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http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

Holy shit.

And

If you want bicycles to stay out of the way of traffic, put in bike lanes. It's not that hard. Every county in the US should be making that a requirement for all new roads.

Are you talking about the southern california driver who started a confrontation with two cyclists, then ended it by pulling around them and then slamming on the brakes, gravely injuring one of them? Then told a police officer he did it to "teach them a lesson"? He was convicted of multiple felonies, 6, I think, by a jury.

http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

I laughed when I saw the comment about cyclists being "provocative" right after the commenter says "you tell them to get out of your way."

Your comment shows the same bias. The reason they get their cars kicked and spit on is because they "buzz" a group of cyclists to "teach them a lesson" or honk at them to "get them out of my way" or scream "GET OUT OF THE ROAD" out their window.

You think we're second class, subservient road users. You think roads "are for cars." You fly into an absolute rage at the sight of two people riding their bicycles next to each other instead of one behind the other. You endanger our lives, and then when finally we have enough and stop being silent, you scream blue-bloody-murder about it.

There is major oil in Florida, or at least under the continental shelf within the EEZ. However, Cuba would probably prefer that they didn't have to compete with Russia for the oil they are slant drilling (using Chinese drilling platforms, instead of US or EU-owned platforms due to sanctions).

Good for them, btw, as there doesn't appear to be any illegality (other than who has the will and biggest guns having the final say as to what is illegal) and obviously it is immoral for the USA to access that oil, anyway.

Man, so many grenades, so little time.

This is what happens when you have a government sponsored and allowed monopoly

I always wondered about the decision-making that went into the FCC's rules on this topic. NPR's Planet Money actually did a really interesting podcast on this topic that explains precisely why the choices in the US are far more limited elsewhere. tl;dr version: the FCC had to make a choice between two (at the time) equally competing visions of the broadband market, and they picked the wrong one.

When the FCC was considering these rules, they had a choice between going with "telephone"-style rules that would emulate the 1996 Telecom Act requirement of unbundled elements (e.g. the phone company had to let 3rd parties wholesale their DSL and resell it), vs. setting up new broadband technologies as "you build it, you keep it." At the time, new broadband technologies kept popping all over the place - broadband over cable, fiber to the home, satellite, terrestrial wireless, broadband over power lines, etc. The FCC realized that all these new ventures probably wouldn't get built unless they allowed the companies that invested in them to have a monopoly on services over the infrastructure they built. So they bet that consumers would get "choice" by having multiple different last mile technologies, which seemed reasonable at the time.

In the end, all these alternative last mile technologies petered out except cable and fiber, and only cable was near-ubiquitous in its deployment. So that's how we got stuck with the situation that we're in, and it's very difficult to go back and change it now since the companies that built out their infrastructure did so with an understanding of monopoly usage of that investment they made. So it was a bad bet and didn't help US consumers... but at least there was some actual thinking that went into it at the time.

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

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

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

Not so fast. We have aided Mexico militarily by sending special forces for training, and also bringing Mexican troops to the US for training. Russia itself has not invaded Ukraine. Russian loyalists however have occupied several government buildings/regions because they're not a fan of the Pro-NATO, Pro-West stance taken by the Kieven government. I'm not going to say Russia is entirely innocent here, after all there were supposedly photos of Russian special forces training Eastern Ukrainians, but that behavior is nearly the same as what the US has done with Mexico in the drug war. We picked the side we liked and benefitted us the most, we gave them equipment and training, and told the other side that if they spill over our borders we will christen them with hellfire missiles.

I live in South Florida. Broward County is north of Miami-Dade County. Like any urban city, the politicians and school boards are full of corruption and conflicts of interest.

http://miamiherald.typepad.com...
http://stateimpact.npr.org/flo...

Seemingly everyone from the janitors to the superintendents are in on the take. They have hired felons in all levels. Some of them interact with kids:
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach....

So yeah, the fact that there's no money for teaching after the all prostitutes and the payoffs and the other criminal activity is no surprise.

I work in the school system, btw.

Don't take my word, just Google it.

