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The University of Oklahoma (home of one of the top Petroleum Engineering departments in the country, and recipient of much oil money), geology department has released statements disagreeing. Why aren't you reporting the "controversy" rather than the science? How incredibly biased!

In fact, just a few months ago, one their Geological researchers released a peer reviewed study that showed ... let's see here ... uh... that fracking is causing earthquakes.

Damn. Wait! I know there's a controversy to report here somewhere. Lemme look....ah, here it is:

Oklahoma’s official seismologist — the Geological Survey’s Austin Holland — is skeptical of the link between injection wells an earthquakes, a view shared by the Corporation Commission and the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, a trade group that lobbies for the interests of oil and gas producers. More data is needed, Holland says.

See, this is actually a controversy! You just have to go to sources that aren't as familiar with the actual data, and/or are in the pockets of the folks doing the fracking. Why isn't this controversy being fairly reported?

Apparently you're very ignorant of the prominence this book has. It is considered one of the greatest sci-fi/fantasy books of all time.

NPR (National Public Radio) has it on their top 100 list of all time at 3rd. : http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books

Same at Amazon : http://www.amazon.com/Best-Science-Fiction-Novels-Time/lm/RIBUB5MTVYA03

Tied for 2nd for sci-fi at Wired: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/12/and-the-winner-is-readers-choice-for-top-10-science-fiction-novel/

Pick a list for sci-fi/fantasy and you will find it no lower than 5 or so all-time.

Any real sc-ifi enthusiast that has ventured beyond the "quality" offered by Hollywood there is absolutely no denying Ender's Game is not just mainstream, but in fact among the elite. The sci-fi public very much loves Ender's Game. Chik-Fil-A ranks ~10th among the fast food public behind fine establishments like Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut. And yet the very act of attempting a boycott of Chik-Fil-A to punish them for the same political position was a spectacular backfire, generating record sales.

In cases like this it appears to me to be less about defending the political position of the boycott target, and more about defending the right of a business owner, or business itself, to HAVE a political position and the right to defend it. No one likes having other people's position forcibly shoved down their throat. It's good to know that when they see it happening to others they demonstrate their distaste.

You could point to exactly the same effect in the protests levied against JC Penny's for hiring Ellen DeGeneres (a married gay woman) as a spokesperson. (http://jezebel.com/5909347/homophobic-protest--from-one-million-moms-actually-boosting-jc-penney-sales)

I dont see how his claim that the military will always expand its power holds water. The military is at the mercy of the executive branch with regards to policy and the legislative branch with regards to funding.

Then you must have missed President Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex. Things haven't changed much in 50 years.

I'd suspect cost.

Apparently, Corning's 'Fusion draw process' is what they use for LCD-quality glass(to avoid issues with defects on the contact side that the were having with float glass). And with that process you can get any shape you want, so long as it's a rectangular sheet. According to this interview, any shaping is done from the sheet stock, but before the ion-exchange toughening process:

"FLATOW: Why can't you - I'm sorry, why can't you make it the shape itself beforehand?

VELASQUEZ: Well, it's much cheaper, more effective, to make these large sheets of glass and then cut it later, as opposed to trying to mold - or mold from molten glass into a small part.

FLATOW: It's not having to do with maybe the glass being too tough or brittle to work with at that point?

VELASQUEZ: No, that's a good question, but we - the chemical strengthening process actually happens after our immediate customers have cut the parts down to the size, the shape of the parts."

So, if that is the case, presumably doing a dead-flat face just requires rounding off the corners a bit, possibly drilling out a speaker grille or front button(if either is within the glass area), and then calling it a day, while doing a 'watch glass' style curve would require starting with thicker sheet stock and grinding and polishing, in a shallow version of lenscrafting, which is presumably a more vexing process.

Probably doesn't help that(unless you got really fancy, selectively messing with refractive indices in parts of the face or something like that) the curved face introduces slight distortions of the image and makes the phone look thicker.

I'm not saying that these are sensible in the broad sense(especially given the number of phones I see out and about that were carefully designed and exhaustively manufactured to be slim, perfect, slabs of featureless unobtanium, which their owners promptly swaddle in garish silicone and blurry screen protectors, ending up with something substantially more expensive than, and neither much smaller nor much more attractive than, one of the less tacky discrete-faceplate designs; but that's my guess as to why it is what it is...

