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Based on the number of times I've heard Republicans scream about 'States Rights' lately, I bet if that same situation were to come before the Republicans of today, a fair number of them would vote to allow slavery because "government just gets in the way" and "regulations stifle innovation" and "the government which governs least governs best". Look at the hard work going on in conservative America right now to roll back labor laws, all the comments made by people like Newt Gingrich about how we should put the young to work rather than 'forcing them to get an education', the concerted effort in state legislatures all over the country to dismantle unions, the relaxation of environmental regulations (Republican Representative Joe Barton even apologizing to the head of BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster)...

You really don't see how the two parties have pretty much completely flipped in ideology since the mid-1800's? Come on.

You should read the rest of the wikipedia article, not just the first paragraph of the toxicity section. Also, it turns out that the excessive use of roundup-ready GMO crops has, shockingly, caused evolution to occur in the midwest, where it was thought to be impossible. Consequently, the next generation of pesticide-ready GMO crops will be much more exciting. Another point I neglected to mention earlier is that if you are a farmer who does not use roundup-ready seeds, but does save seeds for planting next year, then when your neighbor's GMO crops contaminate your seeds, Monsanto will sue you for violating their patents.

I suggest you read this: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story

95% of their money goes into investment and the rest is effectively given away to avoid tax. How is that any different from any other corporation other than it obvious makes people think better of them compared to G.E. for example? And on top of it the bulk is going into some pretty awful companies causing all sorts of problems for poor nations.

Also why do Gates and Buffet largely give away their money to family foundations rather than giving to existing foundations and charities? It's all a con, imo, that makes people think they're awesome.

Except that all that money still primarily ends up in the hands of corporations through investment and they more or less only give enough away to avoid taxes. How is that really any different than running a investment firm? But then on top of it he's effectively creating a charity monopoly that has a knock-on effect of hurting a lot of other charities that do good things. And a lot of those companies they invest in are harming poor countries.

Here's a good more balanced look at his foundation. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story

Arguably Gates is causing more problems than he's fixing. I don't think we need even more billionaires doing that.

In my opinion a lot of his billionaire charitable actions are a con. They claim they are giving their money away rather than giving it to their children but the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a family foundation. Where do you think Gates' kids will end up or if they start their own foundation do you not think they'll get family money for that?

Let's see where Buffet puts his money:

the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
the Sherwood Foundation (formerly called the Susan A. Buffett Foundation)
the Howard G. Buffett Foundation
the NoVo Foundation (Co-Chair Peter Buffet and President and Co-Chair Jennifer Buffet)
Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation

So all his money goes to his friend or his family. If they're so concerned about helping us plebes why can't they just give that money to existing charities and foundations rather than to friends and family? It's a scam, imo.

He's realised he needs to take care of his public image if he wants to die a well liked man but that doesn't mean he's some awesome full-time charity hero. Yes, he's the co-chairman of his foundation but likewise he's still the chairman of Microsoft which happens to use the same questionable labour as Apple through Foxconn. Where's his caring for those people? It's probably because his primary job is still making money off of people. He's the CEO of Cascade Investment so my guess his primary concern is still making money not helping people.

But even if you focus on just his charity, it's arguably a very damaging charity. He's using his wealth to basically create another monopoly but this one's in the charitable sector rather than computers. The end result is all the talent and skill gets dumped into things he wants to fix and other areas suffer. There have already been numerous complaints about this.

His charity only gives away minimal amount of money to basically avoid taxes while investing the rest and they invest in companies that won't work with poor countries so they can buy needed drugs and oil companies that are destroying the same countries he claims to want to help. People in the niger delta have loads of vision issues, asthma and bronchitis because of the companies he invests in. How is curing measles for these people helping them? They get to die from something else which is probably worse? What a great guy. Oh and when he gets that malaria disease will poor countries even be able to get it or will it retain a high price and basically only help Gate's rich buddies?

I suggest more people need to take a critical look at his foundation. The information is out there and has been reported on like in the L.A> Times http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story but for the most part he gets a pass because it's charity work and they think they can cure AIDS. But that doesn't excuse that actually most of the foundation's money actually goes to help rich awful companies through investment. With 48 of 100 be labeled as "transgressions against social responsibility".

