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No warming for 18 years? Then how could we have just had the warmest summer ever recorded with continued melting of ice worldwide and rising sea levels? I think this was all predicted by the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, and is now being observed. If we see the warming stop, and the melting and sea level rise slow significantly, then we can talk about rethinking the hypothesis. Let me know when that happens.

"Continued melting of ice worldwide"?

WRONG!!!!!!>

Don't you hate it when reality intrudes?

Oops!

...

“All the climate models say it should be going down and it’s actually going up, and it’s making news,”

...

Wait? The models say Antarctic ice should be shrinking, yet it's GROWING!?!?!?!

Get this - THE MODELS ARE WRONG.

No warming for 18 years? Then how could we have just had the warmest summer ever recorded with continued melting of ice worldwide and rising sea levels? I think this was all predicted by the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, and is now being observed. If we see the warming stop, and the melting and sea level rise slow significantly, then we can talk about rethinking the hypothesis. Let me know when that happens.

Considering there was the recent killings of doctors who were trying to educate the unwashed masses on how to prevent or mitigate the spread of Ebola, along with the other attacks and general mistrust of health workers, letting the disease spread might not be a bad option.

Those who don't want to listen to experts die off, those who are too panicked to touch the dead bodies live, and things work themselves out.

Cruel? Maybe. But when you're already putting your life on the line trying to help people and those people attack and kill you, sometimes you have to make the tough decision to let nature take its course.

There is actually a cult in the U.S. where people worship ebola and hope for it's spread. They know that the locals are superstitious when they blog online about this and are trying to encite a panic. http://www.washingtonpost.com/... http://www.latimes.com/world/a...

Please write to your governments and have these sorts of people punished. Please send aid money to Africa where Africans (not foreigners) can deal with it themselves. They know how African diseases work and can fight it much more effectively than westerners can.

Back during Cold War I, one of the big TV networks made a movie about nuclear war (and aftermath) called The Day After. Every sane and rational person should watch it every 5 or 10 years to remind themselves of the horrific nature of nuclear war.

That's fine, but those same people should also watch The Soviet Story so they know what we were defending against. The Soviet Union was far more dangerous than Nazi Germany, and it killed far more people. At the end the Soviet Union wasn't as bloody or oppressive as it had been, but the system was the same and only lacked a new leader to go back to the old ways.

Anyone watching that movie should also be aware that is was made while the nuclear freeze and disarmament movement as part of the "peace movement" in the West was in full swing, and of the Soviet Union's funding, influence, and control over various parts of the "peace movement" and nuclear freeze campaigns. The Soviets did this as an act of political warfare to hinder NATO in matching previous Soviet build ups of its nuclear forces in Europe, and US nuclear force modernization.

Soviet influence on the peace movement
"Moscow and the Peace, Offensive"

A parallel effort of political warfare against the US was the Soviet propaganda that the US created the AIDs virus. There are still people that believe that, some even have posted it on Slashdot.

Soviets Sponsor Spread of AIDS Disinformation

The Soviets were dangerous liars.

Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press

Business and state are one, regardless of the form it takes.

Did you have a chat with "Exxon" over coffee about this?

Kinda... And now they say they are shutting down the rig for the winter (or have Rosneft keep it running), while the US government picks up some political hay during election time with its "sanctions" dog and pony show. This is the ebb and flow of currency from one market to another, traders make their money, and then it flows the other direction. Rich Russians are making a killing also.

I'll put in a vote for a Wexler's deli O.G., to compete for best sandwich in LA, simply based on a photo (and review) in the LA Times, (as I've never been able try it).
http://www.latimes.com/food/la...

If you're not paying enough attention to the science to understand even that simple concept why should I think anything else you have to say is worth listening to.

You can keep looking for an excuse to ignore me — or just close your ears and sing "La-la-la". Truth remains — global warming was "oversold" to the general population by the usual alliance of the dishonest seeking to profit from the implementation of measures proposed to fight it and the stupid, who agreed with them.