I have worked in disaster response operations as a logistics and procurement person for six years, including rapid onset refugee settlements. Though I haven't worked directly in camp management, I have worked with purchasing, transporting and setting up these types of tents before. It doesn't say in this article, but other sources point out that even at mass production, the IKEA shelter will cost about twice as much as a canvas tent. At the end of the day, if you're setting up a tent city for 20,000 displaced refugees, that's a difference between 10 and 20 million dollars. Any large aid organization or donor simply isn't going to be able to justify doubling its operation costs. I should also add that one of the selling points of the IKEA structure is that tents only last six months, while these will last years. I don't know how long the UNHCR tents were designed for, but I think it's safe to say that in virtually every settlement I have been to, those tents tend to last longer than six months...alot longer. Usually, the tents are up for multiple years at a time, sometimes reused. This is not a justification for their crappy construction or poor amenities, but I have seen canvas tents that have been one place for six years, so the argument that the IKEA shelters is more economical in the long run isn't grounded in reality. Link to outside info: http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/06/27/196356373/new-kind-of-ikea-hack-flat-packs-head-to-refugee-camps?ft=1&f=1004

That is a great post, very informative.

For anyone that's interested, here are a few links about medical advances linked to armed conflict.

Medical legacy forged by war
Medical Advances Save Lives in Combat
Medical Treatment Advances Help Injured Soldiers

Apple made those changes because developers protested. If everyone was like you or listened to you when you say "You're not entitled to anything beyond what Apple deigns to give you so just shut up and stop complaining" then those few changes would have never happened. So there's nothing wrong with demanding or complaining about the 30% cut or in-app purchase requirements that, for example, the Microsoft stores don't have. You just want people to be happy and roll over.

So Apple wasn't clear about rejections and may not have been consistent with its policies. So what? You want to contribute that to malice, go ahead. I would think that in having to curate hundreds of thousands of applications, there are bound to be problems.

I only care that the situation is fixed. A UI prototyping app was banned in multiple months even after the developer went high up the Apple exec chain. A coding app is prevented from sharing code. http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/Talk/discussion/348/apple-notified-us-of-violations-re-downloadable-code/p1

And we're not allowed to complain?

>I even remember CEO Tim Cook endorsing Google's Map app during the botched Apple Maps launch.

That was because people were getting into dangerous situations with Apple Maps. Apple didn't want to be culpable and get blame for that so they were basically forced to suggest competitors.

Wrong directions can have very bad real life situations, unlike say, a broken RSS reader app.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/137646147/the-gps-a-fatally-misleading-travel-companion

NPR did a radio show on why Buying a Car is always so terrible: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes

It raises the perfectly valid question of, "why can't you go to a single place and shop for multiple brands of cars like you do appliances, electronics, cameras, groceries etc?"

There is absolutely a non-market thing driving the current car-buying process, and it is a bunch of laws in every state that heavily protect car dealerships from the sort of fair competition that merchants in every other industry have to face. Dealers are protected by law from another dealer that wants to open in the same territory, and there are serious restrictions on manufacturers that prevent them from terminating a contract with a bad dealership. So, if you as a customer didn't like how a dealer sold cars, your only option is to drive very far away to the next dealer, or to buy a completely different brand. You can't even buy the car online. This is completely different from buying almost anything else.

Agreed. Its quite a bit different than Slugging that is/was popular in some cities.

These newer programs have apps for ride matching, rating systems, and at least informally set fees. Its a regulation dodge more than anything else.

Still, I would love to see a similar rating system for individual taxi drivers, because half of them don't bathe, 60% of them are surly, 5 to10% of them on any given day don't look remotely like the credentials hanging in the cab, and the vehicles themselves are filthy and often barely road worthy.

Funny that this doesn't mean what people think it means.

The words were taken from the Gettysburg Address, where Lincoln asked his listeners to resolve that "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." Except that in the Gettysburg Address, "under God" didn't modify "this nation" but the following phrase, "have a new birth of freedom." In Lincoln's time, "under God" was a common idiom that meant "with God's help" or "the Lord willing." -- NPR

So yeah, it means: "One nation, hopefully." See how stupid the whole thing is?

Really? Your evidence against electric vehicles is an article by the Institute for Energy Research, a front group for the oil industry?

