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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/...

Likewise, a lot of drivers more or less don't give a damn and will practically run them over, or off the road, or door them.

Or do give a damn and do those things on purpose. Or will throw things at them. I've only had one or two cases in several years of daily commute cycling where I suspect a driver was maliciously trying to edge me off a road, but in some regions its apparently a frequent hazard, and if anyone brings it up, a lot of victim-blaming happens (e.g. cites story of a time they saw a crazy cyclist similar to yours, then claims the person being harassed by a motorist was probably doing something similarly bad, or attempts to charge the guy for inciting the incident in some fashion (see previous link)).

I try to call out cyclists behaving badly, but I find it isn't all that common. When I'm out and about I notice a lot of cyclists behaving perfectly well -- it's just that the odd one or two that don't are the ones that stick out and you notice. The same is true of any vehicle operator -- it's just that people have gotten so used to seeing several dozen traffic violations every day (e.g. failing to signal, running red lights or stop signs, improper turns, failing to leave appropriate space, various parking offenses) without even touching speeding (which would bring it up to likely some 95% of the traffic on the road -- people failing to exceed the speed limit are more likely to be noticed and considered out of place than people speeding). That one cyclist being crazy (and I agree they exist -- I've seen some pretty egregious cycling behavior before) sticks out more since cyclists in general are more rare, but I suspect fewer cyclists in total behave badly with regard to traffic safety (probably because of the inherent additional danger to cycling).

Look, pretty much all cars split in half when they hit a pole at 100 MPH.

http://articles.latimes.com/20...
http://www.autoevolution.com/n...
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news...

How much are you betting that in that last article, the driver of the Maxima wasn't driving 100 MPH? Most highway limits are 65 MPH, you're talking 50% faster, which is perhaps not a "huge difference" but it's not negligible. It also doesn't matter if the car splits in half, as long as the driver is protected within the cage (look at how F1 cars crumple when they crash, without a pole, but protect the driver). What matters more is someone probably not wearing a seat belt...

A stagnant unspending base of users damages the entire tech ecosystem. They hold back technological progress creating a tragedy of the commons when it comes to software and web services features.

Unspending users can only hold back technological progress if software vendors keep maintaining obsolete technology to please them. Which doesn't make much sense, except in the context of trying to keep meaningful competition from arising. But maybe that is exactly what Microsoft is trying to achieve, even at the expense of earning less from the well-paying customers who might embrace faster progress.

There is the following Bill Gates quote:
  "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." (Source: http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9)
A clear case of trying to keep competition down even among the ultimate unspending non-customers.

Exactly... zero analysis... just a citation of numbers without context.

For example, did you know that the US defines infant mortality differently then any country in europe?

This leads to infant mortality not meaning the same thing.

Allow me to open your eyes to the complexity of the situation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

That's just one of the stats and frankly that's not even the full depth of the issue.

There is a tendency for people to cite the numbers to make a point without understanding how the numbers were collected, what they mean, if there are standards across borders, if the reporting rate/system is the same, etc.

Failing to do that means your comparison is invalid. Almost NONE of the studies that make these comparisions especially the incipid newspaper articles go to the trouble to either understand the statistics or correct for these differences.

They just take the raw data, run some basic calculations and then render some ignorant conclusion.

I don't blame you for making this mistake. You've been mislead into thinking the data was treated properly and corrected to allow for these sorts of cross references.

You are however mistaken. The data is at best raw and must be heavily filtered to allow for direct cross referencing.

Here is another example:
http://articles.latimes.com/20...

That is an LA times article that discusses the practice in Japan of labeling all unsolved deaths as natural causes or accidents or something other then a murder.

So for example, if I poison someone randomly in Japan... they probably won't do an autopsy... they'll just declare it natural causes. No investigation.

Now, that naturally has an impact on your crime statistics and it makes it impossible to compare foreign crime stats where countries do not do that with countries that do. How for example do you possibly figure out how many homicides were labeled natural causes? There are naturally no records that would let you determine that because the whole point is to make the numbers look good.

I think you should be familiar with this practice. We see this in many countries including the US where a given politician wants to show they're competent. So they tell the people under them... "deliver these numbers or else"... and they deliver the numbers... mostly by just writing whatever the fool wants into the database and covering up anything that says otherwise.

