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2009 JD Power IQS - Problems per 100 Vehicles

Mercedes 101
Chevrolet 103

Statistically equivalent.

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1071844

Now, you have a whole plane load of security experts.

Now, you have a whole plane load of murder experts. A recent event demonstrates that a trained murderer is good at his specialty, even when the intended victims are trained murderers themselves. In the quest for safety and security, a good offense is not the best defense.

I was thinking more along the lines of this...
Voice recognition

Who gives a flying leap? We're inundated with all sorts of things as we wander around this planet, and I for one think its a bunch of bollocks.

And really --

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16059841

If 420k danes dont have cancer from cell phone use, then nobody will.

That's hardly a fair comparison. To be completely fair and balanced, the browser usage stats should come from a different page outside of your control. I think http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx would present the sort of unbiased sample base we'd expect from a browser-war data set.

Maybe our Laura could go there. She would be the first teenager to sail the seas of Titan, which is much cooler than being the youngest kid to sail around Earth.

You're calling BS on the AP. Keenan went to the FBI because in his fantasy world Wang had used government money to commit fraud.

the A380 was delivered 2 years ahead of the 787

Yeah. Airbus runs a flawless operation.

"The first A380 was delivered to Singapore Airlines in October — 18 months behind schedule after billions of dollars in cost overruns for planemaker Airbus."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23689448/

I would argue, probably nothing. In hindsight, it is always easy to second-guess why the system "didn't work," but in fact, all these same clues occur in thousands of other cases where nothing ever comes of it. So, much of this disappointment comes from people unconsciously (and always in retrospect) hold systems up to an impossible standard - not only where an infinite number of KGB agents have an infinite amount of time to track everybody, not only where a super-intelligent AI acts in the most rational possible manner, but beyond that, demanding prediction of the future given some information which is relevant, but nevertheless insufficient.

I think those laws are new - didn't apply to this guy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19171577/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Nowadays the US Prosecutors are great at playing the Bad Guys in Romeo and Juliet.

BTW, nowadays young girls seem to like that vampire story "Twilight". But in "Twilight", 100+ year old guys are hanging around in high schools and picking up high school girls...

Certainly no Romeo and Juliet. I doubt there's going to be a Twilight law.

> You are clearly not the [good] father of a 14 year old girl.

Of course not, I'm one of those virgin slashdotters. And no I have not donated to a sperm bank before.

If you don't understand it already, if you're a father in the USA, your precious 14 year old daughter could get touched and abused by the US Gov one day.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29912729/
http://www.wpxi.com/news/18469160/detail.html

Quote: "A 14-year-old New Jersey girl has been accused of child pornography after posting nearly 30 explicit nude pictures of herself on MySpace.com -- charges that could force her to register as a sex offender if convicted."

Don't you even worry about that? It sure seems way too common in the US for the Government to abuse children that way. I'd punish my daughter but I'd rather the Government fuck off and leave my daughter alone.

Heck, if your daughter accidentally sends you a nude pic of herself, or gets it saved on your computer (borrows your laptop and leaves it in the browser cache), maybe the US Government will send both of you to prison (different prisons of course). The laws and prosecutors seem to be inclined that way.

Regulation keeps the local restaraunt from selling me poisoned food. OSHA regulations do, in fact, protect workers from violence -- my grandfather died because Purina was too cheap to put doors on its elevators (1959, long before OSHA).

Before the Clean Air Act, you could NOT drive through Sauget with your windows down, even on a blistering hot summer day (they didn't put AC in cars back then). I would consider Monsanto's noxious fumes a direct assault on my person, and regulation stops that assault. Only government regulation keeps Monsanto from violating my right to travel through Sauget while breathing.

Yes, use as much force as you want to keep Monsanto from ruining my lungs, or a drug company form selling me drugs that contain impurities, or from selling poison peanut butter.

On the other hand, law enforcement tries to stop me from gambling, soliciting a prostitute, or smoking a joint. None of these activities harm anyone without their consent. You might want to rethink your position; you've been brainwashed by the corporatti who would love nothing more than to remove the regulations that keep them from assaulting you.

