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This is not a minor philosophical point.

Agreed, it's a trivial semantic one. The only right you naturally have is to starve, freeze, or be eaten by a bear. Nasty, brutish & short aren't a firm of attorneys.

I'd say that you're wrong. If you're interested in a discussion of its credentials and why it gets a "non-scientific" reputation, I'd advise you to take a look at Peter Denning's article, "Is Computer Science Science?" .

A slightly more expensive but somehow even more random method is to seed the generator against the words and phrases that come out of the mouth of South Carolina's Miss Teen USA.

But in all seriousness, I wonder how this compares to the Mersenne Twister (Java implementation & PDF)that I use at home? I am almost sure this new proposed method is more efficient and faster, when will there be (I know, I'm lazy) a universal implementation of it? :)

Also, this may be a stupid question, but I wonder how one measures the 'randomness' of a generator? Is there a unit that represents randomness? I mean, it would be seemingly impossible to do it using observation of the output so I guess all you can do is discuss how dependent it is on particular prior events and what they are, theoretically. Can you really say that this is 'more random' than another one because you have to know so much more before hand about the particular machine & its fingerprint in order to predict its generated number?

The N800 has an 800x480 screen: the "Touch" has less precisely one third that: 400x320. The N800 has bluetooth. The N800 has two SD card slots. (which, combined, have less than the total space on the IPod, but hey, they're removable). The N800 is, of course, hackable. The N800 supports flash. The N800 is typically cheaper. But I predict the iPod Touch will blow the N800 into little pieces. The N800's interface is primitive and backwards, the product of lazy engineering and inept design. The iPod works with iTunes, an excellent piece of engineering. The N800 is compatible with no external software in particular. The N800 can't do H.264, can't retain sound sync in movie playback of the few formats it does support, and has awful use of its own hardware features (it has a video camera but can do nothing with it except video chat with *other* N800's). And of course, Nokia is completely incompetent in this arena compared to Apple. They're going to get their clocks cleaned.

I know I would have invested in a non-DRM'd version of BioShock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contracts
http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/PrivateProvision.pd f
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevoluti on/2005/05/assurance_contr.html

Many public goods and club goods exhibit increasing returns. A lighthouse, for example, is useless unless complete. It's difficult to get voluntary contributions to these types of good not only because of the free rider problem but also because contributors fear that their contribution will be wasted if others do not also contribute. An assurance contract makes contributions contingent on some level of total contribution being reached.

Assurance contracts can help to solve coordination problems. I agree to contribute to build the lighthouse if and only if enough others also agree so that production is guaranteed.

Fundable.org is making assurance contracts easier to implement. If you want to raise money for a cause you can set up a Fundable group. Contributions to the group goal are held by Fundable in escrow. All money is returned unless the group goal is met. If the group goal is met the funds are paid to the group leader.

(summary) "There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes Kb>then Windows own WMV codec."

I normally let these slide, but the than/then confusion gets to me more than the their/there/they're mix ups. Mabye it is the fact that I pronounce their/there/they're the same, but than/then differently? I hit the word when reading and my brain pukes and I have to re-read the sentence to see what I may have missed. Why is this so confusing and hard to get right?

Maybe I'll have to get all my stories read to me so I can just chalk it up to accent/pronunciation. Offtopic, but some of the samples on that site are hillarious...

From an American legal perspective, the the person presenting money to the seller is making an offer, subject to acceptance by the seller. Any advertisement would constitute an invitation to make an offer. Relating this to the case of an ebay auction, a bid might constitute an offer, subject to the seller's acceptance. It gets muddied when the auction ended and the bidder gets a "congratulations" from ebay stating he's the winner. That, in and of itself, might constitute an acceptance by the seller (via proxy).

I have not read any caselaw regarding auctions, online or otherwise. I expect the caselaw surrounding live auctions to be controlling though.

This rationale, while the norm in the United States, does not necessarily follow in other nations - there are clearly two perspective that have a certain amount of validity to them.

http://law.gmu.edu/academics/syllabus/Fall00/LRWA_ Blanton_Fall2000.pdf is the case all the 1st year law students get to read here in the states.

