Slashdot Mirror

This does not imply a causative effect between meat and intelligence however - apes and monkeys, arguably the smartest non-human animals, are technically omnivores but with the exception of a few species that eat insects, they eat plants almost exclusively.

Bullshit.

If you've got any information that suggests that meat was or is essential to brain development I'd like to see it.

How about that I eat meat, and I can use Google?

The problem is that you have a handful of names, while my side has statistics like 125,000 (in just one state!) voters who would have a difficult time meeting the voting id requirements.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/30/157594371/will-penn-i-d-law-actually-keep-voters-away

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/state/air-force-veteran-testifies-voter-id-law-could-prevent-him-from-casting-ballot-646865/

http://www.democracy-nc.org/VoterIDStories.html

,"Identity Theft May Cost IRS $21 Billion Over Next 5 Years"

FRAUD may cost TAXPAYERS $21 Billion over next 5 years

I think I would take 21 billion over five years compared to $2 trillion over ten.

I know, I linked to a biased right wing website, but it claims to pull the numbers from the CBO.

than the combined total of the seventeen nations next in defense spending. I can recommend David Wessel's book Red Ink as an excellent, informative read on US budgetary matters. The stat I led this post with comes from his book. Also, I suggest listening to Teri Gross's interview with Wessel today. You can find it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=07-31-2012

These two new cases are reminiscent of the so-called 'Berlin patient,' the only person known to have been cured of infection from the human immunodeficiency virus.

There is some evidence to suggest "Berlin Patient" Timothy Ray Brown may not actually be cured of HIV. They just don't know for sure.

The language barrier bit my ass.

"Intoxicated" is closely related to a word in my mother tongue that can be translated to English as "poisoned" - while not being a accurate translation. One can be "intoxicated" by consuming a large quantity of something that would be safe in lesser quantity. In my original rationale, agrotoxins.

This is a example : http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/22/147254438/fda-says-brazils-orange-juice-is-safe-but-still-illegal

Instead of cutting where its needed (gross government pay and military), they cut everything else instead.

The problem with the Federal budget isn't military spending. Yes defense can be cut, but it's already the one budget item which has been cut the most in the last 50 years. Right now, our annual budget deficit exceeds the defense budget, so we could drop defense spending to zero and we'd still have a budget crisis. And FWIW, defense spending is on the chopping block as well if the Budget Control Act kicks in.

Likewise, the U.S. spends pretty close to the most of any country on public education per student. So our education problems aren't because of lack of funding. The "lack of money" for education is an illusion created by school administrators, either to cover up their own incompetence or to attempt to carve a bigger piece of the budget pie for themselves. Cutting defense and shifting the money to education is just swapping one form of wasteful spending for another.

What needs to be cut are the social programs - primarily Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security was a problem too, but its growth was mitigated with some of the reforms passed some years ago. Don't believe me? Go read the CBO reports. They've been saying this for over a decade now - Medicare and Medicaid projected to grow to consume 100% of tax revenue by 2050-2070 (the doomsday date changes from year to year). The notes on the NPR graph mention the same thing too - that the social programs are the parts of the budget which have grown the most. Unfortunately some people refuse to acknowledge that this is the real problem, and jealously guard these programs against any and all cuts - Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are all exempt from the Budget Control Act's mandatory budget cuts. And instead insist that everything can be fixed by cutting defense when simple math ($budget_deficit > $defense_budget) says it can't.

Don't trust what I tell you, don't trust what your friends in your political circles tell you. Read the CBO reports and decide for yourself. They're very enlightening.

Oh fart.

Methane is present in the atmosphere at pretty significant levels. That means it's present in all water.

Endocrine disruption usually occurs at extremely small doses.

Seems to me like more pseudo science going on here.

