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His point is that there is no evidences that any of t is getting into the water table.

Well, there have been cases where the stuff that is taken out does find its way into the drinking water but the common argument is that it was mishandled. The way I see this, in a very unscientific way, is that we're doing something similar to when we dumped mountains of garbage into the Pacific Ocean because, hey let's face it, there's nothing out there and nobody's ever going to be able to find it, right? And now we just sit there and stare at it wondering if anyone's going to do anything about it saying stupid shit like "Well, it doesn't matter if we stop, Japan will keep dumping out there."

And, you know, this fracking stuff just sounds like more of the same mentality and I feel like it could bite our ass in the future when all of Pennsylvania has pockets of water underneath it that, by themselves pose no risk but added up eventually cause us some discomfort. And yet, all the comments on Slashdot assure me I'm just a fear monger so what are you to do? People seem to get upset when I try to place the burden of proof that this will not harm us in anyway on the companies that are going to make billions of dollars off it and the people that still own mineral rights are telling me to shut the hell up at all costs. These natural gas companies sound like really unsavory types.

DO you even know what chemicals are in there?

Now that's a funny question if you're in PA (and I don't mean "ha-ha" funny).

McDonalds is definitely cheaper per Calorie.

(I think!)

Hell, Tacobell has a 550 calories per dollar in their beef burrito. (IIRC).

That would be like 10 oz of chicken.

which is pretty calorie dense for a home processed food. Or about 7 apples, which still costs more.

SO, depends on how you determine costs. If you count everything as calories in and calories out, and want to see the costs per calorie, a lot of fast food / canned and processed food, is a much better deal for caloric volume.

If you put in the cost of personal labor, it is _FAR_ cheaper.

Imagine you were, yourself, a food industry worker making 7.50 an hour. You just got your food from your local CSA farm share, and you cooked up (time to cook 1.5 hours), you just spent 11.25 dollars of your life cooking for food that in itself was more expensive.

I spent 1 hour last night with my GF making food, we make far far more than minimum wage, and it took 2 people. So lets pretend our time is worth a dollar a minute (combined, it is worth more but this an example), that would be 60 bucks of "effort" put in.

Etc.... etc... Even if you just take our income and divide by 3 (assuming we work 8 hours a day, but spread it out over 24 hours so that even sleeping itself would "cost" money) it would still imply 20 dollars an hour to make that food.

Far more than driving through McDonalds parking lot or Taco bell and getting the same calories that way.

It all depends on how you look at this stuff.

Take a look at this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5360768

Where a guy determines the true cost of a tomato he gardened to be 64 dollars a tomato.

Very Very expensive.

If you're perhaps wondering about how this works out for smaller businesses, NPR built an anecdote out of a small locally owned pizza joint in New Orleans trying their hand at targeted social advertising. For $240 they doubled their Facebook fans (at the cost of nearly $1 per 'like') and weren't so sure they'd see the return on that money after asking customers one evening where they heard about Pizza Delicious.

Aha, so what we should do is make the vote machine pay out a $100 bill with each vote receipt. That will ensure that they are designed and built right and it will cause all elligible voters to go and vote.

Including up to 1.8 million dead people, and 24 million invalid/inaccurate registrations.

It also likely means whoever's in first spot on the ballot gets elected, since the majority of voters (real and fake/invalid) don't care. Though this can be mitigated by the e-voting machine randomizing the order of candidates on-screen.

Just the thought of my weight on a woman being "normal" is ridiculous.

It's not the weight you need to worry about, it's the body fat content.

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/library/blbodyfatcharts.htm

There's other factors, such as heart health. There's also mental health factors that tie in to an overall well-being. BMI is simply wrong.

Take a look through this gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/ ... You might be surprised at some of the women who come up as "overweight" "obese" or "morbidly obese" according to BMI.

And say what you will, I frankly don't care. My BMI puts me in the "obese" category. My body fat percentage, along with my doctor, say my weight is exactly where it should be, and that I'm quite healthy. My resting heart rate is actually slightly bradycardic depending on my mood and how much sleep I got (it's been measured between 52-60bpm), and I run a 10k 3x a week as part of my normal training regimen. I don't get winded going up the stairs to work, either, and take the 7th floor walk-up daily. Yup. That sure sounds like somebody who's obese to me. Yay 200 year old kluge, you're absolutely correct about your estimation of my health!