Don't you think oil companies might have an ulterior motive for casting doubt on their potential competition?

they put cilantro on everything

I guess it sucks if you don't like it. It is everywhere. Personally I love it, although a lot of people think it tastes like soap. They should have a cilantro free side of the menu or something. Maybe a new restaurant, "Cilantro Optional".

Interestingly enough, the cilantro quale is genetic. Cf.
Love To Hate Cilantro? It's In Your Genes And Maybe, In Your Head

It's just another allele, similar in concept to the one that causes certain people to have the inability to smell cyanide. I have certainly tested my cilantro sensory interpretation, but I hesitate to test cyanide.

If Bert and Ernie can make it work, I don't see why Ellison and Benioff can't.

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/06/28/new-yorker-cover-bert-ernie-gay-marriage-580_custom-81c8cb2f30d2e95d402cd7d8c45fb35de627f5d4-s6-c30.jpg

For anyone interested, NPR's Planet Money team ran a very good story back in February on this topic. If focused on the entrepreneur behind carsdirect.com, who ran into the same obstacles in the 90s when he tried to set up a Web site to sell cars directly to consumers.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes

Planet Money did a great piece on dealership laws awhile back, talking about a startup that wanted to sell cars directly, and how insurmountable the obstacles they faced ended up being.

D-Wave claimed to have a 512 quantum bit system: http://m.npr.org/news/Technology/185532608?start=5

...just pick a random european country

Okay, I pick the UK...
Oh, you mean in on the continent in the EU...
Your turn...

What I heard on NPR this morning is that Snowden's rumored travel involves Moscow to Cuba and then Cuba to Caracas, Venezuela according to an unidentified Aeroflot official.

That, of course, could all be misdirection.

The summary is saying it is a quantum computer because it sold these to Lockheed Martin and Google. Please. stop that shit. They are pretty fast computers, however nobody has proven it is quantum computers. Even the CTO at D-Wave is not able to demonstrate it and he just doesn't care saying it is damn fast and that's all matter for him.

Slashdot should stop advertising D-Wave computers as QC until it has been proven.

• http://www.npr.org/2013/05/22/185532608/quantum-or-not-new-supercomputer-is-certainly-something-else
  ”What we do is build computers,” Rose says, “and if we can build the fastest computers the world has ever known, you can call them whatever you like, and I’ll be happy.”
• http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400
  "Instead, journalists have preferred a paper released this week by Catherine McGeoch and Cong Wang, which reports that quantum annealing running on the D-Wave machine outperformed the CPLEX optimization package running on a classical computer by a factor of ~3600, on Ising spin problems involving 439 bits. Wow! That sounds awesome! But before rushing to press, let’s pause to ask ourselves: how can we reconcile this with the USC group’s result of no speedup?"

And then ream everyone in court who tries to keep some seed and use it to replant.

There's always the option of not buying them and going with open pollinated seed. If you get sued for violating a contract you signed, then that is on you. And before you bring up the inevitable claim of suing for cross pollination, wrong.

lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops

That's new on me. Point me to that specific legislation, because that sounds an awful lot like a load of made up bullshit that someone pulled out of the usual place. Yeah, for some crops like corn and soy, most of the aid is genetically engineered, because most of the crop is genetically engineered. This isn't a conspiracy; it's just how supply chains work.

The upshot: "Based on the vast majority of the empirical work to date, HFT and automated,competing trading venues have substantially improved market liquidity and reduced trading costs for all investors. Share prices are almost surely higher as a result of this reduction in trading costs, benefiting long-term investors. Higher share prices also have favorable implications for firms\ cost of equity capital. "

You are mixing apples and oranges here. Automated trading and HFT are not the same thing. Automated trading does provide substantially improved liquidity and reduced trading cost. HFT on the other hand does not demonstrably reduce trading costs (or at best the jury is still out on that) and the liquidity it provides means your transaction can go through in a fraction of a second rather than in one second. It provides no liquidity when the market is under stress as the HFT machines are plugged out immediately in non-standard situations. On the other hand, HFT takes a lot of capital out of the market for that 'service'. Is that fraction of a second of additional liquidity worh it? IMHO not.

