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"Seems like bullshit to me."

No doubt most people would agree with you. :-) That is part of the reason the US economy is in such a mess. :-(

But hey, if people won't listen to a Nobel Prize-winning economist like Paul Krugman for ideological reasons, why should they listen to me? His book on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_This_Depression_Now!
"But the essential point is that what we really need to get out of this current depression is another burst of government spending. Is it really that simple? Would it really be that easy? Basically, yes."

But before I reply to your points, agreeing with some and elaborating on other, let me make one point clear. I feel a healthy society balanced four different types of economic transactions -- subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange, while minimizing theft. I write about that on my site.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf

The rest of this is my musings about getting the exchange economy moving again (short of a basic income which would be better) and is certainly arguable. But what I feel is unquestionable is that ultimately we need all four types of those economic transactions for a healthy society. The USA has been suffering a huge loss in those other three areas of subsistence, gift giving, and planning, meaning those areas were not as available recently as they could have been to pick up the slack when the exchange economy started failing a big percent of the US population.

In many ways, getting those other types of economies to function well is a more important issue than tinkering with the money supply. As Zimbabwe shows, one can always make mistakes with regulating a money supply. We can't count only on fiat dollars to sustain a healthy society, even though they are by themselves easy to count and so mainstream numerically-oriented economists tend to focus on exchanges of them while ignoring non-monetary gifts like posts on slashdot, or subsistence efforts like people being able to print their own toys at home or generate their own solar power on their roof.

Those areas are actually in resurgence these days and will interact or substitute for the exchange economy more and more in years to come. Which actually might argue for a decrease in the need for as much money supply. :-)

Now on to your points.

"If there really is inadequate money supply there wouldn't be inflation, you'd get deflation."

True in general as the economy freezes up. I don't think I said we face much inflation overall right now? My point is the economy has stopped functioning for many people in the USA and also China (leading to few jobs for the college educated in China due to having an product-export-oriented economy needing factory workers until they can be automated away).
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57549450-92/foxconn-reportedly-installing-robots-to-replace-workers/

"The last I checked that was not happening at least with the US dollar."

Well, over the last few years, US household have lost on the order of US$8 trillion in wealth; seems like something must have deflated in value to me (mainly real estate, but some other things too like some stocks etc.):
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/09/news/economy/household_wealth/index.htm
"U.S. household wealth fell by about $16.4 trillion of net worth from its peak in spring 2007, about six months before the start of the recession, to when things hit bottom in the first quarter of 2009, according to figures from the Federal Reserve. While a rebound in the stock market, an improved savings rate and consumer steps to reduce debt resulted in net worth g

Then Jobs died.
Then ios5 wiped out the maps application off your phone.
Then the iphone5 came out which didn't work with any of your existing power cables and docks.
The high end market where you'd get an iphone as it just worked well now had stumbling blocks. It wasn't an obvious choice any more.
Then apple's share price fell.

Microsoft should have been there to take the lead. The android ecosystem just doesn't work well -- too many disparate devices, too much choice. People like uniformity and simplicity. They weren't.

The market, honestly, doesn't seem to care. iPhone 5 sales are at an all time high, and iOS is ahead of Android again inside the US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/att-iphone-sales-2013-1
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/24/technology/att-iphone-sales/index.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-iphone-sales-for-q4-2012-2013-1
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/apples-hardware-q4-2012-26-9m-iphones-14m-ipads-4-9m-macs-and-5-3m-ipods/

I mean, I know it hasn't been smooth sailing for iOS recently, but let's have some perspective here. In the US, Apple is kicking ass.

And when the government standards, like export restrictions, fall far enough behind the state of the art, hilarity can ensue.

