Slashdot Mirror

I meant this stuff: http://www.wired.com/2011/09/u... and (same story) http://www.motherjones.com/moj... and http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Nuclear power is an enemy of bird life. http://www.motherjones.com/blu... It is horrible for fish as well. http://www.riverkeeper.org/cam...

Mutant baby birds dying agonizing deaths as their parents hover over then in the nest helplessly trying to feed then radioactive worms. http://www.motherjones.com/blu...

Toledo Ohio residents can tell you how that algae bloom worked for them: http://www.motherjones.com/tom...

There is a reason why you are "foed" here by me and others who have two brain cells to rub together:

You're dumb and a liar.

http://www.motherjones.com/blu...

Extract your Duke shilling head from your anus, you stupid fuck.

Sincerely,

Me.

Hm?

Following are just a few sources are located on "the internet." I'm not sure who owns them but I do know they do not toe the part line. Whether you think they are valid or not, they ARE out there.

http://www.motherjones.com/
http://www.theguardian.com/us
http://www.kpfk.org/

You don't think it would cost a pretty penny to replace our power infrastructure?

You don't think power structures need replacing, even if you stuck with coal power entirely?

See, that's where the AGW crowd deliberately misunderstands the Anti-AGW crowd.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall....

No one argues that solar power isn't cleaner than hydrocarbon - but it's unreliable and costs 3 times as much.

It's both reliable and cost competitive, sorry. And that's even without discounting the massive subsidies given the fossil fuel industry. Or did you think economic domination of the gas stations of the world was free?

How about the unstoppable force of your projection vs the immovable object of your ignorance? If prisoners can start filing cases citing SCOTUS's reasoning on the wider reasoning on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, JW's can do the same on an apples-to-apples issue like blood transfusions. And if the courts block those objections, they are directly favoring one religion over another.

You, and the hacks on the court, are in a lose-lose position here.

The average full time non salary worker at hobby lobby makes $14 an hour. I wouldn't exactly call that not much.

Only when compared to the minimum wage which is far below poverty level, so yeah, having to fork out $300 out of pocket for an IUD is a good chunk of change. And not exactly fair when the guy working the next register over pays $300 out of pocket for a $3,000 vasectomy, which Hobby Lobby still covers.

1) Hobby Lobby was fine with covering these meds before it was mandatory

I need a cite before I will believe this.

Sure thing.

Not relevant but show me a creditable link and it needs to be one concerning the 4 contraception they took issue with.

Pointing out hypocrisy is always relevant. Ditto that for buying products from China and the total absence of the "life begins at conception" crowd at the entrance of IVF clinics, which throw thousands of embryos in the trash. And again, sure thing.

3) All their products come from China with it's mandatory abortions

Not relevant again. Or do you think you should go to prison for something your father or brother did?

Pointing out hypocrisy is always relevant. Re the brother and the father nonsense - didn't I ask you to stop being a dumbass for five seconds?

They don't seem to be telling others how to live, just objecting to others telling them to ignore their faith and provide a couple specific things.

Just the usual rationalized bullshit. They aren't a church, they are a business. And right now, businesses owned by JW's and Scientologists and Christian Scientists are objecting to having to provide for blood transfusions/psychiatric care/any medical care. And their objections are just as "valid" as Hobby Lobby's.

No one is arguing to mess around with other people's lives except for the government. They are saying you have to provide X even if it is against your religion and hobby lobby said no I don't and a court agreed with them. That is the facts that it boils down to if you remove all the spin.

By all means, remove the spin. Hobby Lobby wants to collect tax breaks from employer-provided insurance - which is part of an employees compensation - without following the rules that come with said compensation. They're still happy to cover viagra and vasectomies though - but then you seem to be a fan of hypocrisy.

You wouldn't be double paying for it.

Of course you are, as insurance is a part of your compensation, but being arbitrarily denied for unjustifiable reasons.

