Slashdot Mirror

A degree Celsius warmer than a century ago, currently warming at a rate of about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. It's actually going to present quite a problem over the next century, with about 10% of Florida disappearing under water. I'm surprised you haven't heard about it.

No. What proves global warming is an entire range of observations consistent with warming. Simply put, we observe the warming and even many secondary effects caused by the warming, such as increased humidity. The planet most definitely is warming, at a much faster rate than over the past few thousands of years. At the current rate of warming, about 10% of Florida will be under water in a century.

What what? Claiming Florida will be flooded is not a policy. It's a prediction. A policy would be a proposed course of action to mitigate the predicted effects. I don't see anyone claiming that "Florida will be flooded", although there is a prediction that sea level will rise by about a meter this century, and this would mean that Florida would lose 10% of its area. Those predictions are well supported by the science. I don't see anyone predicting that billions will die -- that is a straw man. A warmer climate indeed has both positive and negative effects, but the net effects on the economy are negative wen the warming is above 2 degrees Celsius. There is widespread agreement on this, which is why it's the target for the Copenhagen Accord.

This story was also featured on NPR yesterday (no reg. required). I don't know if it goes into the same details as the NYT article, but here it is: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5280031

I had never noticed "there being a subtle (but satisfying) 'click' when plugging-in a cable".

I was referring to the story about how for the original iPod launch, Steve Jobs was aghast that the prototypes didn't have a satisfying 'click' when you plug-in the headphones. So he forced the engineers to spend all night putting in better jacks into the prototypes. (See here, or here, or here.)

Just like all companies Apple makes compromises.

Absolutely. They make mistakes and compromises, as I was careful to point out in my previous post. But the perceived quality of their products is more than just "convincing" people--they put much more careful thought into their designs and design tradeoffs. Are their products perfect? Far from it. But their designs are far better in consistency and execution, than all of their competition. (If you want to argue that 'being best' is too low a bar, and that products are in general not sufficiently carefully designed, I largely agree...)

Oh god, you're insane.

- the number of logical fallacies you have displayed in these threads leads me to believe you are not very good at providing factual argumentation, you do not back up your conclusions with any actual evidence, but you like to jump to them.

Money only has value to the extent that people are prepared to accept particular amounts.

- you didn't pay attention to the data, did you? US dollar has been losing value steadily, and since the Fed was created in 1913 it lost 98% of it (more than that now.) Pay attention to the data, otherwise you'll look foolish.

"Counterfeit" money is some instrument which you claim to have particular features but which does not have those features.

- counterfeit. Money that's not genuine. Imitation of money.

US dollars that are passed around by the Fed have such exact features. Every new dollar printed is worth less than any dollar in existence, so every new dollar is NOT like any previous dollar. It is not genuine.

A dollar from 1950 is not the same as dollar from 1918. It is also different from dollar in 2011. The difference between them is staggering. With 2011 dollars you can buy 1/20th of what you could buy for the same amount in 1912 when we talk about commodities: wheat, cotton, rice, pork, coffee etc., and yes, gold. If you are interested to see what real money looks like, here are some pictures. for $20.67 you could have about 2.41 troy oz of gold.

There are many reasons why gold is real money and why in most languages the world for money is actually 'gold' or some form of it. You can't change the facts, you see.

Money which is not backed by a gold standard is not "counterfeit".

- money that is not backed by ANYTHING is counterfeit. For example Chinese currency is 'backed' by their reserves of US dollars/debt. Their problem is that US dollars/debt is backed by nothing, so they chose a wrong backing, but their money is not counterfeit in itself. Of-course if they continue on path of printing as much as they get of the US dollars flowing into their vaults, then it's not really any better than being backed by nothing. In case of Chinese, they are a producer nation and as such they immediately suffer the consequence of higher prices for the levels of inflation they are responsible for. It looks like they may have a revolt on their hands if they don't stop printing and causing massive price hikes. They will have to stop printing and will have to re-evaluate their currency in amount of gold they have. This is going to happen sometime soon.

Use of emotive language doesn't prove anything.

- I don't see where is 'emotive language' used by me at all, but I wonder when is it that you are going to present any proof of anything at all in any of your comments?