Look at what happened with the VA recently. They were told to improve wait times for veterans. And if they did, they'd get a bonus.

So they faked reports and made it look like they were hitting their numbers when really they weren't. They literally were deleting vets from wait lists, keeping secret wait lists, and doing all sorts of other crap to make the numbers look good.

Which means those stats are also utterly without worth.

This is a consistent problem with many statistics and its only ONE type of problem.

If you're at all open minded on the issue you'll be a good deal more humble about citing such statistics when you have no personal knowledge of how they're collected, what they mean, etc.

If those borders still stood The USA wouldn't have much of an illegal immigrant problem but Mexico sure would.

Amazing naivete — unless you are joking... Illegal immigrant problems come to countries with relatively high standard of living — you don't have to be part of the much-despised Golden Billion, dirt-poor Thailand, for example, has this problem because their neighboring Myanmar (Burma) is even poorer.

Whether those borders still stood or not, I doubt rather strongly, we wouldn't have been substantially richer than Mexico anyway.

But, as things are currently progressing, we may lose those lands anyway — if they get saturated with Latinos the way Crimea is saturated with Russians (result of Stalin's ethnic cleansing of 1944), they may one day vote to leave the US and join Mexico. Whatever their true feelings might be, polite Mexican special forces (with our own border guards and military under orders not to shoot) will ensure, the referendum's tally is "correct".

The rest of the world will be as indiffirent as it is today to Russia's war on Ukraine. Thanks to Obama's today's help Mexico will finally have finally accomplished, what Santa Anna and Pancho Villa failed to do centuries ago.

You have no respect for others because you have no respect for yourself. You lack the ability to admit error, or let go of a belief system when it has been thoroughly refuted - and your response is lashing out.

my alma mater will be fascinated to know I don't understand thermodynamics

Perhaps they'll revoke whatever degree conferred upon you when you tell them directly that entropy can be circumvented by time travel :)

You have to provide evidence, and no, links to blogs wont cut it, I want peer reviewed research.

You're asking for peer reviewed research on whether or not the laws of entropy can be circumvented by time travel? Really?

Okay, I'll bite :)

http://www.ust.hk/about-hkust/...

"Discovery of superluminal propagation of optical pulses in some specific medium 10 years ago has evoked the world’s dream of time travel, but later scientists realized that it is only a visual effect where the superluminal ‘group’ velocity of many photons could not be used for transmitting any real information"

" The study, which showed that single photons also obey the speed limit c, confirms Einstein’s causality; that is, an effect cannot occur before its cause."

This peer reviewed paper was reported on by the LA times originally: http://latimesblogs.latimes.co... Will you object because a blog cited a peer reviewed paper? :)

/. is really going downhill....

The media in general is going down hill. As much as Foxnews shills for the republicans, this is probably the biggest story of the year, yet it's missing from nearly every other news organization in the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.latimes.com/
http://www.pbs.org/topics/news...
http://www.cbsnews.com/
http://www.nbcnews.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/

I checked every one of those and there's no mention of it.
Obama could get IMPEACHED over this. This is turning into a Watergate level scandal.
It could all be coincidental, but seriously? The IRS doesn't archive email? REALLY?

They bring them down!

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

You might look into the epidemiology of tuberculosis - where the US vaccination rate (of BCG vaccine for TB) is about 0, and it's on the standard schedule of vaccinations in Mexico. There's no particularly good vaccine for TB, but it's the US that has the whooping cough epidemic, not Mexico. See http://latimesblogs.latimes.co....

You forget few things.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO by there own chose (that is why Russia did what it did). But for the countries that are members of NATO are now seeing military build-up due to actions of Russia.

As for states. I am using the same definition as is being used when it comes to U.S states. All of the states in question have some self-rule when it comes it there own internal affairs. All of them have there own parliaments to set local laws (far as I know). Germany has two parliaments, one on federal level and one of state level. This works for most part in the same way as it does in the U.S, there are differences between counties since not all countries have the same system. But the principal is the same in this case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Russia is being hit by sanctions and its conflict in Ukraine. That is also the reason why Russia has been making stronger ties with China in past few months. They are going to continue to do so.

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

Every gun used in a crime in America was purchased legally by a Law Abiding Gun Owner. Every. Single. One.

Very witty, except that you have no fucking clue of what you're talking about.