On education, all they provide a racist scholarship which poor white families can't benefit from. They push privatization of education as a reform. They want standardised tests to rate teachers and schools and pay to be based on test scores. Sure that sounds like a good thing until you realise that standardised tests don't work and if a school's reputation and a teacher's pay is based on test scores then tests just get easier. How the hell does that help?

The UK does the same sort of crap and because of things like the League tables schools aren't giving kids the best education possible. They're giving them something they'll do well on to make themselves look good and get crap like students not getting zero marks for work they don't do at all. Only work they hand in which results in stories like this. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/teacher-who-gave-students-zero-marks-becomes-a-folk-hero/article4230726/

The guy, imo, is still a scumbag. But he's just become smarter at being a scumbag and realises he gets a free pass on whatever he does if starts a big foundation and claims they'll get rid of AIDS and other diseases.

Quoth the anonymous coward:

You've made a lot of extraordinary claims. Now back it up with extraordinary facts.

But this is a big fat fucking waste of troll time, because the US DoJ already proved the claim that Bill is a robber baron. As for the foundation being a scam, the reader may decide for themselves.

While I sympathize with the criticism of our government, I think it's a bit hyperbolic to call this "brutal", especially when the comparison is with Russia where protesters are routinely rounded up and will now be forced to pay fines up to $20,000 for merely protesting the regime.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-author-ray-bradbury-dies-at-91-m,0,1934126.story

And it has those high paying jobs with health care benefits that California just can't seem to keep around.>

Flatly untrue. The high unemployment is at the low wage end of the scale, causing the income inequality in California to skyrocket precisely because it is not the high paying jobs most affected. Those at the low end of the economic scale also comprise most of those leaving the state: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_1211SBR.pdf

In fact, California is by far the principal beneficiary of venture capital, which is flowing in precisely because the high paying jobs have not disappeared. Indeed California's share of high tech and manufacturing jobs has remained unchanged: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/05/business/la-fi-mo-california-far-away-leader-20120405

Sorry to burst your California hatin' bubble.

Of you course, most Atheists are more ignorant than religious nut jobs. And my most Atheists, I mean only the ones that feel the need to tell the world they are atheists in order to make themselves feel superior. Anyone who comes out and starts debating something by leading their argument with critisms of someone rather than their though patterns, its certain they aren't talking about anything they actually know about.

Ironically, your post proves YOU don't know what you're talking about. Atheists are on average more knowledgeable about religion than believers. See for example this poll - and here's an excerpt, in case you don't feel like following the link:

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Centerâ(TM)s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers

I'd also like to point you to the following quote, from here:

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.
 
 

Pollsters are exempt from Do Not Call.

And I believe pollsters generally correct for the other biases you cite.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/25/news/la-pn-gap-between-cell-phones-landlines-evident-in-party-splits-20120524

Because of course a small number of evil bastards act with the full support of all of the billions of Muslims in the world. By your logic, guys like Anders Breivik and Scott Roeder act with the full support of all Christians.

Listen, we all WISH this was about a small number of evil bastards. But every poll done in the Muslim world bears out that a surprising majority of Muslims approve of extreme, violent measures that are oppressive to Muslims, gays, and religious minorities. See this Pew poll, for instance: Majority of Muslims Want Islam in Government. From the LA Times writeup:

majorities in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria would favor changing current laws to allow stoning as a punishment for adultery, hand amputation for theft and death for those who convert from Islam to another religion. About 85% of Pakistani Muslims said they would support a law segregating men and women in the workplace. Muslims in Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and Jordan were among the most enthusiastic, with more than three-quarters of poll respondents in those countries reporting positive views of Islam’s influence in politics: either that Islam had a large role in politics, and that was a good thing, or that it played a small role, and that was bad.

It's no coincidence that all of the world's roughly dozen countries with the death penalty for homosexuality or for converting to other religions are majority-Muslim.

Nope its not a stereotype, its well established that the Audi A6 is the semi official car of choice of the Chinese Communist party official.

The mistresses and princelings apparently favor Ferrari's.

If you aren't familiar with the term princeling they are the children and grandchildren of the giants of the Communist party, the comrades of Mao back in the day, the marchers of the Long March, champions of the worker, who have now suddenly all become staggeringly rich, are driving around in Italian sports cars, and have lost touch with the prolateriat.

should not be perceived as a threat to any other country,

They're not a threat to other countries. They're a threat to their own people. Currently the regime discourages dissent and protests through beatings and jailings, but people still stand up against them. How many will still do so when threatened with a helicopter gunship... Whether it works as advertised or not?

