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Interesting. I got quite upset with the IHT-NYT change a while ago for exactly this reason: many bookmarks and links to news articles that I had made throughout the years evaporated overnight, making me regret not printing or saving the text of those articles when I had the chance. But apparently the NYT has fixed it now. Crampton links to two articles of a scoop he had a few years ago, and they resolve to a new page. And a bookmark that I have on the computer I'm working on now has the same thing, suggesting that they must have transferred their news archive to the new site.

The original bookmark: http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/24/opinion/edcardenas.php now resolves to http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/opinion/24iht-edcardenas.1.20395821.html

I'll try it later with my other bookmarks, but it seems like they have responded to the criticism well.

Grass Mud Horse is an interesting phenomenon

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/12/asia/12beast.php

It was against this background that the grass-mud horse and several mythical companions appeared in early January on the Chinese Internet portal Baidu. The creatures' names, as written in Chinese, were innocent enough. But much as "bear" and "bare" have different meanings in English, their spoken names were double entendres with inarguably dirty second meanings.

So while "grass-mud horse" sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its written Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning â"taken literally â" is benign. Thus the beast not only has dodged censors' computers, but has also eluded the government's own ban on so-called offensive behavior.

As depicted online, the grass-mud horse seems innocent enough at the start.

An alpaca-like animal - in fact, the videos show alpacas - it lives in a desert whose name resembles yet another foul word. The horses are "courageous, tenacious and overcome the difficult environment," a YouTube song about them says.

But they face a problem: invading "river crabs" that are devouring their grassland. In spoken Chinese, "river crab" sounds very much like "harmony," which in China's cyberspace has become a synonym for censorship. Censored bloggers often say their posts have been "harmonized" â" a term directly derived from President Hu Jintao's regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious society.

In the end, one song says, the horses are victorious: "They defeated the river crabs in order to protect their grassland; river crabs forever disappeared from the Ma Le Ge Bi," the desert.

Hi,
found the fact that for the first time in six years CS programs make a comeback in enrollment very interesting: in case you'd have a look to following article by John Markoff

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=20887972

it gives some opinions about, as this one

"This could be a sign that we are beginning to make headway as well as increased attention, increased interest and increased investment," said Andrew A. Chien, director of research at Intel

To give an example - Fedex and UPS spent hundreds of millions of dollars to place orders for A380s in 2006

... and then withdrew them in 2007

It's hard not to think the huge furor about the bonuses is being whipped up as some sort of distraction

It was a distraction, while the Fed pumps another $1 trillion into circulation:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/18/business/fed.php

Which will either head off deflation (never in history been successful) or cause hyperinflation, while we are worried about 0.1% of AIG's bailout funds.

I do agree that the current furor is nothing more than a smokescreen, however hyperinflation is not all that bad for the US. It is however lethal for the creditors like Japan or China. I rather have a hyperinflation than deflationary spiral.

It's hard not to think the huge furor about the bonuses is being whipped up as some sort of distraction

It was a distraction, while the Fed pumps another $1 trillion into circulation:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/18/business/fed.php
Which will either head off deflation (never in history been successful) or cause hyperinflation, while we are worried about 0.1% of AIG's bailout funds.

Perhaps because as yet the European amateurs haven't expressed a desire to wipe anyone "off the map".

Perhaps...

Perhaps not...

No, the blame lies with the Portuguese government agency that contracted to build the site but didn't impose a requirement that the developers not employ proprietary technologies that limit open access. I could build a fine procurement site with open-source technologies like PHP and PostgreSQL that would require nothing beyond a generic browser on the client side; I'm sure many others here could do so as well.

The last thing I could imagine doing is building such a site on graphics-heavy technologies like Silverlight or Flash.

If the Portuguese government hasn't heard about open access and open-source software, were their representatives just out of the room for the past half-dozen years during EU and EC pronouncements on these subjects?

The hallmark of a mercantile nation is hoarding.

You're using "mercantile nation" differently than others do. For instance Dictionary.com says "2. engaged in trade or commerce: a mercantile nation."

if China were really trading fairly

China doesn't trade fairly, that I admit. If China wanted to trade fairly then they'd have to let the market set the price of yuan or the Chinese Renminbi. But instead the government does.

she would be spending that money around the globe and those dollars would ultimately work their way back to the US economy.

