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Good god, there is so much wrong with what you say... it's amazing.

No, this is exactly a preventative crises aka Greece style 1000x over!

No it's not. The US is not Greece. This crisis has zero to do with Greece, and shares absolutely nothing in common with Greece. This was a very preventable fiscal deadline set because of Republican hostage-taking and can-kicking to this point. And you want to compare this situation to Greece somehow? I'd love to hear your analysis of the Eurozone crisis and compare it to the "fiscal cliff." Greece doesn't even have a central bank and can't control its own currency.. I mean, seriously.

Yes, the Tea Party said enough is enough and put their foot down saying "If you are not going to be serious grownups and live within your means with no plans to pay it back, then I wont sign the check". That is what the debt ceiling is.

No, it has nothing to do with writing checks. It has to do with borrowing. The debt ceiling is a technical authorization requirement going back to 1917 that requires Congress to give the okay to borrow money that it has already voted to spend, and much of which has already been spent..

Every American owes $150,000 each

It's about a third that. And as the economy grows, that # becomes less and less significant relative to the GDP.

and by not going off the fiscal cliff you are telling your creditors that you wont pay them back! In essence raising the debt ceiling is simply paying your credit card bill by charging to the same company over and over again.

What the hell are you talking about?

Look at that video above to get an idea averaged out

That video is awful garbage. People are not countries, and people are not national economies. The US prints its own money. You can't. It borrows at ridiculously low interest rates. Most of what it borrows is from its own citizens. It has sterling credit, save for a ding directly attributable to the Tea Party.

[crazy stuff removed] Any bond investor would be nuts to invest in the dollar right now.

Investing in the "dollar" as in the currency? Or in treasuries? There's a difference, but it sounds like you're talking about the latter. And yeah, that's EXACTLY what individual investors, domestic and multinational corporations, and foreign governments are doing, and what they've been doing since the crisis started. The US is getting absurdly awesome rates for borrowing right now (by selling treasury notes) because the world believes that the dollar is reliable and stable.

So you're 100% wrong on that.

Republicans are trying to do the right thing and that is do what they were hired for.

They're trying to do the right thing, but they have no idea what the right thing is. The Tea Party wing of the GOP is as clueless as you are, unfortunately. They really don't understand very basic economics. They seem to follow a kind of AM radio economics that isn't grounded in reality.

[insanity removed] We need 5 fiscal cliffs in a row for the next 20 years to dig out of this hole.

What is this- I don't even...

The stupid.. it burns! Really man... you have no idea what you're talking about, and you're throwing a mish-mash of ideas you got from Fox and random Youtube videos that are completely off base and I guess you're trying to usea "common sense" family budgeting strategies (guy goes into bank to get better credit?) for managing a global economy. That's exactly the sort of cluelessness that leads to thinking austerity policies will grow an economy in a recession, financial markets don't ever need regulation because they self-police, and that government spending should be treated like a family sitting around a dinner table. This may be great political theory for a Republican audience with a 20 second attention span, but it's disastrous economics and leads to stuff like the 2008 Great Recession and the anemic recovery that's followed.

> no recorded case of a resistant strain being developed due to antibiotics used on cows

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/21/147190101/how-using-antibiotics-in-animal-feed-creates-superbugs

Please note that I found that in a quick Google search. In this case, an antibiotic-susceptible organism jumped into pigs, became methicillin resistant. OK, that's not cows, but that shows me that the concern is based in real science.

Bacteria don't care where they live, as long as it's a suitable environment. In any such environment, if regularly exposed to antibiotics, they could develop resistance. This is true in food animals, humans, or petri dishes in the laboratory.

For you to make that assertion, I can only assume that either you are (a) uninformed or (b) a shill for Big Pharma, who make megatons of money off dumping antibiotics into the food chain.

The most interesting aspect is most/many/all? script groups that come to the surface seem to be owned top down or at an admin level or mixed in with many informants/agents/agents provocateurs.
COINTELPRO showed the way, PATCON Patriot-conspiracy http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/18/patriot_games provided insight into the 1980-90's efforts within the USA - using domestic and EU staff to form, control and guide groups within the USA.
Now you have the "so much so that 1 in 4 hackers may now be an informant, according to some experts." quote.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/11/137125799/hackers-and-clouds-how-secure-is-the-web
The idea of any long term group not been compromised or used as bait or tracked is getting more hard to believe.
As for Iran all the 'new' posters to slashdot seem to drop in to tell us past code efforts could only be used for a subset of unique, exotic nuclear hardware.
I guess some governments have a list of other unique hardware and now have the political cover to expand their efforts.