Apple tries to get G4 export ban lifted
Apple PowerMac G4 Commercial - Super Computer
Sci/Tech - Apple launches 'desktop supercomputer'

How does that factor in the tax breaks (income tax and mortgage deductions) that California takes advantage of? A CNN bit about it: http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/06/news/economy/state-local-tax-deductions/index.html

According to statements made to CNN by an AT&T spokesperson, the outage was caused by "a software upgrade".
She went on to say the outage "only hit a limited number of customers". Well DUH! If 1 customer is still online and 99.99% of your customers have an outage, thats still a limited number of customers. I love how corporations have these spindoctors who make vague, noncomittal statements that really provide no information.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/24/tech/web/uverse-outage-att/

What legal issues have you encountered? If your authorities are anything like they are in the more "progressive" states of the USA, they consider anything that looks like a firearm or throws any solid object (or not so solid), via any means of propulsion, a dangerous weapon.

regularly using robots to kill random strangers in distant countries

factually incorrect troll statement. they are neither random, nor strangers. if you ever had any real exposure tot he intel world or the drone ops, you would never spout such BS. also, most people are of that mind that if you can get a bad guy without risking a good guy, it's a good thing; basic us vs them evaluation.

Bare refutation without reason or evidence, appeal to authority, ad hominem, appeal to fear, and a ridiculous level of simplification. Yes, it would be nice if we had a magic button that just blew up "bad guys" without any bad effect, ever. Unfortunately...
Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/index.html
From the article, "TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were civilians, including 176 children."

spending hundreds of billions prosecuting minor, victimless crimes

too vague to be worth debating. could be any of a hundred little pet topics people have around here. specifics needed

You're not debating, you're just engaging in fallacious naysaying. When you actually make a point, I may deign to respond in detail. XD

while consistently ignoring massive and wide-spread criminal wrongdoing by giant corporations because, "hey, they're big!"

again too vague. some people, especilly around here, simply consider CEO's being paid according to their contracts, or the idea that companies are oriented around making money and not morals, a crime.

Straw man. Try billions in money laundering, or causing deaths by deliberately avoiding FDA testing, or rampant mortgage fraud, just to get started.

handing control of their currency to a clique of unelected bankers who then hand out said money by the (virtual) truckload to the aforementioned giant corporations

something tells me you're one of those anti-federal reserve guys who sees it as a vast conspiracy...

Ignored my point, attempted ridicule and ad hominem. You're probably attempting to poison the well, too. Going for a new record on different fallacious attacks in a single post? XD

cutting sweetheart deals with industry on everything from medical care to oil spill cleanup, at the expense of said majority

and now im convinced of it. and again, its a simple us vs them evaluation. ask someone if they want jobs and money to flow to their community, see what they say. go ahead.

Wow. Red herring and False dilemma, without even bothering to present an implausibly bad alternative. Good job!

How about if Holder gave thousands of guns to drug cartels, was then found Contempt of Congress for the coverup of the program. A program that caused the death of hundreds of Mexicans and a US border patrol agent. Of course he would face consequences then.

Unless the prosecutor works for Holder and was told not to prosecute him.

I think the point is painfully clear that if Holder will not be held accountable for deaths of Mexicans and US Border patrol agents that he will not be prosecuted for ANYTHING. It is not FUD, it is fact.

I can easily see this sort of thing happening in the US. Imagine a group of olive-skinned young men sitting in a cafeteria

Given things like two imams pulled from plane bound for North Carolina I doubt your hypothetical group wouldn't have to do much more than just sitting around before someone called the cops on them ".. because"

of emulating the sony design process or German designers from the 50s

Don't you think it would be easier to get it in your backyard, considering that the US has tons of it?

Tons of what? Petroleum? The US does not have that much proven reserves of petroleum. Supposedly what the US does have a lot of is Natural Gas. There are other sources that can come from our own backyard. What the US has much more of is sunlight and wind. According to the study by Southern Methodist University SMU Geothermal Lab project: Vast clean energy source confirmed by Google.org-funded geothermal mapping geothermal sources are capable of producing "more than three million megawatts of green power – 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants today." Relatively clean energy sources, as there are none that are compleatly clean and non-polluting, can prove all of the US's energy needs. The biggest problem, well one of them, is with the infrastructure. U.S. solar power potential untapped as infrastructure is lacking. Yearly cost of U.S. outages: At least $119 billion. If the US is losing this much a year then it would pay to build a new smart grid. Then alternative sources would be able to contribute easier.

