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Second of all, the President didn't increase the debt single-handedly. You cannot point out any amount of programs that he himself pushed for that led to a deficit of $3 trillion since his first budget (the 2010 budget, since the 2009 budget was Bush's).

The 2009 budget was finally introduced in the House and Senate after President Obama was sworn in, and was signed into law by President Obama. Source. The 2009 budget - and its associated deficit - is President Obama's budget, and the result of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - not President Bush or the Democrats. President Bush wasn't even in office when it was pushed through Congress.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:

There is no mention recording name, address, credit card numbers or any of the other stuff. The only part of the bill I find distressing is the use of the term "unregistered sex-offender". Who is that supposed to be?
I knew a cop who once referred to everyone around him that wasn't a cop "a perp who hadn't been caught yet."

Otherwise, you have to go through an unbelievable number of existing laws to figure out what this bill is really trying to do because of the way they have this thing written. To me it looks like the bill is trying to give the U.S. Marshalls a free(er) hand in going after those involved with witness intimidation.

I remember a contract negotiation I was involved with that was written like this, and it was the worst contract "proposal" any of us had seen. BTW, the contract was rejected.

The biggest problem I see is that ISPs would have to store an unimaginably huge amount of data at (ultimately) customer cost. Don't forget the cost of back-ups and security for same.

Write your applicable representative and give them a piece of your mind about HR 1981.

I think the lower/broader tax plan is a great idea, and the balanced budget amendment is totally unworkable. Still, they are doing exactly what they said they'd do when elected.

A balanced budget amendment passed the House of Representatives and nearly passed the Senate in 1996. Instead of working with an amendment that nearly passed, they added numerous severe restrictions knowing full-well their radicalized version stood no chance of passing. That is not someone trying to accomplish what their constituents voted them into office for. It is someone grand-standing to create the appearance that they are doing something.

Furthermore, of all the amendments passed by congress only four of them did not have a deadline for the states to ratify them. Those four amendments are still out there waiting to be ratified by the states. We are still waiting for the Corwin Amendment (1861) to be ratified.

The latest proposed balanced budget amendment obviously started with the text of the 1996 version but, among other changes, the authors exemplified their recklessness by removing the seven year ratification deadline. That would set us up for a constitutional crisis when some states ratify, then revoke their ratification, new states are added to the union, a state splits into two states (like Virginia did), etc.

If the Tea Party is serious about their claims they could start by proposing a budget that actually meets their proposed constitutional amendment.

I think the lower/broader tax plan is a great idea, and the balanced budget amendment is totally unworkable. Still, they are doing exactly what they said they'd do when elected.

A balanced budget amendment passed the House of Representatives and nearly passed the Senate in 1996. Instead of working with an amendment that nearly passed, they added numerous severe restrictions knowing full-well their radicalized version stood no chance of passing. That is not someone trying to accomplish what their constituents voted them into office for. It is someone grand-standing to create the appearance that they are doing something.

Furthermore, of all the amendments passed by congress only four of them did not have a deadline for the states to ratify them. Those four amendments are still out there waiting to be ratified by the states. We are still waiting for the Corwin Amendment (1861) to be ratified.

The latest proposed balanced budget amendment obviously started with the text of the 1996 version but, among other changes, the authors exemplified their recklessness by removing the seven year ratification deadline. That would set us up for a constitutional crisis when some states ratify, then revoke their ratification, new states are added to the union, a state splits into two states (like Virginia did), etc.

If the Tea Party is serious about their claims they could start by proposing a budget that actually meets their proposed constitutional amendment.

I am quite positive that connally, treasury secretary under nixon, had us off the gold standard in August 1971. And the people I was playing with then knew today was coming and in real time cited this even as the tolling of the bell.. Hmm, that is true, but not quite to the point. They knew 1986 was coming, but they did not realize how crazed the monetarists are. So we get wonder walls of money and everything you have come to hate. And now there are no more scams and looting and austerity that will give value to a couple quadrillion in worthless unpayable debt. And you start to get concerned new reporting in your local papers.