The level of paranoia as alluded to in the summary struck me as ridiculous.

Welcome to America. Land of the fearful, home of buttheads.

Where a school decided that they should strip-search a 13-year old girl because another girl with a grudge said she had ibuprofen. This had to go all the way ot the supreme court before the school figured out they were acting ridiculously.

The CIA vaccination thing actually reads like some kind of fan service to conspiracy theorists...
The sad aspect is the cover was not used for a full set of meds.
The CIA got their DNA and left before the second dose was given.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/07/12/137792912/reports-cia-tried-to-confirm-bin-laden-dna-using-fake-vaccination-drive
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14117438

"Darpa figures that it's illogical to make a soldier hand over her rucksack to a robotic beast of burden if she's then got to be preoccupied with 'joysticks and computer screens' to guide it forward." (Emphasis mine.)

I know that people love sounding politically correct by arbitrarily changing "he" to "she," but in this particular case, it's not only silly but probably wrong. We've been hearing a fair amount lately about how female soldiers aren't allowed in designated combat zones, such as in this piece http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=166303415 In other words, "she" is statistically unlikely compared to "he," here.

It's a funny time when we start to trade in /actual/ correctness for political correctness.

Liam Neeson will be glad to hear this news as he decides what to punch next.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/01/25/145837558/what-should-liam-neeson-punch-next

Considering the statistics, one could make a better case for doing away with baseball bats than guns.

Ferran: We Must Stop Baseball Bat Violence!

Against the gun control that won’t work

National Review: Gun Control Doesn't Work

But the wavelength and penetrance is substantially different - we know an awful lot about the radiation exposure associated with flying. We know less about the effects of the radiation exposure from the backscatter scanners

That's not really true. Mostly what we know a lot about is the damage caused by particular radioisotopes, some sources of X-rays, and nuclear accidents. The rest is modeled. X-ray backscatter scanners emit a measured amount of X-rays at a known frequency that's well within the realm of what we know about.

I'm no radiation expert, but when a group of PhD's and MD's who *are* radiation experts have concerns about the machines, then I have concerns:

http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf

The X-ray dose from these devices has often been compared in the media to the cosmic
ray exposure inherent to airplane travel or that of a chest X-ray. However, this
comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest Xrays
  have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately
understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport
scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent
tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two
orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.

This letter was written almost 3 years ago, have any of their concerns been addressed?

How many rights do YOU need? What is it about the concept of a right that is hard to grasp? Is there some new twist to "rights" that says that you can only exercise one to the limit that someone else thinks you need to?

So, by way of the Second Amendment, I have an absolute right to posses as many "arms" as I want end of story, period (does that include biological weapons?). Do I also have a right to privacy, or can the government tap my phone and read my email without a warrant? Do I have a right to get gay-married or does equal protection not extend to sexual orientation? Do I have the right to put whatever I want into my body, or can the government ban drugs? Do I have the right to travel freely, or can my passport be revoked or my flying privileges suspended? How about the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness? Do I have the right to take my own life (it is mine, after all), or should the government intervene if, say, I'm being held awaiting trial or serving a prison sentence? Do I have the right to live, or do I surrender that right if I commit a certain crime? I think taxes infringe on my right to liberty, can I stop paying them and still keep my house? I'm positive that a few things that make me happy would make you very angry and vice versa.

Which is it is? Is the world black and white: do we all have absolute rights as dictated by some dead guys? Or can some rights can be limited for the good of society? Or do you get to pick which rights are absolute and which can be tempered and regulated? If not you, then who? Hey, maybe we should vote on this sort of thing?

