Movement was "radical". The Privacy Rights Movement is considered "radical" too, especially since it requires an end government secrets. Everyone knows the atrocities the CIA gets up to, you think any of theses guys have qualms about silencing "radicals" any way they can?

Anyone think these programs are beneficial? That's an unproven claim. Disprove the null hypothesis: No secret spy organization can be proven to be beneficial. They can't be proven to be telling the truth. A secret oversight committee just moves the problem around.

You're 4 times more likely to die from lightning strike. The flu kills six times more people than a 9/11 scale attack every ear. Cars and cheeseburgers have killed Four Thousand times more lives than a 9/11 scale attack since 9/11. The cost to benefit ratio of the spying programs is ridiculous. Life is dangerous: There are risks that are acceptable. If we're brave enough to drive the kids to get a Happy Meal, then what possible fear can we have of a minuscule in comparison terrorist threat? Even if all 50 of those supposed bombers would have gone off, they'd still wouldn't justify the cost to privacy, freedom, and trust in our governments -- Falling down in the shower is more dangerous than terrorists. Where's the free government bath-mats if terrorists are such a big concern? Mutually assured destruction means big countries are no threat. The cold war didn't end, the military industrial complex just turned on its own people in secret. Everything Eisenhower warned us about came true.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
- John F. Kennedy

What a "radical" thought.

What a nice conspiracy theory you have there.

COINTELPRO is a conspiracy, but it's not just theoretical; TFS shows it's on its way to becoming Law.

Counter Intelligence Program does what? Discredit and silence "radical subversives" to control the socio-political space. It's not like that's something foreign to the NSA: Hey, let's use porn habits against the "radical" folks we don't like. The civil rights movement was considered "radical". The privacy rights movement -- Eradication of government secrecy --is considered "radical" too. With secrets the people can never trust their governments to be performing in their best interest. A secret oversight committee just moves the problem around. With covert secret programs we can't even be sure they're telling the truth about 9/11 or the Iraq War -- We shouldn't have to wonder if it was only a threat narrative created to leverage the disaster and manufacture consent.

Now, here's something interesting: Heart disease and accidents kill four hundred times more people than a 9/11 scale attack every year. The flu claims 6 times more lives than a 9/11 scale attack every year. Why isn't there a War on Cars and Cheeseburgers? Why are the DHS, NSA and other anti-terrorist programs consuming such huge amounts of resources when you're 4 times more likely to be struck by lightning? We could save more lives by mandating foam pads on rails and giving away free traction mats for bathtubs since falling down is a far more dangerous threat to American lives than terrorism. So, the government knows the terrorist threat is laughably inconsequential, yet the scaremongers' message of fear echoed all your mainstream news sources, policy maker statements, and judges opinions. Sounds like a fucking conspiracy to me.

It's silly to excuse malice as ignorance when the "professionals" who's job it is to quantify the terrorist threat are blatantly misrepresenting the threat. You're aware conspiracy is a real thing, right? I'm a rationalist, I attribute degrees of certainty and am never 100% sure of anything; Like any good scientist. It's far more likely the NSA and other agencies are carrying on the COINTELPRO tradition to keep the military industrial complex funded -- As Eisenhower warned us. Than to believe that agencies tasked with counter intelligence are not doing so, and that everyone in the media, politics, congress, the executive and judicial branches, etc. just never took a look at the numbers.

The NSA and DHS should be eliminated. Lives do have a cost that is weighed against freedom and expense. Life is dangerous, and certain risks are acceptable: Thus we don't have a ban on Cars, Cheeseburgers, or Freedom Fries even though since 9/11 these claimed 4000 times more lives than 9/11. If anyone is scared of terrorists then they shouldn't be driving, dining out, or go anywhere without a lightning rod. If you really must fund the NSA, DHS, etc. then give them 1/6th what we spend to prevent the flu, that's the rational thing to do. Anything else in the name of protection reeks of deception for ulterior motives, i.e., Conspiracy.

I disagree because your statement is blatantly false. The NSA can not serve a useful purpose. Simple application of the mathematics of information disparity proves you can't prove your statement to the contrary. As a scientist, I don't believe things without evidence, especially not statements lacking disprovability.

You're aware Omnivore, Carnivore, ECHELON, and PRISM's room 641A existed before 9/11. They failed to prevent 9/11, and every terrorist attack since the 70's. The NIST helps secure our encryption systems. By what amazing feat of mental gymnastics do you arrive at the conclusion that a secret research group can be proven to be helping secure our communications? No, that's asinine. I require evidence. The government secrecy is directly opposed to both freedom and security.

Especially since we've got an army of hubble-esque telescopes zipping around the earth providing total global situation awareness. You don't need warrantless wiretaps with that kind of spy power.

Bonus, the NRO helps with natural disasters, weather, and space sciences. Defund, NSA, DHS, etc., spit the funding between NASA and the NRO. The folks benefiting from domestic spying could instead make their money selling space wares... Ah, but then they wouldn't be able to do insider trading quite so well at all.

You can't be serious, right? By what logical misstep do you propose we trust again a spy who has proven to be a double agent? The same goes for an OS compromised by malware, there is no "removal" of malware, you nuke it from orbit, because it's the only way to be sure.