Falcon

It's possible for a politician to have a change of heart in the six months from May 3, 2012, the date of the story you linked, to December 14, 2012, the date of the announcement of deprioritization.

According to this site total global food production is 4.4 billion tonnes per year, so in a world of 7 billion people that's 629 kg per person per year, or 1.7 kg per day. The average (median) American eats 1.03 kg per day, and the 90th percentile eats 1.73 kg per day, according to the EPA.

About 2.4 billion tonnes is cereals (e.g. corn, rice, wheat).

So yeah, if we're producing enough to feed 7 billion 90th percentile Americans, I think it's safe to say it's a distribution problem not a supply problem.

You will very soon find that I speak for the majority of Americans when I say "enough is enough".

Bull. Shit.

Oh look, how timely: a poll showing that a majority of Americans want stricter gun controls:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/16/cnn-poll-majority-approve-of-obama-biden-in-advance-of-gun-control-announcement/?hpt=hp_t1

Me and the mouse in my pocket will be over here, with the rest of the adults.

Poll title:

CNN Poll: Majority approve of Obama and Biden in advance of gun control announcement

Let me guess, you went to Google, punched in something like "Majority approve gun control poll," and C&P'd the first legitimate looking link you saw, without even taking 2 seconds to read the damn page title.

Brilliant work there, Hoss. Tell ya what, you keep living a fantasy, reveling in your narcissistic, falsely inflated sense of mental superiority, and I'll keep laughing my ass off at your pathetic attempts to denigrate me.

You will very soon find that I speak for the majority of Americans when I say "enough is enough".

Bull. Shit.

Oh look, how timely: a poll showing that a majority of Americans want stricter gun controls:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/16/cnn-poll-majority-approve-of-obama-biden-in-advance-of-gun-control-announcement/?hpt=hp_t1

Me and the mouse in my pocket will be over here, with the rest of the adults.

April 17, 2012
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/17/markets/obama-oil-speculators/index.htm

The new proposals require oil traders to put up more of their own money for transactions, ask for more money for market enforcement and monitoring activities, and call for higher penalties for market manipulation.

"None of these will bring gas prices down overnight," Obama said at a White House press. "But they will prevent market manipulation, and help protect consumers."

I think we should just kick speculators out completely, but then again,
I also think that fair, competitive, and transparent markets are better than "free" markets.

The numbers I've seen quoted are that the oil market is 70% speculators and 30% producers/users.
Historically, that number has been the opposite, with producers/users makeing up 70% of the market.

Or a tax on profits based on time. If you make a profit from buying-and-selling a commodity, and you kept it for less than (say) 24 hours, there's a 90% tax rate. If the you kept it for (say) 4 days, a 80% tax rage; a profit after 10 day period between buying and selling, 70% rage; 20 days, 60%; 40 days, 50%; 100 days, 40%; etc.

This way long(er) term investors are hopefully rewarded for prudent research and (actual) investment (in the Warren Buffett sense of the word). (short and medium) speculators may make a profit, but society gets a benefit from any turmoil that is caused.

Here is essay I wrote four years ago about helping Princeton trancend to post-scarcity values: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html

From two of the beginning sections on it that relate to this issue:

One motivation for writing (or reading) this essay

I have written on these post-scarcity topics before. The biggest single motivation for the organization of this specific essay is the PAW article on "Jumping From the Ivory Tower".
http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW07-08/13-0514/features_phd.html

Is that title going to bring up echoes of this controversy?
"Automaker agrees to changes after meeting with suicide prevention group that objected to spot showing fired robot jumping off bridge."
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/09/news/companies/gm_robotad/

The robot is shown forced to take a number of menial jobs, including holding a speaker at a fast-food drive through and becoming upset enough [by repeated failure at them] to throw itself off a bridge.