I don't get your point, to be honest. Your links show that there are some teachers who are scum who take advantage of their students, which sadly is neither surprising nor new.

If your argument is that Mark Berndt should have been sacked, they had already started the procedure to sack him but he quit before he could be sacked.

L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy — then the No. 2 in command — said he acted to remove Berndt from class the same day he saw the photos and felt there was justification for immediate dismissal. Records indicate that Berndt was pulled from the school on Jan. 6, 2011. And, then-L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who has since retired, said he ordered Berndt to be fired when he heard about the photos.

The district’s legal staff warned Cortines that there might be complications for acting so quickly. Standard practice in L.A. Unified and elsewhere has been to “house” teachers in a district office, away from students, until a legal issue is resolved. But Cortines said he told senior staff that he didn’t want to wait, an account that was confirmed by a former Cortines aide.

By Feb. 15, the paperwork was ready for the elected Board of Education to dismiss Berndt formally and the school board ratified Cortines’ decision. As of Feb. 16, the district stopped paying Berndt, said Vivian Ekchian, chief human resources officer for L.A. Unified.

But the matter didn't end there. Berndt had 30 days to challenge his dismissal, which he did with the help of Trygstad, Schwab & Trygstad, a firm known for representing the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles. In this case, Berndt hired the firm privately; its specialties include defending teachers facing dismissal.

Berndt’s case was then set to go before an administrative hearing panel, a process that would take months. While awaiting a hearing, Berndt resigned from the school system in June 2011, six months after Deasy and Cortines determined to fire him.

If you're arguing they should have the power to sack him immediately, I disagree- everyone should be entitled to due process and be given an opportunity to defend himself. Giving him 30 days would not matter as long as he is kept away from students, which he was.

If you're arguing he should not be entitled to any benefits, I agree - that is a loophole that should be closed.

Because Berndt never was officially fired, he retains lifetime health benefits that he earned through decades of service in L.A. Unified. Ekchian said the district is researching its options for trying to rescind those benefits should Berndt be convicted.

If you're arguing that LAUSD screwed up, then perhaps- I'll leave it to the pending lawsuit to decide the matter and punish LAUSD (or not) appropriately.

Whats all this got to do with strict government control over education anyway? This looks like a criminal matter to me.

Curry isn't the only one to suggest flaws in established climate models. IPCC vice chair Francis Zwiers, director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria in Canada, co-wrote a paper published in this month's Nature Climate Change that said climate models had "significantly" overestimated global warming over the last 20 years — and especially for the last 15 years, which coincides with the onset of the hiatus.

good enough for ya???

Most are not, we have home theaters and dont have to deal with the icky poor people in movie theaters.

And yes I get 1st run movies in my home theater legally...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

I have one of these. and it's worth every penny to not go to the cootie infest poor people palaces.

Want control of your local school board or city council?
Cheapest possible way.

We know name recognition sways lots of voters -- no matter how they happened to see the name, once they're staring at a ballot, oh, that one is one I've heard.

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

Let's not forget that Sterling has been a Grade A fuckwad for decades before this. He has been sued multiple times for his racist housing discrimination practices. He lost one case outright. The terms of the other were confidential, but he had to pay millions in attorney fees, so let's guess how that one ended.

http://www.latimes.com/local/l...

That's just the tip of his douchebag iceberg. He should have been run out long ago, but the league is a bunch of cowards. Fortunately, the players forced their hands by pretty much promising that no one would play for him again after this season.

The police everywhere are given those assault rifles, military grade body armor, etc. just for the price of a stamp, so it's hardly surprising. This is where (some) of the boatload of money the DHS is spending goes.

There is one notable discontinuity in the returns to scale on corruption: If the entity being corrupted is relatively small and can evade wider attention, corruption can simply swallow the whole thing and stop bothering with hiding.

The Hampton, FL, for instance, is less of a town with a corrupt police department, and more of a corrupt police department with some residents. You know you have a problem if the Florida legislature decides that your town is too corrupt to survive and goes about abolishing it...

Teneha, TX operated a similar racket using 'asset forfeiture' laws rather than speeding tickets.

If you approach the task of corruption as that of being a small abcess hiding in a larger, more or less healthy, body, bigger is better. Even if the absolute level of corruption doesn't increase, more cash flowing around makes skimming a percent here and a percent there more worth the time and trouble. However, if you want to go all out, and achieve epic levels (per capita) of corruption, tiny insular shitholes with low risks of outside interference are a very competitive option.