China does spend, er invest, that money throughout the world. For instance "China to invest in Brazil oil". China is one of the biggest investors in Africa. It's because of China that there hasn't been a solution in the Sudan before, but the Chinese are pushing for peace now.

those "New Deal" era reforms made by Roosevelt that were successful

Some economists believe FDRs reforms prolonged the Great Depression as I've said elsewhere. Here's what the Wall Street Journal has to say about "How Government Prolonged the Depression". The protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, enacted in 1930, may of made it worse.

Obviously, all taxes are bad in some theoretical sense, but if you were going to tax -effectively-, and raise revenue to do what it is that governments do, then, the things to tax would be hoards. Capital Gains taxes are the -worst- form of taxes because they encourage hoarding. On the other hand, sales taxes are pretty terrible too because they discourage spending, and that ultimately lowers the velocity of money.

Depending on how you look at it taxing something but not another may be bad, or visa versa. Taxing investments drives money away from investments, and taxing spending drives money away from spending. However not enough people in the US invest enough, too many people have been living beyond their means since at least the 1990s. That stimulus package passed in early 2008, where rebates were mailed out to tax payers, failed because many people used it to pay off debt instead of spending it. If they had spent it though then they would of had more debt. Damn if I do and damn if I don't. About the only thing I can see working is to reduce government spending so taxes can be lowered if not eliminated. Reduce the size of government and use user fees for those things government does mean to provide, like roads.

Falcon

do you really think the locals are going to report on human rights abuses against women in Iran?

They already are. Do you think the women of Iran are simply going to knuckle under, or that Nazila Fathi is just going to go be a waitress somewhere just because the NY Times disappeared?

It's true. U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations

For references, from wikipedia: The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world at 737 persons imprisoned per 100,000 (as of 2005).[16] A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that in the United States more than 1 in 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.[9] The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[6]

The Brits have ground to be ambivalent about France, but the US?

Depends who you believe.

The interesting thing is that Neanderthals has the same version of FOXP2 as modern humans. This makes it more likely that they had proper speech rather than just "grunting" sounds.

Up until the moment stupid people decide that imaginary man in the sky forbids it or that they just don't need it.

Not necessarily mean; the truly mean types generally end up dead or in prison. What you need is a sort of psychopathic ruthlessness.

Even then, engaging in regular criminal activity ups your chances of being murdered in the USA something like a 100X... Hmm... Let's pull up some figures...

I base this on this post, per the FBI 60-80% of murders are felon on felon.
This one suggests that there are ~1.6 million felons denied the right to vote.*

Going by the 300 Million of our population, and round up to 2 million felons(some states don't remove the ability to vote, so the 1.6 is an underestimate. Anyways, we're looking at a category making up .7% of the population consisting of OVER HALF the murder victims... By my calcs, that's 148 times more likely to be murdered if you're a felon. Ouch, huh?

As for the being smart part; many criminals, even if they aren't caught by the police, end up earning less than the average fast food employee. Being caught and spending time in jail/prison, legal costs, etc... Makes even many of the 'more successful' ones rather poor earners.

*I have to say that I wish I could have found better sources, but even if the magnitudes are correct, it points out how dangerous doing felony stuff can be.

A lot of other people have torn to pieces the idea that we really call it "Darwinism" in meaningful discourse. They're pretty right. Our understanding of evolution has, err, evolved, over the years since he first propounded his theory.

That said, he laid the foundations for evolutionary biology, and deserves to leave his name in history a bit. If you've never read The Origin of Species, give it a shot. It's a solid work, and quite accessible. His application of the scientific method should be a case study for all scientists.

For any interested, there's a pretty good article about him over at the International Herald Tribune at the moment.

it is an USA problem (and probably China), that requires their industries to make a change.

That was true before but "China overtakes U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions". At the same tyme "wind power in China is developing rapidly and receives particularly strong government support."

Falcon

Did you download a distro a day? Watch one movie every day at DVD compression?

Glossing over the fact that it doesn't matter because they agreed to sell us the bandwidth to use as we see fit (barring illegal activities, etc.), there are also uploads to factor in. We watch a lot of streaming video, and we're about to watch more. But I also regularly send large files to my friends and coworkers, and my job will soon require that I send them more often (Citrix FTW). What YOU do with YOUR bandwidth may differ.

Speaking of greedy bastards, what about all the loser subscribers that want 100 Mbps of dedicated content for 1/10th what it actually costs the providers to buy it themselves?