The various dire predictions are failing to materialize — and even when they were made, none of his allies have questioned, why Al Gore himself purchased a wonderful piece of real estate on the coast rather than in the mountains somewhere.

To continue to push forward policies based on the same predictions — and the (pseudo-)scientific models that lead to them in the first place, is irresponsible if not outright criminal...

Want to talk about lawlessness in the US?

http://whitegirlbleedalot.com/

The problem is that LEOs regularly refuse to investigate or report crimes that happen, or misclassify them to reduce their severity - http://www.latimes.com/local/l...

It certainly could be as high as 2.5 million, but hey, I'll give you half of those as exaggerations, and we're still talking huge numbers.

More good guys with guns, less crime. A good guy can be an LEO, or a law abiding CCW holder.

Or is it your position that somehow LEOs are superior gun handlers? http://www.indystar.com/story/...

5) The official might think your bribe is too modest, and post the amount publicly on Facebook to shame you:

A Restaurant Tried to Tip-Shame a Football Star [mic.com]

And succeeded!

#Winning

I would add (6) Many states have regulations making it impossible to do what Musk is doing. I live in Republican-Controlled Virginia, where I can't buy solar panels from Musk's SolaryCity, which has a location 20 minutes away from me in Washington DC and more locations in Maryland, because my state has pretty much given Dominion Power a monopoly on supplying electricity here, giving them exclusive rights to net-metering--which they have made cost-prohibitive to implement, and the company has actually successfully sued organizations that install solar panels.

Obligatorily citation: http://www.latimes.com/local/l... [Yacht killing: Escort to be arraigned in Google exec's heroin death]

One of the other articles on the L.A. times is reporting that "U.S. auto sales surge in August to month's highest level in years" so - it's lies, damn lies and statistics time. Electric car sales fell 0.1% as a proportion of total car sales during a period that included the car sales at the "highest level in years."

Consider also that Tesla is still on back-order status and they are gearing up to release two new models of cars. Other than the Tesla, only Nissan has a pure electric generally available on the market - the Leaf - which sold over 120,000 cars last year. See, Wikipedia. Ford's focus is also out there, but only in select markets.

Shorter: there's only one mass-market electric car on the market. The Tesla Model S, while definitely a beautiful car, doesn't have the production volume to compete in a market share battle - that's not Tesla's bag - yet. The "stagnation" story is more of the knee-jerk car guy rejection of electrics that has been bouncing around in the media for 30 years now.

but whenever actual media on the ground go looking through "newly won rebel territory", they find nothing but locals.

Maybe they should go look in Novoazovsk, and around Mariupol in general. The lightning fast strike and encirclement there has two explanations: either rebels have mastered teleportation to suddenly reach out that far with no-one noticing, or else the strike came from across the Russian border (which is much, much closer in that area).

The Ukrainians haven't captured any regular Russian forces in actual combat, just that one small unit out of position near the border weeks ago.

They have only presented video evidence for this one capture, but they claim more than that.

In any case, the more interesting information source here is Russia itself. The coffins are flying back in, and parents are getting slips notifying them of their boys KIA with no specific designation of place... but in all cases they are from the units who were reported to be stationed in Rostov or even closer to Ukrainian border, and time-wise these match with Ukrainian claims of engaging enemy forces. Several NGOs are now trying to dig deeper into the story, contacting relatives etc to figure out the scale of this, and keep finding new cases, but needless to say they're having a hard time - and the government has already started cracking down on them as "foreign agents".

Nevada; No corporate income tax. Far fewer and less effective environmental and labor pressure groups. How selfish. Who does this Elon think he is refusing to be suckered in with environmental rule waivers?

I suspect it's going to take a lot more of this kind of corporate profiteering before the bloom comes off the Telsa rose around here though, and my poor karma will suffer a lot more hits — because fanbois will be fanbois.

I'd give the US military more credit than that. They wouldn't place their own interceptors directly on their bases, but nearby. Else, how would you have plausible deniability?