IT doesn't prevent those people subjected to the loss of transfusions or psychiatric medication from gaining coverage in some other way.

Yeah. It does. Under Obomneycare, you have to take your employer's insurance plan.

There is no reason why it could not be done in the hobby lobby case or a Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientologist.

So you are in favor of abject insanity. At least that's out and on the table.

You act like the sky is falling when all you did was knock you glass off the table.

You're acting like the trashing of the 1st Amendment is no big thang. Let us know how you like it when you end up shelling out thousands of dollars just to make your crazy JW boss happy.

I do:

It sounds a lot like the plot of a sci-fi blockbuster: A deep-space probe powered by a highly radioactive substance could wipe out humankind.

I agree that it is silly for anyone to make predictions about when Strong AI will become a reality, but looking at the failures of AI predictions of the past is no indication that it will not eventually occur. With the exponential rate that computer grow in processing power, the final move to Strong AI will be very sudden and completely unexpected probably even 10 years before it happens.

My favorite explanation for just how quick processing power could escalate is a description of how Lake Michigan would be filled with water if done with the same speed that computers advance. source. If you started in 1940 adding a single fluid ounce, and doubled that amount each 18 months, after 70 years (2010) you would only have a few inches of water. Just like creating Strong AI, it would seem like a futile task. But in the next 10 years you would have 40 feet of water and by 2025 it would be full. A task that looked hopeless in 2010 based on the past 70 years of experience would be finished in only 15 more years.

We may not have Strong AI for another 200 years, but the only thing I am confident of is that the task of creating general artificial intelligence will appear impossible even 5-10 years before it finally happens.

While i see your point it's a hard one to sell... people at that level in their chosen profession are going to be so well established that emigrating to the US just isn't going to be that attractive resulting in very small numbers of H1B's ... so you lose the benefits of having the program (i.e. having a worker pool where you need a lot of people that you haven't got) . . This article http://www.motherjones.com/pol... illustrates the real abuses of the H1B system. Using it to bring offshore workers onshore to train them!!

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/06/eric-cantor-dave-brat-what-happened

I love it how the free-market economist won a primary and now the Republicans are freaking out. Showing their true colors - not the hype they spout to fool ordinary small-government Americans.

Many people have mentioned this, but why ?

I think this article is quite interesting.

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

Does correlation imply causation ?

[...] farmers in the US never really got into feeding their animals ground up animal parts.

Not quite. Feeding cows to cows had to be explicitly banned by the FDA. Now we feed cows to chickens then feed "poultry litter" to cows. http://www.motherjones.com/tom...

Sometimes a new thing looks like a disaster for a while, but in the long run proves itself. The M-16 rifle is a tremendously successful design, but there were issues with the first models that made it look like a huge mistake.

So I am watching the F-35 and I am wondering: will this be as big a disaster as the nay-sayers claim, or will this work out in the long run?

I'm guessing it will limp along as a middle-of-the-road thing: not a complete horrible disaster, just a really expensive airplane that doesn't live up to its expectations.

Also, I have read that it is intended that a bunch of F-35s will share data with each other, and help each other detect and deal with threats; but the giant costs of the program have made it much less likely that enough F-35s will fly together at one time for this to work out.

One thing I am certain about: It's a mistake to try to replace the A-10 Warthog with F-35s. I don't even understand how the F-35 is supposed to do the same mission.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-budget

There is ample evidence that many American corporations have been actively discriminating against American Workers for well over a decade. This is especially true when it comes to STEM work skills. India, China, and Russia have been the main sources of off-shoring (and now, in-shoring). India is the absolute worst, with India's goovernment actively pushing for more H1-Bs because they would rather America hire them than India build proper educational and business infrastructure systems. Indian government is one of the most corrupt on earth (easily as corrupt as some of the worst African states).