I won't stoop to feces-flinging, but I will point out that if ISP's offer to sell a certain thing for a certain price, they are obligated to deliver that thing at that price. If it really costs them so much, then they can't really afford to sell it for so little, can they? I guess not. Of course, Charter is in financial trouble, isn't it? Another case of over-leveraging, trying to sell what you don't have.

I'm a subcontractor biophysicist on a battlefield medicine project.

Looking at the injuries sustained on the battlefield, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/04/america/wounded.php one should conclude they require massive repairs. As my colleague (one of the authors of the book) has stated, the single most important item to have to survive an injury in a battle is a tourniquet.

Most people go out past the wire with a tourniquet pre-applied (but not tightened) on each limb. When I was there, it was a strong suggestion and may now be a requirement.

Now, I'm not on a snake-like project. If it is more complex (and costs a lot more) than a tourniquet, I'd say it is not going to have the promised outcome any greater than a tourniquet.

What does a fat yank cunt like you know?

More than a whinging POME bastard like you.

Type "libel tourism" into google. It is no coincidence that the UK is the centre for this sort of thing.

That's been covered a few times on slashdot already.

Yes, the WTO ruled against the US in favor of Antigua -- but it doesn't matter. Antigua is powerless.

The US is simply removing gambling from the treaties governing the operation of the WTO.

Make no bones about it... the WTO is a tool of the big players, and Antigua is playing shorthanded against the big stack at the table.

But there is just one problem is equating this with NASA. NASA has, AFAIK, never done any research into deflecting asteroids and has never implemented or even proposed such a program.

Thought I'd do some checking on this and share with the class:
B612 Foundation

We've been anticipating the conclusion of a contract we issued to Jet Propulsion Laboratory in early 2008, and it's now available. We asked JPL to analyze, in detail, the performance of a transponder equipped gravity tractor (t-GT) in determining the precise orbit of a NEO with which it has rendezvoused, and to evaluate the towing performance of the GT per se.

And elsewhere on their site:

NASA's NEO Report to Congress (see #15 below) has stirred considerable controversy due to both its rejection of Congress' request for a recommended program to support the new Spaceguard Survey goal and it's technically flawed deflection analysis. The analytic work supporting the summary report to Congress is being withheld from public review by NASA despite it having been published as a 3-color glossy "Final Report" and distributed internally.

The sky is falling, really:

The bad news? While this all looks fine on paper, scientists haven't had a chance to try it in practice. And this is where NASA's report was supposed to come in. Congress directed the agency in 2005 to come up with a program, a budget to support it and an array of alternatives for preventing an asteroid impact.

But instead of coming up with a plan and budget to get the job done, the report bluntly stated that "due to current budget constraints, NASA cannot initiate a new program at this time."

Why did the space agency drop the ball? Like all government departments, it fears the dreaded "unfunded mandate." Congress has the habit of directing agencies to do something and then declining to give them the money to do so. In this case, Congress not only directed NASA to provide it with a recommended program but also asked for the estimated budget to support it. It was a left-handed way for the Congress to say to NASA that this is our priority like it or not. But for some reason NASA seems to have opted for a federal form of civil disobedience.

I think this ties in with NASA's, and specifically Administrator Griffin's, emphasis on manned missions over unmanned missions. I hope Obama replaces the man. Because, not having a space mission is a good excuse for the dinosaurs, we can't use that one.

1) I don't think that's how GPRS works, it is my understanding that after you register with the tower, SMS is done as a push. No polling needed.

2) "Costly" is a relative term. You're saying that despite the ever increasing power of computer systems and speed of networks that a data handshake is not only costly, but that the cost has been going UP?

3) Tax write-offs, govt grants, those "fees on your bill" you've already paid for it several times over in your monthly bill, yet they still get to rape you when you send a txt message.

4) Comparing physical good delivery to data delivery probably isn't the best comparison. I wouldn't call it "stupid" but the relative cost implications are wildly different.

Operators get, on average, 20 percent of their revenue from text messaging, according to Van Veen. In 2010 about 2.3 trillion text messages will be sent worldwide, generating $72.5 billion for the operators, according to forecasts released last year by Gartner Dataquest. Most of that turns into profit, because the profit margin on text messaging hovers around 90 percent, more than double what operators get on voice services.
source

90 percent profit margin sounds like those handshakes aren't too costly.