(I won't link to the video, which contains a graphic image of leaping from a bridge.)

That PAW article title was selected only a little over a year after this statement by a recent Princeton University alumna on behalf of her family:
"Cho family statement"
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/20/shooting.family.statement/index.html

On behalf of our family, we are so deeply sorry for the devastation my brother has caused. No words can express our sadness that 32 innocent people lost their lives this week in such a terrible, senseless tragedy. We are heartbroken. We grieve alongside the families, the Virginia Tech community, our State of Virginia, and the rest of the nation. And, the world. ... We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person. ... There is much justified anger and disbelief at what my brother did, and a lot of questions are left unanswered. Our family will continue to cooperate fully and do whatever we can to help authorities understand why these senseless acts happened. We have many unanswered questions as well.

With Princeton-praising articles titled "Jumping From the Ivory Tower", it seems like PAW is not helping answer these deep questions. If anything, PAW is helping bury them under inappropriate humor. This essay is not intended in any way to condone violence or the abdication of personal responsibility. But it is intended to help understand some of these issues of suicide and alienation in a university context, and to make suggestions for improvements to the social part of these issues. It even tries to use humor in relation to suicide and morbid themes a bit more appropriately (satirically about PU in this case, discussing options like its voluntary peaceful self-dissolution to help a billion poor children get an education, or its metaphorical death and rebirth as an agent of global economic transcendence to a post-scarcity society of abundance for all). It is always easier to destroy than to create, so this essay includes some specific suggestions for improving the situation at Princeton University, which is a mythologically troubled institution (even as it is filled with many wonderful and caring people).

Like how the Cho family describes Virginia Tech, PU also is filled with people with "so much love, talent and gifts to offer". Even the brother of Sun-Kyung Cho '04, Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech,

Here is essay I wrote four years ago about helping Princeton trancend to post-scarcity values: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html

From two of the beginning sections on it that relate to this issue:

One motivation for writing (or reading) this essay

I have written on these post-scarcity topics before. The biggest single motivation for the organization of this specific essay is the PAW article on "Jumping From the Ivory Tower".
http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW07-08/13-0514/features_phd.html

Is that title going to bring up echoes of this controversy?
"Automaker agrees to changes after meeting with suicide prevention group that objected to spot showing fired robot jumping off bridge."
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/09/news/companies/gm_robotad/

The robot is shown forced to take a number of menial jobs, including holding a speaker at a fast-food drive through and becoming upset enough [by repeated failure at them] to throw itself off a bridge.

(I won't link to the video, which contains a graphic image of leaping from a bridge.)

That PAW article title was selected only a little over a year after this statement by a recent Princeton University alumna on behalf of her family:
"Cho family statement"
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/20/shooting.family.statement/index.html

On behalf of our family, we are so deeply sorry for the devastation my brother has caused. No words can express our sadness that 32 innocent people lost their lives this week in such a terrible, senseless tragedy. We are heartbroken. We grieve alongside the families, the Virginia Tech community, our State of Virginia, and the rest of the nation. And, the world. ... We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person. ... There is much justified anger and disbelief at what my brother did, and a lot of questions are left unanswered. Our family will continue to cooperate fully and do whatever we can to help authorities understand why these senseless acts happened. We have many unanswered questions as well.