They want to have their cake and eat it too. We should either have no privacy indoors & in our communication between indoor areas while having expectation to not be spied on outdoors, or have zero protection of privacy outdoors & assurances that our communications are not compromised. Look, if you want to spy on my conversations you can just stand next to me, or aim a laser microphone at my windows or glasses. You don't need to tap the coms lines because folks can buy a burner phone and install their own encrypted voice and text applications. It'll be to late to do anything by the time it's deciphered. The domestic spying and wiretaps only prevent legitimate use of the technology.

Unfortunately, information theory tells us we can not have assurances that our communications are not spied on unless we eliminate the secret spying operation. We have a chance to eliminate secrets and stand brave among the most powerful nations who have mutually assured nuclear peace, and against which no terrorist can pose a threat. Scaremongers would have you believe the terrorists are nothing to sneeze at, yet every year the flu claims SIX TIMES the lives as a 9/11 scale attack. Cars and Cheeseburgers are 400 times more deadly every year than 9/11. Even the most devastating of terrorist threats is not even a flesh wound. We need proportional protection: If you're so scared of 1/400th the threat a Happy Meal poses, then allocate 1/400th of the taxes we spend on heart disease and accident prevention to the NSA and DHS. We need no secrets. Without secrets no spy can harm us.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

- John F. Kennedy

As a rational human being: If you, Snowden or anyone would say that the NSA can serve a useful purpose then the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence to support your unproven claim. Don't forget to prove your hypothesis you will need to more significantly disprove the null hypo

"I would argue that what effectiveness we have seen to date is totally irrelevant to how effective it might be in the future," he said. "This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11 and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and 2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened."'

OK, let's take your utterly preposterous claim at face value. Let's say that this program would have prevented 9/11, and would prevent another 9/11 tomorrow, and has done fuck-all in between. That means we'd save 3,000 American lives every 12 years. Call it 3,600 to make the math easy. That's 300 lives per year. Against the 4th amendment. How does that price measure up against some of our other freedoms?

To retain the right to drive automobiles, we spend 34,000 lives per year.

To retain the right to drink alcohol, we spend 34,000 to 75,000 lives per year (depending on how you count alcohol-related accidents).

To retain the right to use tobacco, we spend 440,000 lives per year.

To retain the second amendment, we spend 30,000 lives per year.

To retain the right to be obese, we spend 300,000 lives per year.

With the possible exception of tobacco, I support the retention of all those rights. Three hundred per year for The Fourth Amendment (and the chilling effect on The First)? Even if his preposterous supposition were true, it would be a bargain at ten times the price compared to some of the other rights we hold dear.

The big issue I see with your argument is Alcohol, Tobacco, and Driving are not rights, they are licensed privileges. Obesity is most often (but not always) a side effect of over-eating.

So 4 out of the 5 examples are not "rights" as defined by the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or any amendments. That doesn't make the point any less valid, actually, in my opinion, it makes the point ever more glaring. If you're willing to defend these 4 "rights" why wouldn't you defend all of the actual, legally defined, rights set out in the founding documents ?

I'd like to see a plan to reduce these threats forever . . . so we can go back to our normal ways, before the war. Now, it seems that we are preparing for an endless war on terrorism.

What if I told you the threat of terrorism was so low even lightning strikes or falling down in the bathtub are more serious threats to American lives?

9/11 killed one sixth the number of people who die from the flu every year! That means since 9/11 the flu has proven 60 times more dangerous than terrorists. Accidents and heart disease kill 400 times more people every year than a 9/11 scale attack. We need proportional protection from threats. 1/6th or 1/60th of what we spend on anti-flu vaccines should be spent on anti-terrorism. The threat is just a fear narrative to get the people to do whatever the government wants. You accept that life is dangerous when you drive to a fast food restaurant, and face a far greater risk than terrorism yet we demand no War on Cheeseburgers and Cars. The war on terror will end when the people stop being afraid of pathetic threats. Accept the risk of being free. It is minimal compared to every other threat you face.

We don't need the wiretapping spying at all. Omnivore, Carnivore, ECHELON, and PRISM's Room 641A existed BEFORE 9/11. The NSA's spying apparatus has failed to prevent every terrorist attack since the 60's, including 9/11. We gave them more powers and they failed to prevent the Boston Marathon Bombing.

The spying programs are expensive and useless for the protection of American lives. It's too easy to track the tax funds so the CIA gets a large portion of its black-ops money through investments. The cold war machine lost its raison d'etre, and like any business or other cybernetic being it didn't want to die. So in order to keep itself fed with massive funds the spying apparatus must manufacture threats to deceive the public with. There was never a suspicion of WMD's there was only the need for a threat narrative to fuel a war machine. Just like Vietnam, Just like McCarthyism, The Red Scare, etc. There is no threat to us anymore from countries defined by borders since we have mutually assured nuclear destruction.

The National Reconnaissance Office gifted NASA two Hubble Sized spy satellites because they're launching far more impressive spy satellites with the biggest rockets in the world. Hubbles aimed at Earth! That's PLENTY of spying capability to be content with. No force on Earth can move against us without us knowing instantly, the wiretap spying isn't needed at all. If the flu, cars, and cheeseburgers are a more serious threat than terrorism, but domestic spying can yield information that can be used for insider trading, and that's how black-ops are funded...