I have an idea-- put glass-steagall back in. Multiple bills with significant backing to do that are in Congress right now. This would take out most of the political leadership and most of the banks internationally. But it is challenging for me to believe they are not going soon. We should chose to keep ourselves standing. G-S, put in in the 1930's and fully repealed in 1999 separates out commercial banking assets from investment banking assets--that is, speculative "value" has to stand on its own.. Think of it this way: We need to keep commercial banks going. We do not need to keep speculators and their assets around. So, the speculators need to go grow roses or something useful. Their paper assets really do not exist. And we realize this by the simple and moderate tactic of *not* supporting the fictitious values of the assets, as with your tax dollars, etc. Hey, this is why we have bankruptcy courts.

HB 1489?comes to mind. I am pleased that my rep defazio introduced a similar and useful bill. Where is your rep on this?. I look for a link:
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/18182

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1489:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.2451:

enjoy

I am quite positive that connally, treasury secretary under nixon, had us off the gold standard in August 1971. And the people I was playing with then knew today was coming and in real time cited this even as the tolling of the bell.. Hmm, that is true, but not quite to the point. They knew 1986 was coming, but they did not realize how crazed the monetarists are. So we get wonder walls of money and everything you have come to hate. And now there are no more scams and looting and austerity that will give value to a couple quadrillion in worthless unpayable debt. And you start to get concerned new reporting in your local papers.

I have an idea-- put glass-steagall back in. Multiple bills with significant backing to do that are in Congress right now. This would take out most of the political leadership and most of the banks internationally. But it is challenging for me to believe they are not going soon. We should chose to keep ourselves standing. G-S, put in in the 1930's and fully repealed in 1999 separates out commercial banking assets from investment banking assets--that is, speculative "value" has to stand on its own.. Think of it this way: We need to keep commercial banks going. We do not need to keep speculators and their assets around. So, the speculators need to go grow roses or something useful. Their paper assets really do not exist. And we realize this by the simple and moderate tactic of *not* supporting the fictitious values of the assets, as with your tax dollars, etc. Hey, this is why we have bankruptcy courts.

HB 1489?comes to mind. I am pleased that my rep defazio introduced a similar and useful bill. Where is your rep on this?. I look for a link:
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/18182

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1489:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.2451:

enjoy

For those who would like to actually read it the bill it is H.R.2417 and here is the complete text of the bill.

Rights & Access

This recording is protected by state copyright laws in the United States. The Library of Congress has obtained a license from rights holders to offer it as streamed audio only. Downloading is not permitted. The authorization of rights holders of the recording is required in order to obtain a copy of the recording. Contact jukebox@loc.gov for more information.

The funny part is that you didn't own that record, according the label it was leased to you for the purpose of producing sound directly from the record. And that was the state of the nation in the year 1900 A.D.

Rights & Access

This recording is protected by state copyright laws in the United States. The Library of Congress has obtained a license from rights holders to offer it as streamed audio only. Downloading is not permitted. The authorization of rights holders of the recording is required in order to obtain a copy of the recording. Contact jukebox@loc.gov for more information.

The funny part is that you didn't own that record, according the label it was leased to you for the purpose of producing sound directly from the record. And that was the state of the nation in the year 1900 A.D.

"...Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has decided that we should keep a copy of every book..."
That's brilliant!

And if the idea gets off the ground, let's give it an official name, like the Library of Congress. Perhaps even a website, does anyone know if http://www.loc.gov/index.html is available?

You mean this frightening bill? -- http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c107:./temp/~c107zgZhZb

Yeah, it provides authorization for all manner of things, though the broadness of its reach should make anyone uneasy. I question the legality of such a blank check declaration of force, but I'm not a constitutional expert. It basically gives the president carte blanche to attack any nation of group he or she suspects might have aided or supported Al Qaeda. Scary.