Yeh, smartfart, summer not hot enough just yet, a little more methane helpful?

http://www.nature.com/news/air-sampling-reveals-high-emissions-from-gas-field-1.9982
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338505/title/Natural_gas_wells_leakier_than_believed
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/151545578/frackings-methane-trail-a-detective-story
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421588/high-methane-emissions-measured-over-gas-field-offset-climate-benefits-of-natural-gasquot/?mobile=nc
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/29/454445/natural-gas-industry-methane-leaks-save-2-billion/
all pseudo...
but once the permafrost opens up more, this won't matter - pseudo too, it's all illusion anyway, stay fresh

Kind of like you making shit up about what he did? His failing is that he didn't independently verify some of what was reported to him by workers in the factories.

Well, he said he personally met people that he did not meet, and that they told him their stories, when these people did not exist and the stories were things that he made up based on rumors he'd heard.

He also lied about the name of the translator who was with him during these purported interviews, and when "This American Life" asked to contact her to check the facts of the story, he told them she'd moved, changed her phone number, and could not be contacted, when when she had not changed her phone number nor moved nor would have been hard to contact if they knew her name. If his failng had been merely "he failed to independently verify," it seems a bit peculiar that he would lie to the producers and tell them it was impossible to contact his translator.

Some links:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/16/148761812/this-american-life-retracts-mike-daiseys-apple-factory-story
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory/
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/theater/defending-this-american-life-and-its-mike-daisey-retraction.html
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/19/mike_daisey_and_the_inconvenient_truth/

The take-home lesson is that even if you think you're on the side of the angels, you shouldn't lie, because it makes people disbelieve anything you say. In fact, especially if you think you're on the side of the angels.

The site's clearly a joke, but it's got some elements of truth. Here's the real story:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/04/142018151/from-nebraska-lab-to-mcdonalds-tray-the-mcribs-strange-journey

Why? Given the popularity of McDonalds popular in France (Only the US is a bigger market for them) , I'd say that it's the quintessential french food these days...

Planet Money is (IMO) just as good as TAL, though their segments tend to be shorter and, obviously, they focus on financial and economic stories.

While we're on it, Radio Lab is as equally well-presented as the other two, but it focuses on more of the humanities, science, and social sciences rather than current events or other topical issues.

And how does this relate to the fact that children are getting Diabetes type 2 younger and younger, at an increasing rate?

The answer is simple; carbohydrates.

Most of our carbs come from plants more closely related to grass(corn, wheat), than to a vegetable

Solution: eat grass fed animals, eat lots of root and leafy green vegetables and some fruit ... ditch the soda, pizza, pasta, burgers, donuts, etc.

Would you do it if there was a 100% chance of the vessel rupturing a few minutes after takeoff? Probably not, that would be suicide without any gains.

Vladimir Komarov did. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage

Only that he didn't die a few minutes after takeoff, but more than a day after.

Would you do it if there was a 100% chance of the vessel rupturing a few minutes after takeoff? Probably not, that would be suicide without any gains.

Vladimir Komarov did. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage

Source: How The Taste Of Tomatoes Went Bad (And Kept On Going)

You're welcome,
-l

Question: How many Georgetown Law School students would this $560M cover?

Answer: At an estimated $3,000/year it would cover about 187,000 Georgetown Law School students.

We're trying to make the planet better, how does creating 200,000 new lawyers help the world?

Question: How many Georgetown Law School students would this $560M cover?

Answer: At an estimated $3,000/year it would cover about 187,000 Georgetown Law School students.

Of course, the easiest way to fix the problem would be to drop the employer health insurance tax credit

and increase the costs to people who have health insurance.

strike down the interstate barriers to health insurance(Oddly enough, a power the commerce clause was actually meant to have),

Take a look at this article

give a 3 year amnesty to move to a private health insurance plan with the health care providers unable to say no

It does not matter how long is given if people can not afford the coverage

force hospitals to itemize their bills and have price lists available for non-emergency care

So hospitals itemize care thet the general public can not afford. How does that help?

have the feds take care of the less than 10% of people who health insurance won't insure at all

What about the other people who can be insured but can not afford it? Sixteen percent of the US population does not have health insurance. Another point is that having health insurance does not mean it is adequate. Some healt insurance has such low caps that a major illness or accident can still be financially devistating.