There is so much FUD around HFT it is hard for people to think rationally about it. I had wasted the following study on a troll once already earlier this morning and therefore it would be a shame not to repost it: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/HFT0324.pdf [wsj.com]

That article is funded by Citadel LLC that owns a HFT platform. It provides no hypothesis, no metrics, no tangible goals. It's pretty much an essay reiterating a couple dozen pro HFT papers and press pieces

Maybe you could educate yourself as well and listen to some other opinions - like that of one of the fathers of automated trading.

Well the reasons for them doing it are simple: Self Preservation. If you had your E-Mail, Social Contacts/Pictures etc. in a system that was regularly tapped by the NSA and the FBI, then you might think twice about using those services. Google's freely available services that you can use but while you're using them, we'll mine every piece of information out of you that we can. They're a commercial NSA and when the real NSA steps on their toes, possibly driving users away that's not good for business. Facebook and Microsoft have the same problem, hell all free cloud based services have a problem now with this "215" section of the law. Yes, Google is an 800lb Gorilla and so is Microsoft, well 650lb now and Facebook, meh, 400lb. If they start pushing on those idiots like Feinbitch who as chairwomen of the Senate Intelligence Committee (boy there's an oxymoron for you) stating that the NSA has access to your phone conversations, when they want. If they start pushing on DC and getting all the masses lined up, maybe things will change. The EFF and ACLU have some pretty sharp lawyers as well and they haven't had much luck in cracking all of the intrusions into our privacy and the secrecy of why the government needs this information. Feinstein and others with her mentality in DC are the reason we have this mess to begin with, now the feign ignorance and shock or coyishly say "well it has thwarted terrorism." Funding comes from congress, there is no way in hell that She and members of her committee didn't have direct knowledge of what was going on, much less every member of the House and Senate for the past decade. They've written the laws that allow the secrecy and the pulling of information without warrants and because of that and the nature of the legal process in this country, lower courts bar cases from moving forward on "National Security" reasons. This is an affront to the 4th amendment yet alone the 1st amendment as Google is claiming. Like I said, good luck because those Federal Judges have to look at the law as written and do you think that stooge Holder isn't going to appeal his way up to the Supreme Court if an "activist" judge somehow rules against the Government?

Also anybody out here should remember back in 2007 there was an uproar because of the warrantless wiretapping going on. What happened then? Well the cases dragged on and then congress gave the telecomms immunity in a new piece of legislation.

Oh and the only case that is still moving forward since 2007 (it is 2013 now after all) is being held up by the Justice Department and that retard Clapper..

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=190892480

James Clapper, director of national intelligence, personally urged U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White to throw out the remaining lawsuit. Clapper wrote the judge in September that the government risks "exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States" if forced to fight the lawsuit.

That case has EFF lawyers behind it, think they'll be successful?

So the constitution and out privacy violated in the names of National Security. Shit, Woz hit it on the mark the other day.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/06/apple-inc-aapl-co-founder-steve-wozniak-rethinks-america/

In Wozniak’s view, the Patriot Act started things going downhill, and he said there isn’t even “a free open court anymore.” He compared the U.S. government to a king who rounds up people and kills them or puts them in prison. He said when reading the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he doesn’t see how the things that are happening now are actually allowed to happen.

He also compared the U.S. to Russia. He said that when he was growing up, the Russian government would follow people around, s

From what I understand they seem to believe we are using the polio vaccine as a way to make the population infertile. Just one of many problems in Pakistan.

From what I understand they seem to believe we are using the polio vaccine as a way to make the population infertile. Just one of many problems in Pakistan.

But i doubt you easy find (imagine) a metabolizm eating it.

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/04/176254902/some-deep-sea-microbes-are-hungry-for-rocket-fuel

Yep. Hard to imagine! It would be unprecedented!

At the same time we hear of the NSA building its data center in Utah, where summer temperatures sit around 105. Is "intelligence" the right word for these services?

You essentially must buy your freedom.