A 23 millon grant from Exxon you say? You mean, like ~0.05% of their profit? Yeah, sound like they're sending the big money to the climate researchers.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22949325/

"That's a very poor argument. You can swap out "church" for almost any other childhood activity. For example, soccer:"

A soccer coach has less scope for compelling sodomy than does a priest representing an imaginary celestial friend.

BTW, soccer coaches aren't paying hundreds of millions of dollars in pedophilia settlement money.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19762878/

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/us/boston-archbishop-will-sell-residence-for-abuse-payout.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655265.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4147431.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3872083.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/us/catholic-priest-who-aids-church-sexual-abuse-victims-loses-job-military-chaplain.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/17/religion.childprotection

http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/scandal/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/17/religion.childprotection

Too bad this doesn't happen more often:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/24/geoghan/index.html

Somalia. Iraq. Afghanistan. Much less nice.

I think it's a fairly safe assumption that at least two of those countries (Somalia and Afghanistan) would still be shitholes even without weapons. Remember that correlation (i.e: lots of weapons) != causation (i.e: lots of violence).

Interestingly enough, there are now anti-Taliban militia's forming up in many parts of Afghanistan. They've seen what the Taliban is all about, they've seen how ineffective we've been at containing it and they don't intend to pushed around by them any longer.

How effective do you suppose those groups would be at resisting the Taliban and defending themselves if they didn't have access to weapons?

Yes, Surely such mistakes could never happen. To be fair, there were pirates on board the vessel (they had hijacked it), but also the original crew, and it was a trawler, not a "pirate mother ship".

Were you seriously to expect liberals to respond to insults towards someone who will not hurt them in revenge ? Why ? Sure it would be immoral to aim gratuitous insults at someone who will not respond to them, but you know, there's no such thing as moral or immoral. Besides you're such a depressing medieval white male to say such a thing, right ?

Now if Bush would have ordered the killing of a journalist or some such. Then, obviously, you would have seen them falling over their own feet censoring themselves, apologizing and groveling. But attacking Bush was cheap. Whatever else Bush was, he is a man of principles, and will never attack an American for any speech whatsoever. Even if it's personal slander he would not do so. So all shots at Bush are cheap shots, certain to go without retribution. Of course that sort of thinking means liberals think Obama's capable of attacking and destroying individuals. Of course they want him to do so. Too many people in America are defending obvious facts or truths, like that communism, and communist policies like national health care, don't work. Lower quality, more expenses, "government cutbacks" and so on are the obvious results, and in medicine such things lead to deaths for obvious reasons. Evident. Proven time and again in economics. Forbidden to say in any liberal paper.

Besides, liberals are right ... Obama, the president of America, does attack individuals and companies, and even the sort of departments he doesn't like (ever notice how liberals complain to no end about ignoring "inconvenient truths" and then their elected candidate does this). Singling them out and using the office of the president to attack political adversaries.

And of course, here's exactly how Obama won't raise taxes for his friends : all his friends are criminals, tax evaders to be precise. Perhaps we should get his message.

It's not that I care all that much about these people or companies. I just worry who's next. I get the impression more and more people do so.

Cops powerless against teenage girls.

I think I can see why they needed to arrest someone...

The cops should have used tasers, like with this 10-year old girl:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34014497/

Look, if a police officer isn't capable of handling a 10-year old girl without a taser, then they should be fired. They do not have the physical strength to do the job.

Curious. Marijuana is way less addictive and toxic than cigarettes or alcohol, and I am pretty sure that you are not allowed to smoke it at home, in most of the US at least. And last time I checked yes, penalties could be quite harsh, all the way to jail time.

Doesn't stop most people. My friend willfully ignores overreaching laws he doesn't agree with his own home.