What the short review seem to be saying is that the author recognizes its not just math.

How in depth the book goes I do not know, but I do know I've been on about the abstraction perspective for near two decades and communicating it to everyone I can including to those in positions at universities.

I have noticed these last few years there are others beginning to grasp the bigger picture, such as J. Wing of CMU and her "Computational Thinking" perspective http://www.cs.cmu.edu/computational_thinking.html perspective and another P. Denning of GMU and his "Great Principles of Computing" http://cs.gmu.edu/cne/pjd/GP/GP-site/welcome.html and I'm sure there are others.

Now I see this short book review "Computer Science Reconsidered: The Invocation Model of Process Expression"...yet I have not seen from any of them software or even an outline of such, that anyone can use to explore and apply the presented perspective. And we all know that to really understand something as it applies to computers requires that actual use of a computer in the learning process for verification of understanding.

So, here is mine http://threeseas.net/vicprint/Virtual_Interaction_ Configuration.html which the link I gave in the parent post points to.

Its all about Abstraction Physics no matter how you present it or what you call it. The evidence is in the inability to avoid using the mentioned action constants set, with or without computers. Know what you do, in everything you do!

I'd argue that that using prediction markets like the ill-fated Policy Analysis Market work much better for predicting future events. It's really too bad that there was an kneejerk media firestorm in response to the Policy Analysis Market, which killed it off before it could even get started.

Ask and ye shall receive: ;)

http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndmea.html

http://yarchive.net/gun/politics/regulate.html

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/12/19/greensla de.htm

http://mason.gmu.edu/~nlund/Pubs/WklyStd2dAmd.pdf

http://www.virginiainstitute.org/publications/prim er_on_const.php#c4

sad but pragmatic

some people think they have to mandate compulsory contribution to society, simply because they are so arrogant as to imagine that they know best how to society should be... at the very same time the the actions they take denigrate society, ways in which they are completely blind to in the formation of their opinions about how society does work

arrogance

Some reading material to think about.

Yes. You've come a long way.

The racist comments have been debunked. Most were written by a staffer that was later fired; other quotes were taken out of context. You can get more info here: http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=41 822

Besides, if he was a racist why would Ron Paul have suggested a black man as a possible running mate in this interview? The racist remarks expose is simply a smear tactic.

If you really want to know his thoughts on racism, read them in his column.
Excerpt: "Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.

The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. "

Some of the closing comments from various neuroscientists, roboticists, cognitive scientists, and AI researchers from the very recent "Decade of the Mind" symposium at George Mason University indicated that academic research funding in those areas is flat or in decline. My advisor lays the blame at the feet of the ongoing Iraq debacle, which is vacuuming huge amounts of monies away from all other aspects of government-based research funding.

According to the Great Filter theory, our chances of colonising other worlds before we go extinct would be diminished with every world we discover that contains life forms; and the higher evolved those life forms, the worse for us.

The theory in a nutshell: There are a handful of steps life must go through, to the best of our knowledge, before a rotating disk of star dust can bear intelligent life that colonizes space and thus ensures its survival. The reason why we don't see life everywhere around us is that one of these steps is so improbable or difficult that only very few, if any, aspiring colonizers of space make it past that crucial step and go extinct. The question is, are we, homo sapiens, already beyond this step? If we never find alien life, chances are we have passed this point. For every life form we do discover, the probability that we yet have to reach this point increases.

And here is the data for 2004.

Speaking of the N800 and the Newton...

Uh, we *do* have room for LPFM. Look up "spectrum efficiency", or better yet, Read this article (PDF!)

The idea of a crowded dial is an artificial and archaic one. There's no reason we can't have thousands more low-power FM stations than we currently do. And NPR did work hard to kill this. My university's radio station lost a chance at an LPFM license due to this, so yes, I am going to hold it against them.

On the other hand, CRB is a fucking joke and I hope every member on the panel gets herpes.

Chuckle, chuckle chuckle.

If any of you care to do any of the most basic research on the history of climate studies, you will find some very strong "opinions" with regards to human induced climate change.

I do not think, or at least I haven't found one scientist yet that doesn't think the climate is changing.