It is likely that the military doesn't need deniability. Many FCC rules don't apply to the military. It is quite likely that they they can legal operate their own cell towers. Similar exceptions are made for prisons, which can operate their own cell towers to keep inmates from making calls from smuggled cell phones.

For the Google impaired:

http://www.latimes.com/books/j...

Update is here

The problem here is that the press reports are just rehashes of what the cops are putting out. Somebody should find this guy and interview him. He may be in hiding for reasons of his own.

His book is self-published on Amazon. It's been out since 2011, and you can read a sample there. This guy is not the next Steven King. A typical sentence: "As Zea approaches her partner she cannot restrain herself from hyperventilating as she peers at the black embossed letters on the translucent glass sign above the entrance to the central atrium".

Today, the Los Angeles Times quotes cops as saying "Everybody knew about the book in 2012", and that this is more about a four-page letter he recently sent to officials in Dorchester County, containing "complaints of alleged harassment and an alleged possible crime". There may be more clarity over the next few days, now that the story is getting attention.

Early last week the school board was alerted that one of its eighth grade language arts teachers at Mace's Lane Middle School had several aliases. Police said that under those names, he wrote two fictional books about the largest school shooting in the country's history set in the future. Now, Patrick McLaw is placed on leave.

Dr. K.S. Voltaer is better known by some in Dorchester County as Patrick McLaw, or even Patrick Beale. Not only was he a teacher at Mace's Lane Middle School in Cambridge, but according to Dorchester Sheriff James Phillips, McLaw is also the author of two books: "The Insurrectionist" and its sequel, "Lillith's Heir."

Now:

"It didn't start with the books and it didn't end with the books," State's Attorney for Wicomico County Matt Maciarello told The Times. "It's not even a factor in what law enforcement is doing now."

OK, WTF do (did) the books have to do with it? It's not McLaw's fault or my fault that I think the police might have arrested him over the books -- it's obviously the police's fault I think that. And it's also their fault that they have a lot of credibility to recover, and saying that it's not about the books rings hollow.

Also, note the careful phrasing -- it didn't start or end with the books, and the books are not a focus now. So, at one point they were obviously the focus, and merited enough focus to be the only thing that was disclosed to the news organizations.

http://www.latimes.com/books/j...

Apparently, he sent a letter which caused some people to be concerned.

From what I've read on the StarDem website (can't find the source for their info), the Wicomico County State's Attorney brought up the issues. From the LATimes article, people were aware of the books before all this.

IMHO, I think there's something else going on here which caused a lot of people to become really concerned. I don't get the feeling it was an overreaction but involves something that they can't share for various legal reasons.

My suggestion, wait and see what is happening.

I think everyone freaking out about an "Author" being taken away needs to take a step back, remove the "books" from the picture, and see if their reactions are justifiable because every article I found about the issue is going nuts about censorship but very few seems to be approaching it objectively.

Our current economic system has created existential risks by discounting the risks of centralization and just-in-time production and just-barely-works systems without huge margins of resiliency. One tragedy-in-the-making example is the USA recently selling off its emergency strategic grain supplies.
http://ppjg.me/2010/11/12/usda...
http://articles.latimes.com/20...

The USA could as a nation be putting in place a more distributed resilient production system (including indoors food production or even space habitats) to ensure the safety of its citizenry even under huge unexpected disasters. The USA has chosen not too because it does not fit with the current economic dogma that discount such "black swan" existential risks. Hurricane Katrina is an example of failure to systemically plan for obvious serious weather-related risks, Given that example, it is unlikely we can expect the USA to plan for even rarer risks like supervolcanoes, solar flares, pandemics, rogue AI technology, asteroid strikes, economic meltdown, civil war, or whatever else. Still, if you add up all the rare risks, taken together, the probability of some sort of "black swan" event may not otherwise be as rare as one might expect -- and they can all be addressed to some extent by creating a more resilient decentralized infrastructure and promoting more cooperation among people (rather than competition).