You cannot beat your wife

You can't do that at home here but in some localities in this state it's legal on the courthouse steps on Sunday.

raise your army

Unorganized militias are supposedly perfectly legal. Doesn't stop ones that don't fall in line from being labeled domestic terrorists though. The tree of liberty needs a little watering anyway.

print money

You got me on that one. It's just plain wrong to print your own money. And kinda tough these days.

or shoot people,

Depends why you shot them. If someone is robbing my house, I'm going to shoot them if they are armed or put up resistance. If someone poses a threat to any member of my family, I'm going to shoot them many times. If they just kinda piss me off, I can't really get away with shooting them. If they piss me off they won't be in my house anyway.

and you cannot do bunches of other things.

You can do whatever you want. You really can. Providing you aren't noticed and reported. It's my house and I WILL do whatever I please. Fortunately I have some morals and ethics and won't go summarily executing house guests or doing lines of coke with my kids.

Actually the only thing that I can think of that would be OK inside your home and illegal outside is walking around naked.

Personally I'm all for that being legal in public. If a dog can walk around naked, why can't I? We're both mammals. We both have penises. To me it seems a little unfair. What's so repulsive about the human body we don't want to see? I probably wouldn't do it very often because I'm thin and get cold pretty easily but hey, I'm still for it.

Curious. Marijuana is way less addictive and toxic than cigarettes or alcohol, and I am pretty sure that you are not allowed to smoke it at home, in most of the US at least. And last time I checked yes, penalties could be quite harsh, all the way to jail time.

Now, either you are for legalisation of hash and light drugs, OR you are for a smoking ban (at least to the level of light drugs), OR you have a serious case of doublethink.

And, just to remind you: no, you are not allowed to do as you please just because it's your home. You cannot beat your wife, raise your army, print money or shoot people, and you cannot do bunches of other things. Actually the only thing that I can think of that would be OK inside your home and illegal outside is walking around naked.

"While Katarina was ongoing, there were plenty of independent news outlets running video footage of professionals warning what would happen. It made the Bush mantra of "No one could have predicted..." out to be just as much of a joke as the "No one could have predicted..." 9-11 version. (And then the Aug 6th PDB title was released.)"

Exactly, so how a Judge could belatedly blame the Army Corps of Engineers, defies logic. Of course he couldn't every state the real reasons. That the levees failed because of their flimsy construction and funding was denied to pay for Bushs war in Iraq. Not only that Bush was warned in advance about Katrina, but took no action.

"President Bush is expected to shift $1.3 billion away from raising and armoring levees, installing floodgates and building permanent pumping in Southeast Louisiana in order to plug long-anticipated financial shortfalls in other hurricane-protection projects, a move Sen. David Vitter describes as a retreat from the president's commitment to protect the whole New Orleans area"

But you are incorrect that they did it for intel, since that is also not possible.

Where's the study or even a valid argument supporting this claim.

Ok. Studies and reports on them:

http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=20647
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/519416/
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/21/21847/9403
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-09/new-study-finds-torture-negatively-affects-memory

And further valid arguments supporting those claims:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30721458/print/1/displaymode/1098/
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/torture-is-more-than-just-harsh-tactics/
http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Dbq-Usefulness-Torture/132993

And at least one example of how this is a slippery slope that leads to nothing good:
  http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/
If nothing else, please Please read about this person!

Do further googles (or wiki searches) for Maher Arar
Then just keep in mind there is NOTHING at all that happened nor will happen that would prevent you or anyone else you know from being in that persons shoes, by a random throw of the dice.

Sure that is an extreme case, but it is cases like that where I can honestly say I would support the usage. If anything, allowing these terrorists to come to a US Court sets a precedent where the usage of information gathered by torture becomes acceptable in a criminal investigation.

That is until they* come into your home at night, haul you and your wife/gf/S.O./whatever away to different prisons in another country and torture you for your terrorists connections for 9 months.
You are doing exactly everything required to qualify as a terrorist suspect under our current methods of determining who is or could be a terrorist, so it is not at all as far fetched as your extreme example is.

