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Public companies, like republics, end up with the leaders they deserve.

I think the more interesting question is, "Why do boards of directors hire and overpay mediocre CEOs who actively destroy shareholder value?" And why do the shareholders elect board members who do this?

A strong antidote is to a) pay board members minimal cash compensation for their duties and b) ensure board members have a significant portion of their net worth invested in the company they oversee. This rather simply aligns board members’ interests with that of other shareholders. Sitting on a board should not be a cushy job -- it should be a privilege to oversee the management team responsible for making you richer and richer. If enough board members own chunks of the company, then bring in "outsiders" for their perspectives, but always make sure the board collectively has enough skin in the game.

With respect to compensation, I frequently see executive pay associated with bullshitty metrics that are not tied to owners’ total returns or increasing the enterprise’s per-share intrinsic value. When executives are compensated with stock, the cost to owners (share dilution) is frequently obfuscated in the financial reports, or considered income through the use of legal but creative accounting. (Adobe and others were notorious for this chicanery before the dot-com bubble imploded.)

When I consider purchasing shares, I always look at "corporate governance," CEO attitude, and board composition as important qualitative indicators of quality. Frankly I’m shocked by the number of publicly traded enterprises that retain significant earnings, and then piss the money away on failed acquisitions, ostentatious headquarters or skyscrapers, or, in the case of Bethlehem Steel before the bottom fell out of the industry, three separate corporate golf courses -- one for management, middle management, and employees.

This is one of the reasons I’m fond of dividends: I don’t trust many CEOs to smartly allocate capital to generate satisfactory rates of return. It takes a special sort of person to either sit on cash for extended periods until a truly outstanding opportunity presents itself, or just admit that the enterprise has exhausted sensible options for capital redeployment, so time to bust out the dividends and share repurchases.

The topic of corporate governance seems to be in vogue at the moment. Just last week, several CEOs and asset management firms released an open letter advocating for public companies to adopt "commonsense" governance principles [1]. And the large asset management firms like Vanguard are starting to become more vocal about how the companies they own are managed, if this letter is any indication [2]. Vanguard and other "passive" asset management firms have enough weight (literally trillions of dollars under management) to force change, and boards know it.

[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.ed...
[2] https://corpgov.law.harvard.ed...

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/n...

This harvard study disagrees.

The best available data comes from consumers who report it to the DOT (WARNING: Source may be paywalled)

Why not go straight to the quoted Wired article with the hyperbolic title?

Those are the same link. And when viewed through Firefox Tracking Protection, with no specific ad-blocking extensions installed, the text of said hyperbolic article is as follows (screenshot):

Here’s The Thing With Ad Blockers

We get it: Ads aren’t what you’re here for. But ads help us keep the lights on.
So, add us to your ad blocker’s whitelist or pay $1 per week for an ad-free version of WIRED. Either way, you are supporting our journalism. We’d really appreciate it.

From the page to which "whitelist" links:

In Firefox “Tracking Protection” may activate our adblock notice. It can be temporarily disabled for a browsing session by clicking the “shield” icon in the url bar if visible and following the instructions.

See the editorial "An invitation to settle matters with @Forbes, @Wired and other publishers" by Doc Searls. Apparently the administrators of WIRED are too incompetent to switch to advertisements not based on tracking viewers' browsing habits.

The best available data comes from consumers who report it to the DOT (WARNING: Source may be paywalled)

Why not go straight to the quoted Wired article with the hyperbolic title?

Those are the same link. And when viewed through Firefox Tracking Protection, with no specific ad-blocking extensions installed, the text of said hyperbolic article is as follows (screenshot):

Here’s The Thing With Ad Blockers

We get it: Ads aren’t what you’re here for. But ads help us keep the lights on.
So, add us to your ad blocker’s whitelist or pay $1 per week for an ad-free version of WIRED. Either way, you are supporting our journalism. We’d really appreciate it.

From the page to which "whitelist" links:

In Firefox “Tracking Protection” may activate our adblock notice. It can be temporarily disabled for a browsing session by clicking the “shield” icon in the url bar if visible and following the instructions.

See the editorial "An invitation to settle matters with @Forbes, @Wired and other publishers" by Doc Searls. Apparently the administrators of WIRED are too incompetent to switch to advertisements not based on tracking viewers' browsing habits.

The best available data comes from consumers who report it to the DOT (WARNING: Source may be paywalled)

Why not go straight to the quoted Wired article with the hyperbolic title?

Those are the same link. And when viewed through Firefox Tracking Protection, with no specific ad-blocking extensions installed, the text of said hyperbolic article is as follows (screenshot):

Here’s The Thing With Ad Blockers

We get it: Ads aren’t what you’re here for. But ads help us keep the lights on.
So, add us to your ad blocker’s whitelist or pay $1 per week for an ad-free version of WIRED. Either way, you are supporting our journalism. We’d really appreciate it.

From the page to which "whitelist" links:

In Firefox “Tracking Protection” may activate our adblock notice. It can be temporarily disabled for a browsing session by clicking the “shield” icon in the url bar if visible and following the instructions.

See the editorial "An invitation to settle matters with @Forbes, @Wired and other publishers" by Doc Searls. Apparently the administrators of WIRED are too incompetent to switch to advertisements not based on tracking viewers' browsing habits.

