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Actually, the former pays better in the long run too. The big media like to point the finger at the web, but the decline in circulation and readership correlates better to the corporate mergers of news papers and the decline in quality in the 90's and early 2000's better than it fits any other metric.

That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, since the trend lately has been to lie and run companies into the ground for profit on Wallstreet without producing anything of real value. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/breaking_the_news.html

Most of it is invested into other parts of the economy. Providing jobs and growth. It would be better if wealth were more evenly distributed but it's not that bad. In effect they are paying everyone elses wages at market rates, ie. supply and demand sets the price not them.

When you have most of the supply locked up, you call the tune. Wealthy individuals and companies don't operate in markets, they use their wealth to control markets.

The investment class doesn't "provide jobs and growth" so much as it skims wealth off of the top. The U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion, the workforce of about 150,000,000: the average American worker creates about $93,000 worth of value per year.

But the average annual wage is only about $39,000.

So where does the majority of that value created by workers go? GDP = rents + interests + profits + wages + some statistical fudge factors. Most of the value created by the average worker goes to the investing class in the form of "unearned" income - profits, interest, and rents.

This idea that we should be grateful to the wealthy for giving us jobs and growth is like beggars at the back door of the palace heaping praises on the nobility for passing out scraps from the banquet. I say fsck the nobility, time for a little peasant uprising.

Iraq = OIL... Put simply, W was/is backed by oil cartel, Iraq is the second largest oil reserve in the world. From an Australian point of view, we Australia, where asked to join the invasion of Iraq, based on irrefutable evidence of WDM's. Our then Prime Minister (head of state) and his lies... or regurgitation of US lies... http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/11/6277_a_look_back_at.html More importantly our own intelligence contradicted US intelligence, and 1 leading analyst spoke publicly and resigned. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/24/1095961862471.html The same happened to England and every other nation that believed the US and followed. While our (Australia) involvement is very minor, it still is large burden for a country of only 20 million, England's involvement also minor compared to the US is still a large involvement for a country its size. As a result... public perception in these countries is that the US lied to the world for personal gain... This is the Bush legacy.

CBS and FOX won't do it to Obama because they *like* Obama. They don't mind if Obama uses their videos to help him win the election.

>>>I hope they pursue this by addressing flaws in the DMCA.

Do you actually know that Obama's campaign hasn't had takedowns used against them, or are you assuming?

** (The real blame lies with the 1990s president who repealed the Glass-Steagall of 1933 which allowed banks to invest in risky stocks, and thereby created the current crisis. But the media is being hush-hush about that. Don't want to risk losing the Obama election.)

Sure. I'm sure that a single piece of legislation caused the whole thing. I notice that you conveniently forget that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was sponsored by republicans (Phil Gramm strikes again), and passed the senate on a party-line vote with only one democrat crossing over. But sure, you go right ahead and believe that the Republicans are in no way responsible for our situation.

I notice also that you neglect to take any notice of other things that contributed quite a bit to our situation, such as the Commodity and Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (more of Phil Gramm's handiwork). This was also a republican bill, but it was supported by a few dems as well. You might want to look into how this relates to the AIG situation and how that affected the banks.

http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=23 has some hints. They also have specific articles for some cars like the Prius. See http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1224.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html is an article about a hypermiler (Wayne Gerdes) who achieves 59 mpg in his non-hybrid 05 Honda Accord.

Gerdes was part of a team of who set a record (which has been since beaten) of ~110 mpg in a Prius over 1397 miles on a single tank.

There are some other tips at http://www.hypermiling.com/.

"Because the metaphor of property was allowed to run rampant, unquestioned."

While I think you're absolutely right about this, as was RMS, it reminds me of something I just read by James K. Galbraith (Yes, John K.'s son...)

"Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant featureâ"a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live."

Full article:
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/05/predator_state.html

How's it working out for you having your government take a "hands off" approach to your banks? (assuming you are an American).