[*] They being all of the sociopaths that work their way into positions of power and dominance due to their personality requiring it, whom you are willingly and gladly giving permission to torture anyone and everyone (since that is our current definition of terrorist suspect)

The difference being that when you do a check on the president, you get suspended. When you look up the contact information for a citizen that calls you fat in a letter to the editor in order to send her an intimidating letter, it gets swept under the rug.

And for the record, Kevin Beary used to be my local sheriff, and yes, he's pretty damn tubby.

We see this atrophy in hospital patients who are confined to bed for years in a coma. These patients never exercise their muscles, and they simply atrophy. Being in space is worse than being in bed. Lack of gravity means that your muscles are not constantly being exercised. Your muscles will waste away.

The fix for this problem is to use only astronauts who have a natural genetic mutation that causes muscles to be large, durable, and strong. A few Europeans do have this mutation.

Perhaps, Khan -- the character in Star Trek -- was right. A race of genetic supermen is best suited for space travel.

you do NOT want the siberian ice dildo treatment, especially in the ear. its been tried and it works:

Trotsky helped lead the 1917 Russian Revolution, but split with Josef Stalin and fled to Mexico in 1937, accusing Stalin of betraying the revolution. Stalin is widely believed to have arranged Trotsky's Aug. 20, 1940, murder, in which a man sneaked up behind Trotsky and sank the icepick into his skull.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8543908/

Considering most of the major telecos went along with wholesale spying on the American public

Only the calls with one of the ends outside America were ever "spied" on. Whether that's legal or not, it is hardly a "wholesale" spying on a public, the majority of whom have never been abroad nor personally know a foreigner. For domestic calls, the only things captured were the fact of the calls — not the conversation itself.

This, I believe, was always legal — the government never needed a warrant to look at your envelops at the Post Office, for example — as long as they weren't opening them. On the other hand, foreign mail was always subject to check by the government, and expanding that power of the Executive to phone calls is not entirely illogical...

Keep your exaggerations in line, in other words... Even if it were illegal, calling it "wholesale" is a flamebait...

Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:

Plug your ears, dude, and say "LA LA LA LA LA" really loudly while I finish my post!

They said it was infeasible to have an automated car. They were wrong.
They said that flying wasn't going to happen. they were wrong.
They said that "heavier than air" flying wasn't going to happen. They were wrong.
They said that breaking the sound barrier wasn't going to happen. They were wrong.
They said that going into space was ludicrous! hey were wrong.
Going to the moon was infeasible. They were wrong.
Free, global communications so cheap that there's little sense in metering it? unpossible! (they were wrong here, too!)

Seeing a pattern, here?

It's impractical only given the assumptions of today. But just like every single milestone above, technology improved to the point where previously impossible/infeasible/impractical feats became ordinary, even cheap and everyday. Even the disgustingly underfunded federal space program is now increasingly being compensated for.

What's needed is a new technology that commoditizes space travel. Many people would point to the Space Elevator as the answer to our dreams. But it's not really all that practical, and requires us to build super-duper long-chain nanostructures, currently infeasible. Additionally, there's the problem of how to confer lots of energy to the elevators themselves as they travel their 11,000 mile course.

But there's a solution that today solves all these problems without requiring any particularly new developments - space travel can be commoditized in as little as 3-5 years, and provide a launch price of as little as $3 per kg, well under 1% of the $12,000/pound figure stated in your linked-to article.

Inroduce the launch loop, and suddenly, numbers start lining up all over the place, at a cost of around 1% of the most recent stimulus package. Seriously. read up on it!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33678801/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

In a historical first for Mudslums, a deranged Mudslum actually attacked a military target instead of an unsuspecting crowd of civilians.

yes, it has happened, but it is not illegal in all states.

The trouble is if the human guinea pigs lie or do other stuff they shouldn't.

See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23727874/

Quote: "In a Johns Hopkins survey of research volunteers published last spring in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 10 percent of the sampled group admitted to participating in more than one study at a time -- most likely without the knowledge of the researchers."

Are you sure about this entering your PIN backwards trick? The only real reference I can find is a 6 year old article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4086277/ and they imply that it's possible but nobody has implemented it. Any other searching just throws up snopes like sites debunking it as a hoax.