On NPR a while back there was an interview with a NASA scientist about the doomsday predictions. He runs the Q/A column "Ask an Astrobiologist" responsible for answering questions posed to NASA, which as of late have mostly centered around Dec 21st. He was incredulous that anyone would believe these stories, but as the same time took it very seriously; he mentioned that many of the people writing to him were of the younger generations (i.e. schoolkids) genuinely concerned about whether the world was going to end. This was the demographic that concerned him. One such excerpt -- "Though some of the questions may seem frivolous and outlandish, Morrison receives queries from people who are legitimately concerned and contemplating suicide. "Another extreme one ... I got was quite touching. It was: My only friend is my little dog. When should I put her to sleep so she won't suffer in the cataclysm?" It's easy to dismiss the doomsday people as loons (and most are), but some of them are just kids so we should focus more on taking them seriously and helping educate them to understand that it's a myth rather than dismissing the entire thing offhand. This can be a very good opportunity to show the community that science > superstition. Interview is at http://www.npr.org/2012/11/26/165928588/as-dec-21-draws-nigh-the-facts-about-doomsday

Conventional wisdom has it that complex life evolved in the sea and then crawled up onto land but NPR reports that a provocative new study published in Nature suggests that the earliest large life forms may have appeared on land long before the oceans filled with creatures that swam and crawled and burrowed in the mud. Paleontologists have found fossil evidence for a scattering of animals called Ediacarans that predate the Cambrian explosion about 530 million years ago when complex life suddenly burst forth and filled the seas with a panoply of life forms. Many scientists have assumed Ediacarans were predecessors of jellyfish, worms and other invertebrates but palaeontologist Greg Retallack has been building the case that Ediacarans weren't in fact animals, but actually more like fungi or lichens and that Ediacarans weren't even living in the sea, as everyone has assumed. "What I'm saying for the Ediacaran is that the big [life] forms were on land and life was actually quite a bit simpler in the ocean," says Retallack adding that his new theory lends credence to the idea that life actually evolved on land and then moved into the sea. Paul Knauth at Arizona State University has been pondering this same possibility. "I don't have any problem with early evolution being primarily on land," says Knauth. "I think you can make a pretty good argument for that, and that it came into the sea later. It's kind of a radical idea, but the fact is we don't know." Knauth says it could help explain why the Cambrian explosion appears to be so rapid. It's possible these many life forms gradually evolved on the land and then made a quick dash to the sea. "That means that the Earth was not a barren land surface until about 500 million years ago, as a lot of people have speculated."

they are by and large legally sound (granted: they are lawyers, so they're good at rationalizing most anything).

And that's the problem. You can occasionally see the cracks in their rationale, like here. I'm not certain this is the Supreme Court, but it serves as a good example of a Federal court deciding what it wants to happen, then rationalizing how the desired outcome is legal. These instances serve to cast doubt on the courts even when their legal logic IS sound. Especially in cases where the issue is complex, necessitating a complex decision. We know they are sometimes willing to pretend the most absurd legal theories are legitimate as long as they advance a desired agenda; this opens ALL decisions (except the trivial) open to accusations of "legislating from the bench". Destroying the credibility of the courts as an impartial arbiter is another giant step towards the sort of social unrest that topples empires. People as a whole tend to demand what they see as justice; if people are firmly convinced they will not receive justice within the system, you will see more and more people seeking "justice" outside the system.

NPR blogs has been doing this lately too with 20 point sans-serif. It's annoying as hell.

I seriously do believe that they are compensating for people who can't be arsed to adjust minimum font size (or dpi) on their own, or to even tell Windows to "use big fonts."

Look at this. Just look at it.

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

I'm 47. I'm not blind.

Oh, God.

That site specifies font sizes in pixels. That's going to look oh-so-readable on 'retina' displays...

CSS was very carefully designed to adapt to the specified needs of the USER. The user knows what size font (s)he finds comfortable to use, and can be presumed to have configured the browser to render normal sized font at that size. Specifying font sizes in absolute sizes - point sizes, millimetres, whatever - breaks that, but at least eight point font should be one tenth of an inch tall on any correctly configured display. Pixel sizes - pixel sizes - are display dependent. No wonder it looks fucking huge on your screen, the designer was probably using a late-model MacBook Pro and it was tiny on his screen...

This is NOT rocket science, guys.

NPR blogs has been doing this lately too with 20 point sans-serif. It's annoying as hell.

I seriously do believe that they are compensating for people who can't be arsed to adjust minimum font size (or dpi) on their own, or to even tell Windows to "use big fonts."