Though supposedly the Pakistan drone strikes are being conducted by the CIA, not the US Armed Forces (which is why the Pentagon always has a "no comment" on them), so I'm not sure what the legality of that is either.

There are already lots of apps for tracking all of Congress. http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2011/06/theres-a-congressional-app-for-that/

http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/intel_interrrogation_sept-1992.pdf

I can't even read Shakespeare without having to sit and think on every page for about an hour

Cheer up. The medium is the problem.

Umm, no. You do make a good point: I've certainly been to performances of Shakespeare where many obscure words and idioms were made reasonably clear through good acting.

But that isn't the main problem. Try reading the script from a Broadway musical of the past few decades; you may not get all the nuance immediately, but it is a lot easier to comprehend than Shakespeare.

The problem is that most people who aren't scholars of Early Modern English (including the vast majority of actors) think that they can just "figure it out" by looking up a few archaic words. But that is generally insufficient for full understanding. Individual words carry all sorts of connotations that have changed in sometimes subtle and sometimes significant ways, while idiomatic uses of those words may carry further meaning. Over a century ago, some scholars were already pointing out how large the gap is and how much audiences (and readers) are missing, as in the example in the "Botching Shakespeare" article here which analyzes a well-known Polonius speech

The language has changed a lot in 400 years. Pretending that it hasn't and all you need is a decent actor to fix that means that you probably aren't getting a lot of the subtleties from the plays... unless you're the kind of person who spends hours each day sifting through arcane shifts in meaning in the OED.

This question got me curious, so I did a little homework. What are the odds of a building in Maryland being struck by a tornado during its lifetime?

Found an AMAZING website: The Tornado History Project, which has statistics for all recorded tornadoes in the U.S., integrated with Google Maps and with a spreadsheet export function. So I grabbed the stats for every historical tornado in Maryland, used the site's track width and length data to find out the area of land affected by each one, and added them all up. The usual caveats about rounding error, reporting bias, etc. apply.

The result: about 43 square km of Maryland has been hit by tornados in the last 60 years. The area of Maryland is 32,000 km^2, so the odds of a random patch of land in Maryland being hit by a tornado over a 60-year period are roughly 1 in 750. (60 years happens to be roughly the useful life of your average building.)

Is this risk high enough to be worth redesigning the building for? I guess it depends on the consequences of loss. It's not a negligible risk, but if the data is backed up elsewhere, I wouldn't worry about it myself. I can think of plenty of other buildings in the area whose loss would be more of a concern.

This question got me curious, so I did a little homework. What are the odds of a building in Maryland being struck by a tornado during its lifetime?

Found an AMAZING website: The Tornado History Project, which has statistics for all recorded tornadoes in the U.S., integrated with Google Maps and with a spreadsheet export function. So I grabbed the stats for every historical tornado in Maryland, used the site's track width and length data to find out the area of land affected by each one, and added them all up. The usual caveats about rounding error, reporting bias, etc. apply.

The result: about 43 square km of Maryland has been hit by tornados in the last 60 years. The area of Maryland is 32,000 km^2, so the odds of a random patch of land in Maryland being hit by a tornado are roughly 1 in 750.

Is this risk high enough to be worth redesigning the building for? I guess it depends on the consequences of loss. It's not a negligible risk, but if the data is backed up elsewhere, I wouldn't worry about it myself. I can think of plenty of other buildings in the area whose loss would be more of a concern.

Silly Fonts aren't even copyrightable let alone trademarkable

The U.S. Copyright Office catalog would beg to differ. Run a quick search in there for Myriad Pro -- one example is document TX0005308118 registered on 2000-10-30 to Adobe Systems, Inc. You can also see registrations for ClearViewHwy, the new font for highway signs, plus if you search USPTO you'll find a trademark application filed in 2003 for the name of the font.