Clue yourself in. The subprime crisis was caused by government intervention, not by any "hands off" approach. Just because people can co-opt the word "deregulation" for their own purposes doesn't mean any less regulation is occurring. Check out this excellent article written 8 years ago that predicted the whole thing, down to the huge dollar amount:

The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities

Right. A single cause for a multi-trillion dollar meltdown. If only it were that simple. Rather than try to pin the whole thing on the CRA, perhaps you might also want to look into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act as well, which deregulated the type of insurance (credit default swaps) that banks were using to allow themselves to make the insane loans they were making. The CRA may have been misguided and caused some more risky loans to be made, but it certainly didn't, on its own, lead to lenders giving large home loans to people with no evidence at all that they could pay it back. Nor did it allow for the obfuscation of the value of these loans through the creation of these ridiculous securities, which is one of the main causes of all of the problems. Nobody knows the true value of these things. That causes panic.

By deregulating credit default swaps, the government (republicans in this case, and Phil Gramm specifically), allowed companies like AIG to insure these mortgage backed securities, even though they couldn't really know their true value. To make matters worse, they weren't required to disclose any of this, and they were not required to have a capital reserve to cover the insured securities either, so when home values started crashing, they couldn't cover even a fraction of the securities that they insured. The whole house of cards came down.

Banks thought they had it made, and were loaning to anything with a pulse because they figured they were covered either way, either the person pays, or they collect the insurance. AIG thought that they'd just sit back and watch the premiums roll in and that they were facing little risk. They both thought they were getting a good deal. Why they thought home prices would never fall remains a mystery.

The emails that they got didn't say much. Not very surprising. There were 1,100 that were withheld for various reasons that are being challenged, but the bottom line is that she is using a commercial account and making it hard or impossible for anyone to access her email, which is supposed to be public record. They can't retrieve the email from her commercial account. This is becoming a disturbing trend among public officials that needs to be stopped. Government has to be accountable, and this kind of behavior is directly opposed to that.

By the way, who says she's refusing to turn them over? Have any source for that?!

Her attorneys filed this privilege log after initialy refusing to suply a small set as described here:

In July, the governor's office refused to disclose the contents of about 40 e-mails between Todd Palin and Gov. Palin's administration as part of a larger public records request by McLeod. Other e-mails between Todd Palin and the governor's staff were released, McLeod said, but had some parts redacted. Todd Palin is copied as a recipient on most of the e-mails but also authored a few.

Some of the subject lines of the withheld e-mails, which were created between Feb. 1 and Apr. 15. of this year, included: "Andrew Halcro," and "PSEA." Halcro is a political rival of Palin. The PSEA is the union that represents the Alaska State Troopers, including trooper Mike Wooten, who is divorced from Gov. Palin's sister and is also a key figure in the investigation of Monegan's firing.

--MarkusQ

I don't recall any belittling of Tim Kaine, I'd be happy to review any citations you have.

How about Karl Rove himself?

By Rove's logic, there probably couldn't be a worse VP pick than Palin. Richmond is only the 105th largest city in the U.S.? I don't think Wasilla would have shown up even in the top 2000.

It is all spin and personal views anyway. If it hadn't been Palin, but had been Jindal, the Obama spin machine would still be attacking. If Hillary had won the nomination instead of Obama, the McCain group would be challenging her lack of experience.

I agree that it's all spin. But you'd think that they'd at least try to give the appearance of being internally consistent. I don't relish voting for either ticket, but my main issue is the economy and taxes. The republicans haven't been doing well in that area, and haven't been a fiscally conservative party in decades, taking only a quick step back in that direction during Reagan's second term, before returning to their irresponsible ways.

I am really disappointed in both candidates in their responses to the economic crysis so far. McCain still seems to hold Gramm as a close advisor, even though the AIG failure and many of the problems stem from the deregulation of credit default swaps in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 via a rider tacked on by Gramm. McCain seems to want to rearrange the regulation agencies, but doesn't seem to favor any regulation.Obama at least has proposed to re-regulate some of these areas, but its still short on details. I want to see more discussion of this in the debates and from the campaigns.

I think either one of them will be in for a seriously tough presidency due to the condition things will be in when they take office.

The Fannie Mae CEO in the ad that McCain linked to Obama was not associated with Obama's campaign. They had like one conversation before Obama even started running. He was black though. And since James Johnson the (white) head of Obama's VP Vetting committee had closer ties to Fannie Mae, it made no sense for them to try to pursue this tenuous connection when there was a much closer one there. Some people saw this is racism, but Obama never said as much.

McCain's campaign has Fannie Mae's former head lobbyist (Aquiles Suarez) and many others with much more direct connections, so his charges against Obama are pretty lame and he's lucky that he didn't get called out more so be careful what you wish for.

ugh, not the baby killing argument.