Want proof? Unemployment is a problem in America, and so are our sticky problems with immigration. Undercover of helping those immigrants who have so long labored in our agricultural sector, the American IT sector has seen fit to use the sentiment to help agricultural workers to create a Landslide of advantage for itself. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans **$10TRILLION** dollars, since 1975. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.

One of the most respected technology pundits in Silicon Valley has this to say about the H1-B worker problem http://www.cringely.com/2012/1...

Here's an attorney and his consultants teaching corporations how to manipulate foreign-worker immigration law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

H1-B abuse if accompanied by other worker-visa abuse L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg). There are more than 20 categories of foreign worker visas. http://economyincrisis.org/con...

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies on this problem. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/...

Federal offshoring of healthcare.gov website http://www.economicpopulist.or...

How H1-B visa abuse is hurting American tech workers http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

There is no stem worker crisis in America http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo...

Marc Zuckerberg and wealthy tech scions continue to perpetuate this trend http://programmersguild.org/do...

Yahoo http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs...

Also, little known is the tactic of creating many different kinds of sub-visa categories to "fool the system". There are almost TWENTY different kinds of work visas. The whole thing is a sham and a lie, designed to drag down wages and keep from having to re-train Americans. Never thought I would see this day!

Some of the information presented in the aforementioned links will shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. Bill Gates, John Chambers, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and many, many others - including the principals of the most prominent immigration law firms, who profit from this outrage, are lying through their teeth. There is NO shortage of STEM workers in the US!!

Gibson for example

This story has been a drum the Tea Party has been trying to beat for a couple of years now. As usual, there's more to the story than the tea party jackoffs would have you believe.

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

And, Gibson settled the case anyway.

http://www.motherjones.com/blu...

Gibson for example

This story has been a drum the Tea Party has been trying to beat for a couple of years now. As usual, there's more to the story than the tea party jackoffs would have you believe.

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

And, Gibson settled the case anyway.

http://www.motherjones.com/blu...

Evil Corporation wants boycott.
Buy the hammer at your local store.

Thomas Piketty's economic data 'came out of thin air'

The Financial Times has suggested that Piketty's work contains a series of errors that appear to fatally undermine large parts of his thesis. The normally restrained paper claims that some of the data Piketty uses to support his arguments about yawning inequality in Britain and Europe are dubious or inexplicable. Some of this, the paper suggests, may be down to straightforward transcription errors. More damningly, the FT claims, "some numbers appear simply to be constructed out of thin air"

"Oh, that's just a right-wing smear from EVUL RETHUGLICANS!!!"?

Yeah, but if The Guardian isn't good enough, how about Mother Jones?

Chris Giles Challenges Thomas Piketty's Data Analysis

Chris Giles of the Financial Times has been diving into the source data that underlies Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, and he says he's found some problems. The details are here. Piketty's response is here.

Is Giles right? Experts will have to weigh in on this. But Giles' objections are mostly to the data regarding increases in wealth inequality over the past few decades, and the funny thing is that even Piketty never claims that this has changed dramatically.

Wut? Per MOTHER JONES, Piketty says wealth inequality HAS NOT BEEN INCREASING?!?!

Yep, everything.

-jcr

this is why a guns should be able to prevent unathorized people from using them. yes, i know its a liberal site but the facts kind of speak for themselves. and why not let the people who want smart guns buy them? why send death threats to gun shops for daring to sell them?

but to raise taxes on the masters of the universe who caused the damn thing.

And that will never happen.

Wine grape grew in England back then.

They grow there now too.

The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concedes for the first time that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, despite a 7 percent rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

No, actually it doesn't, it actually says the trend over the last 15 years is lower than the overall trend because of the chosen start and end dates:

Due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] C per decade)

If man-made global warming is your religion, it looks like settled science despite the actual results.

Very convenient, anyone who disagrees with you is a religious zealot. However, any time that you are allying with religious leaders and calling scientists zealots, you should really take that as a clue that you need to carefully examine your beliefs.