Everyone agrees on that.

The human part is the sticky issue. I don't believe for example burning fossil fuels is making the sort of climate changes I have witnessed.

I DO know that when you follow THE MONEY on the issue here is what I come up with:

1) Hollywood has made millions off the idea.
2) Al Gore, has made a VERY comfortable living proclaiming it to be so, with a carbon "footprint" even George Bush would be impressed with, even though he has absolutely no expertise scientifically as a proponent of the idea.
3) Every major university institution is giving position and power to those who "TOW THE LINE" about human induced climate change based on Federal funding and NSF grants, which is very lucrative.
4) Every major prediction proclaimed since this idea has come about has been revised every year. Nobody it would seem can predict climatic change, even though, everyone working on the very lucrative professionally and financially idea of human induced climate change, has got the "research numbers down pat" they all assure us.

Contrast that sort of "fish bowl" science research with those in the astrophysics/solar weather fields that say our sun has/is going "berzerk" in the past 30 years.

http://www.intellicast.com/DrDewpoint/Library/1186 /
http://www.dxlc.com/solar/
http://physics.gmu.edu/~jevans/astr103/CourseNotes /sun_activity.html
http://www.spacew.com/astroalert.html

The solar cycles are completly out of "whack" right now.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/15sep_sola rminexplodes.htm

The suns behavior is anything but predictable and just this past January I was looking at beautiful aurora while I was visiting Chicago, IL.

Every major planet in the solars system is ALSO experiencing a warming trend.

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/3 434

That could be due to all of the human colonies we have on mars for example as well as Jupitor's moons.

There is plenty of evidence for alternative explanations to climate change.

So why are we not hearing them?

ANSWER: No money to be made.

I mean look at some of the truly outrageous projects given considered SERIOUS thought by proponents of global warming:

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8897

HOW MUCH do you think a project like that would cost and WHO DO you think is going to get the money for it?

It sure isn't the third world countries who are being asked to starve to death and endure this climate change.

There is no suggestion of planting more trees either as you can't make money off of planting trees. It costs too much.

I SEMLL A RAT.

-Hackus

-Hackus

This leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that the presence of microbial life on Mars increases the probability that we're probably doomed soon, since if there's microbial life on Mars then the formation of microbial life must not have been one of the very improbable pieces of luck in our past.

For what I consider a much better treatment of this topic, see: The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?

This stuff is a big deal, and the Great Filter paper actually manages to draw some useful concrete conclusions from the question, or at least useful concrete questions.

Also related, albeit a little more tangentially, is "Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?". "We're in a simulation and there are no extraterrestrials in the simulation" must be considered one of the leading possible answers. (I'm not advocating it either way, I don't have an answer. Nor do I consider this post anywhere near a complete list, just some relevant pointers.)

I hate to tell you this but you really need to actually know a little history of the US before you make statements like "Given the state of today's government". Read a little about the War of 1812 or even just about Alexander Contee Hanson and the Baltimore Riot of 1812. Today's government in the US is a rank amateur in political corruption and cronyism, suppression of rights and individual profiteering compared to the government in 1812 and then it was in a completely unjustified war that was started primarily as an attempt to steal Canada from Britain while it was distracted by Napoleon. Hell the British army that was invading the US and even burned the capital was primarily supplied by New England merchants. The British could pay better since the war pretty much bankrupted the US government. It really annoys me when people who clearly have no knowledge of US history talk about the current US government being the most corrupt and evil ever in the US.

An "officer of the law" is given far too much credit their wide area of expertise and honesty. A citizen has none of this in a court of law without related degrees, job experience and witnesses if their testamony conflicts with the prosecution. I know there are good officers of the law out there, it is past time to hold yourselves to a higher standard, clean your ranks please. Need to make this a call to lawyers, elected and appointed officials of all branches including judicial, its well past time to clean your ranks. As far as the elected ones go everyone should get into that act. As someone once said: There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. The last one is getting more difficult because the supreme court said Samuel Adams was wrong when he said "And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress ... to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.... ".