(IsraelNN.com) The Israeli Navy Monday morning blocked a Libyan ship trying to challenge Israeli sovereignty over Gaza coastal waters by landing at Gaza with 3,000 tons of food and medicine. The Foreign Ministry confirmed that it stopped the ship around dawn and that no force was necessary. "The Navy warned the ship that it was approaching prohibited waters and it decided to turn back," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levi said.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128625

In late August, two boats arrived in Gaza despite Israeli threats to stop them. Israeli Foreign Ministry officials said at the time that there had been a last-minute decision to let the boats through to avoid a public relations debacle at sea, and not to play into the hands of people they described as provocateurs. This time, too, Israeli officials had stated that the boat would not be allowed to reach Gaza, and that the Free Gaza trips would not become routine. Yet the boat was allowed to proceed without hindrance once again. "It was decided at the highest levels to allow them to enter," said Yigal Palmor, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, without further explanation.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/29/mideast/mideast.php

Dignity, a small boat carrying activists, was allowed to sail into Gaza on Tuesday, less than a week after the navy stopped a Libyan cargo ship from entering the Palestinian port and after police prevented a group of Israeli Arabs from embarking for the Strip from Jaffa. Palestinian fishermen welcome... Palestinian fishermen welcome a boat carrying members of a previous activist ship, upon its arrival at Gaza port earlier this month. The boat left Cyprus on Monday night, and was organized by the Free Gaza Movement, which has successfully sailed three ships into the Strip in recent months.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1228728125788

If Israel doesn't want you moving goods into Gaza, you are going to find it very difficult to do so...

Wow...

I'll just throw this out here: the uneducated masses of the US believe it is a democracy. The US is not. It is a Constitutional Republic. The key factor being Republic, where a minority can hold power. That means the wealthiest, charismatic, or powerful people will hold positions. A small group of people, even if they were elected, could not change the government, since it would necessitate a majority vote in both the House and the Senate with the President's seal of approval, or a 2/3 majority. There would never be a majority in favor of reform because those in power would be voting to give up power.

As far as the UN goes, it wastes money like all other governments. Fox News reports of a mural where the cost was taken out of relief funds. Also, the US pays 22% of the UN budget. Japan contributes 19%, with Germany at 8.66%, rounding out the top 3. I don't think you can claim the US doesn't pay a fair share.

Do you remember the UN limiting criticism of Islam? http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/01/news/UN-GEN-UN-Free-Speech.php Something is seriously wrong with the UN if they can limit free speech.

Yes, because someone smoking pot or passing a bad check is a danger to society and must be confined with hardened criminals for several years. Exposing them to sexual and physical abuse, depriving his son of a father, institutionalizing his mind, and depriving society of any beneficial production on his part while spending tons to house him is somehow beneficial to society. The US system isn't about rehabilitation, or benefiting society.

You make a nice abstract picture, one I can't disagree with, but the facts of the US system don't really align with what you say. The US system is broke. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/america/23prison.php

Your correct. Remember that palm shaped islands call Palms Island, shouldn't all things be that way, and they just spray sand dredged from the bottom of the Persian gulf and lay the palm pattern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands
I assume they will use breakwaters like this for the hotel but further away to make it more "aesthetic".
I don't know about how they will handle the extremist but I know how they handle the tourist already:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/10/16/dubai.sex.couple.prison/index.html
http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/04/dubai-rape-victim-faces-prosecution.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/31/africa/dubai.php
I don't know who is worst, the government or the extremist.

Greenland melt seems to be picking up speed

Your list is inaccurate.

-Americans have the constitutional right to abortion.
-Soft drugs I'll give you. It's a problem here, we're working to fix it.
-Alcohol is another one. We currently have that freedom only from age 21, and it's a problem.
-Prostitution is legal in Nevada. It's a state thing, there isn't a federal law against prostitution.
-Again, there is no federal law against it. Euthanasia is legal in Washington and Oregon, and it's not like there are border controls.
-Marriage is a state thing. Legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut, marriage equivalent unions exist in other states.
-All 50 states allow divorce. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
-We have real freedom of speech, while you can only speak your mind if you happen to agree with the government. That is actually something the US has better than almost every other country on the planet. Our cartoonists don't get arrested for hate speech. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/16/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Cartoonist-Arrested.php
-It's Sunday here. The bars are open.
-You got us on the public sex thing. This country is full of prudes.
-I find it very hard to believe that you don't need a visa for 99% of the planet. I just checked, and you're required to have a visa to go to either China or Russia, that covers quite a bit of the planet right there. About the only place we can't go is North Korea. Everywhere else lets Americans in.

