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Don't diss ravens, they can make tools, sometimes more proficiently than apes ! I've seen one of these birds cut a small rectangle of spiky leaf to use as a hook to pull some juicy worms from a dead tree bark; and another cut a stick from a tree, remove the leaves then make one end into a hook for the same task, in mere seconds.

...the breweing of coffee was perfected in 1855...A shot of espresso made with freshly roasted / ground beans and on a well maintained machine by a well trained barrista...

Oddly enough the term "barrista" didn't seem to be invented until about 1990. Just about the time Starbucks began their quest for world coffee domination. Now, of course, even someone who hates Starbucks calls the drink maker a barrista and orders coffee in short, tall, and vente sizes.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Barista

When you're driving at speed, you maintain distance X from the car ahead. And, when you end up at the end of a line of cars at a stoplight, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that you close to within X/20 of the car ahead. Once the light turns green, the safety margin you and everyone else sucked up to avoid stopping a few seconds sooner than you actually did takes everyone a few seconds apiece to reestablish.

For the "everyone step on it now" plan to work, everyone needs to either 1) slow down and stop the moment they see a red light waaaaaay off in the distance, or 2) the USDOT needs to deploy that autopilot system they've been testing that would make it possible for everyone to tailgate at 100 mph. I just don't want to be in that system when it goes south, see "The Gold Coast" for a sample of the result.

Back on topic, a possible near-term result of the London test will be more accidents. During periods when traffic permits, many drivers will be moving at the governed speed limit. When a situation evolves when someone needs to make a quick brake/accelerate/maneuver decision, the quickest reaction is to step on it, which won't respond. It will take drivers a while to internalize this. In the meantime, somebody's gonna get screwed.

Actually, just the opposite. A company that hinders free-market forces *hurts* the economy.

But how can a company that is part of a free-market hinder free-market forces. This is an excerpt from a definition of coercive monopoly A company which has achieved monopoly status by simply outcompeting all other firms, may exploit its position to retain its monopoly; typically, engaging in activities that result in what are commonly referred to as "barriers to entry", although it is is a matter of debate whether particular barriers to entry are coercive in nature. For example, some say high costs required to compete are a barrier to entry, but free market advocates would say that the market is still free since competition is allowed to anyone that can raise the funds to compete, and that hence it cannot rightfully by called a "coercive monopoly."

To my knowledge the complaints against Microsoft aren't complaints about extorsion or other non-economic methods of cementing their monopoly. The biggest complaint is that they have added additional features to their product to make it more usable and used the widespread use of their Operating System to market other products. Seems to me like government sanctions against Microsoft actually work against a free-market.

Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the evil that lives in Redmond either, but I want the market to force Microsoft out, not the government. I want Linux and OSX to improve to the point where there is no reason to run any Windows OS at all, and I believe that day will come.

Not according to this link:

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/List-of-c ountries-by-population-density

That title goes to Australia. And there are many other countries before the US.

You might want to mention that "yellow journalists" has nothing to do the yellowing of the wood pulp. It's used to refer to sensationalized newspaper articles

William Randolph Hearst is the reason hemp isn't used for newspaper. "He was instrumental in publicizing and orchestrating a 1937 oil-and-timber-industry-led media campaign to discredit hemp (an inexpensive petroleum and paper substitute) and marijuana, which led within months to the drug and the plant being outlawed in the United States. Hearst himself reputedly profited due to his interests in the pulp-and-paper business."

The power of newspaper...

You do also produce 3.31 million bbl/day, which does indeed make you the 3rd largest exporter in the world.

You're not really a part of the EU, though you do contribute a sizable portion of their budget.

I'm not sure what the nobel peace "price" is, nor am I exactly sure what you mean. Your country HAS the prize? How did you get it? Are you planning on giving it back someday, or are you keeping it? Can I buy it on ebay? You do contribute a ton fo world aid, and should be applauded for that.

I'd also like to point out that, last I saw, LUXEMBOURG has the highest GDP/capita in the world right now. And not by a small margin, either. I wouldn't say that luxembourgers necessarily have it "better" than the americans, nor would your GDP/capita being higher. I'm afraid I have to ask you to back up your claim. In terms of the least labour-hours for a loaf of bread, that's the UK. I'd much rather live in america than the UK, because damn their housing sucks compared to america. I'd much rather have a huge place to live in with lots of room than be cramped into a smaller place. In terms of best places to live, I've gotta say mexicans have it about the best, they just have a terrible economy, socio-cultural problems up the ass, etc. But it's by far the most comfortable, beautiful, #1 place to live by me.