With Princeton-praising articles titled "Jumping From the Ivory Tower", it seems like PAW is not helping answer these deep questions. If anything, PAW is helping bury them under inappropriate humor. This essay is not intended in any way to condone violence or the abdication of personal responsibility. But it is intended to help understand some of these issues of suicide and alienation in a university context, and to make suggestions for improvements to the social part of these issues. It even tries to use humor in relation to suicide and morbid themes a bit more appropriately (satirically about PU in this case, discussing options like its voluntary peaceful self-dissolution to help a billion poor children get an education, or its metaphorical death and rebirth as an agent of global economic transcendence to a post-scarcity society of abundance for all). It is always easier to destroy than to create, so this essay includes some specific suggestions for improving the situation at Princeton University, which is a mythologically troubled institution (even as it is filled with many wonderful and caring people).

Like how the Cho family describes Virginia Tech, PU also is filled with people with "so much love, talent and gifts to offer". Even the brother of Sun-Kyung Cho '04, Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech,

April 17, 2012
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/17/markets/obama-oil-speculators/index.htm

The new proposals require oil traders to put up more of their own money for transactions, ask for more money for market enforcement and monitoring activities, and call for higher penalties for market manipulation.

"None of these will bring gas prices down overnight," Obama said at a White House press. "But they will prevent market manipulation, and help protect consumers."

I think we should just kick speculators out completely, but then again,
I also think that fair, competitive, and transparent markets are better than "free" markets.

The numbers I've seen quoted are that the oil market is 70% speculators and 30% producers/users.
Historically, that number has been the opposite, with producers/users makeing up 70% of the market.

I'm not disputing that refinery problems are responsible for localized price spikes, but overall prices have gone up because speculators are moving the market towards higher prices.

Once a brand name passes into such common usage that no one regards it as a proper noun anymore, its trademark can be ruled invalid, and anyone can capitalize on all the marketing you've put into it. (That's what happened to "Escalator": The company that owned the name let it become synonymous with moving staircases, and lost the trademark.)

Study: Alcohol 'most harmful drug,' followed by crack and heroin By the CNN Wire Staff November 1, 2010 1:14 p.m. EDTLondon, England (CNN) -- "Alcohol ranks "most harmful" among a list of 20 drugs, beating out crack and heroin when assessed for its potential harm to the individual imbibing and harm to others, according to study results released by a British medical journal. A panel of experts from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs weighed the physical, psychological, and social problems caused by the drugs and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall, according to an article on the study released by The Lancet on Sunday." http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/01/alcohol.harm/index.html

Funny.

Too bad the story is that all this happened two years ago... I guess that's what passes for news around here. He's been swear-free for a long time...

>That said, it's probably a Wal-Mart.

That's easy to check. Is it near a national monument?

Wal-Mart knew about Mexico bribery

How do you know? Do you have a parallel universe machine that lets you see what would have happened in all the cases in which someone did use a gun in self defense if they had not done so?

Ten seconds of looking gives me:
http://www.ktvn.com/Global/story.asp?S=8378732&nav=menu549_2
        - man starts shooting in a bar containing 300 people. 2 people die before he is shot by a civilian. Somehow you know that even though he was reloading when he was shot he wasn't going kill enough more people for you to call it a massacre?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/10/colorado.shootings/index.html
      - man has already killed 4 and is shot by a a lady who was volunteering as security at her church (so not quite a random bystander, but still a civilian carrying their private weapon). You know he wasn't going to kill anyone else, he brought 1000 rounds of ammunition for no reason at all.

First they caught one with drill bits, a cell phone and saw blades sneaking into a prison.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/06/world/americas/brazil-jailbreak-cat/index.html

now this?

never liked cats.. now I know why.

Are unemployment payouts really 4 times higher now than in 2001? Whats going on?

It's $520 billion for the last 5 years, making the average per year cost $104 billion.
And the numbers are shrinking.

In December of 2011 accumulated costs were $434 billion. Making 2012 $18 billion below average.

Are unemployment payouts really 4 times higher now than in 2001? Whats going on?

It's $520 billion for the last 5 years, making the average per year cost $104 billion.
And the numbers are shrinking.

In December of 2011 accumulated costs were $434 billion. Making 2012 $18 billion below average.