Evolution would just mean that whomever has the most children (that survive to also make children) becomes the dominant (in numbers) body type.

Not entirely, in you're assuming that nothing would change during this period, and that just because mother A got 5 children, so will daughter A, but of course it would as evolution itself is caused by change. It is true that evolution ultimately depends on offspring, but you can't neglect the path to having and raising that offspring. These are all events heavily based on environmental factors, and your second mistake is that evolution in our case depends on second set of genes -- our partners. You can't assume that a gene or a trait is good and that's de facto. Our traits are always based on our environments, thus what if you would mix (just as a silly example) high probability with having many children with high probability of dying during childbirth?
 
So you see the only assumption you can make on evolution without being subjected to the fallancy of the single cause is: whichever creatures who are best (or good enough) adapted to their environment will become a genetic base for future generations. Any simplification on that will be incorrect as it will be based on false assumptions.

Careful ... what shape is that lollipop?

So how do you feel if stimulus money is used to buoy an ally?

No one has commented on the fact that $1.5B / 150,000 homes is $10,000 per house served. That seems ridiculously high to me. I have no numbers to compare to but that seems high.

From http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/SavingandDebt/P87298.asp it gives $1400 per year as the average power bill. Let's assume 50% profit margin since there aren't any consumables: 50% going to infrastructure, salaries, maintenance, paying off lawsuits about dead birds, migraines, ... So that's only $700 profit per year. That gives a payback of about 14 years! I would say that would be approaching the lifetime of the windmills (no matter what the manufacturer says).

So how is this a good deal? How can anyone make money with those numbers? Poke some holes in my assumptions because it just doesn't make any sense.

And why do animals eat, you know, eachother ? There are even cannibalistic animals. Worse : we need a long list of proteins, fats and enzymes that cannot be found except in other animals. Why ?

You can recognize someone who's led a vegetarian diet all their life : they're dead before they celebrate their first birthday (of course, if the mother does eat meat and breastfeeds that may prolong things right up to 8-9 years). Until you're well into your thirties there are serious health consequences to eating vegetarian.

Of course the point of vegetaranism is that they see themselves as better than everybody else. You see somehow it shows "better morals" to sabotage your own digestive system (just in case someone disagrees). They're rather up front about that in general too. Their morality, you see, is better than yours.

Of course, vegetarians are more respectable than your average "better morals than you" idiot. Mostly people just claim they're better for having studied, or being a certain color (ever been to the middle east or India ?), or having a certain ideology. Mostly a political ideology, but again in the middle east, it's mostly religion. Then again, out there politics and religion are the same thing.

Still that doesn't mean anyone has to like it. If you don't want to eat meat, by all means go ahead and do it. Just don't try to "convert" me, and don't dare you accuse me of "moral failures" as if I'm some kind of murderer or rapist, simply because you need to feel better than everyone else.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002

From the article;

"In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official."

All in all, a fascinating article - check it out.

Naked mole rats are badasses. Not only are they cold-blooded and eusocial, they are substantially immune to certain types of pain.

And this is a good thing? Pain isn't an unwanted side-effect that evolution hasn't eliminated; it's a very valuable survival trait.

Considering they've already had over 1,000 people die of Swine Flu so far this year in the US alone, why would anyone really need to question this? There is no natural immunity to N1H1. It also affects young adults more than any other group (and need I say a very mobile crowd), with a much higher chance of spreading the disease in colleges, schools, and just in general.

This kind of stunt has become a common play in the PR handbook. Do something moderately outrageous, just enough to piss off some special interest group, and your company gets a ton of free publicity as a result. Pepsi did something like this a few months ago with an iPhone app: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33310411/. You can't tell me that nobody in charge knew this stuff would be controversial. They knew exactly what they were doing and that it would get them more publicity than they were willing to pay for. The company can always fake an apology later to make it look unintentional.