Occam's Razor says Snowden is right: "These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power."

Citizens have changed from collateral damage into the prime targets themselves in the new age cold war. Borders are largely safe now. The developing world is used as the outlet to expend the war machines output. Great stockpiles of the machines of war are burned to make room for new spending. Black-ops instigates new proxy wars. The CIA carries out economic warfare at the behest of Corpora

"I would argue that what effectiveness we have seen to date is totally irrelevant to how effective it might be in the future," he said. "This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11 and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and 2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened."'

OK, let's take your utterly preposterous claim at face value. Let's say that this program would have prevented 9/11, and would prevent another 9/11 tomorrow, and has done fuck-all in between. That means we'd save 3,000 American lives every 12 years. Call it 3,600 to make the math easy. That's 300 lives per year. Against the 4th amendment. How does that price measure up against some of our other freedoms?

To retain the right to drive automobiles, we spend 34,000 lives per year.

To retain the right to drink alcohol, we spend 34,000 to 75,000 lives per year (depending on how you count alcohol-related accidents).

To retain the right to use tobacco, we spend 440,000 lives per year.

To retain the second amendment, we spend 30,000 lives per year.

To retain the right to be obese, we spend 300,000 lives per year.

With the possible exception of tobacco, I support the retention of all those rights. Three hundred per year for The Fourth Amendment (and the chilling effect on The First)? Even if his preposterous supposition were true, it would be a bargain at ten times the price compared to some of the other rights we hold dear.

So what is your final solution? Have the dept of sanitation toss them in the truck when they drop dead?

What is your "final solution"? Subject people to Mengele-like experimentation on their bodies to extend their lives by another few weeks or months, usually in agonizing pain, and then have the tax payer pay huge amounts of money to hospitals, insurance companies, and big pharmaceuticals for the privilege? Make them dependent for a lifetime on expensive, proprietary drugs produced by big corporations that alleviate the consequences of eating crap produced by other big corporations, both massively subsidized and protected by government? That's the kind of nightmarish world that "progressives" like you are propelling us into.

Also note, my suggestion was to raise the minimum wage and encourage shorter working hours. That leads to better choices and reduces the need for healthcare.

Working hours and minimum wage have steadily decreased in many countries while obesity keeps increasing. Your idea that increasing the minimum wage and encouraging shorter working hours leads to better choices is therefore contradicted by real-world observations. Even in the US, there is no correlation between income, education, and obesity (and for women it's pretty weak), http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db50.htm What you're trying to do is justify policies you desire for ideological reasons with fictions you create about the real world, fictions contradicted by fact.

In addition, precisely because we don't want low income to force people to make poor nutritional choices, we have SNAP. We could easily modify SNAP to stop paying for HFCS, trans fats, microwave meals, and ofther bad nutritional choices, while giving recipients nearly unlimited access to any fruits and vegetables they desire. But crony capitalists (and that's what you are whether you know it or not) who push SNAP and want people to become dependent on corporate products oppose such restrictions with the lame excuse that it would "stigmatize poor people".

All they need to do is drop an 'A'.

Been there, done that. Thus no expectation of privacy outdoors, I'm fine with that. It's the tapping of communications indoors and between indoor places that I have a problem with -- Since Omnivore, Carnivore, ECHELON, and PRISM's Room 641A existed before the NSA failed to prevent 9/11. So, the decades of NSA unconstitutional wiretap spying is demonstrably expensive and useless, while the other NRO spying advances space research, directly helps the military, and doesn't invade your home. I'll take NASA Johnson Style.

Hubble's mirror design changed to match the existing mirrors already deployed in spy satellites -- Aiming an army of Hubbles at earth? That's some awesome spying capability; No terrorists or enemies could make a significant move against us without us finding out immediately already thanks to space spying programs. And, when we launch more impressive satellites the old spy-sats can be donated to NASA and pointed into space, or sent to other planets.

Why not just hold a vote? I'm sure the citizens would be in favor of giving NASA all the funding allocated to the NSA and DHS since you're 4 times more likely to get hit by lightning than face terrorist attack... Every year: Heart Disease and Accidents kill four hundred times more people than a 9/11 scale attack, but we're not having a War on Cheeseburgers, or War on Automobiles. "Terrorist Threat", yeah, apparently NSA hasn't heard: They've convinced us to wear tinfoil hats despite the far more dangerous threat of lightning.

We need proportional protection. Cut the anti-terrorism budget for NSA, DHS, etc. to 1/6th the funding we have for anti-flu, since the flu kills six times more people than a 9/11 scale attack, every year. Give the funds to NASA, or the NRO if you're really scared of your own shadow. Problem solved.

http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/publications-data-stats.html

Because washing your hands does not "kill' bacteria, it dislodges them so they can be washed away. The demonstration is extremely valid in demonstrating how long it actually takes to clean the hands of something that tends to cling. Is it a perfect model? No. It is, however, a very good educational too. Most people do not wash their hands properly because they a) miss regions such as the wrist or the thumb and b) they do not wash long enough to be effective. It's the reason that most hospitals have hand washing education programs for their staff.

http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/

Replace with anything else that is small that sticks to your skin, and is visible so that you know when it really has been completely removed? Do it with the dirt of the inside of your keyboard if you prefer.