I find that situation frustrating because I find issues about resiliency to be very interesting civil defense problems to think about (e.g. my OSCOMAK idea), but the current notion of national security is focused on intrinsic unilateral military might, not intrinsic mutual resilient security. The "Lifeboat Foundation" and "The Living Universe Foundation" though are examples of some groups that have concerns in this area -- but with little funding and lots of competition for that funding compared with the effectively trillion US dollars a year the USA spends (or effectively incurs) annually for military-oriented defense.

Like George Orwell said:
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/a...
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield [or a three foot deep ash field...]"

A resilient infrastructure coincidentally is also more compatible with "democracy" since there can't be real political democracy without some level of financial and material independence for the citizenry. At least the Maker movement is a bit of hope there. As are the changing economics of indoor agriculture given LED lights and robotics, even without potentially cheaper energy supplies if either hot fusion or LENR/QuantumEnergy/ColdFusion turns out to be workable.

The Western side of Antarctica has gained some mass but not enough to counteract the much more massive amount the Eastern side has lost. So, a much larger net negative.

What I find most amazing is this: 97% of the best climate scientists we have on earth have concluded that we have a problem. The insurance companies ["How The Insurance Industry Sees Climate Change", "For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change", "Rift Widening Between Energy and Insurance on Climate Change", "Insurer's Message: Prepare for Climate Change or Get Sued", "On Climate Change: Get Ready or Get Sued" have concluded we have a problem. But, in the interest of sticking with their political druthers, a significant fraction of the American population has decided that 97% of the climate scientists and the insurance companies must be wrong. These people--Conservatives, essentially--are willing to take a risk that 3% of climate scientists are correct and that the insurance companies and 97% of climate scientists are wrong--merely because it serves their political persuasion.

Do you think that Liberals would be successful at convincing 97% of climate scientists to take our point of view and the insurance companies too if this were bullshit? Yet, all these wiseass Conservatives are willing to take a risk with our frickin' planet just so they can jam a finger in the eye of their political rivals--ignoring the reality that has the potential to end life on the damned planet. In short, WTF is going on in the mind of Conservatives? How do you look at all these insurance companies and think: "It's a Liberal plot!" Can you be so stupid?

ISS supply mission. Engine explodes. Fails to deliver secondary payload

Primary payload delivered to orbit, secondary lost due to a failed engine re-ignite. This is a partial failure.

ISS supply mission. Maneuvering thrusters fail.

Supply craft captured by ISS due to space x incompetence. This is a failure.

Satellite launch delayed by helium leaks. First stage recovery failure.

Primary payload delivered to orbit after huge delays cutting into profit ability. This demonstrates space x's need to cut corners in order to remain viable.

Test rocket explodes.

Prototype failed due to a production ready component unrelated to the test that could have easily gone off on any of the other flight and again caused delays of their flights cutting into profitability requiring space x to cut corners in the future.

Fixed that for you.

The pope essentially said the same thing recently when he said that young people spend too much time on the Internet.

Did he? It looks like you don't quite have that right.

Pope Francis says the Internet is a 'gift from God'
Pope Francis: Internet is a blessing

The Pope's view is a bit more insightful and nuanced than you state.

ISS supply mission. Engine explodes. Fails to deliver secondary payload

Primary payload delivered to orbit, secondary lost due to a failed engine re-ignite. This is a partial success.

ISS supply mission. Maneuvering thrusters fail.

Supply craft docked to ISS. This is a success.

Satellite launch delayed by helium leaks. First stage recovery failure.

Primary payload delivered to orbit. This is a success.

Test rocket explodes.

Prototype failed. This is a test. This was not a launch ready first stage. This was not carrying a second stage or payload. This has no relevance.

You're replying to the Anti-SpaceX Nutter, who really appears to believe that every one of their launches was a failure. I'm guessing he thinks those satellites SpaceX launched are just faked in the Arizona desert.

They have had a string of failures.
ISS supply mission. Engine explodes. Fails to deliver secondary payload
ISS supply mission. Maneuvering thrusters fail.
Satellite launch delayed by helium leaks. First stage recovery failure.
Test rocket explodes.