This was the prevailing ideology leading up to the financial crisis, where drastic deregulation to get government "out of the way" paved the way to disaster.

Funny, and here I thought that the amended Community Reinvestment Act (as amended in 1991 and 1994, and heavily enforced by regulators beginning in 1994) forced banks to relax lending standards to such an extent that they had to find new and exciting (read: untested and dangerous) ways to get said loans off their books. I was under the impression that this began the rapidly snowballing practice of handing out loans to people who weren't the least bit qualified (from a strictly financial perspective) and that it was heavily encouraged by both President Clinton and (far moreso) by President George W. Bush via Housing and Urban Development.

Further, I kinda figured that several years of practically free money flowing from the quasi-government entity known as the Federal Reserve fueled all kinds of terrible investments (like a housing bubble?). And you know, I didn't think it was helpful that a pair of government-sponsored entities (who were under the direction of the US Congress, had the implicit backing of the Full Faith and Credit of the United States, and who've been taken into conservatorship by the US Federal government) kept prices and rates artificially low at great cost to the US taxpayer and who - together - account for about 60% of the US mortgage market. Doesn't that sort of thing usually spawn... a bubble?

Not really sure what led me to believe all of that stuff. Does the narrative even make sense? Congress changes an existing law and the President changes enforcement to pressure those who give mortgages to hand out more loans to the "economically disadvantaged" in their communities in the mid-1990s which causes lenders to put a ton of loans on their books that don't look very good? I mean, I guess the banks and such would already be lending to people who were qualified for loans; there's no reason not to, right? If you're qualified, the bank makes money through the life of the loan, you get a house, and everybody wins, yeah? So I suppose if Congress had to force banks to make a bunch of loans, it'd probably mean that those loans weren't so great. Now from what I know of banks, they've got to answer to the bean counters and stock holders and all sorts of other people who get fussy when the books start looking scary. I guess if that started to happen, "the government made me do it" probably wouldn't cut it for very long. So on the one side, you've got the government pressuring the lenders to create loans they wouldn't normally create, and on the other hand, you've got people who are like "hey, if you go out of business, I lose a lot of money, so don't do that!" After a little while of that and not seeing things get any better, I know I'd be looking for another way out. Which is interesting, because the US government invented a neat way to get loans off your books back in 1970 with what are called "Mortgage-backed securities" (courtesy of Ginnie Mae). More than half the mortgages in the US have been turned into those, (including $3 Trillion worth in 2003 alone in a $12 Trillion total market) so that's pretty neat.

Ok, so the lenders have a good way move the bad loans off their books, and by all accounts, they start doing just that. By 2002, President Bush was

Oh man, that planet money piece was really great! For those of you who haven't heard of it, it basically explains how lobbyists actually dodge congressmen calls because a congressman has to find something like $10k/day to stay elected. It also talks about how money is appropriated by the party and how what committee you stand on makes a huge difference. I think this is it http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-friday-podcast-a-former-lobbyist-tells-all (can't verify at work) it's a pretty bad ass story.

Not to defend NPR, but you maybe haven't checked your facts Tomhath. NPR gets more like 20% (not 2) of it's funding from the US government, but would survive if funding was killed. The "shell game" you mention isn't a good one since the cards are all face up on the table if you care to read them.

A simple but I believe accurate description of the funding mechanisms can be found here: http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/publicradiofinances.html If you doubt them, the financial papers for all of the publicly funded media outlets are available from each station and are often sent annually to subscription members to account for the money they earned and spent. If all media agencies were so transparent, we'd be in a better world.

Americans should be proud of this transparent book keeping, and I've followed the public stations for years because the main issue that drove all the comments on this page is very important to me. Democracy is a doomed experiment without independent media of all types playing its vital role in the checks and balances of civil society.

And Alexander was right - all media is biased. We just need fair labeling rules so that when you tune in - you know what you're getting. Fox is a perfect example of how not to do it - a giant black hole of private and corporate money - with brainwashing mantras they chant to try and convince you they are unbiased - a statement which is patently impossible. People fall for it when they hear their own fears echoed each day from attractive angry people and are drawin into the bubble shield echo chamber for the complete lack of challenge it presents to their preconceived notions.