It requires scarcity to function. Which is why people are knocking down houses in the USA... e.g. http://www.yidio.com/unsold-houses-knocked-down/id/395665281 [yidio.com] http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=19580208 [msn.com] If demand is ever satisfied, the value of the product tends to zero and therefore it is impossible to make profit or to pay the loans which make up our monetary system. This is why there will always be poverty, always be homelessness, and is of course insanity and stupidity of the highest order. Silvio Gesell [wikipedia.org] identified this particular fundamental problem (and proposed a solution) with the nature of money itself nearly 100 years ago.

If I've read it right, the suggestion is that we abolish land costs and rent. But if people aren't getting paid, who's going to be motivated to get together all the materials to build anything bigger than a stick house? Unless they're already wealthy enough to pay everything upfront.

It requires scarcity to function.

Which is why people are knocking down houses in the USA...

e.g.
http://www.yidio.com/unsold-houses-knocked-down/id/395665281
http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=19580208

If demand is ever satisfied, the value of the product tends to zero and therefore it is impossible to make profit or to pay the loans which make up our monetary system. This is why there will always be poverty, always be homelessness, and is of course insanity and stupidity of the highest order.

Silvio Gesell identified this particular fundamental problem (and proposed a solution) with the nature of money itself nearly 100 years ago.

Less than a month into her run, Lapierre suddenly encountered serious problems. She was twice forcibly French-kissed by the Russian team commander, and soon afterwards witnessed a 10-minute-long fight between two Russians that left blood spattered on the walls.
She insisted that the controversial kisses were not merely “friendly celebrations” and that she had vigorously told the Russian to back off. She quoted him as saying, "We should try kissing, I haven't been smoking for six months. Then we can kiss after the mission and compare it. Let's do the experiment now."
Lapierre dismissed the notion that the Russian thought his actions were normal and acceptable. "Why did he try to pull me out of sight of the camera?" she asked.
When Lapierre's team first entered the modules, Dr. Valery Gushin, the scientific coordinator of the project, voiced attitude that in hindsight could have been seen as warnings about the problem. "Men, they have some expectations from women," he told a Canadian television team. "They want them to be more like women, not just partners. At least Russians do."
Following the incident, Gushin blamed Lapierre. His official report, which Lapierre has seen, saud she had "ruined the mission, the atmosphere, by refusing to be kissed." She should have been taken out, he wrote, and he also insisted that the foreigners had caused the fight.

Troll? I'm not the one comparing people who legitimate reasons against ESC with those who bomb abortion clinics. Who's flame-baiting here?

The first article you gave me showcased using IVF leftovers (which I addressed in my post). Using stem cells harvested in this way has the major problem that they are only suited to academic research where tissue rejection is not a problem, because their genetic material cannot match the patient. I covered this in my post already.

The second article you sent me showcases a modified form of standard SCNT, where they add the twist of crippling the embryo, because they think that people will object less to destroying a crippled human embryo rather than one that is created with normal SCNT.

Do you want to see how the public ethic responds to stuff like this? Imagine the KFC headless chicken scenario, only with humans instead of chickens. Yeah, that'll fly like a lead balloon.

But even on a practical level, the technique listed in the second article suffers from the issue that there are simply not enough IVF leftovers to fuel widespread ESC-based treatments. There just aren't enough eggs.

Neither of the articles you quoted address the criticisms referenced in my original post, and all of the arguments remain untouched.

ESC-based treatments remain as unviable as the Whitehead Institute's crippled embryos, and there are no answers on the horizon that solve both the issues of tissue rejection and human egg supply.

If you're going to troll this obviously (Outstrip the supply? Of something that reproduces indefinately in a lab? REALLY?) you can go spend 3 minutes on google inbetween ad hominems.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22594571/
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1017/p02s01-ussc.html

Here's some random starter articles just from 30 seconds on google. My citation is "GO fucking google it", i'm not your nanny. You're supposedly an adult, put some of that to use and actually research something instead of expecting everyone to hand it to you on a silver platter even when you bring nothing to the table but "I disagree, you are a liar!" without any proof yourself.