97% of the scientists who study climate change think it's happening and it's man-made, as does 97% of the published research on the topic. That leaves a mere 3% to split between the undecided and those who think it's either not happening or not man-made. If it weren't actually happening there should be a lot more research showing negative results.

France, 75% nuclear, some of the lowest rates in Europe.

Low only by discounting the taxpayer subsidies propping up the industry. Particularly the cost of dealing with aging power plants and storing nuclear waste for centuries to come. Germany isn't going to be paying for today's solar panels in 2400, A.D. It's quite similar to how the true price of gas is far higher than $3.50 a gallon, when you look at the subsidies propping up that industry.

"... Or do you support the notion of everyone being able to legal own a 20 Megaton nuke? Because that's the sort of firepower you really need to oppose the US government; ..."

Just wanted to point out in reply that in a democracy, people oppose the government in terms of existing laws all the time through voting, lawsuits, campaign donations, jury nullification, running for office, civil disobedience, writing to their congress person, moving, innovation that changes perceived economic imperatives, performance art, publishing books, writing newspaper editorials, buying different products, eating differently (like eating less energy/water-intensive meat despite government subsidies for it), creating new organizations as examples, fostering alternative communities, contributing to internal political pressures when working with government, and so on. These could be considered variations on the "boxes" of democracy: soap box (publishing), ballot box (voting), mail box (writing legislators), band box / pizza box (community), lunch box (eating and purchasing politically as I see it; social safety net as originally defined), jury box (jury nullification by voting not-guilty because the law is wrong), moving box (between states or between countries) -- all available before the ammo box.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

Other countries oppose the USA all the time as well via the international laws, tariffs, subsidizing local industries, currency manipulations, making choices about whether to trade in dollars, setting standards of imported products, forming their own cartels (like OPEC), educating their own populace, investing in their own infrastructure, making stuff for the USA cheaply to make the USA dependent on the other country and to obtain its business and technological secrets, setting examples of alternative practices as successes, and so on. See also Noam Chomsky on "The Threat of a Good Example":
http://www.thirdworldtraveler....

As Isaac Asimov had a character (Salvor Hardin) say, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

And for a true-life example, consider Leon Shenandoah:
http://pathwayofpeace.blogspot...
"We are the spiritual energy that is thousands time stronger than nuclear energy. Our energy in the combined will of all people with the spirit of the Natural World, to be of one body, one heart and one mind for peace."

Or as I quote about him here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-d...
"Warriors are held up as heroes. They are praised for their gallantry, exalted for their conquests, and used as symbols to inspire patriotism. Monuments are built for them as reminders of past victories and to prepare citizens for the next campaign. Leon Shenandoah was no warrior, yet no warrior could stand up against his power. He carried no weapons, used no harsh rhetoric, and made no demands. His strength was in gentleness. When he spoke, those around him listened. His words were always soft, his kindness evident. He was a spiritual man."

I don't feel US gun culture or politics is likely to change anytime soon. The USA is what it is with a certain cultural momentum. And personally I feel if the USA took care of its economic and mental health issues better (like a basic income and medicare for all) the amount of gun violence would go down. Improving the environment helps too, given lead levels have been linked to violence:
http://www.motherjones.com/env...

But what really bothers me is US gun owners who vote for politicians (of any party) who put i

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201...

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

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetw...

The Luntz memo.

= = = You find it easier to ignore the sacrifice of our nation's ambassador in order to = = =

Approximately a dozen people associated with the State Department - sworn officers, US employees, local employees, and their family members - die in the line of duty every year, consistently for the last 30 years. Very tough, but it is part of the job. Ambassadors who deliberately insert themselves in very dangerous situations - such as attempting to broker among factions in a war-torn land - are of course going to have a higher death rate.

BTW, follow up reporting has shown that the US-made hate video did play a role in rioting in Benghazi that day. Not that it mattered to the specific situation once the ambassador made the decisions to try to get personally involved in that specific situation.

sPh

It would help if climate scientists were more forthcoming on what they know and don't know.

http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/...