Look at this. Just look at it.

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

I'm 47. I'm not blind.

--
BMO

Sadly, it looks like they're going the other way.

Here's the Yelp page for Dietz Development. Look at the reviews and you can see that Yelp has been censoring them pretty heavily. All of them are from the last day or two and the review in question has been removed.

This was a great opportunity for Yelp to stand up for consumer rights and freedoms, but instead they've stuck their head in the sand. Even if they'd put a notice at the top of her review saying that "the statements here are not those of Yelp's, blah blah blah lawyer speak" that would have been fine. However, they've shown they have no backbone and won't stand behind their users.

What if Slashdot editors deleted comments anytime somebody looked at them wrong; what effect would that have on the quantity and quality of the discussion here? There's only been a tiny handful of times that a comment here has been censored -- hopefully it stays that way.

I've never used Yelp before because I wasn't real familiar with them. Now that I am I'll never use them in the future.

that's not quite accurate.

Yelp uses an automated algorithm to filter out some posts: "How do you decide which reviews to filter? We use filtering software to determine which reviews should be filtered on any given day among the millions that are submitted to the site. The software looks at a wide range of data associated with every review. We invite you to watch this short video for more detail about how it all works." http://www.yelp.com/faq#why_filter

as a site dedicated to enabling ordinary people to post reviews about businesses in their own communities, Yelp provides a great service for consumers. but Yelp also has its own concern to try to keep reviews on its site relevant as much as possible. it doesn't serve anyone to allow users to publish reviews that have little to no connection to the actual businesses being reviewed. Yelp's reputation for being a place where you can get low-noise, high-signal reviews is on the line. and having too much noise as compared to actual signal does not serve Yelp's users either, as they won't get a reasonably accurate picture of businesses reviewed on the site.

i'll acknowledge that Yelp is treading a fine line here. i think they understand that. but to say that Yelp is "undermining consumer rights and freedoms" here is completely unfair and unabashedly silly. filtered posts can still be seen if you click on a link below the reviews. Yelp explains why they have been filtered but still allows users to access said posts.

and even then, if you go to Dietz Development's page now, there are a slew of negative reviews, completely unfiltered, that have nothing to do with Dietz Development's services or customer relations. most of them are backlash "internet badass" posts shaming Dietz for suing. while allowing people to review businesses like Dietz and provide said reviews online for the public is a general good, allowing for higher noise to signal and for reviews that have little to do with the actual quality of a company is not.

there was a Florida pizza restaurant President Obama visited during this year's Presidential campaign. the owner of the restaurant was, apparently, a conservative, but he was excited to host the President all the same and even gave Obama a hug. as a result, hundreds of trolls crashed the restaurant owner's Yelp page and posted negative review after negative review. many of the "reviewers" acknowledged never having eaten at the restaurant. some of the "reviewers" had never been to Florida. would you say Yelp should keep all those "noise" posts anyway? i would argue no. the posts were marginally-relevant, if at all, to the actual pizza restaurant, the quality

but it's currently not allowed to take Chinese workers onto US soil to do local work like construction work and maintenance so that has to be done in the US by US workers.

The desire to avoid employing US workers is very strong, even in construction. The Chinese are fabricating entire bridges and shipping them to the US for final installation. We outsource our cultural monuments to China today.

There is precious little beyond civil servants that can't be outsourced, which is why government workers are doing so much better than everyone else. Our income disparity balloons while we feather our regulatory nest, evacuate our capital to Asia and hone our hate for the 'rich' to a fine point.

It's a good thing we protect our youth from conditions like this.

I see your sarcasm and raise you an unfortunate reality. I grew up on the NFL, like many kids did in the 70s and 80s, as our parents and their friends gathered, drank and were merry. I never made a mental connection to football like I did with, say, Star Trek. I didn't ever seek it out, but rather it became background noise and part-reason to gather with friends... and drink. Perhaps a fortunate side-effect of the USA becoming more aware of brain injury could be the replacement of humans with robotic players. Yeah, I know we're nowhere close to stuff like Real Steel, but wouldn't it be kind of cool to see bots being beat to crap and the pieces swept off after? By little robots, nonetheless.