I don't block ads. I block services that track me across websites. Serve me ads that don't track me across websites, directly from a server whose FQDN ends in .wired.com, and I'll see them. But neither WIRED nor Forbes appears to be smart enough to set this up.

THAT'S your threshold for trusting advertisers? So when I setup doubleclick.wired.com, and point it's A records to a double click server so they can serve you ads, and that server also hosts doubleclick.othersite.com, and tracks you all the same, because - well IP addresses and browser meta data, you'll allow those ads because they're served from "wired.com"? Nah bro, I don't think you've thought that one through.

I don't block ads. I block services that track me across websites. Serve me ads that don't track me across websites, directly from a server whose FQDN ends in .wired.com, and I'll see them. But neither WIRED nor Forbes appears to be smart enough to set this up.

This is the way trademark law works. You must defend the trademark or risk losing it.

Citibank's trademark is for a reward points program. Their beef is with an AT&T Thanks program which, like the Citibank program, rewards loyal customers. So that aspect of trademark infringement (that the two names are for a similar product or service which could be confused) is satisfied. This isn't because AT&T is just saying "Thanks" as TFS claims.

At that point, even if Citibank thinks the lawsuit is silly, they still have to file it. Once the court decides there is no infringement, both sides are safe. AT&T is free to call their program AT&T Thanks. And Citibank's ThankYou trademark is safe because they defended it

If they didn't file a lawsuit, someone else could start another rewards program named "Thanks" or maybe "[company_name] Thanks You." When Citibank sued them, they could point to Citibank's failure to defend their trademark against AT&T. The court could decide that that constituted Citibank abandoning the trademark.. Even though the possibility of that is extremely small, the fact that it's not zero means the trademark holder is going to play it safe and file a lawsuit against anything which could be considered a trademark violation.

let me help. rate of sea level rise increasing. tinyurl.com/gqx9hgy [Peter Sinclair]

Nerem et al. 2011 [Lonny Eachus, 2016-02-10]

Why did Lonny Eachus link to a graph showing a 3.1 mm/year global sea level trend? Since that's higher than Lonny's claimed "1.1 mm/year", doesn't that simple comparison show the rate of sea level rise is increasing (i.e. accelerating) over the long term? And since Lonny's accused scientists of being "liars" if they acknowledge the global sea level rise of ~3 mm/year, why did Lonny cite a graph containing what he called a lie from a scientist he's previously called a "liar"?

Furthermore, that's not a peer-reviewed paper. It's a slide from a 2011 presentation which hasn't been turned into a peer-reviewed paper. A real skeptic might wonder why it hasn't. Hint: in 2011 Jane/Lonny briefly stopped denying satellite measurements of sea level because they showed a short term drop. Of course, scientists told Jane that this was because the 2011 La Nina caused such massive flooding that global sea level fell temporarily. See Boening et al. 2012 (PDF).

So is it really surprising that calculating sea level acceleration from 1993-2011 gave an unrepresentative answer? Especially because that's a short timespan, and detecting acceleration requires a longer timespan than just detecting a trend. Maybe we could learn why that 2011 presentation hasn't become a peer-reviewed paper by looking at that same data up to 2016.

Let's analyze that raw data (backup) from sealevel.colorado.edu (backup). Here are accelerations and uncertainties for timespans that all end at 2016.1 but start at 1993, 1994, etc. Notice the similarities between the satellite acceleration graph and the older global tide gauge acceleration graph I've shown Jane/Lonny. All the black best-fit accelerations are positive. More recent accelerations tend to be larger. (The most recent accelerations and even their red lower 95% confidence intervals are off the scale even though the upper vertical limit is twice as high as in the older graph.) This tends to suggest that not only is global sea level accelerating, it's even "jerking" up.

(Technical note: those 95% confidence intervals were calculated using a ARMA(1,1) noise model. I also tested AR(1), MA(1), ARMA(1,2), and ARMA(2,1), but ARMA(1,1) minimized both the AIC and BIC.)

let me help. rate of sea level rise increasing.

Don't like those statistics? Then lobby Congress to remove the ban on funding for actual dedicated research of gun violence.

After all, what have you got to lose? If you're right and the current statistics are completely wrong, then actual dedicated statistics research and collection should prove that.

The US government, motivated by the gun lobbyists, do not want real research on gun violence because they already know the result is ugly. They did the preliminary studies already.

Most gun violence in the US is suicide. It is the white elephant of gun ownership. Estimates put suicide as far more the likely use of a firearm over other uses.

Even the man in the recent gay bar shooting killed himself at the end.

No, regardless of what firearm salesmen or government thugs want to believe, there is no a quiet militia of people polishing their firearms waiting to murder you and your children.

There are a few hurting people - fellow blood and flesh humans - who cannot get the help they need.

But Western society stigmatizes illnesses of the mind worse then skill color, gender, race or creed. The names themselves are derogatory. People aren't ill they are 'Sick in the Head.' Nutters. Crazies. Sickos. Wackjobs. People who work on mental health issues aren't doctors, they're shrinks. You don't have anxiety problems you're just a "head case."

And this hurts us directly elsewhere besides the gun ownership debate. The lack of recognition makes these sufferers distance themselves from general society. The delusions make the mentally unstable easy candidates for recruitment by fanatical organizations with fantastical promises. It is rarely the Supreme Leaders of the terrorists that are blowing themselves up. Their foolish footsolders with the illusions of rewards that do not exist are strapping themselves into the suicide vests.