I will take this moment to admit that Norway is indeed one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and is doing MANY things right. I'm ashamed my country has been unable to at least catch up with you in many of these aspects. But I wouldn't say you have it the best out of everyone in the world :). If you were a real nerd, you'd remember the "cheap 1gbps fibre avaiable in hong kong for only $215 US per month and agree that they have it the best.

I spent a few days in Norway last year (Fredrikstad, Oslo, and Bjørkelangen) and it is really a beautiful and well developed nation.

Check out their GDP per capita: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_ppp_ca p
Index of Economic Freedom is good too, although a bit socialist:
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/co untry.cfm?id=Norway

Norway can afford to do what it wants. They are very rich (being one of the largest oil and gas producers in the world helps), and aren't even in the European Union nor do they use the Euro. The Norwegians I know are also very well educated, and tons of good software comes from .no as well.

Their drug laws aren't as terrible as those we have in the United States either, nor do they have the death penalty, etc etc..

More dangerous.

"It is important to distinguish between the frame rate, and the flicker rate, which are not necessarily the same. In physical film systems, it is necessary to pull down the film frame, and this pull down needs to be obscured by a shutter to avoid the appearance of blurring, there needs to be at least one flicker per frame in film. To reduce the appearance of flicker, virtually all modern projector shutters are designed to add additional flicker periods, typically doubling the flicker rate to 48 Hz, which is less visible. (Some newer projector shutters even triple it to 72 Hz.) In digital film systems, the raster scan rate may be decoupled from the image update rate. In some systems, such as the DLP system, there is no flying spot or raster scan at all, so there is no flicker other than that generated by the temporal aliasing of the film image capture." http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Persisten ce-of-vision

Yea, occasionally I'd like one, but I'd rather it didn't take away from what my graphics card can do, wouldn't I ?

Like, maybe I'd like to have a generalized DSP chip like the one in my NeXT machine here, or one of these specialized DSP boards ?

But if you want a GPU that's targeted to supporting DirectX, I don't know if using it for a DSP is really the right idea. Maybe it is. Or maybe Intel's own vector processing capabilities could improve. Or maybe you could get an extra board and actually make use of those empty, fast PCI slots. Your call. TFA does a good job of pointing out that GPUs aren't exactly 'general purpose', and that's why the article contains :

why aren't we seeing it in the PC space yet? Xenos's particular range of features are going into a closed box environment, hence the API can be tailored to expose all of the features of the chip, however on the PC space graphics processors really need to be tailored to the capabilities of the current DirectX release. This is where Xenos has an issue in that its features and capabilities are clearly beyond the current Shader Model 3.0 DirectX9 specification while it lacks features that are expected to be a requirement for WGF2.0.

So, what's the story even talking about here? Something that's possible except for Microsoft? Or something that's possible, in a completely different form? What's the point they're trying for?

- we all know the U235 came from the German sub U-234, originally destined for Japan. If it had made it there, the japs would have had the bomb first.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Japanese- atomic-program

Why not for air if it works for sea ?

http://www.stratmag.com/issueJan-15/page03.htm

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/shk val.htm

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Supercavi tation

None of the countries you listed are in the top 50 most arable countries in the world. Of the ones you did list, here are the figures: for the amount of arable land per country:
United States - 19.13 %
Russia - 7.33 %
Australia - 6.55%
Canada - 4.96 %

Here is some leftist scare-mongering "propaganda" about the population vs arable land scarcity documentation, but it does seem to have a list of credible references and appears to be written by a sane organisation/peoples.

Here's some juicy bits:


The combination of FAO data on arable land with UN population estimates for 125 countries with populations of more than 1 million illustrates the decline in per capita arable land between 1960 and 1990. Incorporating UN medium population projections for 2025 suggests an even more rapid decline over the next 30 years, and the acceleration is projected to continue through at least the middle of the next century. The decline can be seen more clearly through the lens of the scarcity benchmark. ...

Until now, arable land scarcity has not been much of a problem. Four countries were experiencing arable land scarcity in the early 1960s: Kuwait, Singapore, Oman and Japan.

Now it's more than 125, with more to come.