It's all over the fricken Internet. It was in the NPR report and it looks like the report has since been edited to remove the comment, perhaps out of embarrassment. The transcript from the same report however still includes the quote...

"PALCA: Put a sample of Martian soil or rock or even air inside SAM and it will tell you what the sample's made of. Right now, SAM is working on a Mars soil sample, and [John] Grotzinger says the results are earth-shaking."

From NPR Transcript

Grotzinger is the "principal investigator for the rover mission".

Please point out in that story

The news media put those words into NASA's mouth, but Grotzinger* made it sound like a bigger deal. He should have been a little more reserved but it's understandable, from a geek perspective, that he was excited over something geeky. Which most people will not understand.

Footnote: Interesting.. NPR has apparently since edited the original version of their story and changed "earthshaking" to "remarkable".

"Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the
analysis shows something earthshaking. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says."

[*] - http://www.npr.org/2012/11/20/165513016/big-news-from-mars-rover-scientists-mum-for-now

The quote comes from rover lead John Grotzinger, in a recent NPR interview:

Here are the relevant quotes from the interview:

"We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting,"

"The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down."

"This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good."

The GAO report is misleading in the same way that many GAO reports are. This is largely because the GAO essentially acts like a computer and answers the question with the parameters its given. In this case what is the savings of switching to coins assuming a 1:1 conversion.

This is misleading because in practice coins have much lower circulation rates than bills. There are a number of reasons for this such as weight, the need for different holding arrangements than the rest of the high denomination units, etc. What this means is that in order to meet the circulation needs you need more coins than the number of bills you are replacing. For example, in the United Kingdom after the switch over they found they needed 1.6 coins for each bill removed. Once you factor in this non-trivial increase in the amount of currency to match current levels of circulation, dollar coins actually cost more than the bills they are replacing.

NPR's Planet Money covered this brilliantly, and should be required listening for anyone who wants to comment on this debate:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money
and
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/30/166253822/episode-364-should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill

tl;dr: Bills are cheaper than coins when you measure actual amounts needed in circulation.

The GAO report is misleading in the same way that many GAO reports are. This is largely because the GAO essentially acts like a computer and answers the question with the parameters its given. In this case what is the savings of switching to coins assuming a 1:1 conversion.

This is misleading because in practice coins have much lower circulation rates than bills. There are a number of reasons for this such as weight, the need for different holding arrangements than the rest of the high denomination units, etc. What this means is that in order to meet the circulation needs you need more coins than the number of bills you are replacing. For example, in the United Kingdom after the switch over they found they needed 1.6 coins for each bill removed. Once you factor in this non-trivial increase in the amount of currency to match current levels of circulation, dollar coins actually cost more than the bills they are replacing.

NPR's Planet Money covered this brilliantly, and should be required listening for anyone who wants to comment on this debate:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money
and
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/30/166253822/episode-364-should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill

tl;dr: Bills are cheaper than coins when you measure actual amounts needed in circulation.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137394348/-1-billion-that-nobody-wants

Planet Money did a whole podcast on this. Don't see anyone linking to it, so here's the most current thing:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money
The short is: switching to dollar coins is both less convenient and more expensive than sticking with bills. It's surprising, given the much longer lifetime of coins, but unambiguous.

Instead of relying on someone's opinion based solely on their own behaviour, why not look at the experience in one of the countries that have dropped the dollar note? For example, the UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.

All true, but we also have the best dollar bill in the world. That is, it holds up for far longer than any other, long enough that even though each bill is more expensive to print it is more valuable than others in the world. From the Planet Money story:

"As to the question of why it made sense for other countries to switch from small denomination bills to coins, the answer seems to be: Their bills did not last nearly as long as U.S. bills. The Federal Reserve says typical lifetimes of bills from those countries were just three to six months."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150976150/should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill

You could save thousands of words just by saying "[insert I'm-smarter-than-everyone-else trope here]", but I don't see you making the change. (Hint: You're not actually smarter or even more thoughtful.) In this case the "benefit" is the transfer of wealth from people who use cash to the government. Since I use credit almost exclusively, I have no problem with it. (Or the government could simply mint less and bring us some deflation...)

Continue on with your pointless "Americans are stupid" rant, though. That'll get big mod points, I'm sure.