Wether they can automate the whole thing or not, does not make an iota of difference to me. Heck I would actually prefer if they automate it because it means less human error. What matters to me is the value that this service has. What matters to me is that this service is worth much more to me than the $99/year + 30%. What matters to me is that the alternative: doing it myself, would cost me much more, and it would have much worse sales.

If they could automate all of this and do it at a cost of a couple cents, then I congratulate them, it would be an amazing feat, and they deserve all that profit.

But as someone else pointed out, it does cost quite a bit of money for apple to do this, http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/23/app-store-1-of-apples-gross-profit/ And they are not even factoring in the labor involved (they manually review apps).

Apple doesn't make a significant amount of money off the app store. Having lots of software and games available sells hardware.

As a more libertarian society (yes, we are, like it or not)...

I have some news for you:

"libertarian" does not mean the having the right to be put in jail, and being notable for being known as the country that sets a world record for jailing its own citizens (ref: U.S. Jails More People Than Any Other Country: Chart of the Day)

"libertarian" does not mean fighting a fanatical War on Drugs.

"libertarian" does not mean having the right to randomly search its citizens without a warrant ref: TSA 'Secured' Metrodome During Recent Football Game.

"libertarian" does not mean that the government gets to know what type of books its citizens like to read ...

  "libertarian" does not mean that people get to buy guns so that they can kill people in self defense (ref. http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/28/us/florida-music-shooting/index.html)

  "libertarian" does not mean that you get to put people in jail for making pornography (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hardcore)

  "libertarian" does not mean that banks can break the law but people who oppose banks breaking the law get to go to jail and be deliberately run over and beaten up by police officers (ref: occupy wall street)

etc and so on...

Yeah. America is Libertarian for politicians, police officers and corporations. For everybody else it is a penal colony unless you are willing to suck your local priest/politicians cock.

It'd also prevent it from going the way of that Mars orbiter back in '99...

Your assumption is wrong: CBS' Lara Logan describes being sexually assaulted in Egypt's Tahrir Square

We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God. I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life.

Osama Bin Laden. 2002.

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/01/31/gen.binladen.interview/index.html

Newsflash: Millions of people are going to starve to death with or without GMO crops. It's not like Monsanto or ADM is just going to magnanimously ship all this extra food to Africa out of the goodness of their hearts. Producing more food does absolutely nothing to ensure that the surplus actually gets to the people who need it. One study claims that 40% of food in the US goes to waste (Link). A good chunk of this hypothetical extra GM food will probably just add to that.

Billions of dollars to shutdown airports for no reason. They were thrown off the tracks by Amtrak Chief of Police for trying to encroach on American's 4th amendment rights outside of their "jurisdiction". http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/06/opinion/don-phillips-tsa-vipr-teams/

I wrote to my representatives about how I feel about the TSA. You can too: https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/tsa/

The question is perfectly reasonable for anyone on earth to ask. This idea that you can't ask rocket scientists to justify anything is pretty elitist if you ask me.

How precisely can the place it in orbit. You've got something on the order of 417 metric tons of material (if measured on earth) assuming its a loosely packed ball of rock, which many asteroids of that size are. That could do a lot of damage if it became uncontrolled.

Can you bag that without it changing shape?
Can the bag and tethers withstand the amount of strain necessary to decelerate it from its current orbit to earth orbit, then to the moon's orbit?
Can the engine last that long?
What happens when (not if) the engine fails?
Would it burn up on entry into earth's atmosphere if the engine failed, or a tether broke?
If you lose control of the package for any reason, where does it end up? In 5 years, in 25 years?

If you, and they are so certain of their calculations and abilities, why not put it in earth orbit as others have suggested?