What backing does gold have? You've just changed the problem from one of the government being able to print more money - responsibly or irresponsibly - to inflation created by the mining of gold or deflation created by a growing economy lacking gold.

- deflation is a good thing for an economy, as people gain purchasing power. It's only bad for governments, as they have to give their debts back, and they don't like to do that in real money while they do like to live beyond their means.

I provided a link on top, where you can go to learn at least something from this thread, something about gold and its value. Of-course you are ready to dismiss it, after all, it's only history of the evolution of human economy. What you do not realize is that the fiat system without backing by a recognizable, unchangeable, accessible, moderately

You don't go out in nature much, do you?

Off the coast of Baja, California, scientists find gray whales are uncharacteristically social with humans, even allowing their faces, mouths and tongues to be massaged as they bump up beside boats.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106541921

Each animal is an individual. Some want to enter into collaborative relationships, like birds singing with other species (including humans). I just watched a documentary on Tesla; he had a special relationship with a (wild) white pigeon that came to him when he called.

Isn't china building giant underground military bases ?

The days of Mao are long gone and the current leaders are not total idiots. What would stop the next leaders to go on a military rampage ? It could very well be that the leaders have a hundred year strategy to grow their economic dominance to the point where they are a massive superpower dwarfing the next nation. Add to that all the economical power with them having investments in almost every country in the world (industrial contracts go more and more often to China instead of europe for example). Technologically, yes China is still behind (slightly) in it's mastery of science but with all the advanced countries bending over backwards to get contract and giving full access to top of the line technology. Whatever few years behind they are would be is made up with massive resources.
Again right now, there is no reason for China to get military control outside of its borders. They get what they need much more effectively right now by having one way economic deals: they invest in other countries economies to the point of eventually controlling significant sections of the economies, where our leaders bow down and forget to mention human rights in meetings. But the day they need to fight for resources ... brr that will be nasty. What could trigger such a need to secure resources ? Just imagine a global food crisis. It could be triggered by mass flood, an usually warm year, or event an extremely cold one. Populations around the world would be struggling for food, fighting over it; even in the rich countries. Don't you think that a nation that has the mean to take whatever they want would let its population die of starvation ? Personally I believe this is why Japan is subsidizing farming that much while it seems to make no economical sense to grow food there. The countries that can grow so much food that they can export are still the ones that have the power, or rather the most crucial targets.

But who knows, maybe that will trigger the transition to vat farming of yeast at industrial scale. Removing the need for farmland. That or soylent green.

Also from NPR on Gold:

"Every self-respecting tenured faculty member in economics this country, almost without exception, would laugh [the gold standard] out of court."

"Most economists agree that the gold standard was one of the causes of the Great Depression."

"The world only emerged from the Great Depression when countries started going off the gold standard. And he rattles off this long list of countries — Britain, the U.S., Japan, France and others — that started to recover from the Depression just after going off the gold standard"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/133662179/a-wingnut-argument-for-the-gold-standard

These are different conclusions than your summary.

I don't understand gold either.

There are many reasons for it. NPR's "Planet Money" did a podcast asking the question "Why Gold?", and came to the conclusion that even if they had it to do all over again, gold is pretty much the best metal for using as a currency. It is rare, but not too rare, it is very inert, and it is easy to identify.

Podcast: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/07/131363098/the-tuesday-podcast-why-gold

I didn't get it before until I listened to that.

Here was recently an article about meat eating furniture that I find quite relevant...

That is not about fear, it is about anger and outrage at the actions of certain wealthy, rich people in America destroying the things we hold most dear as a country, and have since the days of our founding.

Government funding for media has been something we hold dear since our founding? Really? Shows like Sesame Street make millions of dollars in merchandise and licensing alone, but cutting off the small portion of their budget that comes from tax dollars is stabbing George Washington in the back?

NPR states on one hand how government funding makes up such a small portion of their budget... combined government support is 5.8% of their budget... yet when someone suggests cutting off taxpayer support, their listeners act as if Hitler were back banning newspapers. That isn't hypocritical fearmongering?

On February 8th, there was a great Fresh Air with Terry Gross interview about this article in The New Yorker.