If Fox News opened their books and showed their bank rollers, everyone would be rightly suspicious - just as we are with all the other agencies like RT, BBC, Al Jazeera, CT and yes - NPR,
To circle back to NPR - I think nothing would make it a better agency than to have state funding removed completely, and transition further into membership support models. (Even though NPR fights hard to say how important the federal funding is.) There is a huge lack in the world of news agencies with any interest in reporting news with MY bias in mind - a middle class hard working American. Let's cut the BS and screw the advertisers. I want news outlets to work for ME, not states or corporations, and I'm a willing contributor to pay for it. It's far more valuable than the Latte I drink each morning, and it costs less.

Soapbox mode = OFF
:)

Well not kool aid, but fine wines.

Or rather, normal wine with a fancy label and sold at a large markup.

Fancy names can fool wine geeks into paying more for a bottle.

The Volt isn't a blockbuster seller, but it isn't doing so terrible. They sell more Volts than Corvettes, for example. (I would imagine the margin on Corvettes is much better though).

Well, kind of.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/11/152511771/the-real-price-of-college

Colleges want to 1. Attract the best students and 2. Charge them as much as they can.

Colleges have been raising their headline price. They then look at the kids finances. If the kid has big grants then they don’t have to drop their tution as much.

Public Tuition seems to be rising due to budget cuts and privates seem not to rising in real dollars for most. Planet Money did a great segment on this, tuition sticker price has been rising, but real prices have been staying with inflation; again for private schools.

https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-price-of-college-tuition-in-1-graphic

And for anyone with a few minutes to spare, you can listen to the whole Planet Money podcast on this topic: (Link)

This is ridiculous, I feel like I have to post some obvious correction every time some republican politician opens their mouth about money these days:

https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-price-of-college-tuition-in-1-graphic

(Spoiler: tuition increases are not related to student loans)

Usually when I say stuff like this I try to keep it apolitical, but it's really gotten out of hand - republicans vilify every single thing that the government does nowadays (except the military, and state secrets, and domestic spying). Yes, Bloomberg is a republican politician (even if he's officially independent like Lieberman), and the WSJ is a republican mouthpiece just like every other Murdoch rag. I'll stop there, I don't want this to turn into some long rant, but come on: you can't use some twisted logic to turn lowering taxes into the solution for everything.

I was under the impression that "private contractors" had something to do with "shrinking genitalia." Which would also be somewhat effective.

Indeed.

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital
Benin alert over 'penis theft' panic
Journalist Tracks Rumors Of Penis Thievery

---
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
"When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." -- GK Chesterton

From what I see more than 100 million Americans experience chronic hunger:

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/14/152667325/pounding-away-at-americas-obesity-epidemic

From the article:

""[The] FDA cannot assure the safety and efficacy of products that are purchased outside of legitimate channels. This also means that we or the consumer cannot be sure that the products received are what the seller is claiming them to be, even if the seller says the products are 'approved drugs.'"

However, apparently they also cannot assure the safety and efficacy of products that are purchased inside of legitimate channels:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/04/150004423/more-fake-cancer-drugs-found-in-the-u-s

which sort of begs the question of the value of their rubber stamp on so-called legitimate channels.

-- Terry

I told you a dingo did eat my baby!

It's certainly not victimless: any merchant who doesn't have insurance is getting screwed by the fraudster, any merchant who does have insurance (because of all the credit card fraud) is getting screwed by the insurance company.

Your numbers are also off - good credit card numbers can go for $30 - $45 depending on the type of card and where it's from:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/06/16/137181702/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-the-credit-card-black-market

and the idea that a guy working in a restaurant would do this... Well, if he was very stupid then maybe. But he'd get caught in no time once this restaurant was identified as a common point of use between all these stolen cards.

Audio CD is not "sonically perfect". Actually they sound pretty shit compared to what ALAC and FLAC are capable of.