But yeah, "leader of the free world" is pretty stupid, even though his policies will have a great impact on your country.

Apparently you and the AC below you have still managed to miss the fact that he's IN! AFRICA!

This is a doctor doing aid work in a third world WAR ZONE, at a hospital less than 20 miles from the border with Rwanda. This is volunteerism; he doesn't even have sufficient *blood* to do the surgery safely, much less someone to reimburse him for what might end up as a several hundred dollar phone bill. You work with the tools you have, and the fact that he was able to pull this off given the resource and budget constraints that were put on him is something to be commended.

Commended. Not denigrated by some privileged jackass who has NO FREAKING CLUE what the world is like outside of his wealthy Western lifestyle and doesn't know (or probably even care) what kind of resources these doctors are working with. This guy takes a month off each year to go work for FREE to save lives, working 24-hour trauma shifts, and you gripe him out because his method of checking with his colleagues isn't high class enough for you -- because he isn't emptying his pocket fast enough.

You make me sick.

As if Oil for Food, Commission on Human Rights and United Nations Office for Project Services weren't already proof enough that any money given to the U.N. is money wasted !

Is anyone else here tired of knee-jerk partisanship framing discussion in terms of false dichotomies? Government involvement can do a whole lot of good or a whole lot of bad. The devil is always in the details.

Good: regulate to prevent monopolization of last-mile utilities and reduce barriers to competition.

Bad: let lobbyists who supported your campaign write bills that hand out huge billion dollar tax breaks to carriers to build out the next generation "information superhighway" and sit idle while all of that money goes straight into the pockets of shareholders instead while countries like South Korea and Japani take the lead in broadband while America slowly turns into a broadband backwater.

Hopefully things will work out a little differently in the new administration.

maybe this has something to do with all of the bee's disappearing? http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/business/bees.php

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/23/america/shuttle.php

Hope they've got a good, strong blend!

Let me get this straight, no ones curious about the drug reference?

Bam!

If the feds didn't force banks to make bad loans, we wouldn't be drowning in foreclosures.

We'd still have the 50% of the loans made by companies that weren't banks, plus whatever percentage of bank mortgages made after Bush undid Clinton's CRA regulations.

Nice try though, next time tell us about how the $200 billion in loans mae and mac held magically turned into a 3/4 trillion dollar bailout in a desperate attempt to convince us that it's all the government's fault because no company acting on its own would ever choose to write a loan that paid more interest than prime rates.

1. How much has the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere gone up since the industrial revolution? How much has the temperature gone up?

CO2: Around 40%
Temperature: Around 1 degree Celcius

2. When and why were Europe and North America deforested? Why does it matter?

Europe experienced a lot of deforestation at the hands of mankind between 1100 to 1500 AD. There wasn't much after that until recent years, when it has again become a serious problem.
America experienced little deforestation until the arrival of European settlers, and there has been extensive deforestation since then, mostly over the last two centuries.

As for why it matters: Forests are a good CO2 sink. Losing them at the same time as releasing unprecedented quantities of CO2 in to the atmosphere will lead to a situation we have not had before and therefore can only make educated guesses as to what will happen.

3. What bad effects of the temperature rise have been observed since the industrial revolution? How sure are you that the bad effects are attributable to global warming?

If I may, I won't just concentrate on what the temperature rise has done, but instead the overall effects of temperature, increased CO2 and so on. It's not fair to look at only one part of the story...

Possible (debatable) effects: More flooding, tornadoes and extreme weather than we had before.
More definite effects: More swans in Siberia, colural foliage fading, severe damage to coral reefs, ocean acidification and more...

4. How much are you predicting that the carbon dioxide levels will rise?

I'm not predicting anything... It's probably safe to say "between not much and quite a lot". Please go look at some research yourself for estimates.

5. How much are you predicting that the temperatures will rise?

I'm not predicting anything... It's probably safe to say "between not much and quite a lot". Please go look at some research yourself for estimates.

6. What bad effects are you predicting due to increased temperature?

Similar to the effects we're experiencing today (see above), only worse relative to the amount of climate change inducing factors involved (including, but not limited to, CO2, temperature rises (from any source) and so on).