Except it doesn't work that way at all. Analysis of political contributions show that the wealthy donate disproportionately more. A mere 0.01% of the population (27,000 donors out of a population of 304M) are responsible for about a quarter of political donations (24.3%).

In the video game industry, we see a similarity with profits on "free to play" games where the vast majority of profits comes from the top few percent of "whales".

The truth is, most people won't part with large sums of money unless they have a lot of disposable income (or poor judgment). In politics, the "whales" are typically the richest of the rich - the top fraction of a percent.

> So while it sounds wasteful to have 2 investigative agencies, it was mandated by Congress, who is happy to
> spend the revenues of the Postal Service.

OTOH maybe its what is needed. Look at the DHS's recent scandal as their inspector general was found to have inappropriate relationships all over the place, to have offered to leave information out of reports, to have classified documents inappropriately to hide their contents: http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

And of course despite this:

Edwards asked Sandweg what day would be good to release the audit and then followed his suggestion. The report was ultimately released after a DHS official testified before a House panel on the issue. One email Edwards sent the day after the hearing said the final report had been sitting on his desk for a week.

Yet even after all that, he was allowed to take an internal transfer after the report about his misconduct came out, in time to save him a job for playing so much ball before the shit hit the fan.

In 2010 the USPS brought in $17,300 million dollars from standard mail, there were 117.5 million households in 2010 which means the USPS was paid roughly $147 per household to deliver bulk mailings.

Planet Money summed this up pretty well for me:
Announcer: "Zoe, let's say I give you two investment vehicles. One is a piece of art, with a drawing on it. The other is a Government bond. Let's say they both will appreciate at the same rate, say, 3% above inflation. Which would you prefer to have?"
Zoe: "Is the Government bond pretty? Does looking at it, feeling it, or smelling it give me any form of pleasure?"
Announcer: "No, it looks, feels, and smells like a Government bond. It has a picture of an eagle on it."
Zoe: "I'm, um, going with the art."

This is a pretty simple example of why art underperforms typical investment vehicles. All things being equal, people prefer the art to the bond. That said, it drives demand for art up, and return for art down. While art may _hold_ its value (keep pace with inflation), it will not compare in its performance with similar investment vehicles (even if kept in pristine condition).

More info here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...
and here: http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jm...

Anyone who ever argues with me otherwise (oh and there are loads of idiots that do) gets redirected to dev/null.

While I happen to agree with you, I voraciously listen to NPR's intelligence squared because an intelligent debate is great to educate you on viewpoints other than your own. Maybe, for your own sake, you should reconsider?

You know, I keep hearing that healthcare costs are too difficult to price out for comparison. However, just last week I heard an NPR report about people taking longer to pay their bills to doctors. So of course the docs put in systems that can immediately figure out how much a procedure costs so people can prepay. It calculates insurance and everything.

I thought this was revealing. Here's the story: http://www.npr.org/blogs/healt...

Lots of educated people are leaving Russia. Google "educated people leaving russia". According to this article, "Russia is suffering from an exodus of educated, talented citizens, including scientists."

A Wikipedia article says, "According to the New York Times, the leading element [in recent protests] has consisted of young urban professionals, the well-educated and successful working or middle class people[31] such as workers in social media."

I imagine Putin is glad to get rid of protesters easily - just let them emigrate from Russia.

This is all rooted in the notion that the internet is not like a phone, a decision made in the early 2000s. Of course, the internet actually is a phone, among other things. If the FCC had decided to treat the net like a phone, we would have massive competition, lower prices, and better service. What we have instead, is non-regulated monopoly cable providers.

This planet money episode gives a neat little history, and a comparison with how much better it is in Britain with respect to internet service:

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

Well, the boy snuck in "under the cover of darkness." No one could have foreseen or prevented that...

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/...
http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.a...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Need more? I suggest :
http://goo.gl/CNwr5t

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/...
Its a talk with an expert, and if you want actual studies, you can go to pubmed or jama.

This is the Planet Money story about LEGO.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Jedi mind-meld tricks

That's definitely a mix of incompatible technologies right there.