Tax-free? We have a progressive income tax system. The top 10% of earners paid 70 percent of income taxes last year.

From NPR, not Fox News or talk radio:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/15/150632993/the-tax-man-cometh-but-for-whom

...Is sort of like Starbucks pledging to stop using the red bug dye. Some people will say it's responsible of them, but I really don't give a rat's ass.

only that this study was far from conclusive.

Fine, this study was not conclusive. How about we add in this study (2008), the same comment from the Mayo Clinic, this study (2012) or this one (2012).

They all say the same thing: getting dirty as a kid and growing up in a rural environment reduces ones vulnerabilities to infections and afflictions. It's called the hygiene hypothesis and makes perfect sense when the evidence is examined.

People, particularly kids, who grow in more sterile environments (constantly using hand sanitizers, over using antibiotics, keeping everything spotless) on the whole, have more allergies and other issues than those who don't go OCD or, if you prefer, Monk.

Not sure how much more evidence you need when it's staring you in the face.

Where did they break the law with the wifi thing? Hint: they didn't.

Britain, for one.

Let's not forget Google's willful violation of US law to advertise illegal drugs in the US to US consumers, which they settled with the DOJ recently.

Also, perjury is generally considered to be an actionable offense. You may have heard EU regulators are thinking of reopening the investigation into Google over the wifi snooping they did, which they said were more or less the actions of a single rogue engineer - except it turns out was known, reported, and coordinated inside the company. Courts generally frown on people lying to them.

I know this comes as a horrible blow to the ego boost you must get from identifying yourself so strongly with Google, but Google has done plenty of shady and downright illegal shit. Get your nose out of their asshole, there's a whole world out here that doesn't smell like shit.

I sincerely doubt there aren't any Republicans to be found in big cities

In my recent primary in Philly, there were no Republicans on the ballot for certain races. The situation was the same when I lived in NYC. Those are the two biggest cities on the east coast.

Personally, I think "us vs. them" mentality pushed by right wing talk radio and Fox News that has overwhelmed the old Republican party establishment is reponsible.

That's only half of it - you also have MoveOn.org and HuffingtonPost.com, for instance.

If vote fraud is required to win then that's ok because they're just making sure that things come out according to God's plan anyway.

Now you are demonizing people, which is the behavior I was hoping you would reconsider. I know a fair number of people who are all over the whole conservative principles you speak of, but would be horrified at the idea of using voting fraud. They are a pain in the ass for a lot of reasons, but in general honesty is not one of them. In no way does the whole ultra religious thing lead to voting fraud.

Incidentally, the most religious people that I personally know are black Democrats. And yes, they literally believe that God is on their side. And no, they are not out committing voting fraud.

They allow people like Blackwell to get away with obvious vote suppression tactics because despite they supposed disbelief in big government they have an almost pathological need to trust conservative leaders.

Again, Blackwell is not the only player here. People with Republican voter registration were quite literally chased out of Philly voting booths just a few years back. YouTube is full of stuff like this. And while I think the incident was way overblown, we had shenanigans like this very recently. Our Republicans are at it, too. We just don't have as many of those. Note that it doesn't take many people to carry out these tactics. I think the overwhelming majority of members of both parties are honestly trying to do the right thing. The Black Panther incident was a handful of men. The flyers were probably printed and distributed by one or two guys. The incident in the first YouTube video could have been a single poll worker. There is no sense in demonizing the members of a party due to these actions - but you can fault them for defending them.

The Black Panther case is extremely informative from a political standpoint, because while it should be unanimously condemned, Republicans imply that it is typical when it is an anomaly and Democrats deflect and start accusing Republicans of race-baiting and such. Both points of view are completely off-base. A man standing in front of a polling place holding a night stick should absolutely be universally condemned. At the same time, it was an isolated incident and the importance of it should not be used as a political weapon. Where is that point of view reflected in our political discourse?

I don't disagree with the possibility that big energy and big auto would want to put out propaganda, but in this case, it is not in their interest to do so. Anything that reduces demand for fossil energy and cars increases the demand for alternatives. Which they also produce.