Basketball, as a sport, already has some familiarity with this problem.

The problem there isn't the lack of showers but the repeated use of clothing.

But then you have CEO of Levi Strauss saying don't wash your jeans. http://www.latimes.com/fashion... I guess its back to nature time. I hope the windows open for a fresh breeze...

"Sir, I don't have a gun. Would you please don't shoot at me until my associates arrive?"

Yes, that's pretty much how it works. As others have noted, it works because guns are the exception rather than the rule. But another advantage: when a gun is in the picture, the beat cops back off and call the professional shooting-people cops, who're actually trained in the art of shooting people, as opposed to the American beat cops who will shoot kids with water pistols, black men reaching for their wallets, miss and shoot bystanders, shoot themselves in the foot, etc.

an elderly relative they took in did not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
"The Dutch famine of 1944, known as the Hongerwinter ("Hunger winter") in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived because of soup kitchens. About 22,000 died because of the famine. Most vulnerable according to the death reports were elderly men. ... After the national railways complied with the exiled Dutch government's appeal for a railway strike starting September 1944 to further the Allied liberation efforts, the German administration retaliated by placing an embargo on all food transports to the western Netherlands. By the time the embargo was partially lifted in early November 1944, allowing restricted food transports over water, the unusually early and harsh winter had already set in. The canals froze over and became impassable for barges. ..."

So yes, it is the height of foolishness that the USA has reduced its food stocks to bare minimums for "just in time" delivery. I read somewhere a few years ago that the USA was divesting itself of its government reserve grain supplies too. It is even more insanity to convert grain to fuel. A trillion dollars a year or more for security spending in the USA, and the government can't even get the basics right...

See also:
http://articles.latimes.com/20...
"But when it comes to food prices, our country cannot even threaten to bolster the national supply because the United States does not possess a national grain reserve. Such was not always the case. The modern concept of a strategic grain reserve was first proposed in the 1930s by Wall Street legend Benjamin Graham. ... In the inflationary 1970s, the USDA revamped FDR's program into the Farmer-Owned Grain Reserve, which encouraged farmers to store grain in government facilities by offering low-cost and even no-interest loans and reimbursement to cover the storage costs. But over the next quarter of a century the dogma of deregulated global markets came to dominate American politics, and the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act abolished our national system of holding grain in reserve. As for all that wheat held in storage, it became part of the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust, a food bank and global charity under the authority of the secretary of Agriculture. The stores were gradually depleted until 2008, when the USDA decided to convert all of what was left into its dollar equivalent. And so the grain that once stabilized prices for farmers, bakers and American consumers ended up as a number on a spreadsheet in the Department of Agriculture. Now, as the United States must confront climate change, commodity markets riddled by speculation, increased import costs, hosts of regional conflicts and the return of international grain tariffs and export bans, we have put our faith entirely in transnational agribusiness and the global grain market. ..."

More neoliberal neocon madness... But most people in the USA did not have a parent who saw a relative starve to death during wartime... You always think the basic services will be there -- until you test them in a crisis and they are not...
"Neoliberalism as a Water Balloon"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Or also:
http://www.taobackup.com/testi...
"No matter how sophisticated or comprehensive your backup system is, you will never know if it works unless you actually test it. Without testing, you can have no confidence at all. Here are

One roll per "SWAT" call, results to be cumulative:

On a "1" he gets shot in the arm

On a "2" he gets shot in the leg

On a "3" he gets beat-up and tossed into a squad car for a few hours

On a "4" he gets a stripsearch, a cavity search, a delousing and a county jail "roomie" for a few nights

On a "5" he gets a round in the face

On a "6" he gets the crap scared out of him (literally... threaten him till he soils) by an over-militarized police unit

On "7" through "12" he gets his life threatened by armed men, and spends a sleepless night talking with investigators, trying to "prove" he's not guilty of something gets the contents of his home overturned and sifted through and has to explain all this to, and comfort, his terrified family members who many never again feel safe in their own home.