7. Isn't it true that without the greenhouse effect, the earth would be a frozen ball of ice and life would be very difficult on the planet?

Yes, that is true, which is why no-one is suggesting we strip the atmosphere off the planet - things would be rather unpleasant.
This is a very silly question though, because you know full well that it's not a binary situation "we have a greenhouse effect"/"we don't have a greenhouse effect". What matters is how MUCH of a greenhouse effect we have. Too little or too much are both bad situations.

Also it does not show that encryption really is compromised. It only shows there are strong signs it is.

If you combine this with some articles found via Google, there certainly are doubts about Skype's security, which for me is enough that I wouldn't really trust it.

And here's the IHT covering the same issue with Barney Frank, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee, apparently strongly against the bonuses. He says he is "deeply disappointed" that a number of financial institutions are distorting the legislation, and says it would be a "violation of the terms of the Act", i.e. a criminal offence to use bailout money like that (hey, it's the same non-US media source!), e.g. to pay executives' bonuses etc.

Listen to what the parent is saying, folks. It's the difference between freedom and dictatorship, and apparently a principal that some portion of the population in the US and UK don't understand.

The UK is doing better lately.

The US has further to go to get back on track:

According to this article, neither candidate is going to reduce the national debt.

While both presidential candidates enter the campaign's final week promising to be the better fiscal steward, each has outlined tax and spending proposals that would make annual budget deficits worse, analysts say, with Senator John McCain likely to create a deeper hole than Senator Barack Obama would.

We, as a country, are screwed with either candidate. As someone who usually leans Republican, I must admit that I think we are less screwed should Obama win. Therefore, he will be getting my vote.

The Real Deal on the Current Economic Crisis

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working home owners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

[citation needed]

Indeed... I took the time to read the blog he's pooh-poohing.

I don't care who wrote it and whether it's the same person or not, they have Gerard pegged - he knows his behavior is indefensible, so he's gone into [Personal Attack] mode right here on Slashdot.

This is of course the same David Gerard who's so "nice" that he regularly cusses people out... even when they were right all along.

The evidence is ample. Rather than this mythical "horde" of people who are trying to "ruin" wikipedia while "valiant defenders" like David Gerard stand in their way, wikipedia is simply full of psychopathic game-players who've ruined more articles than they've saved with petty game-playing, internal politics, and a destructive inability to do anything other than engage in edit-wars and ban-wars. The idea that it's an MMORPG, despite a tongue-in-cheek article penned by someone, is pretty apt - the difference being that if some nasty group of psychopaths decides to grief people and "hold territory" in a game like Everquest or World of Warcraft it just ruins someone's day, while when it happens on Wikipedia it has some shitty real-life implications... and not just when talking about biographies either, but on serious issues.

It makes me wonder... what else is David Gerard and the whole Wikipedia administration system trying to hide? How many people have they abused, lied about, and falsely accused of being "sockpuppets" for trying to fix the broken wikipedia system?

How many good contributors have been run off of the project because of people like David Gerard who see sockpuppets at every turn, whenever someone disagrees with certain "privileged" members?

Seeing him in action today has been like seeing some insane, paranoid night watchman who jumps at every shadow. Gerard, give it a rest, take a LONG wikibreak, and for god's sakes clear the names of all the people you have wrongly accused.

Whatever "lobbying" was being done previously, it seems to have been completely effective. Many countries have signed, without dispute, so-called "free" trade agreements which essentially codify every US-corporate-friendly dream that could be devised by the Bushites - including DMCA-ish and software patent provisions, to speak of 2 issues in the IT area. In non-IT areas, similar capitulations are even worse. Pharmaceuticals, agriculture, all get twisted into poisonous American corporatised pretzels, to pave the way for overpriced patent drugs and monstrosities such as GM products (which should be flat-out illegal anywhere). It's as if the "sovereign" countries didn't even read the agreements, let alone take heed of the public outry that always accompanies them.

It must be so easy for them, when the signatories are Bush-puppet governments such as the Howard government in Australia (thankfully rejected at last) and Harper (which malignancy we should pray is thrown out tomorrow, or at least held safely to a minority).