Protip: No one wants to kill babies, they want to use embros that were going to be thrown out anyway, and that happens a lot.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/07/souls_on_ice.html
The more you know.

So the argument is either
A: No fertility allowed for couples in these situations. This means all those potential lives aren't given a chance.
B: Give birth to them all, which means they have to deal with 7-12 kids instead of one. Just what we need, a family who wanted 1 kid raising 12. Who else would expect a dozen more ignored children.
C: Throw them out like trash, making their "Lives" if you want to call a few cells that, meaningless. (This is the current standard)
D: Have that set of cells save countless lives, keep familys together, treat illnesses...

Sources: CNN, CBS, Mother Jones.

the FBI and Secret Service will react strongly.

I hope they will, mainly due to what's been going on with "Troopergate"

Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4 Article 5 Article 6 Article 7 Article 8

It's a bit of reading but they do cover emails within the investigations.

the FBI and Secret Service will react strongly.

I hope they will, mainly due to what's been going on with "Troopergate"

Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4 Article 5 Article 6 Article 7 Article 8

It's a bit of reading but they do cover emails within the investigations.

This is like selling your state's tollway because you can't balance the budget.

Yes, you get to feel like you solved the budget crisis this year. Too bad you can only do it once.

Mod parent up tis was an important case:

http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/02/Josh_Wolf.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/2/12/exclusive_imprisoned_journalist_josh_wolf_speaks

A resource for prison statistics: Debt to Society. (If you're into ad hominem attacks then there are certainly ways to dispute this source; though personally I frequently have difficulty distinguishing progressive interpretation from factual analysis.)

Western economies in the early 21st century are more socialist than the USSR ever was in terms of wealth redistribution and state support of industry.

Excuse me? I thought the USSR had two levels of wealth: none or all. For the US, we have a large continuum from zero to massive. ...

To compare the US to the USSR is unfathomable. Although I will grant you that Obama would definitely like to move us towards a much more communistic economy with nationalization of another 30% of the GDP...

There's an entire continent of Western Economies you didn't mention. Most of Europe is currently Socialist to some extent (mostly with government provided universal education and health care, though some other aspects are also sometimes included), and doing quite well with it. They are far more socialist than the USSR, though they are not more communist. In blending the socialist ideals with the free-market mobility, they've raised the quality of life for the entire population and enhanced that mobility for those born in bad circumstances to allow them to move along the continuum far more freely than is possible in the U.S.

Who knows whether Leninism could work today - probably not without some radical rethinking - but green issues are making this kind of discussion more urgent, as capitalism is inherently wasteful of resources.

Completely false. The gains we've made in productivity - meaning more output for less input - are entirely from the capitalist economies. The USSR (now Russia) and China are ecological nightmares because of communism, not because of capitalism.

Look no further than your local farmer's market. Clearly the farmer wants to make a dollar, right? Why does the food he sells cost 2-3X as much as the produce you can buy at your local grocery store? Even when you have to ship grapes from Chile, or lettuce from California.

And look no further than the decline of pollinators to see where mono-cultures generated through capitalism will get you. Or the wonders of the Ford Pinto, made for profit by salesmen, rather than for people to use safely by engineers.

The new production method will kill everyone in the world in 20 years? Under corporate capitalism, that's fine if it means you can manufacture at 10% less cost and be the one on top when the world ends. Or even if it only kills the consumers of the product, like cigarettes. Or if it destroys the means of production, like mono-culture farming without land replenishment.

Capitalism seeks to control the means of production and then to artificially inflate prices to derive additional profit. It is not, in any way, inherently seeking the most efficient means of production, or the best final product. If it were, they'd chop out advertising (does nothing for either the efficiency of production or the quality of the final product -- exists purely to increase sales) and the overall compensation packages of the corporate boards wouldn't be one thousand times higher than that of the ones actually producing the product.

Green economics isn't inherently against a large company, it's inherently against the modern, amoral, sociopathic, multi-national corporation. A corporation's sole goal is profit, and the pursuit of profit. All possible costs that can be delayed or pushed onto someone else will be -- for example, pollution. Green economics seeks to make those costs direct and apparent to the entities which generate them, forcing them to utilize more sustainable methods of production.

So, the court upholds the constitutional guarantee of free speech. But... only if the speech is against people.