Terry Gross has this way to get really interesting information from her guests and to do it in a very engaging way. And this episode is no exception.

"On today's Planet Money, we look at the Egyptian military's deep business ties to everything from dishwashers to resort hotels. And we consider how those ties influence how the military responds to the crisis."

Which suggests the Egyptian military be might more in tune with economic reality than the governments of many other countries. It will be interesting to see what they do next.

how does the system actually work?

1.) Workers pay a tax. ('contribution' is a euphemism.)
2.) The money is used to buy treasury notes.
3.) SSA pays dependents according to a legislated schedule.

There is no actual connection between 1 and 3; workers pay whatever percentage Congress legislates and SSA pays whatever Congress legislates. 2 means there is no actual money anywhere, just treasury notes in a ledger. Until 2010 the amount coming in (1) was greater than the amount going out (3). In 2010, 1 became greater than 3 for the first time, ever. That means 3 is now contributing to annual deficits and is expected to grow rapidly, just like every conservative said it would since inception.

From http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/07/133503696/the-friday-podcast-egypts-military-inc "So far, the Egyptian military has largely sided with the protesters in the streets of Cairo. This is not only because the military supports the people; it's also because the military sells the people lots of stuff."

The UK is looking at massive library closings due to right-wing ideology on how to close their budget shortfall:
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133656983/britain-faces-closing-the-book-on-libraries

Plus, it's also been seen here in the states with the big budget shortfalls in municipalities:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6618984.html
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/10/trustees_vote_yes_on_library_closings/

So in the end, we'll have no text books, no libraries, and you'll have to own your own iPad or other tablet, or rent it from the school.
Isn't it cool that our dystopian future is already here?

NYT Editor Bill Keller was on NPR's Fresh Air last week. Here's what he had to say about Assange and redaction:

GROSS: You say: We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator. But he was a man who clearly had his own agenda. What do you think his agenda was?

Mr. KELLER: Well, as I said earlier, I think it was a little murky. He professes a kind of ideology of transparency, that, you know, information should be free.

He, at the outset, even resisted the idea - when we and the other news organizations put it to him that we were going to redact the names of ordinary Afghans and Iraqis who had talked to the American military because it would put their lives at risk, he seemed quite indifferent to that. And over time, he, I think, came around to the view that at least, from a public relations point of view, it was maybe better to allow for a certain amount of editing out of things that could cost lives.

GROSS: Really? He seemed indifferent to the fact that publication with those names could cost lives?

Mr. KELLER: You know, the Guardian is also publishing its own book on the WikiLeaks episode, mostly a profile of Julian Assange based on their considerably more detailed and extensive interactions with him. And what they report in that book was that - in one of the early conversations, when they said, well, you know, the Times and the Guardian would want to edit out the names of, you know, ordinary Afghans, Assange's reaction was essentially: Well, they're informants. You know, there's no reason for protecting them.

GROSS: Do you think it was you and the editors - like, you and your people and the staff of the Guardian that convinced him that he needed to edit out some names?

Mr. KELLER: I think probably not. I mean, I think we may have played some role, but I think two other factors eventually convinced him to try and redact the documents in that way.

One was there were a number of people within WikiLeaks who felt very strongly that you should not just put this raw material out, that it would get people killed, and they had some raging fights within WikiLeaks over that issue.

Another was that when WikiLeaks posted its first batch of documents, which were the Afghanistan war logs, they did, in fact, include a number of un-redacted names of ordinary Afghans who had spoken to the military. And there was quite an outcry about that - not just from the United States government, which I think Julian Assange could not have cared less about, but from organizations like Amnesty International, which I think he did care about.

Essentially, until it looked like certain organizations were going to start considering it a bad idea, he resisted the idea of editing out names. He didn't care if people got killed if they were working with the US or NATO.