No, we don't need a 'technical solution' to prevent shootings. We need to fix society.

That means changing the ideas in people's heads about what's in their heads.

Could there be a technological solution to the problem of mass shootings?

There will never be a machine that fixes the shooter problem or the gun violence problem. Both of these are people problems and fixes need to start and end with people.

Western Society needs to realize that broken minds are broken legs. You don't ask someone with a broken leg to run a marathon, you call an ambulance. You don't tell someone with depression to stay away you're a downer, you offer to listen. Otherwise these sufferers will turn on their own to what help they can. That help may be a pill or a rope or a gun.

Or it could be someone who says 'pray to my God who says kill the infidels and all your problems will be solved.'

And they will believe them. Because there's nobody to tell them otherwise. (That would be bad for sales.)

An oldie from many years ago, copied from http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/pnw...

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.
For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off."

I note now that you have a fixed idea, to which you do not seem to consider worthy of discussing alternatives, that people who grow up without the arts are less well-rounded, less happy, worse coders and probably less smart.

Correct.

I'm going to note that you have provided absolutely no evidence for your assertions

http://pss.sagepub.com/content...

http://www.health.harvard.edu/...

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/comput...

On the other hand, Myhrvold has not made verifiable claims, and hasn't published in peer-reviewed journals.

This isn't true. Myhrvold has published a related paper in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, which is a perfectly respectable peer-reviewed journal. (ADS data are here; the arXiv posting is here.)

This article doesn't display the usual signs of quackery. It's well-written, extensively referenced, and gives both pros and cons of the various approaches it considers. It's a bit on the long side, which you sometimes see in pieces written by nutters, but they tend to repeat themselves, whereas this document seems to consist entirely of well-structured analysis. The acknowledgements section explicitly thanks an anonymous reviewer, which you usually see when substantial changes have been made on the basis of the reviewer's comments, which is fairly commonplace: maybe one in three papers might do this?

Unfortunately, this paper is too far outside of my field for me to directly judge the arguments in it, at least without a few months of study, so I have to resort to judging it by these peripheral issues, insofar as this is possible. But I can say that, if I were trawling the literature on a moderately unfamiliar topic, I wouldn't be surprised by any of these: it looks to me like a fairly normal academic paper.

The significantly unusual things about this paper are that it has a single author, at a non-academic institution, and that the arXiv version appears to have been typeset with something other than LaTeX. But none of these are factors that I would count against it.

One of the major conclusions of the paper is that it would be helpful to have a common, open simulation code to evaluate the expected performance of different surveys in detecting asteroids. Now this is a familiar issue from a couple of fields that I do work in, which would benefit from a similar approach, if everyone would just work together long enough to make it happen. (It's also a bit ironic to be advocating for open software, given the author's Microsoftian background, but I won't hold that against him.)

Your libertarian ideals are great right up until the real world gets applied to them.

Imaging yourself, you the consumer having contracted an incurable, debilitating illness from a new GM soybean product. Of course you have no way of knowing what caused your illness. There's no regulatory environment requiring oversight that would have identified the problem with the soybeans. Maybe it was the factory down the road, maybe it was something you ate, maybe you just happened to win the genetic lottery. All you know is that you life has been irrevocably destroyed, you can't work, you have mountains of medical bills you can't afford. Of course you're not the only one, thousands of others have had a similar experience, similar illness. But it's a mystery, others have gotten sick so it probably has nothing to do with the factory since many don't live near you. Perhaps it's something everyone eat. But what? Ten years later, after manyfold more people have had their health shattered, young children have died, etc. a young university student makes the correlation. This particular soybean has boomed into a billion dollar industry. "Unfounded", "baseless accusations" they, say "millions around the world eat food made from our beans and they're not sick." Fortunately an ambulance chasing lawyer group steps up to create a class action lawsuit against the megacorp responsible for the bad beans. Unfortunately, the case is thrown out for lack of evidence. Aside from the correlation findings by the university student, no one has been able to prove it was the beans. License to use the GM soybeans prohibits any use other than to produce food, independent research on the beans is stymied. Not that it would have mattered much, your health has continued to deteriorate, you stand in financial ruin living off of government disability pay (good thing the Libertarians didn't take that away). A financial windfall might have been salve to your money woes but what difference would it make when you're laid up in bed wracked with pain most of the time. Why, oh why couldn't someone have discovered this problem early, before I ate all those french fries fried in soy oil?

BTW, I'm impressed with your confidence in GM plants not being harmful. Personally I'd be quite concerned with a food plant that produces its own pesticide that works by causing hemorrhaging in the gut. Particularly given that gut inflammation continues to be found at the root of many health problems. Or herbicide resistant crops that can crossbreed with weeds to likewise gain a resistance.

Got a non-WIRED citation? It and Forbes have a habit of confusing tracking blockers with ad blockers. There's currently no way to say "just give me ads that aren't videos and aren't based on tracking me," and it all feels so hypocritical based on a past review of the Disconnect extension in WIRED.

There's an exemption to DCMA for medical device research, see http://cyberlawclinic.berkman....

Government and the technical augmentation or automation thereof is a fascinating source of ideas and issues, philosophical and economic. But the OP's choice of a term like "Big Government" seeks to attract only lightweight libertarians and nattering neocons who are blissfully transfixed by antiseptic fantasies like meritocracy and Big Bad Bureaucracy.