Yeah, but what are the profit margins? If I remember right, oil in Saudi Arabia costs about a few dollars per barrel to drill out of the ground, but it sells for over $100 a barrel on the open market. It's almost like free money.

"When in December 2008, 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi how much it cost Saudi Arabia to produce one barrel of oil, he didn't blink: "Probably less than $2 to produce a barrel." If it costs only $2 to produce a barrel of oil, then why do we pay over $105 a barrel?"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/02/149684373/the-real-reason-gas-costs-4-a-gallon

If you're holding the rights to drill for oil in some location, that's valuable. If oil gets replaced by something else that valuable piece of paper becomes a lot less valuable.

So, no, it's often very much in the oil companies interests to keep everyone on oil.

It isn't unusual. Those are similar to the arguments that cities in the US use for hosting the super bowl and they usually don't turn out as well for the cities as they had hoped. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/02/03/146363292/the-friday-podcast-is-hosting-the-super-bowl-worth-it

FRAUD ALERT: It was not a mathematical model that caused the problem. It was fraud. Financial organizations convinced investors that they had a "mathematical model" so that they could steal. The theft was ENTIRELY deliberate, as is described in detail in the 1997 book F.I.A.S.C.O.: Blood in the Water on Wall Street, by Frank Partnoy. Somehow the issues were kept quiet for 11 more years until the theft could be completed in the 2008 financial crash. Traders called their work "ripping the client's face off" .

There are other editions of the book, such as this one published in 1999, Fiasco: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader, and a 2009 I-told-you-so edition of the original name.

Nothing has been done to reform the extremely corrupt financial system in the United States. No one in the SEC, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the government organization that is supposed to police financial fraud, was prosecuted, even though the agency knew of the abuses. See the February 17, 2009 show Frontline: Inside the Meltdown.

Even though the U.S. dollar is experiencing rampant inflation in 2012, U.S. banks give less than 1% interest on savings. Those who would like to invest can't because the system is so corrupt it cannot be trusted. Corporations hold unprecedented amounts of cash. See, for example, the October 7, 2010 Washington Post article, U.S. companies buy back stock in droves as they hold record levels of cash.

F.I.A.S.C.O. stands for "Fixed Income Annual Sporting Clays Outing" (See page 100 of the 2009 edition.), held at a shooting range called "Sandanona, a club in upstate New York" (Page 97 of the 2009 edition). Traders would go there to shoot guns. The idea was to encourage their taste for violence so that they would be even more financially violent toward the customer.

Perhaps the April 27, 2012 BBC article, Black-Scholes: The maths formula linked to the financial crash referenced in this Slashdot story was influenced by public relations agencies trying to get people to believe that the crash was caused by errors in mathematical thinking, and not by fraud, so that the financial industry can continue stealing.

It would be helpful if Slashdot editors signed a statement about each story saying that they know of no conflict of interest, and no one was paid to run the story.

Worth pointing out that the same applies to vegetables and fruits. Winter tomatoes grown in the sandy soils of Florida can't really be compared nutritionally to what someone can get out of their own garden.

Ultimately, it's all about the "ingredients". That's long been considered a truism for chefs in the kitchen as it is for someone involved in raising animals. That this is routinely overlooked, glossed over or otherwise dismissed in the pursuit of economic interests and efficiencies is both funny and tragic. Funny in the sense of "What the hell did you expect?", and tragic in the sense of engaging in (and wasting time and effort with) tortured discussions of good/bad ideas and practices which, ultimately, are workaround to workarounds.

After all, the Thames estuary can't be hurt by a few anthropogenic earthquakes, now? Can it?

I'd be far more worried about the water laced with sand and chemicals that is shot down into the Earth to release this gas from the shale. They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it? And in some US states, it appears that when people think they are affected by it the company responsible doesn't have to tell them what their area was exposed to. It's well known that it contaminates water supply but greed can overpower any environmental problems. Luckily we should be able to watch Pennsylvania screw up their own water and hopefully other states will take a different approach. I wonder how many laws and regulations UKELA will let slide in order for England to "catapult into the top ranks of global producers."

hate to break it to you but ALL the offshore gas mentioned is in Scottish territorial waters and we'll be taking them with us after the 2014 Independence referendum win ;)

I'd be far more worried about the water laced with sand and chemicals that is shot down into the Earth to release this gas from the shale. They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it?