Or you just want someone to Google for you? Fine, you're really so lazy and ignorant that you need someone to use a global computer network to look up how to wash your friggin' hands...

From here, which has many many papers cited for every step of the process of washing one's hands:

Why? Determining the optimal length of time for handwashing is difficult because few studies about the health impacts of altering handwashing times have been done. Of those that exist, nearly all have measured reductions in overall numbers of microbes, only a small proportion of which can cause illness, and have not measured impacts on health. Solely reducing numbers of microbes on hands is not necessarily linked to better health 1. The optimal length of time for handwashing is also likely to depend on many factors, including the type and amount of soil on the hands and the setting of the person washing hands. For example, surgeons are likely to come into contact with disease-causing germs and risk spreading serious infections to vulnerable patients, so they may need to wash hands longer than a woman before she prepares her own lunch at home. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that washing hands for about 15-30 seconds removes more germs from hands than washing for shorter periods 2-4.
Accordingly, many countries and global organizations have adopted recommendations to wash hands for about 20 seconds (some recommend an additional 20-30 seconds for drying):

30 years ago there was no ADD, or ADHD

Yes there was.

no medication needed just lower his sugar intake and keep him away from sodas.

Sugar causing hyperactivity is a myth, you goddamned moron.

So, around 10,000 homicides by gun EVERY YEAR, plus around 20,000 suicides by gun EVERY YEAR.

A tragedy to be sure though it's a bit more nuanced than that. A HUGE percentage of those homicides are gang and drug related.

How in the world do Americans become accustomed to such carnage?

There were 35,000 deaths in automobile accidents last year but we're not about to take cars off the road. I'm in more danger from dying every time I get behind the wheel than I ever am from firearms, particularly if I stay out of certain gang infested areas and don't get involved in the drug trade. In fact statistically speaking I'm at more risk in a car than I am from suicide by gun. If we are talking about drug related deaths there were 40,000 deaths from poisoning and medical use of legal and illegal drugs. None of these causes of death hold a candle to the biggies like heart disease and cancer.

I guess it's true; we suck at putting things in perspective.

I would say so. Things that are more likely to kill me in the US than a gun: cars, heart attack, diabetes, cancer, stroke, accidents, influenza and pneumonia. Homicides aren't even in the top 15 causes of death. That's not to say it isn't a tragedy but we're talking about perspective here. Comparatively speaking it is a minor risk which becomes extremely minor if you stay away from certain areas and activities.

25,692 alcohol induced deaths per year in the US. 11,078 firearm homicides in the US.

Vehicle related deaths are greater than either despite car safety features greatly improving the survivability of collisions over the last 20 years. Although finding statistics (probably gathering accurate ones also) is very difficult I would be willing to bet the number of serious injuries and monetary costs of vehicle collisions dwarfs either alcohol or firearms. I think driving is more applicable to your argument than either guns or alcohol.

Change 'hobby' to 'social drinking'. How about we take this logic and apply it to alcohol (as it relates to deaths due to drunk driving)?

In 2010 there were 32,885 vehicle fatalities. 10,228 were listed as alcohol related. And those statistics are even skewed since if anyone involved, whether they were the cause of the collision or not, had any level of alcohol it's marked as alcohol related. The problem isn't drunk drivers. The problem is irresponsible drivers drunk or sober. If you're going to look at traffic fatalities address the real issue rather than the neo-prohibitionist agenda of certain groups. If you fix the maniacal driving problem and make people responsible for their actions when driving drunk driving won't be an issue.

Single Point of Failure.

Diminishing Returns.

Planning Fallacy.

Cybernetic Death -- Too much noise (entropy), not enough progress (signal) in the system.

I can think of a million reasons why the NSA has always been doomed to fail. Greed is the general answer.

We have an amazing array of spy satellites launched via the biggest rockets in the world. No terrorist or enemy could mobilize any real threat to the USA that we would not know about instantly. The big nations are no threat sine we have mutually assured nuclear destruction. The NSA couldn't be content with their awesome spying capabilities offline, and so they got greedy and tapped all civilian information even though there is no substantial threat: Every year Cars and Cheeseburgers kill four hundred times more people every year than a 9/11 scale attack. Such expense can't possibly be worth protecting us from 1/400th of the risk in driving to get a Happy Meal. It seems they're not trying to protect us at all -- It seems more likely they're trying to protect themselves from the people who, once they have seen the numbers, will decide we need a base on Mars and the Moon, and tastier health food, and a hyper loop instead of the NSA and DHS terrorist "protections".

How am I supposed to spy if we don't collect data?

The question assumes that spying is needed. This is an unproven assumption. We have no evidence the spying is needed or beneficial, it has been proven only harmful or at best useless.

We're not threatened by other large nations because we have Mutually Assured Nuclear Destruction. Therefore the scaremongers had to invent a new bogieman: Terrorism. The threat is inconsequential. Falling in the bathtub is a greater threat to American lives than terrorism. You're about 4 times more likely to get struck by lightning than die in a terrorist attack. Accidents and Heart Disease kill FOUR HUNDRED TIMES more people EVERY YEAR than a 9/11 scale attack. When you compare the threat of terrorist attack to any other real threat to human lives their scaremongering doesn't match the facts.