If you could pull musks dick out of your mouth long enough you would notice a long line failures due to shoddy engineer practices caused by cutting corners.

Sigh.. I know you are trolling but seriously, if any of that was true and illegal, all you would have to do is go see an employment lawyer and it wouldn't happen much longer.

In the last 2 years, I've had approximately 40 hours worth of wages stolen from me by my employer, who refuses to pay them back.

You see, laws were used against Walmart when employees were classified in ways to avoid paying overtime when the law said they deserved it and managers were changing employee time sheets in order to avoid paying overtime and deducting for lunch breaks even though they didn't get them.

My employer refuses to pay his staff for our public holidays, even though the contract and law says he must.

If it is the law, see above, If it is a contract, see above. There are remedies available without necessitating a Union. If you actually have a case, most laws provide that your legal fees be covered as part of the judgement or settlement.

If I had a union none of that would have happened, and he would be facing criminal charges for the wages theft and civil charges for the lack of breaks, mandatory unpaid overtime, and so forth.

Actually, you would likely be in the same boat you are in right now. Either with a fictitious claim or not pursuing any of it until its way too late like you appear to have done already. You not speaking up, you not looking for the right answers is the reason he got away with it. A union is not likely to change that.

As it stands, if I do anything about it by myself, I will find myself unemployable after he puts the bad word out on me, so don't you put that "unions are evil" shit out there without seeing how the world is when they're not around.

And your lawyer simply has someone he does business with check for an employment reference and when it comes back negative, your old employer pays your wages while you look for a new job and cannot find one.

This isn't something new.. It's happened to lots of people and they did something about it. They did it with and without a union.

Nor would it change the fact that people would still bring (founded and unfounded) lawsuits against the police.

This is flat out wrong. All the evidence to date shows that cop-cams result in a dramatic reduction in complaints, for two reasons:
1. Since there is a recording, there are far fewer false allegations
2. Since they are being recorded, the cops behave better, so there are fewer incidents that result in valid allegations.

Here is a typical result:

THE Rialto study began in February 2012 and will run until this July. The results from the first 12 months are striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24.

But body cameras will solve all that, right?

In the case of Michael Brown, YES, a camera likely would have prevented the riots. The riots didn't occur because a white cop killed a black kid, but because there was a perception that it was unjustified and the cop "got away with it". If there was a camera, there would be much less dispute about what happened. The camera would either show that the shooting was justified, or it would show that it was not and the cop would be charged with murder. In either case, I don't think there would be a riot.

Thats all very nice idealism. Too bad reality says, fuck you and your cameras.

The tragic irony is that police in Ferguson have a stock of body-worn cameras, but have yet to deploy them to officers.

Worry less about deploying them WSJ. Worry more about the people in control of them.

A long, rolling temblor pegged at 6.0 by the U.S. Geological Survey shook a wide swath of the Bay Area awake early Sunday, causing damage to buildings and sending at least 70 people to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Centered about nine miles south of wine country's Napa at 3:20 a.m., the quake was felt as far south as Santa Cruz and into Sonoma County. It was the largest earthquake to strike the Bay Area since the Loma Prieta temblor of 1989, the USGS said.

A little more than two hours after the quake, a shallow magnitude 3.6 tremor was reported by the USGS. The aftershock occurred at 5:47 a.m. at a depth of 5.0 miles.

Residents reported power outages in Napa and beyond, and fire departments in several counties, along with the California Highway Patrol, were on the lookout for damage to bridges. There were reports of gas leaks, downed power lines and at least one fire. Pictures flooding in from Twitter show damage within homes.

Napa County Fire Department confirms they are swamped with calls, including reports of injuries. It is unclear how severe the injuries are because units are still responding.

A spokeswoman at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa said most of its injured 70 patients had cuts, bumps and bruises. Many are being treated and released, but some have been admitted.