You can get the roll call votes here
House: here
Senate: here

S.968 via Thomas

Sponsor: Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT]

Co-Sponsors:
Sen Alexander, Lamar [TN]
Sen Blumenthal, Richard [CT]
Sen Blunt, Roy [MO]
Sen Coons, Christopher A. [DE]
Sen Feinstein, Dianne [CA]
Sen Franken, Al [MN] (Say it ain't so, Franky!)
Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [NY]
Sen Graham, Lindsey [SC]
Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA]
Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT]
Sen Klobuchar, Amy [MN]
Sen Kohl, Herb [WI]
Sen Rubio, Marco [FL]
Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY]
Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon [RI]

However, the vote was merely to put it on the Senate calendar. I don't believe there's records for how that proceeded in the Judiciary Committee. If your interested in the individuals currently on this Committee and how it functions, I suggest this wikipedia article.

dubya tee eff

Someone needs to make a "law rebuilder" that takes all these amendments and crams them all into a working and current document.
It'd be like a CVS system with history for legal reference.

As the system is now, it will only make it easy for Congress to obfuscate the law.

Yes, the vote was 74-13.
It took more digging than it should have (neither Slashdot nor Bloomberg gave links or dates; good going, guys), but here's some pertinent info:
The bill is S.1038, passed May 24, 2011. It was sponsored by Harry Reid, and cosponsored by Mitch McConnell.
I can't see a way to see the actual vote on either the Senate or Library of Congress pages, so here it is from the Washington Post. Votes for: 40 Republicans, 34 Democrats. Against: 3 Republicans, 9 Democrats (and Bernie Sanders, Independent).

As always, please contact your Senator and tell them how you feel about how they voted. Find their information through here. (Remember, a written letter carries a hell of a lot more weight than an email. A hand-written letter will probably go right to the Congressman's desk, rather than their staff.)

And FYI: The House version, H.R.67 is still in subcommittee. The House and Senate versions will have to be reconciled before they're passed. You should probably write your Representative too.

Yes, the vote was 74-13.
It took more digging than it should have (neither Slashdot nor Bloomberg gave links or dates; good going, guys), but here's some pertinent info:
The bill is S.1038, passed May 24, 2011. It was sponsored by Harry Reid, and cosponsored by Mitch McConnell.
I can't see a way to see the actual vote on either the Senate or Library of Congress pages, so here it is from the Washington Post. Votes for: 40 Republicans, 34 Democrats. Against: 3 Republicans, 9 Democrats (and Bernie Sanders, Independent).

As always, please contact your Senator and tell them how you feel about how they voted. Find their information through here. (Remember, a written letter carries a hell of a lot more weight than an email. A hand-written letter will probably go right to the Congressman's desk, rather than their staff.)

And FYI: The House version, H.R.67 is still in subcommittee. The House and Senate versions will have to be reconciled before they're passed. You should probably write your Representative too.

JPEG2000 can work quite well for images, as well.

There's a bunch of old panoramic maps at the Library of Congress which are available in JPEG2000. The amount detail preserved in these offerings is astounding (at least to me).

I mention this only because, as already pointed out, nobody much bothers with the format and, and good examples can be hard to come by. And old maps are cool.

FOSS-speak: "Open media"

Translation: We've got public domain crap, idiots talking to their webcams, sucky indie bands who need to practice more and promote less, and that's about it--unless you want to pirate.

I have found a large number of great (electronic) albums on www.Jamendo.com - these are not Public Domain but are released under a Creative Commons license.

Pirating seems to be the only other option, given that even something like this 1902 (!) recording, recorded almost 110 years ago, on the National Jukebox is somehow still under copyright in the United States:

Rights & Access

This recording is protected by state copyright laws in the United States. The Library of Congress has obtained a license from rights holders to offer it as streamed audio only. Downloading is not permitted. The authorization of rights holders of the recording is required in order to obtain a copy of the recording. Contact jukebox@loc.gov for more information.