What's missing?

And if they do they call them deniers and work to deny publishing and funding.

Provide me with a single link to a scientific paper that says there's no anthropogenic global warming that has been denied publication.

The reason they are not published is because they don't exist. Not because they've been denied publication.

There is no scientific controversy on AGW. There is only denialism, specifically crafted by Frank Luntz in a memo for the Bush Whitehouse in 2002:
http://www.motherjones.com/fil...

The fact that you talk as you do means that his approach has worked on you.

BPA Free water bottles are common place now.

Except that it appears the BPA alternatives they created as replacements can be just as bad, and sometimes worse. http://www.motherjones.com/env...

>> Many third world countries will soon be more free than the USSA - time to emigrate.

"Freer" until you're killed by an executive-ordered, zero-oversight drone strike.

Oh wait, that can happen here too.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.motherjones.com/moj...

There has never been a case of this causing a single problem anywhere.

Wrongo!

So what is this horrifying stuff-which be as much as four feet thick-and why did it begin appearing? The Minnesota research team is focusing on changes in the microbial content of pig shit as the cause. Minnesota Daily reports that the researchers hypothesize that a "new set of [bacteria] species" has developed in manure pits in the last few years. One possible catalyst: The practice of feeding pigs distillers grains, the spent mash left over from turning corn into ethanol. Distillers grains came roaring into feed rations in the mid-2000s as corn prices surged, pushed up by the federal government's escalating corn-ethanol mandates.

link to click http://www.motherjones.com/tom...

You might want to read that article. In particular, "But he added that distillers grains aren't likely the sole cause, because on some operations, the foam will emerge in some buildings but not others, even when all the hogs are getting the same feed mix."

I think far more disturbing than the feed the hogs are eating is their living condition. If the hogs weren't all jammed up in a building living atop their own manure, the foam wouldn't be particularly dangerous, even if its composition remained the same. Also, less problems with disease transmission between them. If we're going to raise the cost of meat, I'd rather do it by giving the hogs a bit more space than by making the feed more expensive.

well there is this: http://www.motherjones.com/tom...

link to click http://www.motherjones.com/tom...

Every time we do something to change the world and someone says "It's not a problem.", they're usually wrong.

Weeds don't leach nutrients. They make it hard for the farm machinery to do it's job. They also help support insects, slow evaporation, and support an ecological system that helps support the crop plants. Web of Life Good. There is a problem where we take too much from the soil, and we have to do crop rotation and let fields go fallow to get that back in. We have to fertilize. We have to grow some legumes and let them put nitrogen back into the soil... Frankly, we use herbicides because it's easier and we're lazy, not because they're a better solution.

And the genes for producing pesticides get out into the wild and the insects develop resistances. It IS happening. Refuges help, but... Then there's the side effects. :D Most pesticides mess up the neurological systems of bugs. Including all the beneficial bugs....

GM crops absolutely produce more food per acre than Dumb Farming. Smart farming however? http://www.motherjones.com/env...

No tilling and good usage of cover crops does wonders... We only ever tilled because it made it easier to drop seeds in, and we thought it would help mix fertilizer into the soil. turns out it just disrupts the systems in the soil and makes fields prone to erosion.

I don't think it's fear mongering to point to what we KNOW is happening, and what WILL happen. I don't think it's fear mongering to point to alternative methods that work just as well and have less side effects and say "Hey! this is way better!". And we don't have a problem producing food. Famines are a food distribution problem, not a food production problem. If you want to fight famine, educate small farmers in poor countries on sustainable methods. Or, you could sell them patented seeds, and then patented chemicals, and then put them in debt forever.

Read the link.

Why shouldn't I talk about valid statistics? Here is one of the many places you can find the statistics: http://www.motherjones.com/blu...
This article says Americans spent 33% of their incomes on food in 1963, and by 2009 this had dropped to only 6%.