Six times more people die from the flu every year than a 9/11 scale attack. We need proportional protection. The budget to protect us from terrorists is out of control. The anti-terrorism budget should be AT MOST one sixth of the budget we spend on ant-flu or 1/200th of the anti-accident budget, 1/200th the anti-heart-disease budget. How much does the government spend to protect citizens from lightning attacks? Is it FOUR TIMES the NSA's budget?!

The government needs no secrets. Our army is big enough and we are powerful enough that we need keep secret nothing. If nothing is secret, you need not fear spies, eh? They've taken the limited power we gave for them to have secrets, and used it against their own people to create a Stasi-like despotic apparatus -- The very thing our soldiers have fought against. Who will answer the call to fight for a government who's action has become indistinguishable from the enemy? The NSA has damaged us, stripped our honor, and shamed us in the world's eyes, our technology sector is suffering due to distrust. The NSA is a threat to national security.

The people should KNOW they can trust their government. We must not allow them to keep secrets. No one has proved the secrets are needed. We are brave enough to risk 400 times the threat of a terrorist attack by driving to McDonald's for a kid's Happy Meal. The public shouldn't have to wear tinfoil hats fearing government spying of citizens unless the government is also handing out lightning insulation suits. We should be able to prove their actions are not harmful to the people or violations of our constitution. We can't do this if there are secret unconstitutional actions.

PRISM is not the first spying apparatus. There was Omnivore, Carnivore, ECHELON, Five-Eyes, and more. Remember how the PATRIOT Act granted immunity to the ISPs retroactively for their assistance in violating the 4th amendment? Yes, remember BEFORE 9/11 how the NSA had secret rooms in telco buildings where all the fiber optics ran through -- Where it was apparently split by mirrors to create PRISM? BEFORE 9/11?!?!!?! OK, NSA. Your fucking move. Prove you are not fucking pointless, you fuckers had your decades of spying on all communications and you FUCKING FAILED to prevent the worst terrorist attack we've ever faced! We even gave you MORE powers and you FAILED again to prevent the Boston Marathon Bombing. The ball is in your court to stand down, the evidence is not in your favor, pushing the issue will get you eliminated for good.

Expensive + Useless = Unnecessary; NSA == Unnecessary.
I'm a scientist, so before we agree to continue funding for these expensive and pointless pork-spending protection systems, including the DHS, I need hard evidence that they are needed. As it stands the facts prove these expenses should be stripped from the budget and given to health care, and research, or at the very least, NASA. The biggest thre

Here's one

Another

And anotherMany people would agree that “back in the day” insufficient exercise would never be a problem for kids. However, in age that dwells on video games, computer programs, and many indoor activities, children are beginning to focus more on instant gratification and less on old fashion fun (unfortunately, this includes playing outside).

Obviously, it's because kids are sitting and not moving around, but ... just read parts about "instant gratification".

News Flash: Driving a car instead of biking to work may make you fat: most drivers ARE overweight.

Oh good grief. Yeah, I see all those people saying, "Yeah, I bored, Let's go sit in a traffic jam for several hours tonight instead of going for a walk."

Computers and video games are making us fatter and more isolated: Facebook and Slashdot are nowhere near what personal human interaction can off and as a result it's making more hostile and anti-social.

Speaking of too much screen time, I need to go. Correcting the Internet every time it's wrong is tiring.

Well, the government has proven we can't trust them to abide by the Constitution. Our armies are so powerful they need keep no secrets. Troop deployment, arms caches, etc. can be known in advance (and probably are due to spies anyway), so even any military action we'd perform really needs no secrets; What the pathetic terrorists threat? Falling down in the bathtub is a greater threat. The secrecy and spying infrastructure costs too much. We can't trust them to have it.

If you give a kid a "toy" that's powerful enough to burn down the house and tell them not to, and they set fire to the whole damn world anyway, well, then you ground the kid, take away their toy, and keep them under supervision. Fortunately the NSA isn't a kid, it knows what it's doing, so we need have no remorse in routing out such Stasi-like spying systems. They'd set the world ablaze on purpose. We can't trust them to keep secrets.

The NSA-like spying world wide has harmed the public trust in their governments. What soldier who served to fight against such oppression would serve a government who willingly perpetrates that which they supposedly fight against? The NSA is a threat to national security for all the world nations. We're braver than this. Cars and Cheesburgers kill 400 times more people than a 9/11 scale attack EVERY YEAR, and yet we put our kids in our fast cars to visit fast food restaurants.

The people must regain trust in their governments, not through ignorance, but through knowledge. We need to KNOW we can trust our governments. We need to see everything they are doing. They can't be trusted to keep secrets without abusing them. The people know what's best for themselves, and any argument that says otherwise is incorrectly assuming the decision is best made by those with knowledge who hold the secrets. Informed decisions about our governance can not be made if the government is cloaked in secrecy. This isn't the Constitution I our founders signed up for. This government is actively over exaggerating fears to turn the home of the brave into the cash cows for the military-industrial complex. Just as Eisenhower feared, and warned.