Some drugs alter your mind so much that we think we'd better make them illegal.

Why ? I still don't understand why it's illegal to manipulate my own body/mind! Under what authority does the goverment grant itself that right ? Music is a mind alterning stimulus [ http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/09/news/la-heb-music-dopamine-20110109 ] , but yet we do not ban certain type of music! My point is I will add whatever harware to my brain and I will consume whatever drugs I want...

It IS relevant to recruitment. It basically started with Top Gun in the 80's years ago when they realised the idealised portrayal of going to war led to a sharp increase in recruitment.

It was so successful that recruiters even had booths set up outside the cinema to catch these people.

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-05/entertainment/ca-20403_1_top-gun

I think you missed his point. He was saying that it would be wasteful to cooperate and support something that would not be relevant. Accordingly they only support positive messages because those are relevant and helpful whereas negative messages are neither.

It IS relevant to recruitment. It basically started with Top Gun in the 80's years ago when they realised the idealised portrayal of going to war led to a sharp increase in recruitment.

It was so successful that recruiters even had booths set up outside the cinema to catch these people.

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-05/entertainment/ca-20403_1_top-gun

If they are going to deceive you like that, then who's to say that they aren't terrorists or child porn distributors?

Money. Lots and lots of money.

Soon they'll all have their own private, but state-funded, police force, like Apple and REACT. I'm sure they'll be flash-banging people and murdering family pets in no time...that'll teach those filthy pirates!

there's 6 billions more people out there

.... 4 billion of whom don't have internet access.

I would say that $18 per user is even little bit low for the value and revenue every user brings to Facebook, ads revenue, sales revenue (from in-game coins), and the social effect of having all the users in the service.

The company is valued at $104Billion which places a value of $115 per user, or £14.80 per person on the planet. Facebook already pockets 14% of all advertising money spent in the US, and with companies such as GM pulling out from facebook, you seriously have to question how much more it can grow it's ad revenue.

And who knows what other monetization Facebook will bring to the table once they get to it.

The kind of aggressive/intrusive monetisation that makes it users leave in droves?

This article gives information for many cities (scroll down past the maps for the text listing):

eclipse times by city

LET THEM EAT ASTROTURF.

Facebook may yet be overpriced. Morgan Stanley and its fellow underwriters of the IPO undoubtedly spent millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions, propping up the stock Friday so it wouldn't fall below the $38 offering price, as that would have been a huge embarrassment. No one knows how long they'd continue to do so.

Additionally, in about a week the shares become eligible for short-selling, which could place more pressure on the price. A few months from now, insiders prohibited from selling their own share will have the green light, and millions more shares will enter the marketplace. The question in coming weeks may no longer be how high Facebook can soar, but how low can it go?
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-facebook-fail-20120518,0,5818946.story

SPLC is a hate group. And yet they don't list themselves as one, I wonder why.

http://www.cis.org/node/54
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/02/local/me-cap2
http://webworks.typepad.com/lakecountyfiscalrangers/2010/06/cost-of-illegal-immigrants-from-a-california-teacher-working-in-a-title-1-school.html
http://sosguy.net/articles/264
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/investigations/122630554.html
http://capoliticalnews.com/2012/03/06/antonovich-la-county-cost-for-illegal-aliens-is-1-6-billion-per-year/

The problem with people like you, is that the moment people cite any facts that impact immigration negatively, they are labeled "hate" by the SLPC. From the SPLC own website ...

Other hate groups on the list target gays or immigrants

I bet you don't even see the problem with that. You're a "hate group" if you mention facts about illegal immigration problems. Self fulfilling much?

Others have mentioned the underwriter issue, but take a look at this article. Basically, the underwriters of the IPO stepped in every time it looked like the stock might hit $38 in order to avoid it going negative. So they end up with more stock than they planned on, which they will be hoping to offload in the next few weeks. The idea being that if the stock tanked out of the gates it would shatter confidence and they would lose money, but if they can maintain even or positive valuation for a little while it will increase investor confidence and they will be able to offload these extra shares bit by bit. Basically perfectly legal manipulation of the stock price in an attempt to assuage investor concerns. The fact that the stock didn't really pop does seem to suggest that they didn't undervalue it (which has been a favorite game of underwriters in the past, as it puts more money in their pockets), but you can't really tell from the trading results whether it was overvalued because, at least for now, there are major banks protecting the stock price.