Except there is no recording available to the questioner of the original 24 studio recording for most music and "mastered for iTunes is lossy and yes, you can hear it (well, maybe not YOU)

From http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/02/24/147379760/what-mastered-for-itunes-really-means

If the implication there, that we haven't been treating our portable, compressed audio files with proper care, makes you think that Apple is finally moving toward a hi-def format, you'd be wrong. Instead, the company is asking bands and their labels to submit songs to the store that are encoded as AAC files directly from the original, 24-bit studio recordings.

In Apple's calculation, mastering a song or album "for iTunes" means that it'll sound better while remaining just as portable as the encoded files we're accustomed to packing by the thousands onto our phones and mobile devices.

The piece then goes on to say that "mastered for iTunes just means "given tools to make the 24 bit studio recording sound better when it's compressed into the standard apple ACC format . So it sounds "better" the way the Dolby button makes things "sound better", which is to say with a lot of artifacts added that some people find compelling . I leave that button "off" myself.

So until studios start saving the recordings to Apple's lossless format - which is NOT what "Mastered for iTunes" means -, the poster is going to have to be comparing 16 bit CDs to lossy formats.

I have sat in the studio while professional music was being performed and and recorded. Something is lost from the performance even in 24 bit. 24 bit does sound better than CDs but unless you have the master tapes to burn to FLAC, it's a moot point. Some bands are releasing true 24 bit recordings on their own. Most music is not available in the original 24 bit and re-recording it INTO 24 bit is not going to improve it.

ALAC is as good as FLAC sonically. I meant to say ACC and typed the wrong thing. My bad and I stand corrected.

I hope this thread helps the OP. To the many faces of AC who just can't resist being freaking nassssty over trifling things , well the cure for you is structural and in place already; that's what the 0 by your comment is there for...

The Susan J. Komen turned out to be a vanity charity, but Planned Parenthood actually delivers a surprisingly efficient operation

Aaaand here is evidence of someone who lets their political view color every aspect of their lives. The only reason you like Planned Parenthood and not Susan J Komen is because you chose the side that matches your political view when the two got in a fight. In reality, Susan J Komen does fine, and Planned Parenthood does well also.

The sad thing is, if you were Republican, you would have written the exact same comment, but switched the names of the two charities.

It is the only thing aside from violent revolution that limits government power over its citizens or citizens from using government power over each other.

You don't cotton to that whole "democracy" business? Voting's for suckers?

Look, governments are clearly collective entities. Certainly that's not all there is to it, but it's their collective nature that drives them towards efficiency. In other words, public accountability. You could view violent revolution as one part of that, but there are lessor revolutions. Electoral revolutions.

Businesses are competitive entities and the free market drives them towards efficiency. Everyone seems to know how that works, even though it's a more complicated process.

People like to moan about government waste, but for some reason businesses often get a pass. I tend to think the opposite, because my own experience tells me that governmental organizations (at least outside of the military) tend to run on a shoestring, but I have no way to quantitatively compare government inefficiency to private inefficiency.

However, when you say that competition between collective entities drives efficiency, that rings false. For one thing, collectives are also generally monopolies. That's how they work and that's fine for collectives - monopoly status is a benefit, not a danger, when you're not relying on competition. Introducing competition means losing that benefit and that means redundancy (not the good kind of redundancy, the inefficient kind of redundancy). It also means risk, which is something that governments are not supposed to be about. Example of government risk taking:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/23/149058391/trying-to-save-a-broke-city

The city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania realized that they needed a trash incinerator. The collective thing to do would have been to go to neighboring cities or perhaps to the county and ask them to contribute to an incinerator which they would all share. They would also share in any added costs if something went wrong with the plan. Instead, Harrisburg decided to fund the whole thing themselves in the hope of generating profit. For a business this kind of profit-seeking would have been fine, it would just be a failed business. For Harrisburg this has meant severe cutbacks to the police force, fire department, pensions, etc. It will probably lead to new taxes, though I haven't heard anything about that.