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
--Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

Unfortunately in relation to the Webster quote we are being disarmed and too many believe the BS kicked out by our politicians enough to the point were too many are demanding we be disarmed more, that those accused of crimes should have more roadblocks to being declared innocent or even getting a fair trial ( too many are getting forced into accepting "lesser charges" to avoid being broken in the process of defending themselves amongst other roadblocks ), ridiculous laws are being passed to track us and make travel difficult and annoying, etc etc etc. Those porn laws might even be able to nail 90% or more of the "Joe Sixpacks" on the internet if their hard drives were searched hard enough. It certainly wouldn't take a dishonest person long to plant it there. Who do you want to send to jail today?

Last two quotes are from here. Oh and from the same sight before anyone trys to say, like the Supreme Court incorrectly said, that the militia is the National Guard it wasn't intended that way by our forefathers, they believed like George Mason: "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
  George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788

It is being said that anyone under the age of 18 is not mature enough to make a decision on their own, this is amusing and frightening. Many states like West Virginia have or had the official age of consent set at 15. Have they changed since this craziness started? Wonder if they working to bar reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies since in them "Granny" is constantly hounding "Ellie Mae" to find a groom since at nearly 18 she is an old maid! Have to wonder too if this stripping minors of their rights is related to the childhood prison system referred to as the public school system and its purported plan to train the kids for corporate and governmental subserviance. Any adult that fails to comply will be ejected from society.

Prediction markets are a major interest of mine. I'm in a bit of a rush at the moment, so I'll have to make some more extensive comments later, but in the meantime here's some neat links on prediction markets:

* Tradesports, a real-money prediction market on political and news events. The 2008 president market currently gives a Democratic a 50% probability of winning the White House in 2008, Hillary Clinton a 55% probability of getting the Democratic nomination, and John McCain a 49% probability of getting the Republican nomination.

* Futarchy, a system of government semi-seriously proposed by Robin Hanson which would use prediction markets as a means of government decision-making. People would vote on values, and use a prediction market to determine the optimal government policies to achieve those values, which would help get around some of the godawful stupid things democracies tend to do.

* Storage Markets, a real-money (but limited access?) market on the computer storage industry

* The Policy Analysis Market, a proposed prediction market for policies in the Middle East. It was IMHO a great idea, and could have potentially prevented some of the stupid decisions which have been made in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the government ended the project after it was the media (including slashdot) had a knee-jerk reaction to it and demonized it. The funny thing is, after the project was cancelled and the media learned more about it, coverage of the project became much more positive.

Fortunately, we have all sorts of additional commentary from the framers which helps to elucidate their intent in writing the 2nd amendment.

"Death is a master from Deutschland" (Death Fugue by Paul Celan, 1944). You can check out an english translation here: http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/deathfugue.html

it does? Where?! As far as science goes, science so far says life exists on Earth and nothing else, so far Earth is the only proven example (scientifcally) of where life exists. This means science says life only exists on earth.

Ah, you are correct, and you didn't even include the felons which I forgot about. I will still argue that 54% isn't much of a turnout considering the events that surrounded the 2004 election, but perhaps it isn't as bleak as I thought.

Dear Hockey Stick Denialist,

You manage to quote two people (two - out of a couple of thousand people who actually study this stuff), yet completely fail to acknowledge the subsequent discussion of McIntyre and McKitrick's critique.

As both the NAS Panel and the Wegman report noted, none of that subsequent discussion had any relevance as to whether Mann's study was a scientific crock of shit, which it was.

Furthermore, you present these as independent, when they are actually working for fields with a very heavy interest in presenting Global Warming as a farce (I'm sure you know which one's they are right? You'd never just take somebody's word for it).

Really? Ross McKitrick is an associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph - he had no financial interest in Kyoto. Steve McIntyre is semi-retired after working in the mining industry - he has no financial interest in Kyoto either. On the other hand, the originators of the Hockey Stick all have huge professional and personal interests in Global Warming and the politics thereof.

M&M are independent and the Hockey Team are certainly not. Wegman et al are independent as well.

Steve Mcintyre has made it clear repeatedly that debunking the Hockey Stick does not mean that Global Warming is not happening. But those with clear vested interests are those who have found fame and fortune promoting fraud, like Michael Mann.