"Today the Law Library’s expansive reading room and its administrative offices occupy the second floor of the Madison Building, while the sub-basement provides more than a football field of compact collection storage space."

ugh.

http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/faq.html#5

As of April 2011, the Library has collected about 235 terabytes of data (one terabyte = 1,024 gigabytes). The archives grow at a rate of about 5 terabytes a month.

Rogers Center (AKA Toronto Skydome) is the host stadium for the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, so it isn't any more metric than a typical US stadium. Anyway, think "typical major football/baseball stadium size" and you'll be fine.

On another page it's mentioned that the tunnel will supply 500 cubic metres of water per second, which they helpfully convert to 17660 cubic feet per second if you really want Imperial measurements. It's apparently enough to fill an Olympic-style swimming pool in seconds. Wow. Well, we are talking about a 14 metre tunnel (think ~14 yards, for the metrically-impaired) and a lot of pressure driving it.

I wasn't able to find an official "volume of the Library of Congress" for either the buildings (there are several) or for stack space, but I was able to find out that it has approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. Bookshelves aren't exactly standard sizes, but assuming it is a 12-foot stack and 1 foot deep (both of which are probably way off, but must be within an order of magnitude), that would be 838miles * 5280ft/mile * 12ft * 1ft = 53 095 680 ft^3, which sounds huge. By comparison, Royal Albert Hall in the UK is 3 to 3.5 million cubic feet or 85 000 to 99 000 cubic metres. Anyway, divide by 17660 ft^3/s, and there's your answer: roughly 3006 seconds, or, ye gods, you can fill entire the shelf space of the Library of Congress in under an hour???!!!

If anyone can find official "volume of the Library of Congress" in terms of books or buildings, it would be appreciated.

Today, the House voted to adopt the resolution (H. Res. 200) that will allow it to consider the actual resolution to overturn the regulation tomorrow. Note the words "Providing for consideration" in the title of the actual vote.

Granted, the House is still likely going to vote for the measure, but saying it's already passed is inaccurate.

Last year, in August, shortly before a highly charged election the House & Senate took a bill originally written for other purposes and rewrote it to take money from the food stamp program and closed a few tax loopholes to provide $10BN in emergency aid for teachers, fire, police,and other first responders an $16BN to fund the "working just great" Medicare system... They re-worked the bill so fast, they didn't even have time to name it, let alone read it, HR 1586...

My point is it is NOT easier to start over with a new bill.

I remember something like that too - probably it was about either this, this or this.

> They gave secular reasons for banning polygamy when
> banning it in your native US.

Who is "they?" Voters are generally quick to say they are motivated by religion. Politicians long ago learned the arts of sophistry, evasion, and obfuscation But the politician-speak is often a blatantly obvious veneer.

Take polygamy in the US. The law didn't have much to say about polygamy until the Morill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1862, a 3 section law whose section 2 targeted the mormon church by name, and section 3 which had nothing to do with bigamy and could only have applied to the territory claimed by the mormon church.

It seems clear this law was against the mormon church as much as it was against polygamy. When the law made its way to the supreme court, the only rationale supporting the ban was that polygamy was an (apparently capital) "offense against society" in England and the States (even if accepted "among the northern and western nations of Europe" and " Asiatic and of African people" .

I guess you can call that secular, but I call it rhetorical, selective, and unsupported.

Offending society is not banned in the Constitution. If society were never offended, we'd still be hanged for working on Sundays.

The Senate bill is S.23, aka "America Invents", sponsor Patrick Leahy, who's been trying to get patent reform done for years.
Bill status query at thomas.loc.gov (not sure if these are persistent), Computerworld article, National Journal with some brief comments from pro/neutral/con parties, SF Chron article.

Silicon Valley businesses large and small were mostly against it, IBM was for it. Dianne Feinstein attempted an amendment to remove the First-to-File part, but voted for it anyway after that failed. Barbara Boxer voted against.