First, let me put out there that I Am A Frac Engineer (IAAFE), so take what I am about to say for what that's worth...

Sand (or other suitable grain material, known as "proppant") is pumped into a hydrocarbon-bearing formation to keep induced fractures propped open after frac operations have finished, so that such fractures do not close up (negating the effects of creating the fractures in the first place). Sand keeps that "highway" open from the fracture network in the formation to the wellbore, so that oil and gas can freely flow to the production tubulars and up to the surface. I assure you that the intention, by design, is to *keep* the sand in the formation, not "suck it back up".

The best frac fluid by far (for optimum oil and gas production) is plain freshwater with no additives whatsoever. However, in the real world various additives are necessary to make fracturing possible: anti-clay swelling agents (NaCl, KCl) are needed to keep clays in the formation rock from swelling up and closing up pore throats, acrylamide polymers are needed to reduce the pipe friction of water at fracturing rates so that surface pressures are minimized, surfactants are used to reduce the surface tension of the water so that the water does not block up the pores and fissures by capillary effects, guar gum is used to gel up the water so that sands don't settle out of the water too soon (causing the sand to bridge off and block flow), etc. The total concentration of chemical additives used in the frac fluid usually does not exceed 0.5% by volume, and at those concentrations are relatively benign.

Frac fluids are flowed back naturally to surface, not "sucked up". The reason they are flowed back is that, well, you can't immediately tie the well to a sales line and start selling it until the produced fluids meet a certain quality. The first fluids that flow back out are the last you put in (LIFO), so by extension the frac fluid would be the first fluids back to surface (and they aren't worth anything to any gas pipeline companies or oil refiners), so they must be stored in a tank and hauled off to wherever it goes (either disposed of in a permitted waste disposal well, or recycled for other frac jobs).

It's well known that it contaminates water supply but greed can overpower any environmental problems.

No, it is not a well-known fact. It is presumed in some cases, but not proven. The link you cited has many other factors that have contributed to water contamination, including the shallowness of the hydrocarbon-bearing formation, and the fact that surface retention pits were largely unregulated for a certain period of time. Surface pollution *is* well known to cause water contamination. Engineers and geologists also know that if your hydrocarbon-bearing formation is within a few hundred feet of a water table, that hydraulically-induced fractures *can* propagate into them. There are a few scientific methods for measuring hydraulically-induced fracture growth, which have been utilized in every active shale play in the United States.

They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it?

Given that it is pumped into oil/gas-carrying rock, it will not seep into the water table. If it could, the oil or gas would be long gone. The problem is that you must pump some of it out to get acces to the oil or gas, and even if it was pure water you pumped down, the water coming up has been in contact with oil and is not clean. With horizontal drilling, you end up with quite a lot of dirty water, and no good way to get rid of it. Another problem is the casing of the pipes going down. It seems to be hard to make sure it is done properly, and if it isn't, you risk the pipe breaking and the fracking fluid running out. As the pipes are necessarily drilled through the aquifer, this is clearly problematic.

It's well known that it contaminates water supply

We have established it in one case with quite a special geologic profile (the fracking happened much closer to the surface than normal). That is a far cry from it being an established, general problem. It is cause for concern, especially for shallow fracking, but I think the two problems I mentioned first are more acute.

After all, the Thames estuary can't be hurt by a few anthropogenic earthquakes, now? Can it?

I'd be far more worried about the water laced with sand and chemicals that is shot down into the Earth to release this gas from the shale. They can't leave it down there for fear of it seeping into the water table and when they suck it up, what do they do with it? And in some US states, it appears that when people think they are affected by it the company responsible doesn't have to tell them what their area was exposed to. It's well known that it contaminates water supply but greed can overpower any environmental problems. Luckily we should be able to watch Pennsylvania screw up their own water and hopefully other states will take a different approach.

I wonder how many laws and regulations UKELA will let slide in order for England to "catapult into the top ranks of global producers."

He's actually done a number of programs for NPR too . . . which as you might imagine don't work well with miming.

for example this piece on magic and trickery.

-GIH

Reference: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/31/146096540/i-wanted-to-live-new-depression-drugs-offer-hope-for-toughest-cases
(I'd post this as a /. article, but it's a bit old.)

YMBNH, that's downright fresh by /. standards. By all means, submit it.