I know!!(10+1) ;)

Perhaps people oppose Monsanto because of this tactic:

1) Claim a patent on seeds Monsanto makes.
2) Get some farmers to buy the seeds.
2 a) Lock the farmers in by stipulating that they can't take any seeds the plant produces and plant them again next year... like people have done for thousands of years!
3) Find a nearby farmer who isn't buying Monsanto and claim they they've planted Monsanto.
4) Find one instance of their plants growing on that farmer's land. (Ignore that seeds travel by air/animals and spread... like seeds have done for millions of years!)
5) Tie up the farmer in court until they either agree to buy Monsanto or they go bankrupt.
6) Repeat 2a - 5.

Your steps seem accurate up to #3. In the only case I have seen about this (the Percy Schmeiser case in Canada) the farmer intentionally killed the part of his crop that was not contaminated so that he could identify the plants that had been cross contaminated with the monsanto genes. He then planted ONLY THAT SEED for the express purpose of using Roundup pesticide on the resulting crop. This wasn't a case of "find one instance of their plants growing on that farmer's land", it was a case of the farmer taking specific steps to isolate the roundup-ready seeds and use them for their pesticide resistance. Here is a story from NPR that discusses that case, hardly a source that would be biased for Monsanto. Monsanto specifically addresses the issue on their site as well, claiming "Monsanto has never sued a farmer when trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits were present in the farmer’s field as an accident or as a result of inadvertent means.". If you have a source to refute that claim then please provide it.

I know that spelling out the facts for you probably won't change your mind on this issue but maybe if someone is actually looking for actual truths instead of strawmen it will help them. I hate Monsanto as much as the next guy, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate them - you don't have to resort to claims that aren't supported by facts.

First they tell us that dark chocolate is good for us because of the antioxidants and that it reduces the amount of fat that your body adsorbs from other foods.
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://www.medicalnewstoday.co...

Then they tell us that whole milk, cheese, etc. keeps us leaner
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa...

Now bathing in sunlight (don't forget the sunscreen) will help us manage our weight.

So, I guess this means that eating dark chocolate, chasing it down with whole milk, while sitting in the sun and reading (good thing I own a Kindle) will help me get rid of those unwanted pounds... Ahhh... This IS the life.... (grin)

This was stated over two years ago by scientists in Hungary and Sweden.

I kind of doubt how useful genome sequencing will be for basic diagnostic medicine. I'm reminded of a scene in House where they're complaining about having to run a full body scan, because any time you scan anyone, you always find a dozen things "wrong" that require following up on, almost all of which are benign.

As a separate issue, considering the fact that the medical profession still can't decide whether fat is good for you or not, I have very low confidence in most assessment that X gene is linked to X condition.

Basically, it's easy for people to hoard, and there's likely going to be a need for quite a bit of back-end management.

A South Korean study found the figure to be 1 in 38. It's likely not *that* high, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the true number is much closer to that figure than our 1 in 68.

Unlike the U.S. Norway has a very good economy, a higher standard of living and lots of money so consumers don't pay for the recharge (this is called an incentive for the Perry minded types). Nuff said: http://www.npr.org/blogs/paral...

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/22/...
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/0...

Crimea has been autonomous within the Ukraine precisely because it is more ethnically Russian than Ukrainian,

How Russians Became Crimea's Largest Ethnic Group, In One Haunting Chart

Crimea may have a majority Russian population today, but it hasn't always been that way.

The peninsula's dark history of ethnic cleansing is visible in the following chart from Reuters.

The chart shows a collapse in the population of native Crimean Tatars from 34.1% in 1897 to zero in 1959, marking brutal harassment leading up to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's forcible deportation of the entire population in 1944, with nearly half dying in the process. It took decades for the population to climb back to 12% by 2001.

While the population of Ukrainians and especially Russians rose, the percentage of the population falling into an unlisted category also fell from more than 20% in 1921 to around 5% in 1959. This was a consequence of the deportation of Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and other groups.

Who are the Crimean Tatars, and why are they important?

Whatever the Tatar grievances against the Ukrainian state may be, when faced with the choice of being under either Russian or Ukrainian control, the Crimean Tatar leadership has consistently and unequivocally chosen Ukraine. Since the Soviet period, attempts to split the Crimean Tatar movement and persuade some of the Tatars to support a pro-Soviet, and later pro-Russian, agenda has not borne fruit.