I actually come from a farming family. I'm an Australian. We were forced off our farm in the 80s. Google for "salinity", perhaps "pyramid salt" , a government scheme where they turned a previously productive farming area that become a wasteland due to rising watertables, into a fucking SALT MINE. If that doesn't scare the living shit out of you, then you're a moron. As an Australian who lives in one of those "big wide open spaces just waiting to be farmed", I invite you to just try and come here and try and grow any crop at all anywhere in the least-arable half of Australia's land mass. You will find a significant proportion of Australia will not even let you grow so much as a blade of grass.

I am by no means a "greeny leftist", god forbid they actually they actually have the "foresight" to protest about something I actually care about (which would in effect trivialise the issue "oh look, protesters, it must be pointless").

Jesus christwagons. I cannot believe your utter blissfull, utopian ignorance of the shrinking amounts of fertile farmland on this earth. You justify our hilariously unsustainable resource consumption on the premise that Star Trek writers are going to invent an actual protein resequencer?. You've really made me so angry; I've used bold type like 5 times now!! ARRGH!

OPEN LAND IS NOT EQUAL TO FOOD. There are in fact VERY FEW areas in the countries that you mention that are good for farming, for christ's sake. China? It's rapdily turning into a desert. 1.5 million square kilometers is classified as desert, growing at a rate of 1000 sq. km per year. They physically do not have enough farmland to feed themselves and are importing more and more significant amounts of their staple foods just to live.

God... I can't believe you could be so BLIND... just travel somewhere, OK? Have you ever even seen a desert? Or even a farm, in your own country? At all? Christ... imagine trying to grow sorghum in Sibria... I'm going to be angry for hours...

There is a current theory that the Earth did completely freeze over, several times. This was in the Precambrian, and is posited to have dropped oxygen levels close to zero. See http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Snowball- Earth

If Hoth was in such a state, most oxygen breathing life would die off soon unless things changed. If Hoth became ice covered within the previous few thousand years, there could still be enough oxygen for a relic population of animals.

You might have to be kind of careful when you say

Japanese culture is much less anti-intellectual and anti-geek

if you are including these 'Otaku' (shut-ins), then I would have to disagree with you completely. I have been living in Japan the last 11 months and every Japanese person who I have broached the topic with say they dislike 'otaku'. Might it be because there was a famous 'otaku' serial-killer?

As for your second point I would not call it racism at all, more of fascination. The Japanese citizens without 100% Japanese heritage is less than 1%. How many American's can claim they have 100% Native American blood? When you come from an immigrant country (read: USA) it may seem like racism, but some of these people have never had a conversation with a foreigner before in their life. Think about it, the total yearly immigrants into Japan is about 11k, whereas the USA is reaching 450K

Seems most people do not know why the word 'Otaku' (and shut-ins) has such a negative imagine in Japan. Seems there was a guy with a lot of sex anime in his apartment that went on a killing spree. Kind of hard to forget those kind of things.

they had an award for the best spam messages, I think This would win first place. This stuff is just bad, nasty, and it is down-right scamming!

It doesnt matter whether you think global warming is happening or not. It is time however to realise that our rates of pollution will result in some resulting effect - regardless of any scientific theory.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/env_pol_car_di o_199

The US needs to curb its pollution _now_.. and lead by example, rather than act as an ignorant, "we can do what we ant" monolith of corporate greed.

a gun-type trigger, something that is impossible for Pu

The gun-type mechanism will work for Pu or for any other fissionable material. As for effectiveness, you might ask the former citizens of Hiroshima how well "Little Boy" (aka "Thin Man") worked.

And as a Dyslexia person myself working as a Network/System Administrator I find all this "P-C" crap with calling "Autism, Down Syndrome, ETC." as "Learning Disabilities" an insult.

Which causes a lot of miss understanding of Dyslexia and how it affects people. And no there is no cure to Dyslexia this crap "I used to have Dyslexia.." is crap they just have a mind case of so called "Learning Disability" an other word I hate,...

Dyslexia people mind are just "Wired/Work" differently which has it's good and bad parts like all thing in life. The problem with Dyslexic people learning is the crap system we have of teaching which is getting people to memorize facts for a crap test, and not care if they understand it or not.

I'll end my rant now... and probably looses all my Karma Points with this post... But I hate people talking/post about crap they knowing about :/

My comparison is actually pretty moot since flag desecration is legal or will be tolerated in most democratic countries. I just did a little search and apart from Ireland I couldn't find any other country where burning their flag would get you into real (legal) trouble.