There are a few citations, here's one from Time and another from NPR saying that about a third of women in the armed forces are raped during their time in the service. It's not really surprising when you consider that you take a group of men, teach them to dehumanise people and that force is a valid way of solving disagreements...

Back in the Kyoto talks, we were TOLD that if no action was taken, then the point of no return was something like 2007. Well? Based on that "science", nothing we do can help anyway.

We get predictions like that all the time. If there's anything we learned from the climategate emails, it's that a lot of the scientists working on this problem are not working in good faith.

The solution, I think, is to work on things that will help us anyway, even if AGW turns out to not be a problem. For example, improving electric car technology will be good for America, whether AGW is a big ball of hype, or whether it's real. Same with fusion electricity. We can work on those things.

Why is there a flurry of general interest news on a technical news web site? N. Korea nuke tests, Treyvon Martin shooting, Rick Santorum articles. Can we get back to posting articles about technical issues, please? We can get general interest news anywhere. News and discussion about technical items and open source software and hardware is harder to come by, which is why I come here. It's what makes Slashdot appealing. If you take that away then you take away the reason to come here over, say, NPR's web site.

North Korea?

Yours In Beijing,
K. Trout, C.T.O.

Well, not learning so much as memorizing. The students memorize VAST amounts of information to pass all kinds of tests, but they don't really spend time on logic, analysis, teamwork, and critical thinking, but rather memorizing things others have done and doing the same thing.

I never had health problems when I was traveling in Eastern or Western Europe but I'm sure their hospitals have emergency rooms and I'm pretty sure they won't turn you away if you have a problem. Especially if you're a citizen of a country that has socialized medicine.

Steve Ryan, a lawyer for the tax-preparation industry who negotiated a deal that has the IRS promising not to set up its own Web portal for e-filing, says his argument was simple. "When the government becomes my competitor," Ryan says, "then I have every right to run an ad that says 'Big Brother is watching your keystrokes.'"

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9112083 I nearly choked when I read that. "Big Brother is watching my keystrokes"?! WTF? Of course they are, that's the point. They're not just watching, they're recording every value I enter into the form, so they can keep it in a file with my name, address, and social security number on it, and then use against me in a court of law! They get the exact same information if I use TurboTax, the only difference is TurboTax gets to watch my keystrokes, too, and then charge me for the privilege.

I think you missed my past tense usage. In the past, the amount of income tax you paid was public. Your right that today it’s private.

I thought that this data was still published when the income tax was reintroduced in the 1940s. I am not so sure about that. On the other hand, when the Income Tax was first introduced in the in 1860’s is was public – just like property tax. NPR’s plant money had a nice little story on this.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/23/149058446/from-abe-lincoln-to-donald-duck-history-of-the-income-tax

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/20/145518102/shop-talk-gingrichs-moral-fiber-mens-obesity
5:08 mark

The roads provide for commerce as well. Trust me, every dollar sunk into infrastructure like that is returned multiple times in increased tax revenue.

The point he was making was that money spent on infrastructure could just as easily be going to railroads or the like, but instead it all gets spent on cars.

Regarding the cost of oil, the world is significantly different than it was 11 years ago - the high cost of oil is thanks to the Arab Spring. The OPEC countries (primarily Saudi Arabia) need money to keep their citizens from revolting. Simple as that. I've even got a reference for you:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/02/149684373/the-real-reason-gas-costs-4-a-gallon

As for how much gas _should_ cost: frankly, it's still too cheap. It's my opinion that commodities should be taxed when they themselves, through use, cost taxpayer dollars. In other words, gas needs to be taxed at a rate which will offset the environmental damage that's done by using it. This is true regardless of the cost of crude oil.

I'm no expert, but I think you're using numbers for the member stations instead of NPR itself. NPR doesn't seem to get much directly from the government. It does get programming fees from the member stations, so a portion of their direct funding does end up at NPR.

http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/publicradiofinances.html

My university had a radio station and there were certainly educational reasons for it. Though it wasn't buying programming from NPR, I don't see anything wrong with that. How many financial transactions must occur before that dollar is not seen as funding something?

Writing off donations is not special to NPR. I'd be glad to get rid of those tax loopholes, but that's not usually what people mean when they say funding.