It's called Engel's Law.

I know you're not the only person making less they did 15 years ago. There are probably millions like you, but in spite of that, Mother Jones can still point out how much more affordable food tends to be these days. Engel's Law has not been violated. Instead of writing another ad-hominem attack, you'd do better to use that time learning about Engel's Law: http://my.safaribooksonline.co...

(Hey, that author also cites milk as an example of something that is now consuming a smaller fraction of family budgets.)

Even the much-pitied fulfillment center temps are treated better than the best WalMart employee.

LOL. Maybe the actual Amazon employees at those centers, if any exist. The vast majority are subcontracted out so Amazon can conveniently avoid any responsibility for their conditions.

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
[print version]

Even the much-pitied fulfillment center temps are treated better than the best WalMart employee.

LOL. Maybe the actual Amazon employees at those centers, if any exist. The vast majority are subcontracted out so Amazon can conveniently avoid any responsibility for their conditions.

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
[print version]

I really like some players like OkCupid urging users to abandon Firefox, but yet we have this: OKCupid's CEO Donated to Anti-Gay Campaign Once, Too

Hypocrisy.

Let's take a look at OKCupid's CEO as well.

http://www.motherjones.com/moj...

In 2004 Sam Yagan donated $500 to Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah). Rep. Cannon voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, against a ban on sexual-orientation based job discrimination and for a prohibition on gay adoptions.

Medical insurers have to have a physical presence or subsidiary in the state where they want to sell.

Citation really, really needed. I haven't found a single site that makes this claim. Some of the places I looked (from Google search 'medical insurance across state lines'):
        http://www.forbes.com/sites/th...
        http://www.ncsl.org/research/h...
        http://www.newamerica.net/pres...
        http://www.motherjones.com/kev...

But what is this job that used to pay $80k - $100k exactly and has now dropped to $40k? It's certainly not software development because wages there have not declined - on the contrary, they've been increasing. Why are you certain the H1-B hires are the reason the average salary has dropped? Another thing I've pointed out previously is that the number of H1-B hires isn't even large enough to have much of an impact on any particular field - they're still a vast minority relative to the numbers in most fields in general.

The wages of tech workers are less than pre-recession levels and are increasing at a rate lower than inflation. http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

So sure, maybe you do work at one of the companies that does bring in cheap overseas hires, but my point remains that all the big boys are not doing this. The big tech companies are all paying well above the average. I can't find the site I used last time I looked into this as it had more uptodate data, this one only goes to 2010, but if you find such a site with more recent data you'll see it's the exact same pattern.

The big boys are definitely hiring the most H1B visas. Whether or not that is driving down their wages is debatable. The top requester of H1B visas is Microsoft. http://www.geekwire.com/2012/4... . Intel, IBM and Oracle are also high on the list. (Yeah, I know, that list is a bit dated, but you get the point.) Actually, the largest recipients of H1B visas may be firms specializing in off-shoring jobs. They bring people over here to learn the jobs and then they can do the work from India or wherever after the visa expires. Apparently, these kind of companies got 40,000 out of the 85,000 visas that were issued in 2012. http://www.npr.org/blogs/allte...

How about Germany? Japan?

USA Today reports, "Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY.

Slashdot, just because the rest of the media refused to lean any lessons from the invasion of Iraq doesn't mean you have to follow along with crap like "here's what some officials say but we wont say how they're full of shit". Russia has an existing treaty with Ukraine for a military base in the Crimea. They have no more "invaded" than the U.S. has invaded more than half the countries on the planet, since most if not all of our 900+ military bases were established with the same sort of diplomatic agreements that Russia has for it's base in Sevastopol.