This is not a joke: In 13 states, you do not have the right of free speech if you talk about food.

Read about food libel laws. Say anything you like about people, but don't libel food!

Don't read this, if you live in these states: Citizens of Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, you may not read the next paragraph:

Large amounts of caffeine have an effect on the human central nervous system that many people consider to be unhealthy. In my opinion, it is better to avoid caffeine. That means avoiding soft drinks with caffeine, and avoiding coffee unless it is de-caffeinated.

Citizens of those states, resume reading. If you care for yourself, you will care for your government. Read the many, many books about government corruption in the United States. Take some action against abusiveness.

More stories about your loss of the right to free speech:

Talk Show Host Gets First Taste of Food Disparagement Laws

Food disparagement laws: A threat to us all.

Food Fights

Food Fight - food disparagement laws fought by Center for Science in the Public Interest's FoodSpeak Coalition project

This is poisoning the available information...

Hmm. If googlebombing is "poisoning the available information", so is any act of speech taken with effectiveness of communication in mind.

This is no different than cranking out handbills noting that McCain wants to overturn Roe v. Wade or John McCain thinks it would be okay if U.S. troops stayed in Iraq for another hundred years. No one is engaging in slander, libel, rumormongering, or censorship here; they're spreading true and relevant information.

I know martinw89 linked a page containing all of the links, but in case that was too confusing, I better link them again:

Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4
Article 5
Article 6
Article 7
Article 8
Article 9

Hope that helps

There are other effects, similar to that, in the US and elsewhere in the world. Consider Africa, where a confluence of war, famine, and AIDS have basically decimated a continent.

Entrenched poverty, and related gang and drug activity has combined with discrimination or bias in the judicial system in the US with the result being so many black men are in prison that it's affecting the demographics of the Republican party's most sacred institution, marriage. Of course, they are so concerned about preventing gay men and women from participating in the sanctity of marriage, whatever that means, that they haven't noticed so many of our nation's daughters will fail to follow God's sacred instructions to be fruitful and multiply, within the sanctity of marriage.

Consider that lead exposure, and probably mercury exposure, too, knock IQ points off the potential of those exposed. How much better off would this nation be if we hadn't exposed generations of kids (including the generations holding office today) to lead exposure? Hey, you Baby Boomers, do you think your kids are smarter than you? Well, guess what, they are. Kids under the age of about 25 or 30 in this country didn't grow up breathing lead fumes. If we would stop spewing mercury all over the atmosphere and oceans we could probably get another five points.

Wow are you wrong. Hans Blix and his inspections team were in Iraq with what they described as unfettered access for 11 weeks in late 2002/early 2003. Inspectors had been denied access earlier in 2002, but the claim that the UN was never allowed to do inspections is false.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/feb/14/iraq.unitednations1

please note that, to the best of my knowledge, no one in the Bush administration claimed Saddam was an imminent threat. that allegation started with Democrats.

9/18/2002: Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress, "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam Hussein is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certainÂ--we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."

http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/ (warning: source is biased, but comprehensive)

...the Astra, which is similar class to the Accord...

Not in America, it isn't. Here, the (Saturn) Astra is considered to be a compact car, while the Honda Accord (which is different and larger than the European Accord) is considered to be a large (not midsize) car. (On the same scale, by the way, your Corsa would be a subcompact.)

Also, an MX-5 doesn't come anywhere close to 35 MPG (and "fairly careful driving" is worthless for comparison; if you're going to start doing that, I might as well claim the Accord gets 60 MPG). For comparable numbers, I use fueleconomy.gov, which obviously doesn't have your Corsa in the database as it's not sold here, but lists 24, 27, and 23 MPG for the Accord, Astra, and MX-5 (all with auto transmissions, because Americans are pussies) respectively.

Of course, it isn't only external threats that are a concern. BIA is so incompetent or malicious that they are reported to have deleted their backup tapes.

This is not a case of a judge gratuitously injecting himself into computer security. This situation arose when Indians sued for royalties held in the Indian Land Trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is part of the Interior Department. During the suit, it turned out that the problem was not just that they weren't getting paid, but that BIA's record-keeping was woefully inadequate. Just figuring out what the plaintiffs were owed proved to be a huge problem. Judge Lamberth ordered the BIA disconnected because court-appointed experts had hacked into the BIA and found the Indian trust fund records to be insecure.