That's the sort of risk he subjected every family member to in every home he pulled this "prank" on. At 16, you are plenty old enough to know better. Kids at age 16 used to be able to hold jobs, and in some places even marry. 16 year olds fought in both the American Revolution and in the American Civil War and have fought in many other wars in human history. This kid is a dirtbag playing with the lives of innocent people and he would likely have continued to do it up until people died (and almost certainly even beyond that point) and if somebody does not put him down soon he probably WILL become a rapist, a murderer or a child abuser (SOME form of bastard that gets his kicks destroying people's lives).

As for the authorities... that's a whole other (and serious) problem. We've had a rash of recent episodes where the police who are supposed to "protect and serve" and who gun control activists tell us are the only ones who should be "trusted with guns" have gone NUTSO and blasted away like Yosemite Sam. The recent episode in Florida where 23 officers unloaded 350+ rounds into two unarmed men, the Los Angeles pickup truck barrage, The infamous NYC "shootout" with an unarmed man, The Arizona vet shooting, etc are all examples of this poor training, poor discipline, and just appallingly bad judgement. There is simply NO excuse for authorities to bash their way into a home in response to such a 911 call... SOME effort out to be made with things like cameras and pocket periscopes to see what's happening inside before lives are put very much at risk.

im all for individual freedom, not being told what I can and cant do.

So you are an anarchist then? Personally I prefer to live in a civilized society where we have meaningful and ongoing debates about what rules we should all live under including those relating to weapons. I'm generally a supporter of the right to bear arms but I also recognize that there are significant real world issues with how to manage weapons while simultaneously ensuring people's rights to life and security. "Anything goes" is not a sane position to hold on the issue.

Without doing that, all gun regulations are unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court disagrees with you and their interpretation of the law is the one that actually matters.

I like the standard keys. And really, just because one manufacturer happened to use a defective part, we lose them? Key switches have been around for decade and are reliable. Just fix the reliability issue in that one model and that's it.

It isn't one manufacturer. There have been over 20 million recalled vehicles due to ignition switch problems, from basically every manufacturer, over the last 30 years.

That doesn't qualify as "reliable" in my book.

Right, because it's not like there's ever been, nor ever will be an issue with push-button ignitions that may incite a recall of millions of vehicles, right?

Wrong.

FYI, contrary to the summary's baseless contention, "Electrical" is not always greater than "mechanical." Otherwise, parking brakes wouldn't still be engaged with steel cables.

Cute.

I live on this planet:

http://losangeles.urbdezine.co...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.co...

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/n...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

This is my planet. Glad you can make a cute statement and run away without any effort to back it up.

If TWC doesn't perform to my satisfaction, I go to ATT. If ATT botches it, I can jump to a number of cellular or satellite solutions. And if it's REALLY bad, I can make sure next time I move I'm in a better area with better coverage.

If you want YOUR local government to take over more stuff, bully for you. Don't even THINK about making it manditory. This is an effing HUGE country with countless different needs and functions. My town has "again and again to cost-cutting in the interest of short-term profits, the neglect of upkeep, and the failure to maintain sufficient overcapacity in order to deal with surges and failures" while private services and businesses who wish to survive need to keep up with client needs -- or at least be better then their competition.

Cute.

I live on this planet:

http://losangeles.urbdezine.co...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.co...

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/n...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

This is my planet. Glad you can make a cute statement and run away without any effort to back it up.

If TWC doesn't perform to my satisfaction, I go to ATT. If ATT botches it, I can jump to a number of cellular or satellite solutions. And if it's REALLY bad, I can make sure next time I move I'm in a better area with better coverage.

If you want YOUR local government to take over more stuff, bully for you. Don't even THINK about making it manditory. This is an effing HUGE country with countless different needs and functions. My town has "again and again to cost-cutting in the interest of short-term profits, the neglect of upkeep, and the failure to maintain sufficient overcapacity in order to deal with surges and failures" while private services and businesses who wish to survive need to keep up with client needs -- or at least be better then their competition.

Cute.

I live on this planet:

http://losangeles.urbdezine.co...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.co...

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/n...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

This is my planet. Glad you can make a cute statement and run away without any effort to back it up.

If TWC doesn't perform to my satisfaction, I go to ATT. If ATT botches it, I can jump to a number of cellular or satellite solutions. And if it's REALLY bad, I can make sure next time I move I'm in a better area with better coverage.