And I don't know where you get the idea that they're world-class statisticians. I can't find any papers they have written on statistics before this one. Care to point to some? Or did you just make that part up?

Why certainly HS Denier. Try this and let me know when you reviewed them all. As I said "world-class" and I meant it.

Finally, Mann isn't the only one who found a significant global warming that occurred in the past couple of decades. I won't bother with relinking the papers here, since I already posted them in reply to another one of your posts. But to claim that a) no one has talked about McIntyre's and McKitrick's critique, and b) Mann is the only one to have found a significant warming is ignorant at best.

Mann isn't the only one to have discovered significant warming. He didn't discover anything at all because his pride and joy doesn't mean anything at all. Discovering warming isn't hard. Discovering whether the warming is a) significant b) deleterious and c) man-made would be, and nobody's produced anything remotely close to a "smoking gun" that is worth anything.

I didn't claim that no one has talked about M&M's critique - where did you get that from?

Considering the effort you expended in tracking down any and all critiques of one specific paper, but didn't bother continuing to find out whether the critiques were right, I can only assume that you are guilty of what you are accusing the rest of the world of: willfull ignorance. Oh, and nice personal insults, too. Idiot.

I spent much more time considering the relevant papers than you'll spend looking at Wegman's CV. I suspect that I won't be hearing any challenge to that claim.

Bye bye and Happy Denying!

Ok, Robin Hanson's home page is here, but it's still down. If I recall correctly, you have to click through to his personal page and then there's some betting markets related stuff. The PAM (Policy Analysis Market) stuff should be around there.

Yes, you said that limiting the supply of options in the options market eliminated *most* of the illegal activities. Which is probably a fair trade off when the commodity is oranges or shares in SCO.

But not so when it's airlines and reinsurance companies?

Reading through the link that I gave on the previous post, I see that each trader starts with $100. So there turns out to be very little money actually riding on terrorist attacks, assuming they were tossed in to that market.

Sorry, I didn't explain that very well. By usng money to manipulat the market, it would be possible to create financial incentives to perform acts of violence. The sponsor would lose money on the deal, of course, but might regard the loss as acceptable is the violent act achieved the desired outcome. So while they wouldn't be buying violence, and therefore not legally liable, it might still be possible to spend money in order to achieve violence, giving the same functional outcome.

Again if the amounts are limited, then you don't have enough in one place to provide an incentive. It's pretty obvious that if there's a billion dollar bet riding on whether a particular act of crime occurs, then there's a massive incentive to make that act happen. So by limiting the market, you remove that incentive. The amounts in the regular stock options markets are large enough that there still remains various incentives. But you can reduce the size of the "terrorism" market so that that isn't the case.

• It [the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development] also finds it intriguing as to "why no developed country has been chosen" for MIT's OLPC experiment "given the fact that most of the developed world is far from universalising the possession and use of laptops among children of 6-12 age group".

"Insider trading" also provides a valuable market signal.

In 2004, Bush got a little over 28% of support (from people of voting age). Kerry got a little under 26.7%. (numbers from the first two sites on Google for "election voter turnout")

As you said, these numbers don't even reflect actual voter support: some (you and I presume large) fraction of these voters are only voting to keep the other guy out of office, making the support for the leader of the country miniscule at best.

Interesting statistics, just thought I'd post.

Politicians will totally pander to some groups because they know that if they don't, they'll be punished bad enough to lose elections. In Canada, we have the NDP. They stand no chance of winning an election but they have a huge effect. The Liberals have to steal the NDP's policies in order to win. It is why Canada is very progressive on some issues. Even the Conservatives find themselves constrained because they know that they can lose votes to the NDP. Yes, I know that last one sounds strange; it helps to have been raised in Saskatchewan (it gave us both Tommy Douglas and John Diefenbaker) to understand it.

There are enough people who don't vote that you wouldn't have to turn too many Republicans or Democrats to make a big difference. This is one of those issues where you could get support from both sides. You could also bundle it with America's fading status in the world and the erosion of civil rights. Heck, you could probably even conscript Ralph Nader's followers.
http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

It would make some people's lives a lot easier if most people became too apathetic to vote. If you let that happen then you deserve what you get.