Being tax exempt, again, is not special to NPR. And since they don't generally run a profit, 34% of zero would be zero anyway. Or if they do have a small profit, that seems to get invested (I see 1% of NPR's income is from investments) until it's needed, not paid out to the owners.

http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/publicradiofinances.html
There is a difference between being a government-funded program and receiving a portion of your finances from government agencies.

I recall the government-funded NPR ...

I recall the government-funded NPR recently fired a black reporter after he made a guest appearance on FOX and said some things NPR did not like. So to answer your question: Yes.

The ideal would be no censorship but of course that doesn't apply to private organizations. They censor things all the time.

Honestly, SHUT UP about "government-funded" already. Combined federal, state and local gov't contributions make up about 5.8% according to their latest figures. The vast majority of their funding comes from individuals, businesses, and universities (amongst others). Your phrasing seems to suggest you think that gov't funding is holding the purse strings... puh-leeze. Would you also say Dunkin' Donuts gov't funded? Or would that be a deliberate misrepresentation of the complete body of facts?

That's like saying the Somali pirates aren't pirates because there's nothing in their culture that makes it wrong. There shouldn't have to be laws for people not to steal, and people who steal are thieves whether there's a law saying so or not.

Laws are dependent on culture. Here in Germany we have a law that explicitly makes it a felony to deny the Holocaust. We also have laws (and would be willing to put up more if loopholes arose) that require services like Google StreetView to erase or blur out individually identifiable information - faces, number plates and, upon request from the owner, even whole buildings - from photographs. Both examples are rooted in our nation's history. Our neighbours may very well shake their heads over our "silly" laws. And we would not force our regulations on them. But we expect everyone to respect those laws when they are in or deal with our country.

So if China does not have a notion of legally guaranteed monopolies on ideas it is up to them and no-one else to decide whether copying a film or album or software constitutes thievery. And believe me, Chinese culture does have quite a good idea of what constitutes theft and how to punish people for it. You may remember the case of Wu Ying?

But parasites can't be pinned on Humans so it's no worth mentioning.

I think there's some irony there, but he's not too far off. Appears there's a place for physics/engineers in the financial sector. Not sure how big the market is, but the student whose fluid dynamics code we used went to work on Wall Street. Your mileage may vary, but it also looks to me like there are more satisfying lives than the life of an academic.

Crap. Here we go...

So I spent the last five years in two different grad programs and will soon be leaving with... an M.S... They were decent/very good programs and I was plenty smart, but spent most of ages 22-27 almost completely miserable for it. In short, I went because I was smart, capable, and loved the material, and I payed a pretty big price for it. It's a great thing if you can find a field that piques your curiosity like that, but I'd call it a necessary rather than sufficient condition for success in grad school. I like to get lost in equations and algorithms, and it just didn't dawn on me that I'd have to make such a desperate attempt to flaunt it and establish a name for myself. I don't have a big enough ego to think that the world revolves around my research topic much less me, and as silly as it sounds, I found myself sitting through presentations much more interested in the personality of the presenter than the content. Grown men (yes, usually men) spending their whole lives analyzing a particular wave mode? Are they passionate about it because it's interesting or because they're desperately clinging to something they can get funding for? It's a mind trip if you really sit there and analyze it. And the isolation. Hell. When I was most productive, it wasn't at all unusual for me to go three or four days without speaking to anyone. Probably wouldn't be so bad if you're of the female type. In the end, I decided that although nothing would technically prevent me from being a scientist and a good person, as stressed out, overworked, and miserable as I already was, and with no end in sight, the risk was just too great.

Sorry for the pessimism. I'll cut myself off there and refer you to a few sources I've found helpful:

worstprofessorever.com/
Former classics professor, now web developer/writer. Pretty awesome person. No longer an academic. You read that correctly. Not an academic. Awesome person. They're not incompatible, despite what some professors would like you to believe.

Demetri Martin On Puzzles And 'Important Things'
Because who doesn't love Demetri Martin? He made it most of the way through law school before dropping out and doing something that made him happy. I like his explanation around 10 minutes in.