Personally I think the stock is rather overvalued (I'd say by about 2-3 times based on potential for growth; I just don't think there is that much headroom for user growth, and thus far they haven't been terribly good at monetizing their vast user base), but then I'm not a trader and my talent for picking stocks has yet to make me rich (or even a significant profit).

The underwriters were actually propping up the stock which isn't all that unusual, but it does mean that the stock was overpriced. We'll see what the stock is really worth in a few months.

Lies

Hardly. The Militia Movement that was screaming mad against Clinton's supposed police state tactics and New World Order - where the fuck did they go when Bush took office and started wiretapping their phones and signing shit like the Patriot Act?

It's the same story with the Teabaggers. The same people losing their shit over Obama's deficits couldn't be bothered to get out of bed when Bush doubled the national debt. That's a fact, deal with it.

and slander.

Look who's lying now.

Netflix had online streaming prior to Oct 1, 2008.. since that is the date on this article where netflix announced a partnership with Starz, and says 10-20% of their visitors regularly use the online streaming feature:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2008/10/more-mainstream.html

Wow, amazing way to look at it. Might make more sense to look at it as money lost. How many of those 1,700 renouncing caused a loss of tens to hundreds of millions, each?

From LA Times, "Schumer said Saverin could save $67 million to $100 million by renouncing his citizenship and moving to Singapore, which has no capital gains taxes."

And as iWhatevers never come unlocked

Except sometimes. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/09/business/la-fi-tn-unlock-iphone-20120409

Seriously, you do not live in California. What Republican controlled California?

If you're talking about Arnold his choice, like Bush, basically disproves any conservative leanings and he broke almost every campaign promise while sucking the union teat. Oh, Arnold also raised taxes on every business in California on multiple fronts. Wikipedia (for laughs), "The last state governor registered in the CRP, Arnold Schwarzenegger was also a film actor with ties to Hollywood and moderate, liberal and even Democratic Party members, such as his wife Maria Shriver whose uncle was Robert F. Kennedy, brother of US president John F. Kennedy, and her distant cousin was the recalled state governor Grey Davis in the 2003 gubernatorial recall election". I particularly like, "In its April 2010 report, Progressive ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Schwarzenegger one of 11 "worst governors" in the United States because of various ethics issues throughout Schwarzenegger's term as governor".

He pardoned a murderers time for blatant political favors, "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his power to cut nine years off the 16-year manslaughter sentence for Esteban Nuñez, the son of the governor's friend, former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez". http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/14/opinion/la-ed-pardon-20110514

I've lived half a century and have never seen Republicans gain any majority in the California Assembly. You know, the State Congress. A Governor, especially one that failed completely at every legislative or voter initiative, provides even more evidence that Republicans have never controlled California.

Anyway, here's a few less-impressive but still revealing facts:

41% of public school students in California live in homes where the most frequently spoken language is not English. [1].doc

English fluency rate in the LA school district has risen from a mere 16% in 2001 to an unsatisfying 49% in 2005. [2]

Yup, that's the crux of the problem. While it may be true, as others say below, that publication bias against negative results occurs in all fields (such as physics) regardless of study funding, what we are seeing now is the influence of pharmaceutical industry funding in the clinical trials used for FDA approval of drugs (that is, a company funding the trial of its own drug).

Specifically, drug studies funded by pharmaceutical companies are four times more likely to show a positive benefit than ones funded by neutral sources. This is a problem because nearly two-thirds of clinical trials used for FDA approval are now industry-funded.

That is a well written expression of contemporary conventional wisdom. Group-think, in other words.

The US government has an outfit called the ATF. They are responsible for, among other things, the regulation of imported firearms. They enforce detailed and burdensome standards on foreign manufacturers that export guns to the US. The US also collects an excise tax (for which few exemptions exist) of between 10-11% on imported firearms.

This is highly unusual. Almost no imports suffer such burdens. 70% of all imports to the US are tariff free, and most of the remaining 30% are fossil fuels, which means most manufactured goods are tariff free.

The result of all this is telling. In the US there are multiple, large, profitable firearms manufacturers that have built large advanced manufacturing facilities and are employing thousands of well paid, unionized workers.