You have freedom as an American citizen. The fee is to legally remove your citizenship. The price went from $0 to $450 in 2010, during President Obama's term. There are also these fees if you have some assets:

... leaving America has a special tax cost. You generally must prove 5 years of tax compliance in the U.S. Plus, if you have a net worth greater than $2 million or have average annual net income tax for the 5 previous years of $155,000 or more (that’s tax, not income), you pay an exit tax. You generally pay 15% on any gain, as if you sold your property when you left. There’s an exemption of approximately $668,000. -- Giving Up U.S. Citizenship

Then there is this courtesy of Barbar Boxer (D-Los Angeles):

Owe The IRS? Bill Would Suspend Passport Rights For Delinquent Taxpayers

If something is too expensive then "DON'T BUY IT". by pirating it you only give them an excuse to provide more lockdowns and inflate the price more.

Game of Thrones pirated; HBO doesn't mind.

Also, those media companies are run by Techno-Luddites who couldn't manage their way out of a wet paper sack with a flashlight and a jackhammer, so no wonder they don't understand how to watch shows on teh intertubes without a cable subscription.

People pirate because it is easier than being legit. If it was easier to pay, many would.

There was an interview this morning on NPR with James Bamford where he claims the NSA has prisms installed on major fiber optic backbones to get their own duplicate direct feeds. So that's why they call the operation "Prism". See http://www.npr.org/2013/06/11/190601064/nsa-collects-massive-amounts-of-data-then-what.

Strad's aren't any better sounding than brand new violins.

For some people nothing says "appeal to emotion" like FBI arrest reports I guess.

Here are some great resources for anyone confused by information at "911truth.org" and would like more information.

'Debunking 9/11 Myths': Nano-thermite dust found near Ground Zero (Photos)
Debunking 9/11 Myths: conspiracy plots are sheer fantasy

NIST Releases Final WTC 7 Investigation Report
World Trade Center Disaster Study

Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

Resources for debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Debunking 9/11 Bomb Theories

The Truthers Are Out There

9/11 Conspiracy Theories: The 9/11 Truth Movement in Perspective

Debunking Conspiracy Theories In 'Voodoo Histories'

Verizon is probably only upset about this because they normally SELL this data and the gov't is forcing them to hand it over for free. That's the real outrage here. The NSA should pay for it just like everyone else.

I doubt this data, if it is sold, is available with so much identifying information. Let's say Verizon sold it to Goldman Sachs, who has some cell numbers for traders at Berkshire Hathaway. Even though they don't know the trades, they now know the parties involved, and if everyone isn't privy to the same data, it's insider information. Verizon would be in very hot water if they even had a hint that this was the intended use when they sold it.

Ironically, if the NSA used it for this purpose, recent changes to the STOCK Act make it nearly impossible to detect Federal abuse of insider information.

Some news sources have speculated that this program was related to the Boston Marathon Bombing. However The Washington Post sys that

... the order appears to be a routine renewal of a similar order first issued by the same court in 2006. The expert, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that the order is reissued routinely every 90 days and that it is not related to any particular investigation by the FBI or any other agency.

This particular order was classified as Top Secret/NoForn/SI. The routine nature of the order was likewise highly classified.

Ordinary people-- those not initiated into the orders of nobility associated with "clearances"-- cannot select their government based on real, verifiable information. They have no means to judge the effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness of their political candidates. Instead, they must have faith that their government is either incompetent, or competent.

Do you believe that your government is doing its best to protect you? Surely its effectiveness would be diminished if carefully guarded secrets like this got out, and were use by enemies of the nation and of the state?

Do you believe that the government is doing its best to cynically exploit the security apparatus for its own political benefit? Surely this is but the tip of the iceberg. Were it not for classification, the entire enterprise would be exposed as a cesspool of corruption and criminality.

But in the absence of good solid, reliable data, both of these viewpoints can be freely adopted by any voter who chooses to have an opinion on the matter. Instead of a mass of peoples carefully using their judgements to select the good leaders over the bad, the entire electorate, kept in ignorance, has been reduced to flipping coins.

Government, it seems, is to important to be left to the governed.

The US already spends money on healthcare. The current law isn't likely to do much to improve outcomes for the general population It may result in some improvements for a small minority, and make care for a much larger percentage much more expensive.

Democrats' New Argument: It's A Good Thing That Obamacare Doubles Individual Health Insurance Premiums

In fact, the average 25 and 40-year-old will pay double under Obamacare what they would need to pay today, based on rates posted at eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH). More specifically, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoker, the average Obamacare “bronze” exchange plan in California will cost between 64 and 117 percent more than the cheapest five plans on eHealth. For 40-year-old male non-smokers, it’s between 73 and 146 percent more.