Planet Money did an analysis of the issue awhile back, and discovered that the habit of people to let coins collect in jars & drawers, while it would benefit the government, would alter the math and not end up saving us if we made the switch.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150976150/should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill

Planet Money did an analysis of the issue awhile back, and discovered that the habit of people to let coins collect in jars & drawers, while it would benefit the government, would alter the math and not end up saving us if we made the switch.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150976150/should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill

They've been through this before. There's a relevant Planet Money story about this.

The short version is that people tend to hoard coins whereas they tend to spend bills. This means the government would have to have more coins in circulation than if they were using bills. They ran the numbers and concluded that it would actually cost more to replace all dollar bills with dollar coins.

Planet Money did a whole podcast on this. Don't see anyone linking to it, so here's the most current thing:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money

The short is: switching to dollar coins is both less convenient and more expensive than sticking with bills. It's surprising, given the much longer lifetime of coins, but unambiguous.

Neat story. Decided to DDG for a bit more detail.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/10/03/140815154/dissolve-my-nobel-prize-fast-a-true-story

Sounds like you should move to Colorado or Washington state, and take up on the now-legal pastime of vaporizing the local herb. That will definitely increase your appetite.

"He is a very eccentric person; there is no question. He is a very complex person. In fact, in one instance in August, I had heard a rumor that he had in fact killed somebody, and I asked him about that. And he says, “That he actively encouraged the rumors about him.” And I said, “Why would you do that?” He said, “Because I wanted people to be scared of me.” He said, “Remember I am living here, in a place where I feel very threatened. Where I think people are trying to harm me, and I want them to be afraid of me, and if they think that I am capable of some brutality, then all the better” So clearly he is living a life that most people would never choose, never even dream of. And yet, I asked him, point blank, “Why don’t you leave? If you think people are trying to kill you, why don’t you leave?” He says, “I love it here! What do you mean?” That’s why I said he is complex; it is very hard to figure him out."

There are some other interviews with or stories by Josh Davis who has interviewed him for over 100 hours over 6 months.

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/14/165160275/anti-virus-software-pioneer-on-the-run-in-belize

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/threatlevel_1112_mcafee/

McAfee sounds crazy and paranoid, but that doesn't mean that people aren't out to get him.

The only people using mail anymore are junk mailers. And they get an ENORMOUS discount to send out thousands of flyers and coupons. So let's raise our taxes even more to prop up a bunch of spammers. If you don't, the union gets angry and leans on politicians. That's just good policy.

To put some figures (though not much) around that:

http://stateimpact.npr.org/new-hampshire/2011/09/27/how-junk-mail-is-helping-to-prop-up-the-postal-service/

What's really really obvious is that if you take a human and raise them in isolation or in a primitive tribe, they might have a much lower IQ than if the exact same human was raised by the finest minds and educators in the modern world.

NPR ran a story on this on their "Planet Money" economics show. They talked about research looking at the effects of preschool education on child development, and the discoveries were really shocking. They took a group of poor children, then randomly selected half of them to recieve a top-notch, free, pre-school education, then followed both groups. The kids who got pre-school tested higher on child IQ tests, but what's more, the differences stuck with them all the way into young adulthood. There were also major differences in terms of better earning potential, lower teen pregnancy rates, higher rates of attending college, with the pre-school group doing better than the control group on all of these fronts.

So yes, smart parents tend to raise smart kids. But a big part of that is that if your parents raised you well and taught you well, you raise your kids well and teach your kids well.

It's worth a listen- it's one of the best shows on NPR, and this is one of their best episodes in my opinion: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/19/163256866/episode-411-why-preschool-can-save-the-world

China lacks rule of law, it only has rule of the rulers.

Thats the big problem with doing business in China, there is no actual Rule of law.

http://www.npr.org/2009/12/31/122114058/the-loudness-wars-why-music-sounds-worse?sc=nl&cc=mn-20100102

It's not that it's more pure. It's that vinyl is usually mastered correctly and thus sounds better.

Most "religious people" aren't really religious. I find that comforting and reassuring. Even people that claim to be devout just really aren't...

Turns out Americans go the church about as much as the "godless" Europeans - except Europeans don't lie about it nearly as much.