The conventional wisdom you offer would have us believe that these US manufactured products would be wholly unaffordable due to the cost of US labor and regulations. The truth is that Sturm Ruger, for instance, has had to stop accepting new orders because, despite their vast and entirely domestic manufacturing operations, they can't keep up with demand. The guns are entirely affordable as evidenced by very high sales.

The truth is our leaders and captains of industry don't believe your conventional wisdom either. Having publicly acquired a black eye due to the failure of certain high profile investments, the US government felt the need to protect another domestic industry with a brand new tariff.

We know exactly what to do to protect domestic industry and we know it works. We just don't bother. The truth is we would rather that nasty industry business be kept far away, preferably somewhere that has next to no regulation and an amble supply of disposable, exploitable labor to maintain those "low, low" walmart prices.

Anyway, you guys need to come join our wonderful 'write an X on paper' system. We get results the same night, too.

We had mechanical voting booths in the Bronx and NY in general, but then had to change to electronic ones to comply with federal law. (Stupid HAVA.)

Bloomberg called its first use on primary day 2010 a "royal screw-up". I've voted with both old and new machines, and while both seemed to work well, who knows what bits flipped (or were flipped) between feed and count. Personally I think the change was as necessary as the impending invasion of internet TLDs (i.e. not at all).

Go count how many nukes China actually has. They might only have enough as a revenge strike on a very few number of cities, if the USA eliminates most of China's weapons and cities in a first strike. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons#Statistics

They may be lying but:

China is the only NPT nuclear-weapon state to give an unqualified negative security assurance due to its "no first use" policy.

They might as well stick to that strategy since they have so few, and the USA or Russia would be able to wipe out most of the useful parts of China - even if China makes a first strike.

The main thing is so far their leaders do not appear to be insane, life is good for them at the top (they even have their own elite farms so they don't get poisoned like the rest[1]) ).

In contrast there was and is actually a significant chance of people like Sarah Palin getting into power. Think about that from the perspective of the rest of the world. Fact is the USA is a greater threat to the world than China is. The USA has more power and they have greater willingness to use it (and in many cases abuse it).

Now consider that when other countries spend more on defence, it might actually be for defence - and the responsible thing to do for their country.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/16/world/la-fg-china-elite-farm-20110917

Agreed. I lost a lot of respect for him when he opined that Universal health care is equivalent to slavery

Actually, what is incorrect in his analysis?

If you have a "right" to healthcare (a service provided at a cost) then that implies you should have the full weight of the government to enforce your claim of that right. Thus, if no one is willing to provide the service at the price the government is willing to pay for it, measures would have to be taken to compel them to do so.

A service cannot be a Right as to declare it as such does in fact contain the idea that others will be, if necessary, compelled by force to provide that service. The comparison to lawyers in the article fails as there is a large difference between something you're supposed to have available to you under specific conditions and declaring a universal right to an on going service. Further, the "state will provide a lawyer if you can't afford one" thing came about through court cases interpreting the mentioned clause in the Constitution as requiring that.

I suppose one could construct some logic that says that:
A) Health care is a Right
B) If you cannot afford it, the State will provide it

But it still doesn't get around the fundamental issues:
A) Health care costs, unlike the costs for lawyers, grow substantially over time. No matter how large the economy of a country is, the cost will eventually break the state or lead to significant rationing schemes
B) Ultimately if Doctors/Nurses/Support staff refuse to work for whatever wage the government will pay (either directly or through medicare/medicaid or whatever), what do you do? Do you compel them to do so to provide this Right?

Agreed. I lost a lot of respect for him when he opined that Universal health care is equivalent to slavery last year, but I'll be the first to cheer him on in this regard if he can do something about the ridiculous waste that is the TSA.

I actually proctored the TSA tests off and on from '06-'08. Besides the fact that the questions themselves were a joke (I remember one in particular being "Have you ever lived in a house you thought was haunted?"), the majority of the people sitting for them looked like they were either under the influence of narcotics, or at least had more than a passing familiarity with them, not to mention gang tats and other evidence that these people were not the best and brightest by any stretch.

I haven't traveled by air since, and barring a death in the immediate family that makes such a trip completely unavoidable, that's not going to change anytime soon. I honestly can't understand how parents can let their kids be patted down by these animals...although I'm betting if they were as familiar with the types of people that sit for the tests, and how ridiculously worthless the tests were themselves, that the airports would either be completely empty or full of rioters...