According to PG&E, more than 42,000 customers are without power across the northern Bay Area, including American Canyon, Napa, Saint Helena, Santa Rosa and Sonoma, according to an outage map.

This guy is, understandably, overstating the prior uncertainty in order to promote his own research.

Is he? http://articles.latimes.com/20...

Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.

The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn't enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said.

This was just last year from a respected climate scientist who apparently was on the right track. Did we get all that needed data in just one year? Logic doesn't hold. They may have firmed up the theory, it is still a work in progress,. I think a large food source for the skeptics is the constant minimization or even complete dismissal of the uncertainties by many who report the science. Science reporting sucks so bad these days that anyone can conclude anything they want.

google global warming hiatus ipcc

http://www.motherjones.com/env...

http://washington.cbslocal.com...
http://www.weather.com/news/sc...
http://articles.latimes.com/20...
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
http://www.climatecentral.org/...

Actually, at least an order of magnitude more money is created by the private sector than by government. The private sector invented "kicking the can down the road".

Planned economies don't have to accompany a basic income. Give everyone a choice whether they want to enter the free market, or pursue their happiness on their own. Our goal is knowledge advancement; business is not the most efficient way to advance knowledge, because it is too short-sighted and focused on next quarter's stockholders' report.

What incentive was Kleinrock, et al. responding too, when they created the internet? Not economic. They simply wanted to connect computers long distances apart so they could communicate easier. Kleinrock has explicitly denied any economic motivation for the internet.

From http://www.latimes.com/busines...:

Today's anniversary gives us a chance to remember a salient fact about the Internet's origins. It was a government project, built with your tax money, because private companies (namely AT&T and IBM) didn't see enough profit in the idea. That's what government is supposed to do--take on important jobs shunned by the private sector.

The private sector resisted the internet. From http://sloanreview.mit.edu/art...:

The idea of an ongoing struggle between results-oriented managers and technical visionaries is not new. Economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen noted it in his 1904 book The Theory of Business Enterprise. Eighty-some years later, John Kenneth Galbraith cited Veblenâ(TM)s view to describe a dynamic still at work in a more modern economy:

"The businessmen, for good or ill, keep the talents and tendencies of the scientists and engineers under control and suppress them as necessary in order to maintain prices and maximize profits. From this view of the business firm, in turn, comes an obvious conclusion: somehow release those who are technically and imaginatively proficient from the restraints imposed by the business system and there will be unprecedented productivity and wealth in the economy."

A basic income is one way to "release" individuals from having to work for little Napoleon bosses more interested in playing control games than disruptive innovation. Hold challenges (like DARPA, Google Bug Bounties, X Prize, kaggle.com, Netflix Prize, etc.) to stimulate creativity.

stupidity is still stupidity
What is next ?

Cupidity?

In fact, the police have repeatedly stated that the story simply isn't true. The defendant's iPhone 4 does not have Siri, and the screenshots were fabricated.

In fact it's looking very like the Apple connection is solely intended as a viral marketing stunt. Apple vendors are piggybacking a mundane murder trial with their astroturf in order to sell more iPhones.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/...

It's strange how California's environmental protection law was put in place by the beloved icon of Republican party... the same party who now say it's the reason for companies to stay away from California.

"California's landmark environmental statute, widely known by its acronym CEQA, was signed into law by former Gov. Ronald Reagan. It requires state and local government agencies to review development projects to identify potential threats to the environment and recommend ways to reduce or eliminate any potential damage."
http://www.latimes.com/busines...

Scanning travel documents for hits in criminal (or other databases) is yet another case of data being re-purposed for uses other than the original intent. It is the same problem I have with things like Visa selling lists of what people pay for using a Visa card, Verizon selling a list of what addresses I travel to and what websites I browse and my pharmacy selling my prescription information.
 
Repurposing of data for unrelated uses is deeply corrosive to the trust that society needs to function. It keeps us all metaphorically looking over our shoulders, wondering in the back of our heads just how this information generated by going about our normal every-day lives might end up harming us. Even if one in a million times it helps catch a pedo, that still doesn't justify the damage it does to a free society.
 