Why discuss flamebait? Let's ask a better question.

Can AI/tech improve or replace government? Can it help us to focus better on issues rather than politics? Might tech help us to make concrete measurable progress toward achieving specific goals, improve administative efficiency, and minimize the role of gov't in our lives? Yes, I'm convinced that it can, and I'd love to discuss it. But the OP's simplistic article won't inspire that level of discourse here and now.

For a better start on this topic, I recommend:

"Automating Easy Government Solutions with Machine Learning"
https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/11/18...

"Why Government Managers Need to Know About Machine Learning"
http://datasmart.ash.harvard.e...

"How can government make the most of machine learning systems and avoid the pitfalls?"
http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/h...

"White House to probe role of AI in government"
https://fcw.com/articles/2016/...

Yes, a nice example is to look at a hi-resolution photo of Earth from space. Much of humanity lives along coastlines and rivers, especially where a river meets the sea, as you get ocean access and river access to both global and inland trade, along with fresh water and a convenient way to get rid of waste.

Civilization settled where trade was convenient, with few exceptions. Before flight, water was the best, fastest way to trade. Once we mastered the sea, and were no longer confined to rivers and coastlines, civilization flourished with increasing speed. A few centuries back

According to Harvard University,* in this era: " More than 2 billion people, an estimated 37 percent of the world's population, live within 60 miles of the coast and would be affected, directly or indirectly, by incursions of the sea."
If we increase that to about 93 miles,** then the number jumps to approximately 44 percent.

The Harvard article is talking about a 3 to 5 foot increase in sea levels wiping out much of the coastal infrastructure worldwide, as much of it is built on flood plains frequently no more than 3 feet or so above sea level.
I would think it a safe bet that a 300 foot rise in sea level would affect a great many more, likely much more than 50 percent.

*Harvard:

  http://environment.harvard.edu...
http://www.oceansatlas.org/ser...

**UN atlas of the oceans: /CDSServlet?status=ND0xODc3JjY9ZW4mMzM9KiYzNz1rb3M~

I thought the discussion was about Global Catastrophe like Human Extinction? How does a Economical Catastrophe like sea rising fall into one of those? It's not like sea will rise 50 meter overnight.

My example uses _YOUR_ logic! According to your statement, the FBI can break into your computer (crime), install illegal software (another crime), and log all of your activities (outside of the scope of the warrant, so another crime), and they can do so because they had a warrant.

I agree the logic is silly, and that is the point of showing the extremes of _your logic_.

Pretty cool how you claim that it's not illegal after change the wording to specify "on computers I own", where in the case and point being discussed the FBI did this on computers they DID NOT own. Oh, and go ahead and install keyloggers on computers you own that other people can access. If you don't believe your wife can not have you prosecuted.. you are hilariously ignorant. It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in most you will be guilty of violating Federal wiretapping laws.

Thye had a warrant to install and collect the information, just like a wiretap. I'm nit sure where you get it was illegal because they didn't own the computer but that is what wiretaps warrants are for - to listen in to a suspect's conversation. Whether or not the FBI owned the computer is irrelevant, as is your rant that key loggers are illegal. As for violating Federal Wiretap logs, Federal courts have ruled it was not a violation. See: http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/di... As for state laws, those vary but Federal law does not vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction it is a Federal law, not local. As for installing on your computer and using it to record keystrokes, those state cases were lawsuits not prosecution as you stated. In one case that was prosecuted key logger software was installed on somebody else's computer by his roommates; which is clearly different than installing it on your own; or under a court issued warrant. In short, you know not what of what you speak.

I think that the problem isn't that people are trying to do something to fix the issue, it's that what they're trying to do is ineffective or counter-productive (PDF warning). Alternatively here's an article that reports on the main findings of that study or incorporates data from a few others if you don't want to read ~30 pages of journal article yourself.

Basically the people who constantly push these programs don't tend to follow the science to find the most effective ways to go about doing it so they just end up failing, wasting time and money, and alienating the people they're trying to connect with and it seems like with many they refuse to try to do anything different. It's just another case of trying to be tough on crime or ratchet up the drug laws even more because it's about appearing to do something or people simply feeding their own egotistical desire to feel like they're changing the world rather than doing something that's actually good.

A controlled study is described here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ne...

You copied that without reading it, and criticized the math without working through it.

That equation also serves as a general proof that the velocity addition formulae never result in a speed w > c when u, v [lte] c

Since you're assuming u > c, that objection is inapplicable. Also, read the other article, and after that take a look at page 3,4 of this article[pdf] which has a nice graph of how causality breaks down. Again, for the purposes of causality violation, there is no practical difference between a superluminal signal and a superluminal spacecraft.

How about "citations" proving all the bold counter claims?

You made the claims bub, don't try and weasel out now...

I'm not saying that the idea was a bad one, I'm saying that it didn't bloody work. a reference

You didn't even read the your own citation did you? In your own citation it actually says it went down in developed countries such as Australia.
If you read past the headline, it went up in undeveloped countries like China and Pakistan, and their numbers skew the global average. But based on your study that you cited, legalised prostitution has lowered trafficking rates in countries like Australia, NZ and in Europe.

Show me evidence to the contrary and I'll re-evaluate.

Your own citation. Maybe you want to read it fully before you embarrass yourself further.