Tracking CAN be eliminated. Consider a mesh network with store and forward. You download that cute cat video directly from the peers around you that emailed you about it instead of having to do all the hops to get it from the source -- Free Co-Location! The internet is a store and forward network, but ISPs want to charge outlandish fees for bigger buffers. Packet radio also exists. Get the FCC to relax anti-packet radio laws on the public use air-waves, and give us a section of unlicensed HAM band, and you'll have your free network akin to the Internet. Like the BBS era's Fidonet it will self assemble and have anonymity inherent -- You route data for your neighbour, your neighbour can spoof packets and say they are routing them for someone else; point to point nodes can be established. You'll join the network by paying a one time fee to buy the hardware and join the web; Bigger the node, faster the connection. Cellular exists. The public citizens need the right to use their own air-waves. There's no reason backing up your encrypted family files off-site to grandma's and your sister's PCs needs go through a 3rd party. The technical limitations don't exist. You see, a government can't have a kill-switch for a publicly operated network, so they simply don't allow one. "Land of the Free", No, we're not it's enough to make a gadget lover cry.

Haha, you should reread what you wrote a couple of times, too. You even used bold to give yourself a hint ; )

You are asking why you need to have a polio shot when there was not even one single case of polio in the US since 1979. I mean you are right, it's hard to explain if it's not obvious.

You offer scoffing and snark, not insight. Or is it just a failure of imagination?

It's correct to scoff at folks who are scared of Terrorists. You're insinuating that terrorists are nothing to sneeze at, but The Flu Kills Six Times more people EVERY YEAR than a 9/11 attack. Cars and Cheeseburgers kill FOUR HUNDRED TIMES more people than a 9/11 scale attack. You're OK with pissing away taxes to have government agents protect us from WOW playing terrorists? Come the fuck on, man. You sound fucking hysterical and moronic to boot. Do you want to ask permission from a TSA agent before you're allowed to dial the phone? Do you want a DHS employee riding with you in your car, and tossing out your French fries to "protect" you? No. It's been over a decade since 9/11... The cost of our freedom and privacy spent by the NSA is far too much just to "protect" us from something that's one 4000th of the threat encountered on a trip to McDonalds.

So fucking what if in-game currency is used to to channel funds. The threat is fucking pathetic compared to even the greater threat of falling down in the bathtub.

Freedom isn't free. It costs lives and money. For a country to succeed it must be tolerant of new ideas, thus America has embraced both capitalistic and socialist methodologies and leveraged them to their benefit. When Americans consider the costs of the NSA relative to the lives they supposedly save, it is hard to agree to continue the program considering the threat. Falling down in the bathtub is a far greater threat than the "Terrorist Threat". More lives can be saved by giving away bathtub traction mats than by sponsoring a nation wide spying initiative. As a capitalist I would have to be a fool to spend so much taxes and give up so much privacy for such a little benefit.

Security researchers have a name for things like the NSA: Single Point of Failure. If a contract employee like Snowden can get such data, then state sponsored enemy spies have likely infiltrated too. Thus, the NSA is actually a threat to national security -- They are helping our enemies far more than they help us. The NSA is now deserved of the term used for other invasive, expensive and yet ineffective "protection" schemes: Security Theater. See also: DHS.

Terrorists are a pathetic threat; It takes more bravery to bathe than to stand in solidarity against such attackers as the Boston Marathon Bombers -- An event whereby the NSA failed our nation and proved how worthless they are. Should we outlaw pressure cookers? No: Six times more people die every year from the Flu than a 9/11 scale attack. Every year Cars and Cheesburgers kill Four Hundred times more people than a 9/11 scale attack. Yet, if anyone tried to take away our freedom to drive fast cars or cook and eat fast food we will fight them off, not embrace the "protections"! On 9/11 the terrorists were reminded by the honorable passengers of Flight 93: Attack Americans and Americans fight back. The NSA would do well to remember this: We do not need or want their expensive and invasive erosion of privacy in the name of protection.

To the NSA agents who read statements such as mine as a part of their jobs, and decide whether they will use our porn preferences to discredit the "radicals" who speak out against you: It's no wonder your morale is so low. Your official stance is to lie to Congress. No one can now believe anything you say. No evidence you have ever collected can now be trusted. Your secrecy has become dishonesty and made your job worthless and without honor. How can you even look at yourself in the mirror? Don't like the low morale? Quit your un-American and unconstitutional job. Spineless treasonous traitors deserve far worse than just having low morale.

You are wasting a shit ton of money on Terrorism protections, meanwhile falling down in the bathtub is a greater risk to American lives.

Every year: Heart disease and accidents cause Four Hundred Times more deaths than a 9/11 scale attack. We will fight you to the death for the freedom to drive fast cars to fast food restaurants. We do not need protection from the pathetic "terrorist threat". Stand terrorism next to ANY other threat and you will see why our HUGE budget to fight it is ridiculous and proponents of spending such should be fired on sight. They say Terrorism is nothing to sneeze at, but EVERY YEAR the Flu kills SIX TIMES more people than a 9/11 scale attack. They pay for submarines to tap into under sea cables to prevent terrorism? Body scanners and gropers at transportation hubs? No longer.