I'm rambling now. The point is that when you confuse your motives you wind up with a mess.

The burden of evidence is on the person making a claim, not on the reader of said claim.

If it were difficult to find this information then you would have a point, but it isn't. If you search google for "gates foundation criticism" then odds are that above link will turn up in the top 10, and in fact 40-50% (depending on how you count) of the links are actually from credible sources like The Guardian and The Seattle Times. As it is, you are just fucking lazy, and you want some basis on which to attack the comment in order to discredit it. You don't actually want to see the mounting criiticism against the foundation, such as that many [of the Gates' Foundation's] partners said the foundation didn't understand their goals, was inconsistent in its communications and often unresponsive, or that Bill, Melinda and Microsoft maintain pharmaceutical patent investments, tobacco investments, investments in alcoholic beverages, petroleum investments, investments in experimental and controversial crops, or that grant making by the Gates Foundation seems to be largely managed through an informal system of personal networks and relationships rather than by a more transparent process based on independent and technical peer review. You'd rather remain blissfully ignorant because the more you know, the more defensive bullshit you have to invent to support your untenable position.

That's right. Defect from the country that provided you with outstanding developers who were the end product of the best k-12 (and 12- 16 AND into adulthood) educational systems in the world

http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3343,en_2649_201185_39700732_1_1_1_1,00.html

and who were willing to work for start-up wages and take risks because they weren't burdened with student loan debt:

From Wikipedia:

The Finnish education system is an egalitarian system, with no tuition fees and with free meals served to full-time students.

The present Finnish education system consists of well-funded and carefully thought out daycare programs (for babies and toddlers) and a one-year "pre-school" (or kindergarten for six-year olds); a nine-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (starting at age seven and ending at the age of sixteen); post-compulsory secondary general academic and vocational education; higher education (University and Polytechnical); and adult (lifelong, continuing) education.

The Nordic strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education.[1]

Part of the strategy has been to spread the school network so that pupils have a school near their homes whenever possible or, if this is not feasible, e.g. in rural areas, to provide free transportation to more widely dispersed schools. Inclusive special education within the classroom and instructional efforts to minimize low achievement are also typical of Nordic educational systems.[1]

Yes defect from that system you benefited from so you can save a measly 12.5% on taxes :

FTA:

The corporation tax rate in Finland is 24.5 per cent, while Ireland's rate is 12.5 per cent.

Yes do defect . Because that's coke n' whore money you could be putting up your fucking nose instead of giving it to the most effective and civic minded governments the world has ever known and supporting one of the most egalitarian societies the world has ever achieved. .

In truth, this happens all to time to Finland . Sports stars, recording stars etc etc defect to a low taxation country. They know about it and build in an allowance for it. They STILL like their society better , and as far as the loss of "talent" goes, they know how to print that shit on demand:

"Finland has reached number 1 or number 2, with very high rankings in reading literacy, mathematics and science. If one could make a calculation of the total, comparing different fields, Finland would be number 1. The country received very high marks in this international comparison of students," Finnish Ambassador to Thailand Sirpa Maenpaa told The Nation recently.

"Furthermore, the results that come from Finland are uniform. They do not come from some top students, but from the performance of all of the students," she said.

from:

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/09/28/national/national_30113177.php

For anyone interested in how the Scandinavians think about taxes, this is a great listen from Planet Money:

Quotable quote- an incredulous interviewer asks a woman "would you like your taxes to be even higher??" to which she replies "...mmmm .. what will I get for my money?"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/01/podcast_tax_me_please.html

Very little of NPR funding comes from the government.
http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/publicradiofinances.html
As you can see, it's actually supported by individuals donations and corporate sponsorship. And as someone who often takes issue with many ideas presented by self-ascribed progressives and liberals on /., I think I can fairly say that I find NPR to be among the most balanced and honest media organizations.

The cost of higher education is in a different universe from where it was just ten years ago.

This is mostly a myth. The marginal cost has gone way up but fewer and fewer students actually pay full price. The net cost of public schools (since we're talking about a cost-conscious consumer) has gone up by about 25% over the last 15 years after accounting for inflation.