Applied where? I read the article, no link but it says that the program is called the “National Emergency Technology (NET) Guard”. Googled and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergency_Technology_Guard which links to http://www.fema.gov/government/grant/netguard/index.shtm which says:

Page not found
The requested page "/government/grant/netguard/index.shtm" could not be found.

Reading the Wikipedia article, it says, "Finally, June 18, 2008, FEMA announced it was starting the NETGuard program." There is a citation to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92008366 which is a transcript of an interview with Senator Ron Wyden who is apparently a terrorist. He is threatening to put a hold on some DHS nominee until the program is started. The transcript is dated June 29, 2008, after the Wikipedia article says that the program started.

It's all vaporware. Nothing to see here.

We're a large part of the way there: there are very few companies in the world with sufficient patent arsenal to make a phone.

Here is a recent NPR podcast:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/23/163480928/episode-412-how-to-fix-the-patent-mess

It mentions the ridiculous number of patents required to make a smartphone (can't remember the number) and the legal impossibility of making arrangement for all those patents.

Are you trying to insinuate the US doesn't have socialized health care? Because millions of people would argue otherwise: people on Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, the Veterans' Administration, or who obtain free care by going to emergency departments without ability to pay.

First of all, I don't think GP was saying that at all.

Second, If Medicare is socialized health care, so is every other form of health insurance. Because right now I'm paying a nice chunk of my paycheck into Medicare every week. What's the difference between that and Aetna? We all pay every week. We don't all use it. Some of us use more than what we paid in. You may argue that since one is run by the government, that it's inherently more "socialized." I guess that depends on your distinction between socialized and socialist.

I have no way to elect the president of Aetna; if it's the only health care option offered by my company, I either take it or leave it (and pay outrageous fees for individual health insurance). I do have at least a nominal say in who runs Medicare.

Also, I don't know why you think people get free care at the ER. ERs are required to give care, but they are not required to do it for free. Even non-profit hospitals sue poor people.

Microbiologists disagree. The technical:

No significant changes in bacterial species composition or in the proportional representation of genes encoding known enzymes were observed in the feces of humans consuming the FMP.

Or the layman versions:

Reporting in Science Translational Medicine, researchers write that the bacteria in yogurt affect people’s digestion--but not by repopulating gut flora. Microbiologist Jeffrey Gordon talks about these findings and the future of using bacteria as therapy for digestive disorders such as diarrhea.

I would never ever wish C-Diff on anyone, not even my worst enemy. After the wife was put on broad spectrum antibiotics for an ear infection, then came what we thought was a bit of the flu or stomach virus (a.k.a. the trotts). Never-ending trotts. After exploratory colonoscopy & cultures to verify, & several different rounds of antibiotics, what finally worked for us was one last round of antibiotics combined with an insane intake of yogurt & probiotics (as we were finishing off the antibiotics). I think it was the combination that worked for us. We now start a (paranoid) regimen of yogurt & pro-biotics whenever someone is on antibiotics. Would we have gone for the "shit enema" (as unappealing as that sounds)? Perhaps. Let me put it this way, after weeks of the most debilitating pain (doubled over in pain), not eating for days, and blood literally pouring out your hind end, you are ready to grasp at anything that might work. Wife said that child birth had nothing on the C-Diff pains (& she went through 2 births with not so much as an aspirin -- another story. . .). I'll joke about a lot of things, but not this. So if this works (faster), more power to it. Oh yeah, cases of C-Diff are on the rise -- yay ( http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mens_Health_Watch/2010/June/clostridium-difficile-an-intestinal-infection-on-the-rise & http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/06/148072242/deaths-from-dangerous-gut-bacteria-hit-historic-highs ).

I have no doubt that a portion of Iranian citizens prefer a theocracy. However if you recall the crackdowns on protestors a couple years back shows that the theocracy will stop at no bound to stay in power, despite a significant part of the population that wants them out.

Iran chooses to starve and inflict economic hardship on their own people to a near crisis level. Here are several citations and sources on how the Iranian government hurts their own people. The Iranian government chooses to spend billions of dollars on nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism over feeding and providing medicine to their citizens. In my book the government is incorrigibly corrupt and evil.

http://www.rlc.org/irans-economy-on-the-verge-of-collapse-people-suffering-due-to-sanctions-2/

The Iranian people are the ones who feel the brunt of sanctions. In the past year, the value of the rial has fallen more than 75%, and food prices have skyrocketed more than 50%.