The US patent system has been first-to-invent for a long time, while Europe has been first-to-file. There's lots of other detail, largely intended to reduce the amount of patent litigation, improve the coordination with non-US patents, potentially improve the problems with patents on things with prior art and obviousness, and affect some tax issues."

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.CON.RES.298:

This would prevent the prosecution of the recording of the police during their official duties.

False. Orion has not been cancelled. The most recent NASA authorization act passed last year authorizes over $3.6 billion in funding to develop the vehicle over the next 3 years. The Ares I/V launch vehicles are what was cancelled.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c111:3:./temp/~c111kXpLQV:e14982:

That's not at all what they're doing here. The article is intentionally misleading.

This is a bill HR. 68 "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. "

Further they didn't even pass this yet, they merely referred it to committee. Indeed there isn't even any pork in it. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.68:

That's not at all what they're doing here. The article is intentionally misleading.

This is a bill HR. 68 "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after fiscal year 2013. "

Further they didn't even pass this yet, they merely referred it to committee. Indeed there isn't even any pork in it. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.68:

How is that hypocritical? It's doing two different things in two similar but different situations, not saying one thing and doing the opposite. It's just doing what is in you own intererst as opposed to what is "right".

And Obama already has a "kill switch" and hence claiming he "wants" one is a bit silly. Which part of the text of http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.3480%3A do you find to be so troubling and what new "kill switch" power is is granting that the President hasn't had since 1934 anyway?

Well, according to the Library of Congress' website, they have collected "over 200 terabytes of data". But since they don't specify an exact number, let's call it at 200 TB.

295 exabytes / 200 terabytes = 1,546,649.6 Libraries of Congress.

I want to know why Obama hasn't closed the damn place yet. One of the major reasons I voted democratic in the last presidential election was to put an end to this sort of thing.

Because Obama is not the dictator of the United States but must faithfully execute[1] the laws passed by the Congress when they are within the power of Congress to regulate. As it happens, Congress has the explicit power to determine what happens to captures[2] during a time of war. So blaming Obama here is somewhat ridiculous as he is simply not in an office charged with

So far, Congress has forbidden the Executive from moving detainees from Guantanamo[3,4] by huge supermajority votes (90-6 in the Senate, for instance). The actual statutory language[5] is quite clear (quoted below). So if you want Obama to close Gitmo then you are essentially asking him to ask in open defiance of the law.

SEC. 1032. PROHIBITION ON THE USE OF FUNDS FOR THE TRANSFER OR RELEASE OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT UNITED STATES NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA.

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act for fiscal year 2011 may be used to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release to or within the United States, its territories, or possessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other detainee who--
(1) is not a United States citizen or a member of the Armed Forces of the United States; and
(2) is or was held on or after January 20, 2009, at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the Department of Defense.

[1] Article II, Section 1.
[2] Article I, Section 8.
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21detain.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/us/politics/23gitmo.html
[5] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:5:./temp/~c111aSU9NC::

Relying on wikipedia for info is a bad idea

Can you point out where I said wiki was a good source of info? Or did I use as one source among others?

The 4000 year is bullshit anyone who actually reads their bible it has many genealogical records start adding dates it is closer to 6000.

One of those other sources did say 6000 years.

As for the Catholic church they were the ones who persecuted everyone who wasn't a part of their organisation

Just as other churches did. Many of those Christians who burned people on stakes were not Catholics. The Anglican church of England most definitely isn't Catholic but it persecuted others. The Puritans or Pilgrims came to America to escape persecution. Here's a link to a Library of Congress page about America as a refuge for those Christians from one church who were persecuted by Christians from other denominations. King James I "persecuted both Catholics and the extreme Protestant Puritans and Separatists." Yet when the Puritans set up the Massachusetts Bay Colony they in turn persecuted those not of their own church.

So, are you going to admit the truth or are you going to continue to persecute Catholics?

Falcon

Oh, not one of those links above are wiki links.

Is it really a "nanny state" kind of action if it is giving power and control to the parents?