You also might want to look into the epidemiology of truck bombs. They can have a significant negative impact on the health of a community, and there have been a fair number of attempts by extremists in the US since 9/11. One of them was by a member of the Taliban.

Yazidis Live Among Reminders of Deadly Attack

The death toll from 9/11 attack was ~ 3,000. It resulted in approximately $100 billion in damage to the US economy. That is more that the incremental cost of the war to the US defense budget in several years, and half of the cost of implementing the Affordable Care Act per year once it is in full force.

That's a myth. Both of those things can be overcome quite easily (yeah their example links to a business site but it doesn't make it untrue). It's perpetuated by the old, 'well everyone says so' bullshit. The reality is that builders don't have to dig deep because the frost line is not deep there and building codes say you don't have to dig deep. So it makes it cheaper to build if you don't dig a deep foundation like a properly built basement, with rebar reinforced concrete walls and floors and well drained gravel backfill outside like is done in more northerly parts of the country.

Southern Ontario has a lot of heavy red clay. I don't know anyone growing up, who didn't have a basement (I don't live there now). A lot of places have it. And you want to talk about expansion and contraction, look at Manitoba and Saskatchewan (with similar great plains/prairie soil). Especially Winnipeg which is build in a flood plain along the banks of a large (the Red) river. Talk about potential for water. The frost line is around 10 or 12 feet deep. That is a lot of depth for expansion and contraction (it's called frost heave). Every home practically has a basement there. And they have a technology called 'water proofing' now. It works on basements too. Seriously, only a retard would build a new house in Oklahoma (and the rest of tornado alley) without a basement that has at least a part with a cement cover. FWIW the 'showme' part of my nick comes from the fact I used to live in Missouri. I know the sound of the siren. And they have a lot of places without basements there too. Ridiculous.

I don't care that much about the "Virtual Nude" thing. (Although I might care more if I were an attractive young female, I guess.)

My objection to the thing is the X-ray radiation. I am by no means convinced these things are safe.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-glossed-over-cancer-concerns

Four doctors from the University of California, San Francisco wrote an open letter expressing their grave concerns based on their expertise. They listed dangers of these scanners and requested to see the safety studies and get access to the raw data of the safety studies; they also asked for the names of the people who conducted the safety studies. The government's answer boiled down to "our experts have studied this and it's safe". Completely non-responsive to the listed concerns and not sharing any data.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833083

So I never yet have let them scan me; I always have requested the pat-down. When they ask if I would prefer it in private, I tell them no. I'd rather the patdown be out in the open where anyone could watch. I have no particular reason to think any TSA agent would give me extra trouble in private, but I'd prefer as much publicity as possible.

I guess millimeter wave isn't ionizing radiation? That's a giant improvement right there. Maybe the new machines are safe? Safer, anyway.

I'm sorry, but this urban legend that Monsanto sues farmers for cross-pollination with their crops simply has to die already. I saw the film "Food Inc" and completely bought into the horror stories of Organic Farmers being sued out of business for cross-pollination, but then those same farmers took the case to court and the Judge threw the case out because the farmers could not produce one single example of this ever happening. Here's the Court Transcript, and the defense makes a pretty strong argument pages 33-36:

23 ...the notion that Monsanto's campaign, so to speak, against farmers -- which, by the way, by their count, over 15 years has amounted to 144 lawsuits brought, every single one of them against farmers who wanted, affirmatively were making use of the trade, and spraying herbicide over the tops of their crops without signing a license, without paying Monsanto the royalty for the use of its intellectual property -- the notion that that terrorizes people who have no desire to use it whatsoever is perhaps belied most significantly by Mr. Ravicher's inability to cite anything other than a movie called Food, Inc. or a CBS report to demonstrate what they can't demonstrate, which is if this were a ubiquitous threat, you would expect that there would be some plaintiff in this case who would say, "I am an inadvertent user. I have it and it's inadvertent. I have it in my fields and Monsanto has sent me a letter or Monsanto has called me and said, 'You are in patent jeopardy.'"