If you want YOUR local government to take over more stuff, bully for you. Don't even THINK about making it manditory. This is an effing HUGE country with countless different needs and functions. My town has "again and again to cost-cutting in the interest of short-term profits, the neglect of upkeep, and the failure to maintain sufficient overcapacity in order to deal with surges and failures" while private services and businesses who wish to survive need to keep up with client needs -- or at least be better then their competition.

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

Yes. Tesla won in MA

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

That's the Koch's, again, buying legislators.

As usual, their lobbyists (bribe bagmen) provide plausible-sounding bafflegab that has nothing to do with the reality. It's just there because most people cannot even find the details, much less understand them.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-solar-kochs-20140420,0,7412286.story

Give up. This is not about science, it is about tje progressive anti-gun stance.

In your haste to construct an anti-liberal, pro-gun narrative, you missed the real reason for his suspension, which somebody mentioned above.

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

Schiller, 43, also was the teachers union representative on the campus and had been dealing with disagreements with administrators over updating the employment agreement under which the faculty works. His suspension, with pay, removed him from those discussions.

Schiller, 43, also was the teachers union representative on the campus and had been dealing with disagreements with administrators over updating the employment agreement under which the faculty works. His suspension, with pay, removed him from those discussions.

cite
Its not about safety, its about removing the union rep from negotiations at the expensive of his students who are preparing for their AP exams.

Schiller, 43, also was the teachers union representative on the campus and had been dealing with disagreements with administrators over updating the employment agreement under which the faculty works. His suspension, with pay, removed him from those discussions.

This article makes it sound like the inability to afford food ends when you graduate.

But then grocery stores that gouge customers who don't have club cards or that charge confiscatory prices for food that is so plentiful we pay farmers not to grow it is a subject very much like liquor stores in poor neighborhoods.

You're not allowed to talk about it.

it's not the bigotry, its the fact they have no zoning laws and some megacorp can build a fertilizer plant next to residential housing and kill people when it explodes
or build some oil refinery next to someone's home and poison their air and water

While I'm sure that Texas has totally managed to avoid the scourge of zoning laws, the California approach has its own drawbacks that are becoming apparent, especially as California is now practically speaking a one party state run by Democrats with super majorities able to pass whatever they want.

California: CEOs Rate It Worst U.S. Business Climate For 8 Years Running
Hundreds of Thousands Flee Democrat-Run California
Just How Bad is California’s Business Climate?
California, a bad bet for business - Why would new enterprises come to a state like this?
Texas v. California: The Real Facts Behind The Lone Star State's Miracle
State leaders closely watch migrating millionaires

Does it matter whether you do not have a democracy or whether you do not have a republic? The point is that you have a plutocracy at your hands, and you're discussing semantic bullshit.

To him, it's not a matter of semantics. Democracies are evil because they use the string that maps almost 1:1 onto a political brand name that he doesn't like. Republics are wonderful because the string that describes that form of government maps almost 1:1 onto a political brand that he does like.

Although the quote is technically correct (the best kind of correct!), because of the political party preference of the person who made up the quote, he has been trained to prefer the character string "Republican" over the character string "Democrat" regardless of the policies associated with the two political parties that have adopted those two character strings as brand names.

Perfect example of Newspeak. Control the language used to describe political expression, and you control the range of political opinions he is capable of expressing. Here, we start with a guy who prefers the (R) brand, convince him that the string "democracy" means something unamerican, and we have his vote for life. We've managed to so associate the "d-word" with un-americanness that the R-branded folks are now siding with communist China on labor laws and with Vladimir Putin on everything from marriage to the invasion of the Ukraine and the reconstitution of the USSR.

It's brilliant. It's evil. It's dangerous. And it's working.

http://articles.latimes.com/20...

There are roughly 9.6 million millionares in the US presently (NOT INCLUDING HOUSES). That works out to roughly 3% of the population, so not a ton.

Given that I think most dev's probably fall into the top 1/3rd earners in society and that the 'millionaire' mark errodes yearly with inflation, its very likely that a large number of software developers will in fact be millionaires by the time they retire. The real question is in 30 years, what will a million bucks be in buying power, and will the next big number be 10 millionare, etc. instead.

A lot of people aren't aware that thanks to a law passed by California voters, if you are arrested for a felony (or a possible felony) in California, your DNA will be collected and held in a government database indefinitely

Note that you only have to be arrested for what might be later possibly considered a felony for this to occur. You don't have to be convicted. Not even charged. Everyone who is arrested in California is arrested fairly and ultimately charged and convicted... right, Occupy Oakland people?