Article appears to be slasdotted..and sparse per prior posts. Any better links?
Oh that's right.. unlike the submitter or the eds.. I can use google.
http://www.livescience.com/20048-ridiculously-automated-dorm-room.html
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2012/05/01/cal-student-creates-a-ridiculously-automated-dorm/
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-video-berkeleys-most-ridiculously-automated-dorm-room-ever-20120501,0,2225746.story

What is Facebook's actual revenues? Something like $200M quarterly?

LA Times is reporting $3.7B annual revenue, so an average $925M quarterly.

As a government agency, shouldn't their first priority be to maintain order and prevent riots?
I find it very odd this story is posted today of all days. THIS is exactly what Bart was trying to avoid.

He's talking about a server, not a sex dungeon.

Meh, better to think ahead. Otherwise you'll end up retro-fitting a sex dungeon after... at greater expense. Just ask the CEO of Broadcom: "Billionaire sought secret lair for sex, drugs, complaint says"

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nicholas18jul18,0,7022711.story

I did not dismiss it. I addressed it see 1) and 2).

Read this too: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/26/opinion/la-oe-orent-pox-20100926
Congo is not Uganda, but it's not far away enough for diseases like this (they share a border).

In hindsight you can say it was nothing. But it's all based on the information they had at that time. When a potentially infected passenger is in flight, you'll just have to quarantine everyone on the flight till you know things are OK.

What do you propose they do instead?
a) Let everyone including her go?
b) Check her while letting the rest of the passengers go?

What if it turns out she is infected with something nasty and contagious? You now have even more people to quarantine - since the other passengers would have travelled "everywhere" and come into contact with even more people.

They violated their own protocols.

Can you provide actual evidence that they violated their own protocols?

HIV is not as contagious as monkeypox, nor does it normally kill as fast. And it is unlikely that stereotypical virgin slashdotters will get AIDs.

Nor does it seem to be super deadly-- between 1-10% fatality rate even in Africa.

5% would be a pretty high fatality rate for an infectious disease. Not as high as the 1918 flu, but high enough to worry about. Even 1% is nothing to take lightly. And do read on - not all monkeypox is the same.

Might be a good idea if you do not rely solely on wikipedia for your information.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/monkeypox/treatmentguidelines.htm
www.state.nj.us/agriculture/divisions/ah/diseases/monkeypox.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/26/opinion/la-oe-orent-pox-20100926

There are two distinct genetic lines of monkeypox. The less severe West African strain entered the United States in 2003 in the body of an infected Gambian pouched rat. It spread in a pet store to dormice and to caged prairie dogs, and eventually caused 81 human infections, none of them serious and none of which spread. The far deadlier Congo basin strain causes a disease that is "virtually indistinguishable" from typical smallpox, says virologist Mark Buller of St. Louis University.

In the Congo basin, an area crossed and re-crossed by battling armies in the Democratic Republic of Congo's long civil war, people are suffering, almost out of sight of the rest of the world, from a monkeypox strain that causes disfiguring rashes, headaches, fevers and sometimes blindness. About 10% of those affected die â" a rate approximating the African death rate from smallpox.

If the last part is true, that's not something to take lightly.

Now if this was random stopping of people on the public streets, we would have something to talk about.

Well then let's talk about it:

"Congress will soon be signing a bill allowing additional funding for a large expansion of TSA checkpoints soon. Yes, checkpoints. No longer are the TSA relegated to the lowly airport, as 25 teams have been roving the country side conducting highway checkpoints, setting up shop at bus terminals, sporting events, and even a high school prom. Congress apparently feels as though you aren’t being reminded on a daily basis that you live in an ever-increasing police state, so they want to add twelve more “Viper Teams” to the roster." -- KEVIN HAYDEN – TRUTHISTREASON.NET

Where do people get this idea?

From libertarians.

Do you know how many times I've heard libertarians tell me we should wipe every regulation off the books and start over? That any form of taxation is evil and wrong? That safety nets only encourage 'laziness and dependency on the government'? According to those Libertarians I've spoken to, taking one single dime from a man to feed someone starving is a far worse crime than allowing the man to starve in the first place. Requiring hospitals and doctors to provide people medical care in an emergency, regardless of ability to pay, is slavery.

You tell me, Libertarian: What taxes are good? What social institutions should be kept? What are some examples of regulations we need to keep, and what makes them more important than other regulations?

After all, the Thames estuary can't be hurt by a few anthropogenic earthquakes, now? Can it?