Your family paid for your education. Not exactly new - Bush would have been a community college dropout without his daddy's money. Not everyone has a rich-assed dad though.

My parents helped with room and board; not tuition. They weren't especially wealthy. This strikes me as quite reasonable. Had I lacked their support I'd have either gone to a school that offered to pay room and board or I'd have taken out loans. The grand total would have been about $20k for four years (ending in 1997).

And how well are you going to be able to compete when you have to pay $400 a month on your student loans - when the cheap import labor has no such costs to deal with?

How does having a $400/mo loan payment affect my ability to compete in the job market? If I had that kind of obligation I'd live more frugally than I might otherwise. My need to live frugally would have no bearing on my ability to get hired and perform well in a job.

California public unis now cost more than Ivy Leage schools.

You make an excellent argument for not attending a public university in California.

You don't know there's a reason that so many call centers are located in India, or that people can't learn a second language? Or that if only 1% of Chinese students learn fluent English and want to work in America, that equates to over 10 million competitors for American jobs?

We're not talking about call centers in India. We're talking about STEM jobs in the U.S. There are tons of fluent Chinese and Indian speakers of English. Most, while fluent, still can't communicate as well as native speakers. I know because I work with them and interview them.

[We're competing with them regardless of where they are.] No. We're not.

For the kinds of positions I'm talking about, yes we are. People can start companies here or they can start them "there", where "there" is "the rest of the world". The more smart people we have "here" the more likely it is that new enterprises will start "here" rather than "there".

If I'm good a math and want to teach it in high school, I actually don't have to compete with math grads from Bangladesh. Same for medical doctors or engineers. Your brilliant proposal would take care of that, though.

Here's where the fact that this isn't zero sum comes into play. Only some percentage of immigrants will be math teachers. Only some percentage will be doctors. They'll be mixed in with engineers, developers, scientists, businessmen, etc. These guys and gals will have kids. That means more teaching jobs. More trips to the doctor. Etc. Hell, more eating out at restaurants, more buying crap at the mall, etc. The U.S. has the opportunity to skim off a good chunk of these countries' very best and brightest. It's basically reverse brain drain. It blows my mind that you can't see how it would be beneficial to integrate them into the U.S. citizenry.

Good time to cancel the special parking permits for Nobel Prize winners

  * http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/10/04/new-nobel-winner-gets-real-prize-a-special-parking-permit/
  * http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113883274

"Nobel Prize winner Saul Perlmutter joked that the “only reason to win a Nobel Prize” was to receive the famous Nobel laureate (NL) parking permit, reserved for laureates on the Berkeley campus."

The Chinese currency is currently, artificially, kept very low. It has been for a very long while. NPR Report from 2006 on Yaun manipulation

If the Yaun were more influenced by the market like the rest of the world, it would be balancing much quicker. The issue has very little to do with what US workers are willing to work for and more to do with what corporations are willing to pay. With the current unemployment rates in the US, you could stock a factory with minimum wage, skilled laborers, without an issue. But that still can't compete on a resource cost level with a stifled Yaun.

Even so, as skilled production work moves to China, wages continue to increase due to labor shortages. NY Times article on the wage and labor issue. It is starting to even out, and we'll likely see more jobs returning to US shores as an equilibrium as reached.

TomTom has excellent customer service. Google has none, and can lead to numerous deaths:
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/137646147/the-gps-a-fatally-misleading-travel-companion

OpenStreetMap suffers for the same reason, customer service is self serve. That's actually a step above Google.
Joseph Elwell.

Parent is correct. However, you don't have to work exclusively for U.S. companies that offshore labor. Many U.S. companies are looking to expand to the Chinese market, and want native English speakers on the ground in China.(Specifically automotive companies) Unfortunately, not many Americans are keen to move to China.

This may be a valuable opportunity if you are willing to reinvent yourself.