When you go to court to sue a company for unfairly suing innocent farmers who's crops were inadvertently cross-pollinated with patented GMOs, you better be able to produce at least one single example of this happening. When I read this transcript, I realized the Organic Seed Growers Association and all this anti-GMO stuff is really just anti-Science Neo-Luddism. As nerds we should be concerned with veracity and not fall into the trap all the muggles fall into of condemning technology and believing all the scientifically-unsupported horror stories about it simply because it's new and different.

Many large corporations, including the entertainment industry, are using -- or are looking at using -- proactive strategies as part of their security playbook. There was an interesting report on NPR concerning this a few months back. Currently, deploying malware is, to all intents and purposes, simply illegal. As it should be. These guys want a self-defense avenue for deploying destructive or surveillance programs against their perceived enemies. IMHO our corrupt congress will -- sooner or later -- be bribed into letting them have their way.

YOYO. You're On Your Own.

Unfortunately I don't think they'll be too scared - Budget Woes Mean Big Delays for Small Claims Courts

It's not being shocked you need to worry about, it's the vapors!

Dealers contribute a big share of state sales tax revenues — as much as 20 percent in some states — and they tend to be big local employers. That makes state and local legislators listen.

It's definitely worth listening to the story, as there's a rich and interesting history that leads to the rather broken present reality in the States.

• Short All Things Considered story | direct mp3 link
• Full Planet Money episode | direct mp3 link

Dealers contribute a big share of state sales tax revenues — as much as 20 percent in some states — and they tend to be big local employers. That makes state and local legislators listen.

It's definitely worth listening to the story, as there's a rich and interesting history that leads to the rather broken present reality in the States.

• Short All Things Considered story | direct mp3 link
• Full Planet Money episode | direct mp3 link

Dealers contribute a big share of state sales tax revenues — as much as 20 percent in some states — and they tend to be big local employers. That makes state and local legislators listen.

It's definitely worth listening to the story, as there's a rich and interesting history that leads to the rather broken present reality in the States.

• Short All Things Considered story | direct mp3 link
• Full Planet Money episode | direct mp3 link

Dealers contribute a big share of state sales tax revenues — as much as 20 percent in some states — and they tend to be big local employers. That makes state and local legislators listen.

It's definitely worth listening to the story, as there's a rich and interesting history that leads to the rather broken present reality in the States.

• Short All Things Considered story | direct mp3 link
• Full Planet Money episode | direct mp3 link

They both exist to keep deranged Wingnuts angry and stupid so they don't wise up and turn back into Conservatives..

Apparently they succeeded. ;D

But, just for fun, here are some more links.

A Timeline Of The IRS's Scrutiny Of The Right

2011

Dec. 16: Despite being briefed about the matter six months earlier, Lerner does not divulge the flagging of conservative groups when she and others from the IRS meet staff members of the House Ways and Means Committee to discuss the issue, according to the staff's timeline of events.

Tea party groups call IRS process 'nightmare'
Higher-Ups Knew of IRS Case
Reality Check Exclusive: Cincinnati agent giving orders in IRS scandal?
It Didn’t End - The IRS is still stringing conservative groups along

Now I'm curious though, when were you last conservative?

Agreed, I am not giving TOS enough credit. I didn't realize the impact of the influence it had until I read this ...
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter

You can listen to an NPR piece where the dolphin are interviewed.

as an owner myself, don't fool yourself about the NRA

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/whom-does-the-nra-really-speak-for/266373/
http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-industry-funds-nra-2013-1
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16324652

From a casual reading (by a non-lawyer) of the constitution, this makes perfect sense.

This thing about "we can go through all your possessions if we somehow get our hands on it" is ludicrous, and the "if we can pick the lock or break it open we can rummage around inside" thing is stupider still. If I lock my data but the police manage to break the encryption method they can rummage around in the data? Does this work for the locks on my house? The dial on my safe?

The simple search looking for weapons thing "to protect the officer" was an exception, but they've taken it beyond extreme rights violations.

If you see someone committing a crime, arrest them. If you can't convict them without the data on their cell phone, you shouldn't have arrested them in the first place.

Oh, and if someone parrots "how can we do our jobs if we don't have the tools" nonsense, remind them that we're currently enjoying the lowest crime rate in several decades.

In case anyone is interested, here's the link to the NPR review of 'Into Darkness'. That reviewer seems to echo this review's sentiments pretty closely; it's different from the old Star Trek, and doesn't have much thought to it, but is entertaining nonetheless.