This is a good place to start if you want to know more about the topic.

Very well, though I assume the comrade greeting was in jest. From even the US CIA 2005 World Fact book, the manipulation ground of the US government in the following link are supporting statistics; focus on the area including Israel, UK, US, Ireland, and China): http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph-T/eco_pop_be l_pov_lin&int=-1
The mentioned statistic for China has further decreased by 10% further last year. The average of percentage of population below poverty level in this list is 25.5%, while both US and China then are each far below even using the moderately outdated measures used for the list it is China that still has with modification and estimate from the antagonistic US CIA only 10~9% compared to the US at 12.7% from the same year. The perception that the majority of Chinese citizens or even the average economic level is that of the poor farmer is outdated by two decades and more. The post by user listen refuses this by falsely pursuing unemployment rates rather than poverty rates despite employment meanings differing between nations as consequences differ.

Case sensitivity ... doesn't match human readable languages ...

Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my Uncle Jack off a horse" and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse."

I think I agree with your fundamental point though - the cause is less likely to be guns and more likely to be the lack of a stable monarchy in the States. If there was a queen, she could behead George W. Bush. Or at least give him a good spanking...

Well, that's one way to get a stable wormhole.

"And have what, 20% unemployment rate? No thanks, I'd rather work 20% more then not at all."

Then perhaps you should move out of the U.S. to Sweden which has a lower unemployment rate.

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph-T/lab_une_ra t&int=-1

That reminds me; why is tidal power not more widely used? Building islands is expensive but if the long term results are positive, why not?

World imprisonment rate

One of them must be wrong ...

What's a Cubian?

In other news, Generalissimo Franco is still dead.

"In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"

Your examples of features from which everyone is benefitting are mostly addressed here;

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149177&cid=125 15118

The same applies to all the others as well, in fact I can think of little in the way of a service, beyond *maybe* a military, that could not be better provided through a private user pays and voluntary participation scheme, without the possibility of the accusation of theft being levelled at it.

If you didn't pay for this through taxes you'd be paying private industry. Inefficient as government is, you only have to look at US healthcare to see that private industry can be even worse.

I disagree;

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/hea_hea_car_fu n_pub_per_cap

Your country is only third in line when it comes to public spending on healthcare, furthermore what right do you have to a doctor's time or a drug companies medicine? A popular appeal for modern politicians for the essential nature of public health is precisely because people fear death and they want as long a life as possible, this doesn't necessarily make it anyone else's responsibility to help you achieve that goal.

Would medicine as a field advance so rapidly if it were mandated that no profit could ever be made from it? Where do most of the advances in modern medicine originate? That's right, the US pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, companies that work for profit, the same organisations that you're currently so dismissive of as in need of reform.

They don't owe you or me anything, and attempts at the legislative level to try and force them to comply with this perceived duty of care are just as likely to hobble innovation and motivation in their fields as allow access to high quality healthcare for every last person that believes it to be their divine right.

It's an online handle. I'm no more communist than you are ethereal.

Well I'm glad to hear you don't identify as communist, but I think we can fairly safely say that you are in fact quite a lot more communist than me, about (insert effective tax rate here) percent more communist. ;)

A typical defense, but lets examine it more closely;

* A stable government.

I don't know directly to what you refer to here, but I'd point out that the government has the potential to change every four years, perhaps you mean they won't be too tyrannical to their subjects, but with the blatant disregard for the constitution illustrated with such modern law as the PATRIOT act and the DMCA, I question the validity of that point. Perhaps you mean that they're stable in the sense that they won't indulge in foreign expansionism and nation building, playing world cop, sticking their nose in where it's not wanted...

Oops, no, not that either.

Would this apply equally to a mafioso crime family ruling a city? Well, yes, up to the extent that others fight with them for control of the territory of the city, much as the current war between the terrorists and the government rages with plenty of innocent life lost on both the side of the US and it's perceived enemy nation states.

Can you draw me one example of how this point is in fact anything more than mafioso lite, sugarcoated and cleverly marketted? Keep in mind that Burma, Cuba, China, until very recently Iraq, and Syria have also had a "stable government" before pushing this any further.