I'd be far more worried about the water laced with sand and chemicals that is shot down into the Earth to release this gas from the shale. They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it? And in some US states, it appears that when people think they are affected by it the company responsible doesn't have to tell them what their area was exposed to. It's well known that it contaminates water supply but greed can overpower any environmental problems. Luckily we should be able to watch Pennsylvania screw up their own water and hopefully other states will take a different approach. I wonder how many laws and regulations UKELA will let slide in order for England to "catapult into the top ranks of global producers."

hate to break it to you but ALL the offshore gas mentioned is in Scottish territorial waters and we'll be taking them with us after the 2014 Independence referendum win ;)

nonsensical at 12:35 AM April 23, 2012

"When a mother eats meat, her breast-fed child's brain grows faster and she is able to wean the child at an earlier age, allowing her to have more children faster, the article explains." NOT what the article explains. They have a model that says carnivores wean faster than herbivores and omnivores (which humans certainly are, at least in our very recent evolution.) Then, they say their model's prediction for carnivores matches some human data. Which is odd, since we are omnivores, and our dental and digestive structure suggest we were previously herbivores. Possibly, other factors predicts larger brain size.. Article: "time to weaning predicted for a generic carnivore and non-carnivore with a brain mass equal to that of humans was compared to the actual time to weaning in a global sample of 46 human natural fertility societies. The sample fit the prediction based on the species in the carnivore group with regard to both mean value and distribution (left panel), but did not fit the prediction based on non-carnivore" THIS IS ALL THEY SHOW. Plenty of chimps have varying degrees of monkey-hunting and other meat in their diet, couldn't they look at time-to-weaning within those chimp groups and see if meat consumption explains the variability? Or look in human societies if time to weaning varies with meat consumption? Ridiculous article, stretched even further.

http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-meat-eating-reproduction-20120420,0,2388092.story

After all, the Thames estuary can't be hurt by a few anthropogenic earthquakes, now? Can it?

I'd be far more worried about the water laced with sand and chemicals that is shot down into the Earth to release this gas from the shale. They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it? And in some US states, it appears that when people think they are affected by it the company responsible doesn't have to tell them what their area was exposed to. It's well known that it contaminates water supply but greed can overpower any environmental problems. Luckily we should be able to watch Pennsylvania screw up their own water and hopefully other states will take a different approach.

I wonder how many laws and regulations UKELA will let slide in order for England to "catapult into the top ranks of global producers."

Worse:
All red meat is risky, a study finds
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/13/health/la-he-red-meat-20120313

He was distracted by all the bright shiny things dangling off a ring near his right hand. They were making tinking sounds and reflecting sunlight, and he ignored the fact that turning the one sticking into the steering column two clicks to the left would have shut the engine off and saved all their lives..

Either that, or he was too busy trying to pull his Taser out of his off-duty weapons bag so he could shock the vehicle into submission.

I'm assuming there has to be more to that story.

There is. The car did not have a traditional key type ignition switch. Inf fact it had a push button ignition which required the non-obvious technique to hold the button down for 30 seconds to turn the engine off. Cite: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/business/la-fi-toyota-pushbutton11-2010feb11

The car was a loaner and he was not that familiar with the controls as if it was his daily driver. I also wonder if he was showing off the power it had by pressing the throttle all of the way to the floor resulting in entrapment under the floor mat.

Brakes should have been capable of stopping it if applied without release. If they were released, power assist could have been lost and fade due to heating could have made effective braking difficult.

This article describes 3 different diseases where there have been breakdowns in herd immunity in the US:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/05/health/la-he-vaccines-herd-immunity-20110801

If you do further research you will find that in Europe the problem is much worse. For example post the Wakefield article in Lancet measles vaccination rates dropped to 80-85% causing several outbreaks and the British Medical Society to declare measles as endemic in GB.

Are you sure your children will never want to travel to Europe? Or somebody from Europe will never visit your town? Last year the largest outbreak in the US in 15 years occurred from this source.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2011-10-21/Unvaccinated-behind-largest-US-measles-outbreak-in-years/50852098/1

A lot of people are going to the London Olympics this year. Some have predicted it will trigger a measles epidemic in the US.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9156762/London-2012-Olympics-may-spark-measle-outbreak-US-warns.html

People like you are compromising the society you live in by playing at amateur epidemiologist. It is immoral behavior.