No it isn't. Children have no rights of any kind...

False.

and they are not citizens.

False in the United States. According to the 14th ammendment of the US Constitution: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Your parents have your rights on your behalf.

In the United States, False. Your parents exercise and protect certain of their children's rights. They do not "have" them on your behalf.

In that case, our government seems to be sending a mixed message by adding the internet kill-switch back into proposed legislation...

Sensationalist headlines aside, care to point out where the aforementioned bill says anything about shutting down communications? From my reading its about isolating the networks on which high value infrastructure is located, not shutting down anyone's communication. More reading, less rhetoric please.

What you don't seem to get that is that "isolating the networks" is exactly how you shut down communications. How else would you do it, besides pulling the plug entirely?

Also, the other important piece here is that according to the blll, Judicial Review is explicitly denied

A company that objects to being subject to the emergency regulations is permitted to appeal to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano. But her decision is final and courts are explicitly prohibited from reviewing it.

So if anything can be declared "critical infrastructure" and isolated without benefit of the courts, any communication can be shut down. The attempt to avoid judicial review is on page 403 of the bill, if you care to read it yourself.

"they can contain more data than all the printed texts of the Library of Congress, thousands of times over?"

Your smartphone contains 148,000 terabytes of data?

  That thing must be huge! That's what she said!

Can you tell me where you got 148,000 terabytes from your own link? Or any other real estimate of how big the LOC actually is?

Maybe I'm just tired, but I can't seem to find it in that post.

"they can contain more data than all the printed texts of the Library of Congress, thousands of times over?"

Your smartphone contains 148,000 terabytes of data?

That thing must be huge! That's what she said!

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

Jailbreaking a phone is not actually in any law. Section 1201(a)(1) of the DMCA authorizes the Librarian of congress to make specific exceptions every three years. Jailbreaking is one of those exceptions currently in effect, but only for the purposes of switching carriers or "interoperability" between legally-purchased programs.

Even if his code were covered by an exception, Section 1201(a)(2) prevents him from making his tools available to the public. The people using such tools may be accused of "trafficking" such tools, and face legal problems of their own.

I remember well a particular quote from 1998: The DMCA passed. Run. Run and hide.

"Fair use" is irrelevant with regards to section 1201 of the DMCA, which covers breaking copy-protection schemes. The unlock-to-change-carriers is a specific exemption, from the Librarian of Congress. The DMCA authorizes the LoC to make exceptions every three years to prevent abuses of copyright law. The Librarian determines what kinds of copy protection may be broken, for specific purposes.

The VCR case predates the DMCA, and is a shining example of how the DMCA screws over consumers. Back when that ruling occurred, the burden was on the copyright holder to show that the accused actually copied their intellectual property.

The DMCA changed that. Now, any form of encryption, no matter how trivial or ineffective, is considered a protection mechanism, and if you break a protection mechanism, you're assumed to be copying. This is a much lighter burden of proof, and it tramples uses that are obviously legitimate. Thank the WIPO.

None of those folks are progressive. Those folks were right of center the whole time. Name one very left person in the congress, by that I mean one who would support a real health care bill, one with at least a public option. Not the one they passed that was practically written by newt gingrich.

Would you consider HR 676, the United States National Health Care Act, a "real health care bill"?

SEC. 101. ELIGIBILITY AND REGISTRATION.

            (a) In General- All individuals residing in the United States (including any territory of the United States) are covered under the USNHI Program entitling them to a universal, best quality standard of care. Each such individual shall receive a card with a unique number in the mail. An individual's social security number shall not be used for purposes of registration under this section.

Cosponsors in addition to John Conyers Jr. can be found here.

Have you ever sent out a “tweet” on the popular Twitter social media service? Congratulations: Your 140 characters or less will now be housed in the Library of Congress.

That’s right. Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions.

Kind of sucks, doesn't it, where that drunken tweet ended up?

-- Barbara