This has even been challenged and upheld by the 9th district.

This law was passed by a 9/11-frightened public in 2004. Would such a law pass now? I strongly doubt it.

These records are never expunged.

(Link heavy...) I think you got the wrong end of the stick, there.

Some studies have been done that show a minimum 30% penetration is possible for *any* region (and this one stopped their modeling at 30%, so its likely higher)...
http://www.renewableenergyworl...

An earlier study from Europe (no link at moment) put the figure around 40%.

Another US study comes in around 45%...
http://arstechnica.com/science...

UK study comes in at >90%...
http://www.gizmag.com/uk-natio...

German study comes in at 100%...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
More on this...
http://www.renewablesinternati...

Some of these show cost savings from adding renewables, another one showed costs rising about 10-15%.

Iowa already got over 25% of power from renewables in 2013; not sure about the mix but I don't recall hydro being a big player there. The state has set a 40% target for 2015!

As for diverse power generation, that is a good rule of thumb, however the non-renewable generators cannot continue to operate in the long-term and nuclear in particular is even worse than variable renewables as the latter has a large correlation with demand curves. Anyone scanning the field for the past few years, however, is getting the idea that a diversity of storage will be at least as important. And there are a LOT of different options. The state of the art in this field has moved completely beyond the 1990s consensus that your post is predicated on.

Hydropower operating permits are up: http://grist.org/news/america-...

In Germany, they have closed a deal with Norway which has vast hydropower resources.

Batteries are considered the least economic storage solution, but I suggest you google "flow batteries". Here are some examples other storage types:

Zynth batteries
http://www.eosenergystorage.co...

Battery EV storage pilot in US
http://www.latimes.com/busines...

Ice bears (cold storage for hot nights)
http://www.renewgridmag.com/e1...

Undersea pumped hydro (you read that right)
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/...

Power-to-gas
http://www.nasdaq.com/press-re...

Molten salt
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...

I doubt there is any field where one percent of laymen aren't vastly superior to the majority of professionals. ... This is statistically normal.

Fine, but just like the quatrains of Nostradamus: can you identify them correctly beforehand? Counting the perfect hits after the fact isn't fair. (But then again I guess it worked for Miss Cleo for a while)

BTW: 16th century Mr. N. is an idiot. But he's better than the current sales-people paying attention to him with 5 centuries more experience. Oh, and multiple Blood Moons are soon arriving -- buy your Tarot cards and ticket to safety now, before it's too late!

Oh look at the outrage.

Cops, fire fighters, city managers and the rest routinely gouge huge chunks of money out of city and state governments in the US. Most of the time they get a pass. After all, why shouldn't some LA assistant chief pull $260k a year bilking double and triple time hours recorded while getting dressed for work? That's nothing compared to some evil capitalist pig-dog bankster. Right?

That's the rationale, anyhow. So now this culture of corruption has gone and created a way to launder some of their bribes through a charity. And we're supposed to go all pitchfork and lick-spittle about it?

Selective outrage. That's all it is.

The engineer behind the heart bleed bug is named in national news: http://www.latimes.com/busines...

Anon because I modded you as above.

Having your cake and eating it too.

Paying the bill: there are other ways.

No, there are no other ways. It costs money to run radio ads. It costs money to run a website. It costs money to run print ads. SOMEONE has to pay for that. There is no other way.

If you say that the wealthy and corporations will not participate in equal election funding, then answer why they wont.

If I say what? That if you prohibit the use of money to pay for effective speech the rich won't be able to participate in speech? That should be obvious. If the poor cannot buy airtime because they don't individually have the money and you prohibit them from forming groups (like CU) with the intention of pooling their money, and you prohibit the rich from using their own money to buy airtime, then yes, you've silenced both groups. You haven't made it easier for the poor to speak.

Or that silencing people you don't like isn't the solution to people you do like not being able to pay for their speech? That should be obvious, too. But I don't know what this "participate in equal election funding" nonsense is, or how it is supposed to remove the requirement for money to have effective speech from the system.

Requirement to have money to have speech: see above, and why does it *have* to be that way?