There will always be crime, even in the most authoritarian of countries. But copious amounts of dignity and privacy are necessary for a healthy society - when you constantly have to second guess yourself it makes you less willing to be open and honest with others, makes you less willing to take risks, to be unconventional. Just compare the amount of creative development in the west to that of the USSR in the same time frame, or even North Korea now. Every time a database is repurposed, our society gets a little bit less robust.

> And California will continue it's steady slide down the economic toilet.

What slide?

You want slide, look at this place.

Unless you're calling your local Comcast office you're calling across state lines. If you do anything across state lines it falls to the Feds which are 1 party.

Unless one party is in California.
See this for an interesting analysis.

He's no more of a Genius than Frank Dux is a Kumite Champion and responsible for the popularity of MMA...

their revenue is collected for them at gun point by the IRS.

Really? I'm sorry, but when was the last time any IRS official pulled a gun on someone and told them to hand over their money.

Oh, I see. You mean like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AIG and a whole host of other private companies who told the American taxpayers they will hand over their money so the people who nearly brought down the country's financial institution can still get their bonuses.

Maybe the Federal government is different, but I know for a fact people in state government fired all the time for not doing their job. The only thing it takes is for their non-work to be documented. Once that happens, there is nothing any Union can say about their firing.

But please, continue your rant of how evil government is. After all, the benevolence of the private sector is so well known we sing their praises every day because they never, EVER take advantage of people or stick it to us in their quest for profits.

Maybe, but you might also be thinking about a certain yacht marina in Santa Cruz. http://www.latimes.com/local/l.... The name of the motor-yacht is Escape BTW, and it is now for sale by the Ex-Google gambler's widow, (because he lost).

Even if you want to try and spin it as not Hamas' fault and the fault of countless rogue elements in the Gaza strip then ultimately Hamas is the controlling authority in the strip so still bears blame. Hamas has every power and authority in the strip to make sure it happens and due to their iron grip on it any time it does happen it must be with either their implicit (blind eye) or explicit blessing.

If Israel did nothing about some genuinely zionist civilians shelling the shit out of Gaza indiscriminately for years on end would you say it's not the states fault even though for it to occur it would require the state to explicitly avoid acting to stop it?

The fact is, that Hamas is linked directly with the MB (and even Al Qaeda offshoot) Sunni militants.

Because Hamas has been largely isolated now by Iran and Syria because it opted to back ISIS and other Sunni militants and hence sided against Assad's regime and Hezbollah the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda and affiliated groups are really the only allies it has left.

A quick search will pull up many 10s of incidents this year alone in Sinai near Gaza. It's no coincidence that this is such a hotbed of Sunni militant activity with Hamas right across the border. Sisi didn't close the border for shits and giggles, he closed it because:

http://al-shorfa.com/en_GB/art...

http://news.kuwaittimes.net/mi...

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/...

http://www.latimes.com/world/m...

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/...

http://english.alarabiya.net/e...

So whilst Hamas and friends are selling folks like you a story about poor Gaza children being bombed whilst playing, Hamas and friends have been bombing poor Egyptian (and trying to bomb) poor Israeli children whilst playing too. When you see a photo about some suffering wounded kids in Gaza at Israel's hand, spare a thought for the suffering kids in Sinai etc. at Hamas and friend's hand too.

Which is why again, Hamas is every bit as bad as the Israelis.

According to researchers, monkeys in the vicinity of Fukushima City had detectable levels of radioactive cesium in their muscles, while the northern monkeys did not. Researchers also found that the Fukushima simians had significantly lower white and red blood cell counts compared with macaque troops almost 200 miles away.