Crimean Tatars fret over Russian domination again

Crimean Tatars living in Turkey said Monday they worry of a return to the terrible oppression they suffered in the Ukraine province the last time it belonged to Russia and the Soviet Union.

"We've seen this movie before and we don't want to see it again," said Celal Icten, 59, head of Crimean Tatar Association of Istanbul, whose parents were born in Istanbul and Romania but both draw direct lines to the ancient city of Bakhchisaray, the pre-Tsarist capital of Crimea.

Once Victims Of Stalin, Ukraine's Tatars Reassert Themselves

Those with odd-numbered plates lucked out; apparently they've already discontinued the practice, after having issued roughly 4000 tickets.

One especially pertinent quote from the linked article: ""I know it's not great to say it but I'm willing to take my car and pay the fine to get my kids to school, because I don't have the choice," one woman told the TV network."

NPR - On Point With Tom Ashbrook - Chessmaster Garry Kasparov On Countering Putin
Direct link to mp3 - Around 15:00 are Kasparov's remarks about Putin's KGB profile

Actually even telling stories and showing pictures of the sick kids does not work. A recent story on NPR from last week covered this topic. The study looked at people's likelihood to get vaccinations. And after the people were given information about how the vaccines do not cause autism, and they actually believed the information, they were still less likely to get vaccinations for their kids. Other groups tried other methods like showing pictures of sick kids and in all the cases the likelihood after giving more information about vaccines made them less likely to get the vaccines. So from that study the best thing to do is nothing. But perhaps there is another way to get through to people that the study did not try. http://www.npr.org/2014/03/04/...

Quoth NPR: 45 states, the District of Columbia and four territories have fully adopted the Common Core State Standards in English, Language Arts and Math. It will soon be 44 as Indiana forsakes Common Core for its own standards.

Given the citation that an "earlier $5B education reform effort" didn't really do much, are we to believe that two small grants, $6.5M to David Coleman's company and $10.75M to Khan, somehow means that Gates single-handedly rammed the common core down everyone's throats against their will?

That seems hardly likely. Bill Gates may support the common core, but the notion that it's somehow a conspiracy that he masterminded with his wealth seems farfetched. If you look at reporting on the common core like this recent NPR article (http://www.npr.org/2014/01/28/267488648/backlash-grows-against-common-core-education-standards), you'll see quite a complex list of entities for and against common core. The Chamber of Commerce is for it, Glenn Beck is against it. There's a lot more in this fight than the Gates Foundation's $17.25M.

People on medicare are the real takers. . And Romney attacked Obama for cutting medicare.

That infamous quote is still valid here. People on social security – no surprise – rise and fall with the unemployment numbers. This un-paralleled recession has created unpatrolled numbers of people ‘on the dole’. With the GOP slashing welfare, the alternative is skyrocketing disability recipients. No miracle that the highest rates of states on disability are those with the lowest education. Great article on tall this over at NPR http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-... and you better read while available because most GOP’rs absolutely scream about public dollars to NPR.

California is trying that, it just takes years to develop these plants. The water from the plants is still more expensive than normal water, but it's a reliable, drought-proof source, which is obviously really desirable right now. See http://www.npr.org/2014/02/26/....

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...

This might be a good time to post a link to a fascinating radio program I just heard today on the chicken and hog industries. And it also has something to do with cattle too because these big food companies are starting to use their market clout to bring secret grower contracts to bear that undermine the free market, and, even if subsidies were eliminated, make the subsidy issue almost moot. It's honestly pretty scarey (and I say that as a farmer). And it's also directly relevant to this article and conversation.

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

I do know as a farmer that this system of food production is working its way into other food areas besides meat production. Potato production is now governed largely by secret contracts with regional monopolies who care only about their profits, though they pretended to be farmers' friends for many years. And when contracts result in farms not making enough money to be solvent, the big processors are extremely happy to help farmers out by buying their farms out. This means in Idaho much of the prime farmland is directly owned by the processors. At this point, the open market and subsidies are largely irrelevant now.