Furthermore, I'd like to see American Exceptionalist coup supporters say with a straight face that the "interm" government of Ukraine has legitimacy based on popular will, but that the Russian supporting, ethnic Russian majority of Crimea has no right to self-determination. Based on popular will.

and turn California's most fertile farming area turn into a desert in order to "save" some freaking minnows that actually need MORE water, not less.

TFA speaks about alfalfa growers in the Imperial Valley of California, which was and is a desert.
From Wikipedia: "Bordered by sand dunes and barren mountains, it was uninhabited until 1901, when the Imperial Canal was opened and diverted Colorado River water into the valley through Mexico."

With the water restrictions that are coming due to changes in the Colorado River Compact(which is where Imperial Valley gets its water, not from any source in California proper...) the Imperial Valley alfalfa farmers are going to be hard pressed. Their cheap water is coming to an end and they know it...

There are water issues in the norther third of the state regarding the Delta and fish on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. However that is hundreds of miles away in northern California. Maybe those are the minnows you are mentioning. You need to remember though that there is a fishing industry that makes money from the Salmon up there, and they are being hurt by the water being diverted in northern California and southern Oregon for the same type of alfalfa growing...

It's usually better to research what you post before you post it. It saves you from looking like a tool.
Perhaps you should stick to letting Big Money steal elections in Michigan...

And people are dying early now due to the rich-poor divide. So why not fix that now?
http://overpopulationisamyth.c...

Also, such research ignores the low-hanging fruit of better nutrition as I mention here: http://science.slashdot.org/co...

How to get healthier for most people in the Western world: https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
http://www.grassrootshealth.ne...
https://www.lef.org/magazine/m...

But it is hard to make huge profits from suggesting people live well and clean up their environment and thus prevent and cure disease... There are a lot more profits to keeping people on patented drugs by just treating chronic "conditions" or reducing the pains associated with them.

To be clear, I'm not against anti-aging research or genomics. I'm just saying, we as a society and scientific community are often ignoring the obvious well-proven paths to better health and extended life-span and diminished "frail span" for most people.

Of course, genomics also has a dark side -- the potential for customized plagues that may destroy humanity in the next few decades, like I worry about here: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

So, I'd suggest we build healthier and more secure and equitable communities for everyone right now, before the plague potential of genomics fully emerges, in order to have the community spirit needed to deal with the dark side of such innovation.

Science is settled until new contrary evidence comes along to unsettle it.

There is an obvious contextual reference here to the contemporary scientific debate raging around global warming. If I may push back against the OP's question for a moment: The question "is the science ever settled" is not framed in a useful way. I think it is more useful to ask "does the science ever prove a political position"? I frame it this way because typically, when partisans point out that "the science is settled" on some subject, what they are really trying to do is put the weight of scientific authority behind their political positions.

Furthermore, I think this has demonstrable, detrimental effect on science. There has been a recent uptick in global warming disbelief. The typical response to this kind of thing falls into one of two categories: either Americans are unwashed idiots or the effort to disseminate scientific knowledge is somehow flagging in the internet age. But there is a third explanation which receives little attention; namely, the relentless push by partisans to make science speak for particular political ends brings science itself into disrepute. In this view, rising skepticism of scientific consensus comes from backlash induced by, essentially, partisan bullying on scientific issues. With respect to global warming, people see partisans making statements attempting to link currently held scientific views to political ideas that run the gamut from signing bad treaties like Kyoto, adopting economically ruinous policies, or enriching crony operators of new "carbon" exchanges. And then they conclude that maybe the science wasn't all that necessary or important to these partisans after all.

You might be surprised as to how much "road attention" you lose performing such a simple maneuver.

Yes I would be surprised. And I wouldn't take your word for it. Especially as you example is of taking your eyes off the road, not a long press of a button that is already at your fingertip.

Yea, too bad there's not a plethora of existing studies that show how non-visual distractions are just as bad (if not worse, in some cases) as vision-based ones, huh?

http://www.scientificamerican....

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://mentalhealth.about.com/...

http://www.motherjones.com/kev...