The researchers suggested their findings mirrored studies conducted on human health impacts following the Chernobyl disaster, where researchers found decreased blood cell counts in people living in contaminated areas.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-fukushima-monkeys-20140724-story.html

The Chernobyl site is in the process of having a New Safe Confinement structure built, which will keep radioactive material from the disaster site from entering the environment for 100 years. Once it is in place some of the radioactive material will be broken up and moved to long term buried storage.,

In contrast, one of the articles states "The plant is believed to be still releasing an average of 10 million becquerels per hour of radioactive material." The quoted 1.1 trillion BQ figure was the result from recent debris removal.

Up to 1.12 trillion becquerels of cesium was dispersed last summer as debris was removed from the battered building of reactor 3 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, with tainted rice later being found in Miniamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, according to Tokyo Electric.

The amount of cleanup and debris handling remaining is immense compared to the work done in this last operation. This means that the impact of future work will be proportionally larger.

Beyond that, the three damaged cores are still not stable or safe. There is no solid information on the state of cores, or even if the core material is in the containment structure. At least one of the cores is believed to have suffered a complete meltdown and become corium.

The already severely damaged reactors are still at risk for future earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons. Any one of these events could result in another large scale radiation event. The Fukushima disaster is not necessarily over. It's just less active.

So go on and giggle over a number. It shows that you have the collective intelligence of a retarded 11 year old.

This is quantitively and qualitatively different from graphic allusions of rape and death and suicide. The threat in the first email is very clear.

But it's weird you use the actual arguments to justify the existence of a pervasive "rape culture" as a defense against action. It is absolutely and provably true that men out there experience rape. It is absolutely and provably true that women have raped women. It is very obvious that American (and to varying degrees western nations all over the world) laws don't handle this situation very well and tend to ask everyone to just pretend nothing happened.

That the preponderance of cases of this tend to be men assaulting women and that society is slightly harder on women then men in this shouldn't be some sort of surprise. It's the way things have been for a long time.

What we're asking is if you're actually satisfied with leaving things this way.

Speaking as a conservative, I just don't think that trying to artificially adjusting market forces will have a net benefit on the lower working class. It has nothing to do with siding with businesses or hating poor people for whatever reason. I want people to succeed, and the best way to do that is to provide people with the best opportunity to do that for themselves. But it seems unlikely to me that you can pass a law and magically increase a bunch of people's living standards without negatively impacting others in an unanticipated way. Economic reality isn't quite that simple or forgiving, unfortunately, and we live in reality, not a fairyland of good intentions. People on the lower ends of the economic ladder are the first to suffer if the experiment goes awry, which is what I'm afraid of.

Honestly, I'd love to be proven wrong on this, because it's a hard position to take, and it would be great if we could actually help people this way. But the articles in the summary don't give any clear evidence one way or another, as they admit causality can't really be demonstrated. I think it's worthwhile to proceed with cautious increases and carefully watch the results, and do our best to extrapolate results to decide future policies. Unfortunately, I fear this issue has already become too political to avoid coloring opinion and studies, but I guess we'll see.

Actually, I suspect that neither side knows the truth...

Really? So according to you, Obama lied about the missle trajectory?

Okay get your political avatars correct. Jerry Brown is governor Moonbeam and he'd be much better suited for Mayor McCheese's position on the moon.

The state had 109 temblors measuring 3.0 or greater in 2013 — more than 5,000% above normal. There have already been more than 200 earthquakes this year, Holland said.

There is controversy in that the quakes have occurred after the start of fracking (and the disposal of wastewater), and the oil companies refuse to acknowledge the connection. However, I find this stance akin to the cigarette companies refusing to acknowledge a direction connection between smoking and lung cancer.

SV execs should now better than allowing ideology to take over economy. It always ends bad. The Sunflower State is the current example. http://www.latimes.com/busines...

They better act fast if they want to skirt the law with yeast, while there's still a law to break. In USA, Pot will be legal nationwide by 2018

At least that's been my bet. According to the LA Times today, the DEA in Washington is showing "fatigue" at enforcing it and the White House is ready to give up on the "war on pot". http://www.latimes.com/nation/...

It took 148 years for the states to agree slavery was bad, you think they'll agree on pot being good in less than a decade?