Of course, it isn't only external threats that are a concern. BIA is so incompetent or malicious that they are reported to have deleted their backup tapes. Judge Lamberth was so appalled that he threatened to jail the Secretary of the Interior for contempt of court. The government eventually got him removed on the dubious grounds that he was biased against the government, the only evidence of which was his well justified criticism BIA.

pollution of various kinds, and too much noise meaning that they can't communicate.

It's not just that it's noisy so they can't communicate. The Navy is maiming whales with it deep sea sonar. Kinda like how a gunshot blast beside your head damages your hearing. They are perfectly aware of this and they don't really care other than the PR problems, but that is being addressed. First they just tried to use bad science to make it OK. And then the blinded whales started beaching themselves. But at least one court isn't fooled by the carte blanc of "national security".

Disclaimer: I grew up in Virgina Beach, VA most of my friends and their families from back home are in the Navy. I want our Navy to be strong and safe, but I don't want to mutilate whales to do it. Good sonar didn't do jack shit for the USS Cole, and I don't think Iraq or Afghanistan has much of a Navy to worry about. How about a new better technology instead of just turning the volume up on the sonar.

the point is that if the sciences won't grant degrees to creationists, it's rather odd to turn around and talk about creationists' lack of scientific achievement in the field

But I'm not asking about a lack of scientific achievement. I'm asking about a lack of economic and business achievement. You don't need an advanced degree to do well in business. Bill Gates is a college dropout, for example. However, it seems like only con men actually try to apply creationism to a useful purpose.

Why does geology predict rather well where to find oil? Because it begins with observed facts.

But - and this is critical - it doesn't end there. Oil exploration is not just a matter of, "Gee, we found oil and the rocks looked kinda like this, let's look up in our records where other rock that looks like that can be found." You need to fit those facts into a framework. If oil forms primarily from reefs that have been buried under the right kind of sediment, and maintained under the right sort of temperatures and pressures, and then collected in other kinds of rock formations, then to find oil, you need to be able to identify where such conditions have obtained in the past.

You need to know where the oceans were, and how deep they were, and from that where their coasts were, and which of those coasts have been buried. You need to be able to figure out what areas have had the right kind of elevated temperatures for the right length of time, and where reservoirs could form, and which of those would have been geologically stable for long periods of time. All of this connects to other fields - chemistry and physics for dating, modeling, and assaying, paleontology and biology for dating and modeling again, then toss in seismology and so forth. It's not exactly a coincidence that creationists who enter the oil business either leave the field or stop being creationists.

I assert that there are no "facts" about the origin or age of the universe, because you must choose your epistemological presuppositions first.

We do have an epistemological difference, but it's not the one you're proposing. It's much more fundamental. You believe in the 'supernatural' - something forever unknowable by humans, even in principle. However, that's a troublesome concept.

How can we, in practice, distinguish between something 'currently unknown but comprehensible' and something 'forever unknowable'? (We could also add other categories like 'knowable in principle but impractical to discover' and 'knowable and practical but, just by bad luck, will never have the explanation stumbled upon'.) From a practical perspective, the only way to tell which category something falls into is to try to understand it; if you succeed, then it was knowable. The problem is, if you fail, you can't conclude that it's unknowable. It might be... but it also might be the case that you just didn't happen to figure out something knowable, and you or someone else might have better luck on a subsequent attempt.

If you decide that something is fundamentally incomprehensible, you will stop trying to understand it. Richard Feynman once joked that "You don't understand Quantum Mechanics, you just get used to it," but he never stopped trying to advance understanding of QM, despite how counterintuitive it is. And it's worth noting that QM is not quite as incomprehensible as it's popularly portrayed - if it were, the computer you're reading this on could never have been designed and built.

Accepting that there are things that we don't know is not the same as accepting that there are things that we cannot, even in principle, know. As discussed above, the notion of 'the unknowable' adds nothing from a pr

Monsanto sued Percy Schmeiser of Bruno, Saskatchewan in 1998 for cross-pollination of his heritage rape crop with Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety.

>Personally, I think these types of attack vectors are silly. People make all kinds of friendships and relationships
>throughout their lives, and to be held responsible for all the beliefs and actions of those friends or associates is just ridiculous.