So far other bulk food commodities like wheat and soybeans still have an open market, but who knows what will happen as consolidation among grain buyers continues.

Considering Grassley investigated NASA last year about some viking photo, my guess this has little to do with governmental accounting, and more about someone in NASA pissing in his Cheerios.

Science is never settled and always ready to accept change.

However, science pendants are often heard claiming certain science is settled and are highly resistant to accept additional input.

Certainly no rational person would disagree with they, would they?

I wonder if this study has the College Board a little worried about their relevance. Does the SAT make them a little money?

> spiraling shithole

Since its independence from colonial rule, the country made advances in nearly every index. Go ahead, prove me wrong by finding charts to the contrary.

> Indian parasites

Parasites? Indian diaspora are quite productive and successful. In US, they have the highest per-capita incomes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01...
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org...
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/29/...

Today, an Indian-American runs Microsoft, an Indian-American is Miss USA and Indian-Americans reign spelling bee.

Of course, facts don't matter to you - a vanilla racist bigot.

The core tenant behind the increasingly popular paleo diet is that food has been over-domesticated, favoring things like size, portability, and crop yield rather than health. Taste is often also low on the priority list (though higher than health). Wild plants like dandelion greens and ramps are significantly healthier than our domesticated cabbages for example.

The same goes for meat. Wild game meat is far healthier than meat from a factory farm. It's often tastier as well, though the farmed stuff tends to be fattier (and fat equals flavor). I'd love to try the meat of an ancestor of the cow that pre-dates its domestication. (It should also be eating and excersizing similar to the way it would in the wild rather than eating corn and living in tight quarters.)

According to this, Lessig was talking about a remix in one of this lectures, a music matcher downloaded his lecture, found it to contain the song 'owned' by this label, and the label sent out an automated harassment lawsuit threat to Larry.

You have to wonder, at what point did they realise they were taking a copyright case against one of the world's most famous legal authorities on copyright!

According to this, Lessig was talking about a remix in one of this lectures, a music matcher downloaded his lecture, found it to contain the song 'owned' by this label, and the label sent out an automated harassment lawsuit threat to Larry.

So, he counter-sued. It's not clear if he got any concessions from the label about using automatic scanners directly (as the article said was one of his goals), or if just having somebody finally fight back is the signal to them to back down. One can imagine a group of people posting obviously protected content and waiting for their chance to file counter-suits, probably first against a bit player in the music label sphere (the ideal company to target for precedent is the least-well-off label that is using this scanning technology - being overseas is a bonus).

Note that this *isn't* about complaining though Google's no-help-desk.

...but it's not as bad as this:

http://eightvirtues.com/misc/2...
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/21/...

What in the unholy hell is wrong with people? I'm not religious, but my God.

There is (or at least was recently) a significant problem with poaching though.

It's relevant because their eggs are an important sustenance to a migratory bird that loads up for a flight from their habitat (central east coast of US) to south america. I do believe efforts have been made to reduce the poaching, as not just the birds, but obviously humans too, need these creatures.

http://www.npr.org/templates/s... puts the issue more with climate change than poaching though, so maybe reports of poaching/not bleeding and releasing as is supposed to be done were grossly exaggerated.

We are 90% bacteria. It is time we stopped viewing ourselves as a monlithic organism and started viewing ourselves as some sort of managed colony.
http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

"We think that there are 10 times more microbial cells on and in our bodies than there are human cells. That means that we're 90 percent microbial and 10 percent human. There's also an estimated 100 times more microbial genes than the genes in our human genome. So we're really a compendium [and] an amalgamation of human and microbial parts."

If we are 90% microbial and 10% human, it would imply that there are only 9 times more microbial cells than human cells.

We are 90% bacteria. It is time we stopped viewing ourselves as a monlithic organism and started viewing ourselves as some sort of managed colony.
http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

"We think that there are 10 times more microbial cells on and in our bodies than there are human cells. That means that we're 90 percent microbial and 10 percent human. There's also an estimated 100 times more microbial genes than the genes in our human genome. So we're really a compendium [and] an amalgamation of human and microbial parts."