* a modern highway system

Seems that the questionable worth and fairly indisputable bloat of the Interstate highway system is a poor defense to the degree to which you are taxed, what of those of us who have no need for such a road? Is it still acceptable that we be forced at the point of a gun to pay for it? Further note the figure of 72% of funding for the highway taken from direct "user-pays" types of tax on fuel and associated items, it doesn't go far to validating the wholesale plunder of the general population to the level of the modern tax system when 72% of the infrastructure in question here is in fact funded directly by the users thereof.

Furthermore, keep in mind that government projects are notoriously inefficient compared to their private counterparts, consider the amount of funding spent on the system in it's current incarnation compared to what could have been achieved in a completely voluntary commercial project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_highway#Fi nancing

* a large military to protect our interests

If you didn't have such a large military sprawled out all over the world with it's fingers in the various pies of other nation states globally, oftentimes seen as meddling, sometimes leading to direct hostile action on your home country civilians, it'd be questionable how worthwhile this asset is from a standpoint of attempting to minimise invasion of your country, take note;

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Military

Massive expenditure, and yet;

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fi g_cap

Of the countries in the lower half of global military expenditure, how many have been unsuccessful in defending their own borders? (Hint: they all still exist).

Yes, you have a really big sword, no, it's not doing you any good, in fact, more often than not, you are hitting yourself with it.

* jails to keep criminals from your belongings and family

I can't believe you're honestly positing your prison system as an asset worth paying for, do you really want to go down this path? I'll give you an option to reconsider, keeping in mind the following;

http://www.nationmaster.com

A typical defense, but lets examine it more closely;

* A stable government.

I don't know directly to what you refer to here, but I'd point out that the government has the potential to change every four years, perhaps you mean they won't be too tyrannical to their subjects, but with the blatant disregard for the constitution illustrated with such modern law as the PATRIOT act and the DMCA, I question the validity of that point. Perhaps you mean that they're stable in the sense that they won't indulge in foreign expansionism and nation building, playing world cop, sticking their nose in where it's not wanted...

Oops, no, not that either.

Would this apply equally to a mafioso crime family ruling a city? Well, yes, up to the extent that others fight with them for control of the territory of the city, much as the current war between the terrorists and the government rages with plenty of innocent life lost on both the side of the US and it's perceived enemy nation states.

Can you draw me one example of how this point is in fact anything more than mafioso lite, sugarcoated and cleverly marketted? Keep in mind that Burma, Cuba, China, until very recently Iraq, and Syria have also had a "stable government" before pushing this any further.

* a modern highway system

Seems that the questionable worth and fairly indisputable bloat of the Interstate highway system is a poor defense to the degree to which you are taxed, what of those of us who have no need for such a road? Is it still acceptable that we be forced at the point of a gun to pay for it? Further note the figure of 72% of funding for the highway taken from direct "user-pays" types of tax on fuel and associated items, it doesn't go far to validating the wholesale plunder of the general population to the level of the modern tax system when 72% of the infrastructure in question here is in fact funded directly by the users thereof.

Furthermore, keep in mind that government projects are notoriously inefficient compared to their private counterparts, consider the amount of funding spent on the system in it's current incarnation compared to what could have been achieved in a completely voluntary commercial project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_highway#Fi nancing

* a large military to protect our interests

If you didn't have such a large military sprawled out all over the world with it's fingers in the various pies of other nation states globally, oftentimes seen as meddling, sometimes leading to direct hostile action on your home country civilians, it'd be questionable how worthwhile this asset is from a standpoint of attempting to minimise invasion of your country, take note;

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Military

Massive expenditure, and yet;

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fi g_cap

Of the countries in the lower half of global military expenditure, how many have been unsuccessful in defending their own borders? (Hint: they all still exist).

Yes, you have a really big sword, no, it's not doing you any good, in fact, more often than not, you are hitting yourself with it.

* jails to keep criminals from your belongings and family

I can't believe you're honestly positing your prison system as an asset worth paying for, do you really want to go down this path? I'll give you an option to reconsider, keeping in mind the following;

http://www.nationmaster.com

A typical defense, but lets examine it more closely;

* A stable government.

I don't know directly to what you refer to here, but I'd point out that the government has the potential to change every four years, perhaps you mean they won't be too tyrannical to their subjects, but with the blatant disregard for the constitution illustrated with such modern law as the PATRIOT act and the DMCA, I question the validity of that point. Perhaps you mean that they're stable in the sense that they won't indulge in foreign expansionism and nation building, playing world cop, sticking their nose in where it's not wanted...