Certainly, a candidate shouldn't be judged on their friendships alone, nor should those friendships be evaluated out of context. But McCain has publicly accepted the endorsements from Hagee, Parsley, and other unsavoury characters. These are not simply business associates or friends, whose political views he happens to disagree with. McCain publicly calls them his "spiritual guides". That seems like poor judgment at best, and hints that he might have some private views which voters should get to know more about before granting him control of the most powerful military on the planet.

The same standard should apply to all candidates, not just McCain and Obama, but also Hillary Clinton, whose connections with "The Family", a church group from the rightwing Dominionist movement, deserve similar scrutiny.

The 1978 Presidential Records Act expressly forbids it. In fact this admission that they intentionally destroyed hard drives just adds to the evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the current administration. These crooks were also using Republican National Committee servers to conduct official Whitehouse business in order to skirt the record keeping requirements of the act. http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/03/white_house_emails.html

But the congress is gonna let them slide again, when they should impeach the bastards.

...Actually, if you define "The US" as "The World" then you might be right. But executive compensation *in the US* is positively insane compared to all other countries that are ostensibly our peers.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/exhibit/2006/05/perks_of_privilege.html

Fooling yourself into thinking this is a rational and efficient free market reminiscent of the one described by Smith is a naive and charming fairy tale, as well as an impressive feat of self delusion. The real problem is that this not a free market, but mostly one of good ol' boys clubs and cronies who also have the influence and power to rewrite the rules of the game in their favor.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html

I did see a list of music used in a US holiday camp south of Florida to entertain the people there, recently.
I found this URL using my favourite friendly non-evil search engine.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2008/03/torture-playlist.html

Bert

This guy got 180 mpg out of a Honda Insight on a 20-mile urban course in the rain, using energy-conserving driving techniques.

All they need to do is either find or start an auction site that doesn't do the dumb things that ebay's been doing (like making them accept credit cards through paypal or not at all) and get a significant (~25%) portion of the actions and buyers to come to that site.

Uh, right. And what auction site can they find? Yahoo! Auctions was probably the closest competitor, they shut down. There are a few niche players - uBid does inventory liquidation via auction, Bidtopia was started by one large eBay seller as a private auction site and has allowed others to play too. But Ebay is auctions on the web. See the graph of their dominance here.

Under corporate capitalism, large firms don't achieve victory by competing well in the market - they win by achieving the size and power to control the market

The only way eBay will be displaced is if some other large player with the resources to grab mindshare and bleed a loss for the first year or two - Google, maybe - decides to get into the game.

Gilbertson describes how he and another reporter were nearly blown to pieces by an errant Air Force bomb in northern Iraq in the late days of the American invasion. They finally withdrew from the front because, as Gilbertson himself concedes, "The risk was too high, the payoff too low." And yet when he returned to his hotel in Erbil, he switched on the television and found Fox's correspondent "crouching in front of sandbags, wearing a flak jacket and a helmet. He was supposedly on the front lines, reporting via a scratchy video phone. He had to whisper, he said." But as Gilbertson studied the screen, he could discern, over the correspondent's shoulder and above the sandbags, the "distinctive architecture of our hotel." Fox's man in the field was reporting live from a foxhole he had built in his hotel room. The outraged Gilbertson dialed the correspondent's in-house phone and then hung up, allowing just enough time to send a single ring over the airwaves.

There's an excellent article I read about it; I think it's a combination of factors. By nature, a lot of geeks are raised in comparative isolation; the internet has made it even easier to surround oneself only with people who agree with you; there's a disdain for "lesser" people that comes from years of wedgies. It's part of the standard high-school rant that those damned bullies are going to be pumping your gas one day, and why on earth would a geek who's Gotten His try to better that bully's position in life?

(I should disclaim that the above is just cultural criticism, and it's very far from empirical. You'd have to be David Brooks or someone like him to think that that constitutes an actual explanation for the streak of libertarianism that runs through geek culture.)

On a less hand-wavey level, I think there's something very appealing (especially to geeks) about the idea that one can deduce the entirety of politics from first principles. (I speak here of the Non-Aggression Principle.) The problem with this, as Seth Finkelstein points out, is that it just moves the complexity to the definitions of your terms, which are beyond debatability in your edge of the libertarian tent, in much the same way as fundamentalist churches claiming that their sole authority is the bible sweep their assumptions under the rug by pretending that they're not making any. (Fred the Slacktivist has some good discussion on the topic; also here.)