Could boys perhaps be more susceptible to vitamin D deficiency and mitochondrial dysfunction? http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions/autism/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html

One of the reasons we homeschool/unschool is that school especially these days push intense academics on all kids way too early, and boys especially suffer for that. Echoing your point, at least one study I've heard of shows that the focus on early academics is depriving children of the early experiences they need in nature and with water and sandboxes that kids need to later have an intuition about scientific and engineering things (so that they know what the symbols for mass, force, volume, rates of change, and so on actually physically represent).
http://www.ci.pleasanton.ca.us/services/recreation/gb/gb-playessentials.html
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm
http://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/
http://susanlemons.wordpress.com/category/early-academics/

And then the schools push parents to drug the non-compliant children...
http://www.thewaronkids.com/

Almost any school is filled with large numbers of well-meaning good-hearted hard-working adults who really care about children. The problem is they and the children are trapped in "an abstraction that has escaped its handlers":
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html

Here is a psychologist saying the only reason affluent kids do better on math is that their parents teach it to them since most schools are terrible at teaching it:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-schools

The iPad has a lot of math-learning games for it that your son might like. We just got several for our kid. Here is one:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/motion-math-wings/id508228412?mt=8

See also:
http://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-apps
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/14/tech/gaming-gadgets/ipad-autism/index.html
http://www.squidoo.com/ipad-for-autism

The directness of the interface is probably a big win for that situation.

There are lots of interactive online resources for learning math of course, and PC simulation environments like "Scratch", and lots of other such tools you can use together with your kid (like geometry related ones).

Just watch out from becoming even more vitamin D deficient by being even more inside using fascinating computing gadgets. A focus on early academics instead of outdoor play also harms kids in that sense. My speculation about that:
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005083.html

See also the writings of John Holt and Seymour Papert on math education, including Papert's idea that to learn any foreign language, whether French or Math, it is best to be im

Two years was a typo, actually. I had intended to write ten.

In any event, Alaska has so much oil and so little population that they'll be just fine without money from the Feds. And I measure secessionist political clout by how many politicians at mid to high levels have secessionist views or sympathies. For instance, in Texas: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/16/texas-governor-says-secession-possible/

In Alaska, former governor Palin and her family have been involved with the secessionist movement and there are quite a few in the state legislature who are also involved in that.

Maybe the schools in your state need to be improved. I basically didnt need to study in Bio 101 a few years ago because I remembered a lot of the info from 9th grade biology. The math class I was required to take for my degree was several notches below the Calculus, trig, and even algebra 2 classes I took in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. The civics class I took in 10th grade is responsible for a great deal of my working knowledge of how our government works.

Honestly, if more people had paid attention in Civics, we might be in a much better situation politically than we are across the board. Maybe YOU should have paid more attention in highschool.

in order to hopefully get to college, where one can then be saddled with explosive nondischargable deb

Sounds like you could have also learned about fiscal responsibility and cost-benefit in highschool too-- though I will agree most places dont warn you about the dangers of $30k+ tuition, one would think a rudimentary math education could serve as a warning. Most in-state tuition runs less than $6k, which is earnable (after taxes) by waiting tables-- I know because I did it, and ended with 0 college debt. One could attend UVa ($12k / year), Va Tech (~$7k / year), William & Mary (~$6800 /year), or GMU (~$6500 / year) without breaking the bank, and I believe theyre all considered "top universities".

The trick is to go to in-school colleges that you can afford; and if you consider it a "big deal" to go to a certain university that you cannot afford to pay out-of-state for, you could always establish residency there. The trick is also to make your decision with a mind to reality and your ability to pay for tuition; but it seems from the entitlement mentality on slashdot at least that that is a lesson still not learned.

Now we need a published map detailing the locations of all the blacksmiths.

in China

You mean the unarmed security guard hiding in the office?

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/columbine.cd/Pages/NARRATIVE.Time.Line.htm

Posts like yours prove over and over again how much damage propagandists like Micheal Moore can do the uninformed.

You say that but what did Android offer over iOS? It's confusing because it looks different and can behave differently depending on who you get it from. It was incredibly buggy for the longest time, getting updates isn't consistent and it does have more malware.