Oops, no, not that either.

Would this apply equally to a mafioso crime family ruling a city? Well, yes, up to the extent that others fight with them for control of the territory of the city, much as the current war between the terrorists and the government rages with plenty of innocent life lost on both the side of the US and it's perceived enemy nation states.

Can you draw me one example of how this point is in fact anything more than mafioso lite, sugarcoated and cleverly marketted? Keep in mind that Burma, Cuba, China, until very recently Iraq, and Syria have also had a "stable government" before pushing this any further.

* a modern highway system

Seems that the questionable worth and fairly indisputable bloat of the Interstate highway system is a poor defense to the degree to which you are taxed, what of those of us who have no need for such a road? Is it still acceptable that we be forced at the point of a gun to pay for it? Further note the figure of 72% of funding for the highway taken from direct "user-pays" types of tax on fuel and associated items, it doesn't go far to validating the wholesale plunder of the general population to the level of the modern tax system when 72% of the infrastructure in question here is in fact funded directly by the users thereof.

Furthermore, keep in mind that government projects are notoriously inefficient compared to their private counterparts, consider the amount of funding spent on the system in it's current incarnation compared to what could have been achieved in a completely voluntary commercial project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_highway#Fi nancing

* a large military to protect our interests

If you didn't have such a large military sprawled out all over the world with it's fingers in the various pies of other nation states globally, oftentimes seen as meddling, sometimes leading to direct hostile action on your home country civilians, it'd be questionable how worthwhile this asset is from a standpoint of attempting to minimise invasion of your country, take note;

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Military

Massive expenditure, and yet;

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fi g_cap

Of the countries in the lower half of global military expenditure, how many have been unsuccessful in defending their own borders? (Hint: they all still exist).

Yes, you have a really big sword, no, it's not doing you any good, in fact, more often than not, you are hitting yourself with it.

* jails to keep criminals from your belongings and family

I can't believe you're honestly positing your prison system as an asset worth paying for, do you really want to go down this path? I'll give you an option to reconsider, keeping in mind the following;

http://www.nationmaster.com

Go to the bank, they have signature cards. Go to DMV and they have your picture on file

Um, I'm worried more about the guy who picks up your wallet, not the DMV or Bank.

Which all they are currently asking is pretty much your drivers license and passport rolled up into one

Two words: Cross Reference. Next to impossible now, all but standard with a new card.

You obviously do not design databases. If you did you'd know how powerful those two little words were.

Convenience. You no longer have to carry a passport AND drivers license.

Not an fair trade vs. the side effects. You may disagree, but that's all the more reason for public discourse.

What corporation gives you food and requires you to pay the video company late fees?

Good grief it's an example, and it's not that far off. Let me change it then, What company could refuse you live saving healthcare because you haven't paid your cable bill?

Answer: GE

and the underwriters do not know what your race is - especially since they rarely if ever come in contact with you

They would with an ID card. That's my point.

The secretary at the car rental agency could just as easily give your drivers license which has a whole lot of info.

BUT MY DL ISN'T CONNECTED DIRECTLY TO MY BANK! That's my whole point!

That's a good idea, but I don't know where to find those stats. However, I can find the one the AC suggested:

Population in prison (2003):

USA: 2078570
China: 1549000

Actually the US produces closer to 29-30% of the world's goods with 25% of the world's "resources". So, we produce goods at a higher efficiency than the rest of the world (on average).

What is your source for those numbers? I don't doubt them (much; nationmaster.com says the US produces 23% of the world's GDP, but they can't even spell their own name right on their home page), but I'd like to look up how China compares. My guess would be that its ratio of goods produced per resources used would be a lot higher than the American ratio of 1.2.

"If you use some common sense, you will realise that Soviet Union had no reason to invade countries - after all, it was supporting the 3rd world countries, by building factories, hydroelectric dams, providing engineers, training local specialists, etc., while the US was milking the colonies for resources."

Ok, so when Soviet Union uses it's power in another country it is helping, but when the USA does the SAME THING it is imperialism?

The Soviets were helping because they knew that they would get something in return. They also realized that their system would not support itself; in order to maintain a living standard (which they couldn't do) they would need to continue to obtain new property from which to extract resources. This is exactly what colonialist Europe was about in the 1800's, except the Europeans weren't doing it to survive, they were doing it to thrive.