Attitudes like yours really piss me off.

What attitudes are they, the ones that question people who tell lies or can't read?

Attitudes like yours really piss me off. Who is trying to push an agenda here? Your calling me a "wowser" whatever the *fuck* that is, because I "dared" to call out the bullshit that is your happy world view that if we just got the "man" out of everything then it would all be better. Well, news flash dickhead, the world and the universe does not give a fuck about what you think. Societies are too fucking complicated to model, so simplistic solutions such as "oh, if it were legal then everything would be better", don't always work out as planned. Smart people then look for something else.

Wanker

Why is it the job of some guy on Slashdot to explain the last 100 years of physics? Do a google scholar search if you are curious. You will find that jfbilodeau is absolutely right. You may consider starting here in 1896

This raises the question of climate change. It should be conveyed and understood that we are in a phase of “icehouse earth” that is abnormally cool for the planet. While this phase has lasted the entirety of human civilization and would have drastic consequences for many species should it end, it must be understood that temperatures and CO2 levels have normally been far higher, and the industrial contribution is relatively tiny.

No it doesn't raise a question about climate change. Why do you think humans exist independent of the climate system? The climate switching to the "hothouse" Earth would summarily cause an extinction event with an extremely high likelihood of taking us with it. That's the whole point.

Your argument of "in the past" is completely irrelevant to present day. The current biodiversity (which has been precipitously plummeting as of late) is based on the current climate. Our species depends on the current climate. Our arable regions and crops depend on the current climate. Our coastal regions depend on the current climate. If you want to do a historical comparison, look at what happen whenever there is a significant global climate divergence.

We find that CO2 emissions [during the Cretaceous] resulting from super-plume tectonics could have produced atmospheric CO2 levels from 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre-industrial value of 285 ppm.”

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/...

Until the past two centuries, the concentrations of CO2 ... had never exceeded about 280 ppm... Current concentrations of CO2 are about 390 ppm...

Those "super-plumes" were part of a massive extinction event that continued for millions of years. Then it took millions of years for bio-diversity to recovery.Then it millions more for us to climb down out of the trees. During all that time there were occasional extinction events. Finally, 50,000 years ago or so modern humans showed up and were doing doing relatively well until about 10,000-20,000 years ago when (again) another major climate shift occurred and almost wiped us of the face of the Earth.

The relevant point here is that when climate shifts happen, regardless of cause, it is detrimental to the current life on the planet. It is extremely naive to think that our technology has advanced to the point where such climate shifts wouldn't severely impact our species.

“We are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the present carbon dioxide level. When you have high amounts of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere up to a certain limit, which is considerably higher than it is now, the result is green plants grow very much better... And it is precisely at this time that the recovery from the first dinosaur extinction takes place.

And that took MILLIONS.OF.YEARS. In the meantime, 75% of the species that existed at the time were wiped out. Not to mention the fact that large swaths of the Earth would become inhospitable to human life if temperatures were 6C-8C warmer or the other negative impacts that go along with higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2.

The rest of your ludicrous arguments all fail for the exact same reason. You seem to think a warmer planet/higher CO2 level is a good thing while completely ignoring the global devastation it took to get to those conditions. That seems to the thing you just don't get. We have not lived in hot house conditions. Our crops have not lived in hot house conditions. The current life on this planet has not lived in hot house conditions.

Even in our own short history, even regional climate disruptions were enough to destroy civilizations. If you think a major climate shift of any kind will simply be just all unicorns and rainbows for the human raise you're either incredibly stupid or incredibly naive.

“We find that CO2 emissions [during the Cretaceous] resulting from super-plume tectonics could have produced atmospheric CO2 levels from 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre-industrial value of 285 ppm.” http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/...

Until the past two centuries, the concentrations of CO2 ... had never exceeded about 280 ppm... Current concentrations of CO2 are about 390 ppm... http://www.acs.org/content/acs...

“We are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the present carbon dioxide level. When you have high amounts of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere up to a certain limit, which is considerably higher than it is now, the result is green plants grow very much better... And it is precisely at this time that the recovery from the first dinosaur extinction takes place. When the super plumes come and carbon dioxide increases, and the oxygen correspondingly increases as a result of photosynthesis... And yet the super plumes did not last forever and they started to die at the end of Cretaceous.... In any event, large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28. And so this suggested to me that this was perhaps a significant reason for the first dinosaur extinction, and probably one of the major factors in the second, the terminal dinosaur extinction, other than the birds. It also neatly tied together all of the really bizarre features about the Cretaceous... The Cretaceous is clearly a green house period as opposed to the present ice house that we have... 72 percent of the world's petroleum supply comes from Cretaceous rocks. Well, the rich carbon dioxide of course provides for a much greater biogenic diversity... [The Cretaceous supported] 8 or 9 tropic levels, which cannot be supported today.” http://www.ucl.ac.uk/.../sloan...

“The earth is currently in an icehouse stage, as ice sheets are present on both poles and glacial periods have occurred at regular intervals over the past million years... Earth is more commonly placed in a greenhouse state throughout the epochs, and the Earth has been in this state for approximately 80% of the past 500 million years... Permanent ice is actually a rare phenomenon in the history of the Earth, occurring only during the 20% of the time that the planet is under an icehouse effect.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You're just two months into the new year and you're already declaring yourself the winner?