Heck, I went through a libertarian phase when I was profoundly ignorant of how history actually worked. I grew out of it by the time I got to college; it looks like a lot of people never got that far.

Mother Jones ran an article about the use of electric shock to manage severe self-injurious behavior. It'd be a Good Thing if deep brain stimulation could do this in a more humane way...

Or......you're an idiot.

well, read this and see if you still feel like defending google no matter what they do:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/11/google.html

the fact is they have a lot of power and they have a lot of data. past performance is no indicator of future, as they say, and given that absolute power corrupts absolutely, I just fear any single entity that gets that much info on us.

I don't worry about the gov getting as much on us - the gov is mostly incompetant (that actually works in our favor, as citizens). but google is pretty competant - and that scares me, given how much data and access (and machine power) they have.

OR... because pres bush allocated 1.2 billion for hydrogen car research.

BUT he's still a jack ass 'cause the way he wants to do it the hydrogen will be produced by fossil fuels which will produce MORE emissions and use more fossil fuel do to a loss in efficiency. References:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2003/05/m a_375_01.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle

OK, I have to reply to yet another Percy Schmeiser reference...

Read this all the way to bottom (please)... The article is in my opinion even slightly anti-GM, so no it isnt a pro-GM rant, it represents both sides...

The take home message is that Schmeiser's field was *NOT* an example of a just natural cross polination or seed contamination. He (at least) *intentionally* amplified the presence of the round-up ready gene in his crop by spraying a large area with round-up and then keeping the seed from the surviving plants!!! It is obvious to anyone that if you dont want a GM round-up resistant crop, then you dont plant seed that you *KNOW* is GM. So for him to then claim he didnt want it in the first place is just plain stupid.

The crop in question that Monsanto sued over was over 90% GM, that just doesnt happen unless you intentionally try to make it so... You can not do that unknowingly, which was the real issue of the case. Schmeiser stole Monsanto's IP and they (Monsanto) had to prosecute it or they risk losing the patent (remember Xerox's attempt to recover "zee-rox" for "copy". Protect it or lose it)

Back on topic (the Schmeiser reference is not)... Crop contamination *is* an issue that should be seriously looked at. But GM seed is rarely "fitter" without the selective pressure applied to it. Dont spray weed killer and weed-killer-resistance-gene wont become prevalent... That means if you are organic the *worst case* is a tiny fraction of contamination. The seriousness of *that* is open for debate.

Terminator genes are one such way to stop someone like Schmeiser from intentionally (or otherwise) growing a GM grop. There isnt a chance of growing a GM plant if it wont germinate. And yes it helps that it secures your customers to buy your seed next year, but most farmers do that for conventional seed already. If the 3rd world dont want it then they dont have to take it... If they cant afford to pay for the seed next year, they certainly cant afford to pay for the herbicide to spray said crop, which is why they have the seed in the first place, right?

Well it could be the use of God in the scientific way meaning that all other particles come from this one particle. Or it could be using the term God as in the creator of all things which is pretty much the same as the first.

I'd guess it's the latter given how some physicists are actually not afraid to mention God in their research and theories. Although some physicists (Briane Greene for one) believe in evolution (and therefore by definition can't believe in a God and Creation) it seems there are others who still have some respect for what they are studying (even Einstein had respect for God).

"I'm pretty sure there is no prior art for Google bashing."

Here you go.

(Yeah, I'm bored too)

Driving efficiently needs to be made as cool as driving aggressively. There are "hypermiling" competitions out there for who can get the best gas mileage through an in-city route.

Here's an article about a guy who takes it a little too seriously: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/ki ng_of_the_hypermilers.html?welcome=true

I've tried driving for excessive fuel economy and found it a fun challenge. If you need to feel "cool", cornering at high speeds to avoid braking. There's the challenge of knowing exactly when to start coasting to pull to a stop at home without braking or accelerating. I'm getting c 32 MPG in-city these days on a car rated at 24MPG in city. Hope to break 40 MPG at some point.

From what this article says, they do. Of course, the driver who is the main focus of the article may have suicidal tendencies in how he drafts 18 wheelers and how he deals with stop signs in the name of saving gas. Still, it's an intriguing read.

Personally, I was just wondering why it had to be an either-or? Why can't the ultra-economy conscious have the intelligent sensors built into a hybrid car? One would imagine that this would be far better than either.