Let's be honest. "Globalisation" never meant anything more or less than "America buys your stuff cheap, you buy America's stuff dear". The world does not need Wal-Mart, Microsoft, McDonald's, or any other substandard, exploitative American brand. The height of absurdity is Wal-Mart selling rice to Indians. What do the Wal-Marts in China sell? Crappy plastic Chinese crap back to the Chinese? The whole concept is absurd. What is Wal-Mart even doing in Canada?

The ultimate irony is that those tilting the playing field towards the USA, and who would most vehemently deny the insuperable insult to sovereignty that these agreements represent, also claim to believe in a "free market" - the Bushites, the Reaganites, the Friedmanites, the corrupt fuckwads, the ignorant lying Sarah and Todd Palins, the criminal Cons and neo-Cons whose chickens, we hope, are coming home to roost at last. If you're wondering why you're having trouble competing - maybe it's because you're not competitive! Top example - Microsoft can't compete on merit. They have to be anti-competitive; and you betcha they love them some FTA help. Pity they got caught at it.

But perhaps as the world wises the hell up, we finally see some logic in Bush's response: More lobbying. "Bring it on", in the Texan moron's famous catchphrase: Just expect more pushback!

But we'd prefer if you'd just Bugger off.

"I know Dick Cheney has assured us that 'Deficits don't matter' ..."

Tell that to Iceland. Not so long ago, Iceland was a rich country. Recently, the country has become unable to pay its debts, and its currency has quickly lost its value. Now, banks have stopped trading in Iceland krona, which means the money has essentially become worthless. And that means that if all you have is Icelandic kronur, you will have a very hard time paying for things. I don't think Iceland is a rich country anymore. Now, tell me again why deficits don't matter?

You are confusing small individual bills with the goverment's budget. The budget is a much much bigger deal. It is where Reagan began taking us down the bad path.

The *President* sends the budget to Congress.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/05/news/budget.php

A one-megaton nuclear bomb detonated 250 miles over Kansas could cripple many modern electronic devices and systems in the continental US and take out the power grid for a long time.

I don't mean to troll, but you don't need a nuclear bomb to take out the power grid [1,3]. Instead, the money should be invested in renewing the outdated grid in the USA [2,3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout

[2] http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/26/business/grid.php

[3] http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/239-5-years-after-blackout-power-grid-still-in-dire-straits.html

It's not that the mutants survive, it's that everyone survives, so there's no basis for any one mutant having a better chance of survival. Which means we'll just have a lot of mutants.

Evolution can't work if "survival of the fittest" really means "survival of everyone".

Evolution is survival *and* (since everyone dies eventually) propagation of the genetic line. It is not enough to survive - an individual must survive and reproduce (and their children must reproduce, etc, etc.). If you and I are alive 50 years from now - but you have 20 grandchildren and I have none - then it is pretty clear whose is more "fit" from a genetic perspective.

This viewpoint could also be extended to larger cultural, religious, or ethnic groups. Populations that promote population growth will have an upper hand on societies that do not. An extreme example is the Shaker community whose beliefs (celibacy) have doomed it to a dead end.

Because of it's zero-sum/violent nature we tend not to recognize when natural selection is at work in the human population. But don't fool yourself. Natural selection of the human population is still going on all over the world (see http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/17/opinion/edheinsohn.php).

"Expect to see more Sorny goods if this goes ahead!"

Maybe not. Maybe: "Expect to see a lot of counterfeit products labeled Sony, in the same kind of packaging Sony uses."

Ever since the days of the DOS operating system, when it was only the Taiwanese who supplied computer parts, the Chinese have been extremely dishonest. They would deliver computer parts until a distributor got established. They would get paid when a load was delivered to a ship in Taiwan. But, the would eventually deliver a huge load of junk, stuff that had failed testing but had been saved for that purpose. That would put the U.S. distributor out of business.

At the same time, there would be a Chinese distributor in town that just began doing business, selling the same items.

Now that everyone has paid to build factories and complicated procedures in China, they are very vulnerable to Chinese control.

Here are a few stories, chosen from thousands. The Chinese governments, in Taiwan and mainland China, have always pretended to be interested in stopping counterfeiting:

FBI and Chinese seize $500 million of counterfeit software.

Dangerous Fakes: How counterfeit, defective computer components from China are getting into U.S. warplanes and ships.

YouTube videos about Chinese counterfeiting

The World's Greatest Fakes: Chinese Copies Are Making Their Way Back To U.S.

Heparin Find May Point to Chinese Counterfeiting

Chinese Product Counterfeiting Causes US Job Layoffs