I love "see above" arguments, because they are so meaningless. What "above" shows that money isn't necessary for effective speech? Nothing. You simply declare "there are other ways" and don't quite get around to saying how you'd cover the costs of the speech. It has to be that way because newpapers and TV stations and websites don't get free electricity and newsprint and servers, and the people who run those media don't all donate their time.

Bribery and graft: Those laws are not really working and the wealthy are working hard to dilute them further, ( Citizens United, the recent ruling on overall contribution limits ).

What utter and complete nonsense. CU wasn't about bribery or graft or anything in furtherance of either. CU was about a corporation that was CREATED FOR THE EXPLICIT PURPOSE OF BUYING AIRTIME FOR A MOVIE still being allowed to buy that airtime because the people who made up that corporation HAVE THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH. Just as the Sierra Club has the right to dump $200,000 into a campaign against a conservative. And the Teamster's Union spent their member's money on a hatchet job on the same candidate:

However, the special Senate election took an interesting turn a few weeks before election day A union group ran a radio ad that accused Smith of murder ...

Now, maybe you were vocally opposed to that use of money, too, but I don't know many people who were. Wyden slid out from the mess by claiming the people who were spending money on his behalf weren't under his control. Apparently Ron Wyden doesn't think money is corrupting or buys influence because he relies on it for his campaigns.

For someone who is so adamant that silencing people is bad you seem very in favor of policies that do exactly that.

Nonsense. CU being allowed to buy airtime for a movie is hardly how one silences anyone. It means that more people can speak because more people can join with others to pay for that speech. A movie that shows Hillary Clinton in a bad light doesn't stop you from buying an ad that shows her to be the Next Coming of the Messiah.

That's the real way to counter that speech that you are so opposed to. Not silencing people because you don't like what they say or how they pay for the media to say it. Making your own speech and banding together with others of like mind to make your single voice more effective.

But the one fact remains: it costs money to have effective speech in these modern times. There is no way around that. Someone has to pay for it.

"April 8, 2014. The long-awaited Rand Corp. study of Obamacare's effect on health insurance coverage was released Tuesday and confirmed the numbers that had been telegraphed for more than a week: At least 9.3 million more Americans have health insurance now than in September 2013, virtually all of them as a result of the law."

"That's a net figure, accommodating all those who lost their individual health insurance because of cancellations. The Rand study confirms other surveys that placed the number of people who lost their old insurance and did not or could not replace it -- the focus of an enormous volume of anti-Obamacare rhetoric -- at less than 1 million."

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

I know I'll be modded down again but:

Well, no, because that's not really a position of hate now is it? She's haggling over the meaning of the term "marriage" but ultimately is in favor of same sex couples to have the same rights that heterosexual couples have. She states it twice, "I donâ(TM)t ever want anybody to be denied rights within our country" and "perhaps we will decide that there needs to be some way for people to express their desire to live together through civil union" in the the four sentence position you quote. Yes, many gay activists would be upset that Rice seems unwilling to recognize the significance of the term "marriage" in this case, but most would at least understand she's not trying to deny them actual legal rights or rights of association.

In addition, regarding the concerns with Eich: Eich didn't merely donate money to some generic pro-Prop 8 group, the Prop 8 group itself was broadcasting ads before and after Eich donated to them describing homosexuals and homosexual marriage as dangerous to Children.

And Eich pointedly didn't back down from that position - that homosexuals are dangerous to children - when it became public knowledge he'd made those donations to fund ads saying just that despite claiming to have noted the pain it was causing to people around him.

Regardless of your views on gay marriage, Eich co-funded some extremely nasty propaganda and handled the revelations that he did so extremely badly. As such, it was reasonable for us to question his judgement, honesty, respect, and management skills, and ask why he was supposedly a good person to trust with the role of CEO.

Rice? Uh... well, judgement, honesty... you'll have to look elsewhere for a sign she's deficient in those areas, although to be honest, I don't think you'll have far to go Iraq.

Numbers without citation. How useless.
1 million policies canceled

The people that left their coins sitting on Mt. Gox's servers instead of getting them off immediately? Yes, those people are unusually stupid.

The people that are buying Lambroghinis ( http://articles.latimes.com/20... ), apartments ( http://www.uproxx.com/webcultu... ) and even castles in Estonia ( http://thebitcoinnews.co.uk/20... ) for mere pennies on the dollar don't seem very stupid.