I was the clear winner two months ago. Otherwise I wouldn't have made the bet. Do you know how I know this?

If there is such a thing as scientific proof

There is not. Proof is for alcohol and mathematics. I assume you are not a science teacher?

show it to me

Start with this one from 1896: http://articles.adsabs.harvard....914A/0000014.000.html

And read through to this one from last year http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

Yet somehow they increased how confident they are that they are right.

It's explained in the IPCC AR5. If you are curious you can look it up.

Having delusional fantasies about defending yourself and your neighbours is not virtuous. The statistics regarding firearms used in defense has been overstated.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hi...

Real people are more concerned about protecting their ego than their person. But yeah, keep pretending you're just defending yourself and your neighbours.

*cough* Harvard Calculus *cough*

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/pedagogy/harvardcalculus/

> When the planet's surface is 60% water the meteors are going to hit water 60% of the time.

Not exactly true. There seems to be a relationship between the fall rate and latitude.

Also, the northern hemisphere has proportionally more land than the southern hemisphere (68% vs 32%), you'd expect about twice as many NH impacts on land than in the SH.

> When the planet's surface is 60% water the meteors are going to hit water 60% of the time.

Not exactly true. There seems to be a relationship between the fall rate and latitude.

Also, the northern hemisphere has proportionally more land than the southern hemisphere (68% vs 32%), you'd expect about twice as many NH impacts on land than in the SH.

And you wrote that with the unwritten assumption that this is caused by man.

It was unwritten by me but you could find it written in the scientific literature. See for instance Tett et al. 2000, Meehl et al. 2004, Stone et al. 2007, Lean and Rind 2008, Huber and Knutti 2011, Gillett et al. 2012, and Jones et al. 2013.

In case you think I am only showing articles that support my position you could look to the worlds leading scientific organizations such as the AGU: ("Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years." ) or the Royal Society ("There is strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century has been caused largely by human activity") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Or you could look to studies on the scientific consensus which find that about 95+% of scientists who have studied this issue agree that humans are largely responsible for warming over the last 50 years (see for example J. Cook, et al 2013, W. R. L. Anderegg 2010, P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman 2009, or N. Oreskes 2004

The only way NIRP can "work" is for all accounts to charge interest and there to be no physical cash option. This is not conjecture or conspiracy theory.

Negative Nominal Interest Rates: Three ways to overcome the zero lower bound , published: Buiter, Willem H., 2009. The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 213-238, December.

The paper considers three methods for eliminating the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and thus for restoring symmetry to domain over which the central bank can vary its policy rate. They are: (1) abolishing currency (which would also be a useful crime-fighting measure); (2) paying negative interest on currency by taxing currency; and (3) decoupling the numéraire from the currency/medium of exchange/means of payment and introducing an exchange rate between the numéraire and the currency which can be set to achieve a forward discount (expected depreciation) of the currency vis-a-vis the numéraire when the nominal interest rate in terms of the numéraire is set at a negative level for monetary policy purposes.

Costs and benefits to phasing out paper currency (PDF) By Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University.

This paper explores the costs and benefits to phasing out paper currency, beginning with large-denomination notes, later extending to all but small coins and bills, and eventually those as well. It is hardly a simple issue; paper currency is deeply ingrained in the public’s image of government and country, and any attempt to change long-standing monetary conventions raises a host of complex issues. The symbolic value of the euro, for example, as a flag for nascent European Institutions, is hard to overstate. Nevertheless, it is important to ask whether currency in paper form has outlived its usefulness. Credit and debit cards today are increasingly being used for even small transactions. And although today’s crypto-currencies fall far short of being true currencies – for one thing their prices are simply too volatile – the underlying technologies may ultimately strengthen the menu of electronic payments options.

For more information, the Tom Woods Show covered this in an episode last summer. Also note that so far, NIRP isn't even achieving the desired result of increased loans to spur aggregate demand. The only thing it has achieved is wealth transfer.

Most other violent socialist factions "just" slaughter people who disagree with the new government.

There are three informative works that are worth looking into, or at least to be aware of.

The first is the documentary The Soviet Story. (on demand) Its creation was supported by a committee of the European Parliament, among others. Review is below, and here is a trailer. I suggest watching the entire documentary some time.

Telling the Soviet story - A new film about Nazi-Soviet links

The film is gripping, audacious and uncompromising. Though it starts by telling the story of the murder of 7m Ukrainians in 1933, it is no mere catalogue of atrocities. The main aim of the film is to show the close connections—philosophical, political and organisational—between the Nazi and Soviet systems.

As Françoise Thom (one of many anti-communist luminaries appearing in the film) puts it: “Nazism was based on false biology; Marxism was based on false sociology”. The Marxist dream of the “new man”, for example, mirrored the Nazi idea of racial superiority. The Nazis murdered chiefly on racial grounds, while the Soviets concentrated on class. But mass murder is mass murder

Those who keep a soft spot for Marxism may flinch to hear that the sage of Highgate referred to backward societies as Völkerabfälle (racial trash) who must “perish in the revolutionary holocaust”. Or that the Nazi party in its early days idolised Lenin (Josef Goebbels said he was second only to Adolf Hitler in greatness).

Perhaps the best sequence in the film shows pairs of posters using almost identical designs: muscular workers strike heroic attitudes in support of the party and the state, blonde little girls beam, fists smash enemies, hammers break chains. Without the swastika and hammer and sickle as clues, it would be hard to know which is which.