Amazon.com: Winning the Games Scientists Play
I can't recommend this book enough. It's basically a book about how to advance your scientific career in the most efficient way possible. I picked it up randomly and got through half of it standing in the library stacks before I found myself too nauseous to continue. He starts off insisting he's only the messenger, but it's really pretty sickening that someone would attempt to codify and advocate everything that makes academia such a miserable place. Thing is, it's pretty much true. I love where he says that fake scientists with outside hobbies or interests that occupy too much of their minds should be identified and exposed with great pleasure. Wow.

Richard Hamming: You and Your Research
Yes, Richard Hamming of the eponymous window function! Advice on how to be a good researcher. "I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this."

Anyway, after all this, I figure someone who's not deterred in the least might actually

I'd wager you would fall into one of those believe-anything groups, tmosley. Every comment you make bets on a world of endless oil and no climate change. Let me make some verifiable predictions about you based on your commentary:

1) You drive a big, gass-guzzling pickup or SUV
2) You live in a predominantly rural state like Texas or Montana -- definitely not East Coast or West Coast
3) You believe Obama is a socalist and suspect he's secretly a muslim
4) You generally vote Republican or for whoever's right of them (e.g., David Duke)
5) You ardently believe that predictions of climate change are just a fraudulent racket so people like Al Gore can make money

Do you ever given any though to the geopolitical ramifications of oil addiction? Or the fact that the Chinese demand for oil has grown so much that PetroChina now produces more oil than Exxon? Just so you know, if those tree-hugging, pinko liberals do manage to get their electric cars and alternative energy sources working, it means that the price of oil and electricity will be that much lower for you because they won't be buying any. However, you will still be funneling money straight to terrorists and camel jockeys in saudi arabia. As a liberal, I applaud your generosity for helping those poor arabs. Without your petro dollars, their nations would collapse and then they would likely mobilize for war against us infidels. Lord knows we can't have that. Fighting a Billion muslims is way more expensive than fighting 20 million here and 20 million there. It's cheaper just to pay them off.

One big smokestack is easier to regulate (and replace with something cleaner eventually)

The process is already underway. Coal plant construction is ceasing in favor of cleaner natural gas for both economic and regulatory reasons.

The Atlantic coined it the Prison Industrial Complex for a reason.
This little gem is particularly entertaining.
http://www.npr.org/2010/10/29/130891396/shaping-state-laws-with-little-scrutiny

I would not trust this conclusion. Simple dilution does not mean absence of risk. Despite this being a comment on Slashdot, I read to the end where I'm struck by this conclusion:

"Although the seas in the immediate vicinity of Fukushima probably experienced a very high dose of radioactivity during the months immediately after the disaster, as long as none of the isotopes accumulate in any organisms, the effects are unlikely to be long-lasting."

I strongly suggest looking up scholar.google.com and checking the isotopes: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/21/134567288/radiation-by-the-numbers-isotopes-to-watch

Off-handed dismissal of bioaccumulation risks is rather shocking. There are also differences between exposure to radiation and having a radioactive particle lodged within your body for prolonged, embedded exposure.

Would the NOAA lie to us about radiation or oil or anything? You already have your answer just simply by their track record on the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Just the very numbers of the official estimates and how they only changed from ridiculously minimal to realistic shows there are dishonest interests involved.

http://www.reefrelieffounders.com/drilling/2012/01/24/ee-scientist-is-accused-of-lowballing-size-of-gulf-spill/
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/

While some are pointing to the obligatory http://xkcd.com/radiation/ and I respect Randall, the lowballed numbers we are receiving from media with vested interests don't rank this disaster accurately. Even hardened robots can't last more than a few hours at the Fukushima 1 plant where the radiation is 73 sevierts, and that warrants careful examination of what we're told the risks are to broader areas. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120329a1.html

Whatever the truth is about Fukushima, it isn't coming from the NOAA.

The play Photograph 51 told me that story. Brilliant play. Try to see it if you can.

Garrett officials say it came from a school-owned laptop because the tweets came from an IP address on the school’s network, the Journal Gazette says.

http://stateimpact.npr.org/indiana/2012/03/29/how-one-tweet-got-a-high-school-student-expelled/

Gosh, I wonder if the school has a VPN.

Garrett officials say it came from a school-owned laptop because the tweets came from an IP address on the school’s network, the Journal Gazette says.

http://stateimpact.npr.org/indiana/2012/03/29/how-one-tweet-got-a-high-school-student-expelled/

In most states, if somebody doesn't pay a judgement, then the plaintiff can do things like have the sheriff show up at their office and take anything of value up to the amount of the judgement.