The public needs proportional protection from proportional risk. The budget for terrorist protection should be less than that of the Flu prevention, and less than what we spend to preventing you from braining yourself on the bathtub faucet by accident. It has become clear that our protection is not the government's agenda. It seems that the agenda is to funnel as much money possible into the pockets of those who benefit by increasing the size and reach of the Military Industrial Complex.

You have made Eisenhower's Nightmare come true.

> I looked at a datasheet for cobalt 60 apparently you have to come into physical contact. Looking at it shouldn't do them much harm.

You need to throw away that datasheet and get a better one. :)

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/isotopes/cobalt.asp

Cobalt 60 emits gamma radiation, fairly energetic, which means you only need to be in proximity to it to suffer ill effects. I saw a chart on another site a while ago that said standing within 1 meter of the Co-60 for longer than a few minutes would result in a serious exposure. Being that close to it, without touching it, for more than 30 minutes to an hour would almost certainly be fatal.

The sad thing is, the guys probably didn't know what they were handling and are almost certainly dead by now. I'm frankly surprised that they didn't find the bodies near the site, because after about 15-20 minutes of direct exposure to that much Co-60, they would have already begun feeling the effects -- severe headaches, nausea and diarrhea.

4) No. I've done nothing wrong, but fear that my political stance and cryptographic, OS development, and online research for fictional writing and game development will wrongfully place me in the cross-hairs of the surveillance state. Though metadata collection is too invasive, I continue to exercise my freedom of speech against my better judgment although I'm aware of the very real threat to myself and my loved ones. I remember the brave men who died for my freedom and the friends, family and neighbors who served for our country under the goal of upholding our constitution in the fight against enemies both foreign and domestic who would create dystopia through leveraging such Stasi-esque spying practices. If I do not uphold my end of the bargain and exercise my freedoms, then those brave soldiers sacrificed for nothing.

We need proportional protection from proportional risk. Heart disease and accidents kill 400 times more people every year than a 9/11 scale terrorist attack. Freedom means being free to take such risks as eating cheeseburgers, driving cars, showering while standing up, and traveling our great country unmolested by useless and expensive government agents.

Come now – "a tricycle can become deadly"?

Many, many more people run over their children in the driveway compared to the number of kids killed by their toys.

Cars are the number one cause of death for children after infancy. When we complain about people worrying about stupid things, this is what they should worry about. More than half of all kids are killed by automobiles, far more than any other cause.
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810803.PDF
http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe (Center for Disease Control, fun interactive graphs about death and dying).

If a specific kind of car adds even more danger to this carnage, (hmm, a pun) I see no reason why they shouldn't be removed from the road. I'm happy to blame drivers, but I'd like to take dangerous tools out of their hands too.

Now, whether the issue of regulating the minuscule number of these exotic cars matters in the overall issue of traffic danger, is another matter. We should not focus on a few cars without looking at what measures would actually increase safety in general. But if these cars (and the people who chose to drive them) are costing other people's lives, I'm happy to take their keys away. Let them drive a tricycle, no?

Ah the Poe's Law Troll, one of my favorites. However, I'll oblige.

You're not important enough for anyone to care about your private communications.

Until you are. Then you're fucked, even if it's a bullshit reason, like making anti-NSA political statements on the Internet, while also being an OS developer and having knowledge of unpatched OS exploit vectors, and developing your own cryptographic ciphers. Then you may find your router firmware mysteriously bricked by an exploit gone wrong -- You see, upon suspicion of odd things going on in my network (like 350 MB uploads in the middle of the night when no one was using the net to IP addresses owned by the US government) I cleansed my systems and replaced my router and its firmware, but caused it to still be fingerprinted as stock. That's called a canary, and my canary is dead. When I look at things from an intelligence perspective, It seems like I might be interesting to them, even though I'm a pacifist not a terrorist.

I'm not sure who wants into my systems or for what purpose. However, condoning such actions against citizens is abhorrent. If they showed up at my door step with a warrant I'd shake their hands and give 'em few cases of my homebrewed beer to take home and help them to everything they want to know -- That's what they should be doing. Now, I have to assume it's malicious attackers or enemy state actors. It's really not helpful to be at war with your allies... I don't think we should have to live in fear of whether or not the NSA style spying will be leveraged against citizens, or make the governments of our world illegitimate by violating citizens trusts and rights. Regardless if they are "legally" allowed, it means nothing if your populous abhors the action and despises the state for it. We should not have to wonder; We should know we can trust that our governments are not evil -- We should be able to prove it. We shouldn't allow them to do anything we don't know about. In the NSA's case they lie to their overseers. The threat such actions pose to national integrity and stability is far too a high a price to pay. The risk is too damn high.

I, for one, think it's hot that the NSA sees my sexts.

When the government retroactively declares your "sexts" to be offensive and illegal material they probably won't arrest you for it -- Unless they decide that they don't like you for some other reason. This is how police states operate. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you. They will not have the obligation to use the information they have to exonerate you. In fact, once they "like you" for a crime the states will employ the practice of Parallel Construction. And no matter how sexy, your sexting habits may be just the ticket to nail you for something else. In other words: We shouldn't help them fuck you. They should have to work for the taxes we pay.

If the NSA didn't do this, we'd already be dead.
Everybody already knew the NSA does this, so it doesn't matter.