The illustration of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is compelling: Soviet radio transmitters guided German bombers in their attacks on Poland. A Soviet naval base near Murmansk helped the Nazi attack on Norway. The Soviet secret police helped train the Gestapo and discussed how to deal with the “Jewish question” in occupied Poland. . . . Read the whole thing

The second work is, The Black Book of Communism
There are multiple reviews at the link for the book, but this is also informative: So, how many did Communism kill?

The third work is this book: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change

We find in it a great deal of history that people would like us to forget, including how fascism was admired by many, how progressives influenced and were influenced by fascist movements in Europe, and how common threads of ideas and values continue to influence events today.

And since we have a self-described socialist running for office:

Communist Party USA Chairman Vows Cooperation With Democratic Party

This raises the question of climate change. It should be conveyed and understood that we are in a phase of âoeicehouse earthâ that is abnormally cool for the planet. While this phase has lasted the entirety of human civilization and would have drastic consequences for many species should it end, it must be understood that temperatures and CO2 levels have normally been far higher. âoeWe find that CO2 emissions [during the Cretaceous] resulting from super-plume tectonics could have produced atmospheric CO2 levels from 3.7 to 14.7 times the modern pre-industrial value of 285 ppm.â http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/... âoeWe are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the present carbon dioxide level. When you have high amounts of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere up to a certain limit, which is considerably higher than it is now, the result is green plants grow very much better... And it is precisely at this time that the recovery from the first dinosaur extinction takes place. When the super plumes come and carbon dioxide increases, and the oxygen correspondingly increases as a result of photosynthesis... And yet the super plumes did not last forever and they started to die at the end of Cretaceous.... In any event, large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28. And so this suggested to me that this was perhaps a significant reason for the first dinosaur extinction, and probably one of the major factors in the second, the terminal dinosaur extinction, other than the birds. It also neatly tied together all of the really bizarre features about the Cretaceous... The Cretaceous is clearly a green house period as opposed to the present ice house that we have... Well, the rich carbon dioxide of course provides for a much greater biogenic diversity.â http://www.ucl.ac.uk/.../sloan... âoeThe earth is currently in an icehouse stage, as ice sheets are present on both poles and glacial periods have occurred at regular intervals over the past million years... Earth is more commonly placed in a greenhouse state throughout the epochs, and the Earth has been in this state for approximately 80% of the past 500 million years... Permanent ice is actually a rare phenomenon in the history of the Earth, occurring only during the 20% of the time that the planet is under an icehouse effect.â https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Berkman report is pretty interesting reading and points out thatdevice encryption can be frustrating, but there's still no default for end-to-end encrypted communication, metadata is plaintext by necessity, and the security of the IoT is something that too few people have worried about.

Their argument is like liberals trying to outlaw firearms: they make a basic assumption that 'guns are evil, therefore get rid of guns' when in reality people kill people, and eliminating guns won't really do a damn thing; someone wants to kill, they'll find a way, gun or no gun.

Any argument you might have had just evaporated with this ridiculous statement.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hi...

http://www.ajpmonline.org/arti...

And before you get all uppity and start yet another gun argument, no-one is suggesting to outlaw firearms, gun regulation means allowing sensible people access to sensible weapons, just like in most other western countries that have gun regulations, and healthy gun ownership, but nowhere as many issues.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never mind the fact that filesharing is never, ever going to go away, either; they're fighting a losing battle.

The strategy, like gun regulation, is not elimination, it is to minimise availability. By going after the low hanging fruit, it makes pirate file sharing a less common practice. So the stupid people who can't figure out technology will find it too hard, and so pay for it through legitimate channels instead (have you seen iTunes profit lately?) This strategy only has to make a 10-20% dent in the market and it is worth million of dollars. That doesn't sound that stupid to me.

Why Is Blue Light before Bedtime Bad for Sleep?
Blue light has a dark side

Perhaps you are talking about New Math [wikipedia.org] which was introduced in the 1960s, and then abandoned by 1970. That was five decades ago.

When I was in college during the 1990's, Harvard Calculus became the new thing in teaching introduction calculus. The textbook had only word problems from "real life applications" with none of the problems demonstrated in familiar mathematical symbols. Even the instructors had problems trying to translate the word problems into mathematical symbols on the blackboard. I gave up the class after a few weeks. The university gave up on the courses a few years later.

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/pedagogy/harvardcalculus/

Not true, when guns are more available, more gun violence ensues. please check out this harvard paper http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hi...

Guns don't kill, unregulated easy access to firearms does.

Um... actually...

Firstly, private gun sales are legal. Facebook is making a blanket policy which is politically charged, which could also be applied to arranging abortions, distasteful speech, consensual sex of any non-mainstream type, and a host of others that anyone can come up with after a few minutes thought.

So in effect, they are suppressing behaviour that is completely legal.

Secondly, although guns do seem to kill a lot of people, the overall statistic of importance to check is "average expected lifespan", which is much *higher* in areas where there is easy legal access to guns.

To put this another way, if you let your kids play in the yard of a gun owner, their chance of being killed by that gun go way up, but their chances of death by *all causes* go down. If you can't maintain proper nutrition or medicine for a time because you got robbed, it affects your overall lifespan. If your neighbor has guns, it has a protective effect on you because criminals tend to go elsewhere, and so on.