High interest rates used to be a crime called "usery" and it dates back a few thousand years. It used to be a crime to charge interest at all. The U.S. used to have state statutes on the maximum interest you could charge before it became usery. A common punishment for usery is the loan was forgiven or the lender couldn't sue to collect. In 1980 when the U.S. was in a nasty inflationary spiral all usery laws were overturned with the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act. It was actually passed by Dems just before Reagan was elected though it was a perfect fit for the Republicans. Much of our financial cataclysm of late is actually thanks to this act which allowed userous loans. We've had payday loans, 20% credit card rates and every manner of acute usery since. You could argue its buyer beware but people are often desperate or foolish and take out loans they can never repay and it just makes their problems worse. I personally never borrow money... EVER. I wish it was a lot harder to get loans but banks make a lot of money on teaser rates, balloons, etc and they pretty much own Congress so we have turned in to a nation of debtors and its a key reason our economy is imploding, while the Chinese, who are chronic savers are doing well. You ever wonder why there are payday loans stores on every street corner now, its because usery is legal and very profitable in the U.S.

The worst thing about student loans has been the last eight years when the Republicans decided it was a good idea to put private corporations in charge of them. They provide none of the capital, they assume none of the risk, tax payers provide the money and take the risk, they just take a hefty cut and all they do is marketing and hand out cash. It was pretty much a criminal enterprise like most things in the U.S. and all it did was take money from students and taxpayers to line the pockets of politically connected corporations. I think the Dems have been trying to return to a sane system where the government just does the loans and gets rid of the middle man, though it will end a no risk gravy train for a lot of powerful people.

The same biochemical matrix (Of fibronectin fibers created by fibroblasts, and the cellular messages these special matrix cells convey to stem cells) is used for all tissue types: Be it bone, Skin, Kidney, or even neural.

Being able to directly control this to the practical extreme of being able to completely regrow arbitrary organs in vitro, we would be able to regenerate lost brain tissue.

As for instances where stemcells have been used to regenerate neural tissue in the CNS (brain and spinal column) I leave you with this little story:

Toddler shows remarkable improvement after receiving own cord blood stemcells

The usual issue with human scarring VS "salamander like" regeneration is that human fibroblasts "lose" some of their ability to communicate with each other, and with neighboring tissues to know where they are in the body, and how to properly direct tissue regeneration.

SciAM: Can people regrow lost body parts?

Being able to properly instruct human fibroblasts to perform "Proper" tissue regeneration WOULD imply full neural repair being made possible, at least theoretically.

"the Supreme Court has ruled that the right to Free Speech is not absolute, but the prosecution of a girl for calling another girl names over a dispute over a boy? A matter for parents and possibly high school guidance counselors, or on the rare outside case for a psychiatrist, but not for the courts."

RTFA: "Details of the incident weren't made available, but police say the harassment went on for a few months and involved a dispute over a boy."

This is a bit more than just a girl posting OMG UZ STOLEZ MY BF U IZ BIATCH!!!! Also at 16 years old she's hardly a "girl", as I'm sure you heard about the 15 yr old who lit a teen on fire over $40 and laugh about it or the four teens who beat a 16 yr old bystander and honor roll student to death and recorded it on a cellphone.

I'm glad police are taking this seriously and doing something about it, teens should not be burned alive or beaten to death.

The blinders you socialist wear. The free market wants to do it but hippies are stopping it. Sure, there's plenty, but there could be so much more.

I don't care what it is, the Left Wingers who lip service to clean power are also the same ones who block it. Now that Ted Kennedy is dead hopefully that huge windfarm can be built.

They are good people because they are in those positions of power, sacrificing their superior selves to make the lives of we, the incompetent peons who need them to look after us, better.

You're dead wrong on this one: psychopaths have no illusion whatsoever about what good they do to "us", the lowly ones. Psychopaths only and exclusively look for their own benefit, even if it means a damage for everyone else. They have no conscience whatsoever, but are very charismatic and expert at manipulating. I highly recommend the book Snakes in Suits for anyone interested in the phenomenon of psychopaty in corporate life.