Meanwhile, the Iranian people are starving and dying because of lack of medicine.

http://www.economist.com/node/21564229

Despite subsidies intended to help the poor, prices for staples, such as milk, bread, rice, yogurt and vegetables, have at least doubled since the beginning of the year. Chicken has become so scarce that when scant supplies become available they prompt riots. On October 3rd police in Tehran fired tear-gas at people demonstrating over the rialâ(TM)s collapse.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/10/sanctions-iran-ordinary-people-target

Activists say that, unlike ordinary people, the regime can find a way out of banking difficulties with help from its proxies.

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/16/158831342/from-all-sides-iran-under-siege

That has brought inflation and unemployment; even some food riots have been reported. The effects of the sanctions have been too apparent to deny, says Vatanka of the Middle East Institute.

"There's no doubt, based on all the figures and even statements coming from Tehran, that they are suffering," he says. "We only have to take the words of the leadership in Tehran. They are saying they are hurting."

There are IQ tests that are geared towards 2 year olds.
Oddly, what you mentioned are not the big factors. IQ is set early in life – say before 5. What matters is improved:
        Prenatal health. More folic acid, less drinking by mom.
        Better environments: Less lead in the paint, more calories to eat - even empty.
        Better early childhood education. See Planet Money for a good story.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/19/163256866/episode-411-why-preschool-can-save-the-world

i.e. the big gains are not coming from boosting the top 20% - It is doing a lot of small things. IIRC the removal of lead paint and gas is responsible for a 1 to 2 point increase in IQ in America over the past 40 years. Young children no longer get high fevers that cook their brain, eliminating a who vector for mental retardation. Etc.

1. From the article description: "The sad fact is that so much money is being spent, no one can even keep count".
2. From an NPR report dated October 11, 2007: "There's a nationwide crime epidemic going on that rakes in $35 billion or more each year. Exactly how much is being stolen is impossible to say, because the federal government doesn't try to measure it. It's Medicare fraud." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15178883
3. See the similarity? I do.
4. From the Miami Herald newspaper two days ago: "An offshore remittance company called Caribbean Transfers financed a complex money-laundering ring that moved more than $30 million in stolen Medicare money from South Florida into Cuba’s banking system, federal authorities said Thursday." Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/18/3056554/feds-remittance-firm-at-center.html#storylink=cpy
5. Is this so hard to see the relationship? Do you see that I'm not politicking?

swapping an electric car battery isn't possible in reality? Thanks for enlightening the world with your clearly superior intellectual abilities.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/424587/israel-to-get-electric-car-battery-swap-stations/
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/21/159355676/dont-charge-that-electric-car-battery-just-change-it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu9PST7oXls
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd0WPw3p2MQ
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/better-place-unveils-battery-swap-station/

If only these people were as smart as you...

There are more $100 bills than all other types of bills put together. The majority aren't even in the United States.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/09/162568387/all-the-money-the-government-is-printing-this-year-in-one-graphic

As we all know, you don't have to possess a physical dollar bill to spend a dollar. There's no reason the same shouldn't be true of Bitcoins; you shouldn't need to "possess" a "real" Bitcoin in order to spend one.

To be true, there doesn't need to be a physical dollar in possession *anywhere* in order for you to earn/spend it. Printing electronic money is WAY easier than printing real money. However, this raises the question; is there an advantage to letting a BTC "bank" keep your coin in their account while you go around earning/spending them? If it's all electronic anyway why not keep the BTC in your own possession (or at least locked by your private key). Until private key "vaults" become necessary due to advanced hacking techniques, I can't think of a good reason. More BTC has been lost due to big "banks" being hacked than due to little individuals being hacked (at least based on recent news).

There are more $100 bills than all other types of bills put together. The majority aren't even in the United States.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/09/162568387/all-the-money-the-government-is-printing-this-year-in-one-graphic

As we all know, you don't have to possess a physical dollar bill to spend a dollar. There's no reason the same shouldn't be true of Bitcoins; you shouldn't need to "possess" a "real" Bitcoin in order to spend one.