Thirdly, if you like to compare England to the US, consider this Harvard study which finds (journal page 656):

[...] despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s.On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England’s response was evermore drastic gun control including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns. Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by 2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the developed world’s most violenceridden nations..

To conserve the resources of the inundated criminal justice system, English police no longer investigate burglary and “minor assaults.” As of 2006, if the police catch a mugger, robber, or burglar, or other “minor” criminal in the act, the policy is to release them with a warning rather than to arrest and prosecute them.

Easy access to firearms actually protects people.

Personally, I dislike being mugged, robbed, burgled, and assaulted in *minor* manners, but

...if that floats your boat please continue telling us about the perils of easy access to firearms.

One anecdote doesn't override stats, jedidiah. I could give pointless, inapplicable anecdotes if that is the only thing you'll believe, but I won't bother. Numbers, however...

"New study finds 45,000 deaths [in the US] annually linked to lack of health coverage" - Harvard Gazette
http://news.harvard.edu/gazett...

In 1978, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) reported that, "Only 10%-20% of all procedures currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled trial. In 1995, the OTA compared medical technology in eight countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States) and again noted that few medical procedures in the U.S. had been subjected to clinical trial. It also reported that infant mortality was high and life expectancy was low compared to other developed countries. Although almost ten years old, much of what was said in this report holds true today. The report lays the blame for the high cost of medicine squarely at the feet of the medical free-enterprise system and the fact that there is no national health care policy. It describes the failure of government attempts to control health care costs due to market incentive and profit motive in the financing and organization of health care including private insurance, hospital system, physician services, and drug and medical device industries. Whereas we may want to expand health-care, expansion of disease-care is the goal of free enterprise. "Health Care Technology and Its Assessment in Eight Countries" is also the last report prepared by the OTA, which was shut down in 1995. It's also, perhaps, the last honest, in-depth look at modern medicine. Because of the importance of this 60-page report, we enclose a summary in the Appendix.
http://www.wnho.net/deathbymed...

There is none so blind, as those that will not see. - Matthew Henry.

men's general health overall is so good

Confirmed for troll by stating a bald faced lie about well-established facts. Men have 1.4x the death ratio of women, and it's higher in all major health-related categories except Alzheimers. Source: http://www.health.harvard.edu/...

Gold standard is a fucking illusion. It's no different from fiat money. It's simply an accounting tool that is easy to carry (high density, so not taking too much space), doesn't stink, and not easily eroded by chemical degradation, so it stuck.

Arguing for gold standard is like arguing that natural numbers must be based on comparison with stones one-by-one. You have two cows. How do you know they're two? By establishing one-to-one mapping from them to a subset of International Prototype of Stones made from platinum-iridium alloy, stashed in a basement in Paris. That's gold standard for y'all.

Why are you afraid of getting a ticket?

Are we going around in circles? You seem to equate probability with irrational fear? Hint, they aren't the same thing.

Yes, I believe the risk of an accident is greater than the risk of needing a gun. I also believe the risk of being in another fire is less than either of those things, and yet I still keep a fire extinguisher handy. It's about the risk-to-consequences ratio.

Now we are making progress. So to quantify that risk (using made up numbers purely to demonstrate a point), if probability if a serious car accident is 1:10000, and probability of act of crime where having a gun improves the situation is 1:1000000, and you act on the 1:1000000 risk but don't act on the 1:10000 (ie don't wear a helmet while driving), unless there's other information I'm not aware of, it can only be because you've overstated the 1:1000000 risk for no logical reason. This is what irrational fear is.

Your thinking is unclear. People are killed by fires when they don't have a fire extinguisher, just like some people are killed by criminal assault when they don't have a gun.

Those people are also killed by fires and guns even when they do have preventative measures (eg it's hard to use your gun when you're asleep).
Unlike a fire though, a fire extinguisher NEVER increases your risk of being in a fire, whereas owning a gun does increase you chance of being shot.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ma...
http://ajph.aphapublications.o...

Note: don't take this an anti-gun post, I'm fine with people owning guns, along with appropriate regulation, I just think the reason people think they need guns are somewhat misplaced.

Clickbait, no: there's actual, real, high-quality content to what he writes.

No, it isn't.

Cosmology is complicated. The Black_Hole at the center of our galaxy is an awesome thing, but it's just a little bitty baby compared to the clickbaiting monster at the center of M87, which is 3.5 BILLION solar masses!

These links are also well-written and also have pretty pictures. If I write a few dozen paragraphs of drivel like that and loosely tie it in to a one-sentence summary of whatever Hubble or Chandra discovered this week, do I get two front-page articles on Slashdot every day?

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hi...

The United States ranks 50th for rate of suicide. Japan, with very strict gun laws ranks 17th. (List of countries by suicide rate)

Which is completely meaningless given they're vastly different cultures.

Guns may make it easier, having tons of guns may result in having more suicides by guns but where's your evidence that guns mean more suicides?

There are lots of studies, here's a quick primer I googled. The mechanism is really obvious (guns are very quick, effective, and highly associated with dying) and whenever there's a big drop in gun control there's also a big drop in suicide rates.

You won't see that because Apple already squatted on U+F8FF at the end of the Private Use Area. But that's what happens when you sell your own computers with your own operating system. Let's see KitKat fork BSD with their own UI on top and then we can talk.