Like this priceless gem: A Florida Couple 'Forecloses' On Bank Of America

Over the past few years, we've heard plenty of horror stories about bungled foreclosures. The one of Warren and Maureen Nyerges, from the Naples, Fla. area, is just as bad. In 2009, they bought a home with cash, yet in 2010 Bank of America tried to foreclose on them. It took two months of phone calls and eventually court intervention to clear up the misunderstanding.

In December, a judge ordered the bank to pay the couple $2,500 in attorney fees. But months went by and the bank never cut a check. So, the Naples Daily News reports, Nyerges hired a lawyer, who pursued a levy, and this past Friday the showdown was on: The Nyergeses showed up to a local branch of Bank of America with the sheriff, the media and some movers with a truck:

"I'm either leaving the building with a whole bunch of furniture, or a check or cash or something," the attorney, Todd Allen, vowed.

... An hour later, the bank cut a check.

Astronauts in space partly lose their sense of smell: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/23/147294191/why-astronauts-crave-tabasco-sauce

Numerous occasions in the past three years, in fact. Do us all a favor, and go educate yourself, instead of being a dipshit with a half-assed political agenda.

Fact: Overly conservative parents object to books that they consider "pornographic" or "anti-religious." (see: Ender's Game)
Fact: Overly liberal parents object to books that they consider too "racist" or "insensitive." (see: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

If you actually care to read a fairly nuanced essay about book censorship, you could start here. Then you could stop pretending that there's any difference between overly protective 'conservative' parents and overly protective 'liberal' parents when it comes to their children reading material that goes against the orthodoxy those children are being taught at home.

Hmmmm - I object to books that are pornographic and to books that are racist. But I object to neither Ender's Game or Huck Finn.
So what am I ?

Numerous occasions in the past three years, in fact. Do us all a favor, and go educate yourself, instead of being a dipshit with a half-assed political agenda.

Fact: Overly conservative parents object to books that they consider "pornographic" or "anti-religious." (see: Ender's Game)
Fact: Overly liberal parents object to books that they consider too "racist" or "insensitive." (see: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

If you actually care to read a fairly nuanced essay about book censorship, you could start here. Then you could stop pretending that there's any difference between overly protective 'conservative' parents and overly protective 'liberal' parents when it comes to their children reading material that goes against the orthodoxy those children are being taught at home.

Oh trust me, I am aware. I've been arrested (case later dismissed) because of women lying about me, and even had to call the cops three months ago to explain how another girl I'd been involved with was trying to spoof emails to frame me for "harassment" in order to avoid paying me the money she owed me. But the US government has wanted to get Assange extradited to the US so they could try him under the Espionage Act ever since the Collateral Murder video. I don't see how they'll be able to do that just from this, maybe they think they can put more pressure on the Swedish government than the UK, or maybe they think discrediting him as a rapist or putting him in Swedish jail is satisfactory. Sure, I admit I can't prove it's part of an ochestrated smear campaign or conspiracy, but given the fact that the accusations are based on an apparently obscure and rarely used "surprise sex" law, the timing of the incidents, the fact that at least some people in the Swedish legal system wanted to just throw the case out when it originally happened (this is from memory, sorry I couldn't find a link), I think I'd have to be gloriously naive to think the US didn't play a role in all this, even if they weren't directly involved with the two women making the accusations.

If this is unreasonable, call me out on it, but honestly how can anyone take these charges seriously?

The TAL pieces on the economy are produced by NPR's Planet Money team, which also produce their own short biweekly podcasts and occasionally write for various magazines as well.

If you liked those TAL pieces, definitely give Planet Money a shot.

And even if we assume that the ex KGB officer says the truth, the story is different from someone "forcing people into capsules they knew were doomed" as was said here.

But one key difference is that sending a teacher isn't inherently more dangerous than sending anyone else. A new maneuver is inherently dangerous and requires more analysis, testing, and listening to engineers.

But the accident had nothing to do with the difficulties of the maneuver. In fact, the second craft was never launched after the first one experienced problems. So the stupidity of Breznev didn't directly casuse the accident, contrary to what the journalist wants to make us think.