Your facts are incorrect. 61% of the eligible population voted. These stats don't count how many are registered, just voted.

Just don't get hit by a bus until then and most of us have a good shot at becoming biologically then non-biologically immortal (or none of do).

From:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/MediaBias.doc

Our results show a very significant liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News' Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABC's World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News' Special Report is the most centrist. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

Of course! Have you not noticed how many companies are spending enormous amounts of money searching for a cure to cancer? A cure would be worth a lot of money, so people/banks/companies are willing to lend money to these companies to find one. The invisible hand at work!

Behavioral enconomics is not something spooky -- it is based on observation of past behavior and expected behaviors from these using reason. There really isn't an "invisible hand", you know ;)

For those interested in some common sense Economics, try reading articles from http://www.tsowell.com/ or http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew

while that was an egregious violation of human rights, i'd like to point out what might have happened had fdr_not_done that...no, not sabotage...

it's far more likely that many jap-ams et al would have been lynched by mobs, as happened during ww1 to germans: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/1/

the internment camps were most definitely not death camps on the nazi model: to call them concentration camps is a ignorant if not outright bigoted slur...

i'm not aware of any deaths due to fdr's relocation camps (to spin it the other way;-) more like protective custody, a lesser of 2 evils (which doesn't reflect highly on the nativist majority)-:

"Without WM there, all those people on $8/h would be unemployed.

Nonsense. Without Wal-Mart, someone (or, more likely, several someones) would step in to fill the void. People gotta buy shoes, somebody's gotta sell them."

At higher price, dumbass. Jones doesn't save half of price he would have to pay at the more expensive store => Jones doesn't employe SOMEBODY ELSE.

Unemployment increases, real wages go down, standard of living goes down. Economy your way DEVOLVES. It works like on rewind, going back to past.

"Those $8/hr Wal-Mart wage slaves would likely work for someone who (gasp!) may actually live there and give half a fuck about the community around him."

All those expensive store owners caring about community... it warms my heart...

You are too stupid on top of beeing too romantic, vague, and inspecific to understand how practical economy and society and community works, that's all.

"Because the vast majority of people in this great nation are fucking idiots who wouldn't know their own self-interest if it bit them on the ass, reared up on its hind legs, and said "Hi, I'm you self-interest.""

Nope, they understand their own self-interest much better than you understand your own. Evidence:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/s sq.pdf

This is what applies to you:

"Despite the philosopher's perplexity, people are fiercely attached to their principles
--even to unintelligible or preposterous ones. . . . Their minds are
clouded by childish myths and unspeakable fears. As a result, they often fail to
grasp their private advantage or to act upon it when they do.
Stephen Holmes, "The Secret History of Self-Interest" (1990:274)"

FYI, you're a feeble-minded looney, not a rational anarchist.

Actually, only a small percentage of Americans voted for him. The problem is, most people did not, or were 'unable' to vote...

http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

lookee here, 55 to 65% of americans elegible to vote, voted!, of those, bush got just over 50% and kerry 48%. I dont think anyone was suppressed, unless you think illegal immigrants and the like should be allowed to vote...granted most people who didnt vote just plain did not want to.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/a rchives/voting/004986.html
http://www.voterunlead.org/facts/voter_turnout_2 004_e.cfm

so what the HELL are you smoking?!

Yeah, it's absolutely amazing; an 'environmentalist' believes the media spin provided by the United States government and media following the TMI accident. The accident released 2.4 million curies into the atmosphere, including radioactive noble gases! For those of you non-chemists, a curie is equal to 3.7x10^10 decays per second. That's not significant radiation?
 
Now, Cesium-137 (which was being tracked to determine the extent of radioactive fallout) has a half-life of 30 years. After 4 decades, therefore, the radioactivity of the fallout would not be 1/1,000 the strength, but just under one half! In terms of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors, where the hell do expect to be able to store it if we continue at this pace? The entire bedrock and soil would be radioactive, as well as water seepage and atmospheric pollution! The half-life of Pu-240 is 6,560 years, and the half-life of Pu-239 is 24,110 years! That's longer than steel or iron will last, my friend.
 