To preempt the citation-craving masses:
Encyclopedia
News
Ruling

Anyone familiar with what is going on knows that no hacking was involved. The State Department is paying people to post to the web sites in question to counter the Al-Qaeda propaganda.

Even NPR was smart enough to blatantly state this was not hacking. Why is slashdot so out of touch with such a basic technology story?

It is a matter of record and fact: The US kills more innocent civilians in Yemen - or anywhere else, for that matter - than do any alleged 'al-qaeda' affiliates.

Jeremy Scahill, National Security reporter for The Nation:

"Saleh essentially made an agreement with the Obama administration to get an increase in his counterterrorism funding in return for allowing the United States to conduct various operations of its own, unilaterally. And so, effectively, counterterrorism funding for his regime became like crack cocaine. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. His government was extremely corrupt. This was their cash cow, claiming that they were fighting terrorism.

And so what you've seen over the past 10, 12 years of history between the United States and Yemen is Ali Abdullah Saleh, when it was convenient for him, allowing the al-Qaida threat to flare up, looking the other way when 23 al-Qaida people broke out of the prison that they were supposed to be held in, actually allowing weapons to be smuggled into al-Qaida areas so that they would attack a police station, and then coming back to the United States and saying, oh, we really need more funding to go and fight these terrorists."

" the United States has sort of outsourced its intelligence operations in Yemen to Saudi Arabia and Yemen's security forces. And we've seen repeatedly over the past 10 years the Saudis and the Yemenis manipulate events regarding al-Qaida within Yemen to try to curry favor with the United States or to get more funding.

And so I just would sort of reserve commentary, as a reporter who's covered Yemen extensively and been there, on going too far down the line of guessing who this agent was, who he was working for, and what he actually did, because I've seen it too many times where someone's getting played, or someone's getting spun."

"Colleagues of mine who are in the south of Yemen right now and are on really the front lines of this drone war, my friend Iona Craig, who's a great reporter for the Times of London, was just saying to me that she met civilians who were severely burned from the drone strikes and that one civilian that she talked to said there were 26 people killed in the strike that he survived and was severely burned in."

"the U.S. bombed this village and killed 46 people, and we know the names of all of the people that were killed. I went there myself. I interviewed a woman who lost her entire family. An old man, 17 of those 46 people that were killed were members of his family. There were five pregnant women among the dead."

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152854335/why-the-u-s-is-aggressively-targeting-yemen

People are 'cutting the cord' at a high rate. A catastrophic fall-off in viewership is occurring, which is why Hollywood has prodded Genachowski into action.

Give it 24-36 months and the business model will be forced to change. People who dropped cable for Internet streaming aren't going to be forced back into huge cable bills even if they could afford it.

The cable companies and content owners are feeling the 'new reality' pinch their subscription revenue and they don't like it. Most won't adapt; big institutions rarely do. Those few that do will win and that will be the new paradigm.

actually, some research on shoplifting has shown that the vast majority of shoplifters can afford the items that they steal. In fact, its not uncommon at all for white middle class adults to engage in shoplifting, often citing the excitement of it as one of their motivators.

The "National Association for Shoplifting Prevention" says that studies have found depression to be very common amongst shoplifters (http://www.shopliftingprevention.org/whatnaspoffers/nrc.htm).

another interesting article is here: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137627302/sticky-fingers-hidden-hams-a-shoplifting-history

I don't know if there's any practical way to determine that.

First, such a function would definitely not be linear, given the variety of coastlines. Places that have flat sandy beaches would see a greater increase in local surface area, while places with coastal cliffs would see a negligible increase.

Second, it's entirely possible that an increase in the sea level of 10 meters could increase the surface area of the ocean by a tenth of a percent (350,000 square kilometers, or approximately the area of Germany or Montana), but possibly a far smaller percentage. However, it is estimated that about a tenth of the world's population lives under 10 meters elevation.

I fully admit that this is largely guesswork. Most is based on eye-balling maps such as this:

http://merkel.zoneo.net/Topo/Applet/appletTopo.php?lang=en&file=mondeB

And the estimate of populations in low elevation coastal zones comes from here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9162438