Of course openness only appeals to a small number of people but these are the people that will talk about it the most and create hype and if Ubuntu create something that provides openness while making it a more consistent and better experience than Android then they'll do well.

Also if they improve security over android that will help. Android does get a lot of people buying their phones but it also has a higher level of customer dissatisfaction. in fact in some results, Windows phone ranks higher than Android.

http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-keeps-smartphone-satisfaction-crown-builds-lead-over-android-06246257/
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/wp7-ahead-of-android-and-right-behind-ios-in-customer-satisfaction-survey/13728

Another poll says that 1/3 of android owners would prefer to have an iphone. So is adroid only as big as it is because it's financially people's only choice? http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/11/14/poll-suggests-third-of-android-owners-really-want-an-iphone/

77% of iphone users say they'd buy another iphone. 20% of Android users say they'd buy another Android phone. http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/23/technology/iphone_4_att/index.htm

So basically all around it looks like there is a lot of dissatifaction amongst Android users and they're not overly keen on having an android phone. Maybe that's why they don't really buy apps or surf the net unlike iphone users.

So let's not pretend Google has perfected the mobile phone and no one should else should try. Again openness does mattter to get in the people who will get all fanboyish about it and promote it and if they can make something that also a superior user experience then they'll do well.

What are you talking about? They already had a hardware version of the Google Maps fiasco - it cost them money to bail out Sharp.

This is a second time of doing the same - which makes things even more idiotic. Apple is determined to cut off their nose to spite their face, apparently.

These constructs in games are very similar to financial products, which are also logical constructs and virtual products:

1) "A financial product is about as conceptual as you can get,” says Wilson Ervin, a senior adviser at Credit Suisse. “You just need paper and ink.”-- The Economist magazine

2) "In an even more blunt description, Tourre calls the CDOs he produced "intellectual masturbation" and likens himself to Dr. Frankenstein.

"When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'well, what if we created a 'thing', which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?")" -- CNN / Money

Be wary of those who tout the financialization of society, as it results in a "house" which generates these logical constructs, which it then sells to people. They have value because people value them, like Petville pets or Farmville tractors. All of these things are neither goods, nor services, but logical constructs. They're inherently volatile. The financial world is built on logical constructs - currency is a logical construct, as are stocks and bonds. Currency is durable construct because it makes life easier for people versus barter. Stocks are volatile - "Shares of ownership in a company." Bonds are volatile - "Promises to pay."

Anyway, just wanted to point out the similarities.

You think Linux is like a Lamborghini? Ahahahahahahahaha! Oh, that's a good knee slapper right there. You kind of missed the part that a Lamborghini also costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, allowing it to make up for quantity with a whole heaping helping of quality.

Sorry, Linux only rates a Jeep Wrangler with better fuel efficiency.

http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric_1_mars-orbiter-climate-orbiter-spacecraft-team?_s=PM:TECH

Oh, I'm sure no problems are caused by this at all.

People like to make a big deal of of Soklyndra but the failure rate of these government supported green companies is actually quite small: http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/22/news/economy/obama-energy-bankruptcies/index.html

Also, the reason Solyndra went belly-up is because China started their own initiative and dumped $4 billion into solar panel development, which they then dumped on the market for dirt cheap. And by dirt cheap, they went from $400/kg to $40/kg in three years time.

In short, we're not just competing with companies in other countries; we're competing with the countries themselves. How many markets are you will to surrender to China?

Idiocratic journalists don't even ask the first order correcting question let alone the second. The first is, how much is their spending per capita compared to ours (duh, about a factor of 4 or 5 there), and second, how much is their spending per engineer/scientist (or whatever subgroup that actually needs that spending). Again, duh, about a factor of 3.5-4? Of course, we ARE producing the worlds most educated baristas, busquers and bloggers.

Oh, but wait. She did it from her iPad. Nice endorsement.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/20/tech/social-media/oprah-surface-tweet/index.html