If you follow the Chernobyl accident, the problem they're facing now is that the sarcophagus they placed around the core (which melted down 60% in the accident, devastating the USSR and especially Finland and the rest of Scandanavia) is buckling and falling apart. This lobbyist really doesn't know the facts; rather, he formed his opinion a priori and shunted all other relevant facts and interdisciplinary persepctives which may suggest the duplicitous misinformation of his words.
 
Amazing, isn't it?

The fact that Aum Shinrikyo spent loads of money on their biological weapons and failed doesn't mean a thing, really. The cult sprayed crude slurry's of their agents of choice, which is very inefficient when compared to the stabilized and lyophilized agents that any offensive military program would employ. The sprayers that Aum Shinrikyo used also produced droplets that were too large to really be efficient (5 microns is optimal for for dispersal and lung retention). Moreover, the cult attempted these attacks during the daytime. UV radiation quickly obliterates most biological agents, which probably contributed most to the lack of infections. A scary fact about Aum is that they actually sent cult members to Africa during an Ebola outbreak in an attempt to secure that horrific virus. Given the rudimentary state of their bioterrorism program, who knows what kind of wake they would have left on their trip back to Japan. Ironically, Japan has utilized biological weapons more than any country to date. Japan's past was marred after employing biological weapons just prior to, and during WWII (see "water filtration" unit 731, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731).

I can't recall the exact study, but the US government simulated a bioterrorism cell. Basically they set aside a small group of scientists (3 or 4) and gave them limited funds ($10,000 if I recall correctly) in order to covertly set up and produce a bioweapons simulant from scratch. It was disturbing how quickly and quietly they produced weaponized agent. I encourage anyone interested in this subject to read books such as Plague Wars, Biohazard, and/or Germs.

I attended a biodefense conference in 2002 sponsored by George Mason University where I had the opportunity to listen to and speak with Dr. Popov and Dr. Alibek (former deputy director of Biopreparat, the Soviet bioweapons program), among many others. The Soviet bioweapons program rivaled that of their nuclear program, yet remained largely unknown until several defectors revealed the system. Interestingly, George Mason University became a sponge for many former Soviet bioweaponeers. It is now home of the National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases (http://www.gmu.edu/centers/biodefense).

I'm sure we all remember the anthrax letters from 2001. This is the scary thing about biological weapons... the amount of damage that they can incur upon an infrastructure can easily rival any casualty concerns. Decontamination procedures are costly and time-consuming, and there isn't a single health-care system in the world able to handle mass FUD that such an attack would cause. Symptoms from many bioweapons agents mimic that of the common flu. As soon as it's announced that such an attack has occurred, everyone with the slightest cough or bit of paranoia is going to rush to the closest hospital and complain of smallpox/anthrax/tularemia/etc.

For more info on a not-so-commonly known bioterrorism event in the USA, check out Oregon in the mid 80's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneesh

Have you ever read a moderm biography of Rockerfeller?

Oh yes. Have you?

Robin Hanson (who worked on the Policy Analysis Market you describe) actually has a pretty neat research paper analyzing the media's reaction to the project. Here's the abstract:

Title: The Informed Press Favored the Policy Analysis Market

The Policy Analysis Market (PAM), otherwise known (inaccurately) as "terrorism
futures," burst into public view in a firestorm of condemnation on July 29, 2003,
and was canceled within one day. We look at the impression given of PAM by five
hundred media articles, and how that impression varied with eleven indicators of article
information quality: publication date, citing someone with firsthand knowledge, article
length, a news or an editorial style, author anonymity, and the awards, circulation,
frequency, and topic specialties of the periodical. All eleven indicators individually
predict more favorable impressions of PAM. In a multiple regression model, seven of
them remain clearly significant. This model predicts that a fifty word news article
in an award-winning widely-read science and business publication a month later that
mentioned an insider would give a solidly favorable impression of PAM, as would a
similar three hundred word article today in a general publication.