This line of reasoning is pure bullshit. We suspected, but we didn't have evidence, and given that Habeas Corpus is now eliminated upon mere accusation of threat it does matter more than ever before. Those who love their country are not so content to have it turned into the same things their soldiers fight against. The greatest risk is that the honorable will STOP fighting for those who are seen as dishonorable when countries become like the enemies the soldiers were trained to despise. The NSA actions, and the spying actions like them by countries world wide are threats to national security and national sovereignty of all the world's peoples.

Finally, the terrorist threat is pathetic, though they say it's nothing to sneeze at the flu kills six times more Ameri

CDC, poultry, pigs, more pigs (the references have more). Good overview of the CDC report from Wired: here and here.

So yeah, maybe not cows, directly. Not yet.

Princeton is currently having a situation with drug resistant meningitis, and is asking to use an unapproved, in the US, drug to treat it.

Nope, thanks for playing.

Princeton is having a situation with a different strain of meningitis than is usually seen in the U.S. Serogroup B meningitis is more common in Europe, and that's why there was more effort to get the vaccine for that strain approved quickly there.

It's no more drug resistant than regular meningitis. Instead, because meningitis infects the meninges that normally keep everything out of your brain, it's hard to treat.

That's why they like to vaccinate against it.

While it may indeed be that "a likely cause of ... drug resistance is use of antibiotics to increase growth rate in livestock," it's totally unrelated to the meningitis outbreak at Princeton.

But don't take my word for it, ask the CDC. See http://www.cdc.gov/meningococcal/vaccine-serogroupB.html.

I wonder what the overall contribution of vehicle vs. pedestrian is to the total death and injury by vehicle numbers.

Hmm.... " Pedestrians are 1.5 times more likely than passenger vehicle occupants to be killed in a car crash on each trip.2" It seems that pedestrian deaths might be worth worrying about.

I'm not sure what that sentence means though - they report ~4,000 deaths and 70,000 injuries to pedestrians per year, while there are tens of thousands killed and millions injured in motor vehicle accidents every year.

the likelihood of getting infected from unprotected heterosexual activity is near zero.

Incorrect.

The rate of actually acquiring an infection from an infected source by insertive anal (gay) intercourse is 6.5 in 10,000 exposures. The rate for Insertive vaginal (straight) intercourse is 5 in 10,000 exposures. The difference there...1.5 cases in 10,000 is pretty inconsequential.

It is different for the receptive partners. Receptive anal (gay) intercourse is 50 infections per 10,000 exposures. The rate for receptive vaginal (straight) intercourse is 10 per 10,000 exposures. Receptive gay sex is 5 times as likely to transmit the disease as receptive vaginal sex...but when it's 10 per 10,000 vs 50 per 10,000, it's still within the same order of magnitude.

(Source, the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/policies/law/risk.html)

10,000 deaths! Oh No!!! So scurry..... Take my blood, harass me, shove a camera up my ass, PLEASE MOMMY GOVERNMENT PROTECT ME TAKE ALL MY RIGHTS AWAY JUST KEEP ME SAFE LEST I TINKLE MY PINK PANTIES!!!!

Hmmm....

Oh, shit. Out of 2,468,435. 10,000? Fuck you, fascist authoritarian apologist scumbag,

Vital Statistics of the United States 1941, Page 241

I think it's delightful that someone is bright enough to identify this as propaganda. Please help me fight such pernicious lies that Heritage purports to justify these "facts".

It seems to be amply footnoted, with 50+ references:
[1]Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, âoeIncome, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,â U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports: Consumer Income, P60-239, September 2011, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf (September 13, 2011). The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family cash income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2010, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $22,314. A family of three was deemed poor if its annual income was below $17,374.
[2] See Catholic Campaign for Human Development, âoePoverty Pulse, Wave IV,â January 2004, at http://old.usccb.org/cchd/PP4FINAL.PDF (September 7, 2011). Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level.
[3]These surveys include the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, What We Eat in America, Food Security, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the American Housing Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. See U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/ (June 22, 2011); U.S. Department of Agriculture, What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007â"2008, Table 4, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/0708/Table_4_NIN_POV_07.pdf (June 22, 2011); Mark Nord, âoeFood Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Household Characteristics,â U.S. Department of Agriculture, September 2009, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB56/EIB56.pdf (September 7, 2011); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, âoeAbout the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,â at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm (September 7, 2011); U.S. Census Bureau, âoeAmerican Housing Survey (AHS),â at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs.html (June 27, 2011); and U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2001 Panel, Wave 8 Topical Module, 2003, at http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html#sipp01 (June 27, 2011).
[4]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2009, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/h150-09.pdf (September 8, 2011).
[5] U.S Department of Energy, Residential Energy Consumption Survey.
[6]Derek Thompson, âoe30 Million in Poverty Arenâ(TM)t as Poor as You Think, Says Heritage Foundation,â The Atlantic Monthly, July 19, 2011, at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/30-million-in-poverty-arnt-as-poor-as-you-think-says-heritage-foundation/242191/ (September 7, 2011).
[7] C. T. Windham, B. W. Wyse, and R. G. Hansen, âoeNutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977â"1978: I. Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density,â Journal of