"Soviet Union was no [sic] invading 3rd world countries"

Am I the only one that remembers Afghanistan??

(http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Soviet -U nion-invades-Afghanistan)
"The war was regarded by many as an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country by another. The United Nations General Assembly passed United Nations Resolution 37/37 on November 29, 1983, which stated that the Soviet Union forces should withdraw from Afghanistan. However, others supported the Soviet Union, regarding it as coming to the rescue of an impoverished ally, or as a pre-emptive war against Islamist terrorists."

Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? Yet, the USA is the bad guy, while the USSR is the downtrodden, lone hero surrounded by a world of evil.

Sounds reasonable to me. :)

Although I didn't mention it, I also have the same trepidation about trusting the CIA, for the same reasons you describe. It's very difficult to trust an agency which primarily lies and kills people (even though IIRC, it was originally intended solely as an intelligence/spy agency, not an agency of active intervention in other countries' affairs, though, that charter clearly didn't last long). I don't know of any other well-organized source for economic info like that. Nationmaster is cool, but most of the economic stats they use there appear to comes from - you guessed it - the CIA World Factbook. :-/

Do you know if The Economist's online subscription gives access to their compilation of the raft of economic stats that the CIA does? (I've considered subscribing, and I was *thisclose* to subscribing last Sept. when they had their $30 off discount)...

Cool web site. I'll see your statistic and raise you a more relevant one: rate of enrollment in tertiary education.

I think there's a general consensus that American higher education (undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional) is still the class of the world. Both its quality and its accessibility to outsiders play a role. When American, European, Asian, and African students all start flooding into the burgeoning universities of India, China, France, or wherever else, that consensus will change. But the global brain drain is still real, and unidirectional.

Sorry, but the USA is not number one in education but numer 14, see http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/edu_sch_lif_ex p_tot

but it still won't improve your grades (
Literacy (total population) CIA factbook)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/edu_mat_lit

1. Japan 557
2. Korea, South 547
3. New Zealand 537
4. Finland 536
5. Australia 533
6. Canada 533
7. Switzerland 529
8. United Kingdom 529
9. Belgium 520
10. France 517
11. Austria 515
12. Iceland 514
13. Denmark 514
14. Sweden 510
15. Ireland 503
16. Norway 499
17. Czech Republic 498
18. United States 493
19. Germany 490
20. Hungary 488

1% of the population is in jail !

nearly double China's prisoners

free at last, free at last !

that would be 10% of the US population

Oh, groan, go away. Your country has killed over 15,000 innocent people in Iraq in the past couple of years. What makes your 3,000 worth more?

generous - both in the public and private sector, long before charity came under the world microscope.

America contributes very little to charity, proof here. However, your state department considers loans to be charity for some fucked-up reason; the rest of the world is trying to stop rich countries lending money to corrupt governments as it's the people who pay and the money gets squandered. Google for "third world debt".

It's easier to control people in a monoculture. You can't walk across the street and find yourself in little Italy, and then cross another street and be in the ghetto, then cross yet another and then come to an hispanic neighborhood anywhere in Sweden. America has a lot of cultures all trying to coexist. Wanna know something REALLY interesting? Look at this site
Guess who's higher than the US in per-capita crime? Oh, wait... The UK. And Finland. And Denmark. Get off your high horse. I know American bashing is all the rage now, but you're still an idiot.

Don't confuse per capita GDP with average wage.

But I'd still like to see your reference.

And when you say average wage, is that per capita income, or is that the average wage of those that are employed?

It's possible that the average wage could be higher and per capita income lower if unemployment in the UK is higher.

Again, do you have a reference?

The gross national income figures here show the UK with a per capita income of $24637 and the US $33684.

I'm sorry, but the parent post is just nutso. France alone is the 4th largest economy on the planet, comparing more closely to California than lowly Alabama.

Pay attention. The post concerned per capita GDP. That's not the same as total GDP. When you look at per capita GDP, France does very poorly.

France has an economy comparable in size to California's only because France has a population of 60 million, while California has a population of just over 35 million.

I just can't believe anybody would recite such claptrap. The poster must have never been to Europe to be able to type such rubbish.

And visiting all the tourist traps in Europe makes you an expert?

Next time you're in Europe, get away from the popular (among tourists) cities. You'll find very large numbers of people living in what amount to shacks.