A decent story from NPR (WARNING: contains Ira Flatow) on what U.S. providers are calling "4G" even though they don't meet the ITU definition: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/14/132934022/what-does-4g-really-mean-anyway

NPR's Planet Money: "How Fake Money Saved Brazil"

Conversely, if you see an impulse on the part of a human being to control you, you know very well that that human being is lying to you

From http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright
"...anything that's characterized as disconnection or this kind of thing, it's just not true. There isn't any such policy."
...
"We all know this policy exists. I didn't have to search for verification -- I didn't have to look any further than my own home." Haggis reminded Davis that, a few years earlier, his wife had been ordered to disconnect from her parents "because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did twenty-five years ago when they resigned from the church. . . . Although it caused her terrible personal pain, my wife broke off all contact with them." Haggis continued, "To see you lie so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: what else are you lying about?"

Also http://www.npr.org/2011/02/08/133561256/the-church-of-scientology-fact-checked

I knew there had to be a lot more going on than the Wired article stated. NPR via AP has much better details as to the goings on at http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133607089/house-rejects-extensions-of-patriot-act-provisions?sc=17&f=1001

So what else is new. I signed up for the Mac App Store a couple of days back when I received an unpleasant jolt about Apple fanaticism to control their own platform.

I am a casual user who had just joined the App Store. I was just about to buy Angry Birds when I noticed a top selling software called OPlayer. Curious because the name resembled a suspicious familiarity to the PC player MPlayer, I browsed the app and discovered it was indeed just a wrapper around MPlayer.

There were no reviews for telling the customer that he need not pay for this application and could just install MPlayerOSX from http://mplayerosx.sourceforge..../ or download VLC from http://videolan.org. A small google revealed that the developer OlimSoft is a guy called "Jonathan Young" from China.

MPlayer has contributors from many countries, primarily US and Europe, but also India and China. It turns out he has never even contributed to MPlayer. He is just putting a wrapper around the app himself and charging $20 a pop to unknowing users to profit at the expense of the hard work

I decided to give the app a single star and write a short review to dissuade unknowing visitors from accidentally buying the app.

It turns out I can't write this. Apple doesn't allow you to review an App unless you specifically for out the money for it. I was jolted by this because while I had bought apps for my iPad (like Angry Birds) I didn't know that Apple was deliberately suppressing information.

I have also used Amazon.com, but they actually allow you to review ANY and I mean ANY product. It was because of this that Games with draconian DRM were given 1-star on Amazon by users to express their dissent. It was because of user review that the CDs with Sony's infamous DRM Rookit got booted from top position.

But here we have OPlayer, a top 300 app on the Mac App Store ripping users and charging for other people's work and I can't even tell people about it!

When I posted this on the Apple Forum my post was deleted because "Your post was removed from Apple Discussions as it contained feedback or feature requests."

But "Journalists" (who just love Apple) love to write glowing reviews like this even if Apple creates a noose around their people neck for design, convenience and security.

Sometimes people get really lost and a GPS could have saved them.

In particular I am thinking of the story of James Kim and his family. In December 2006 they were driving south in Oregon, and they missed their planned exit. It was almost an hour of driving later before they realized they had missed the exit. Not wanting to waste another hour by doubling back, they got off the highway and took a road that looked okay on their map, but was pretty much impassible in winter. (In fact there was supposed to be a gate closing off the road with a sign saying "Closed in Winter".) They ended up stuck, completely outside cellular phone coverage areas, with nobody having any clue where to look for them, and no emergency food or clothes in the car. After a week (a week! no food, only snow for water, two adults and two children, imagine how horrible it must have been!) Mr. Kim made the decision to set out on foot and try to find help. He froze to death, but fortunately a search helicopter spotted the car and the rest of the family was saved.

I have always figured that a GPS could have prevented this tragedy; with a GPS they wouldn't have missed their exit, and if they did they would have realized it immediately and would have simply gone back and taken the intended exit.

Now, while I have no desire to say anything disrespectful about Mr. Kim, I do also wonder at their common sense. According to one report I read, they found the road to be difficult going, and they had to stop and get out of the car and move obstacles out of the road (fallen trees? I don't remember the details). Their common sense should have told them that this road was a bad idea, and they should have just turned around and backtracked before it was too late.

So, common sense could have saved them, or a GPS could have saved them.

The sad irony is that Mr. Kim was an editor on CNet and he reviewed gadgets like GPS navigators. But he didn't have one in his car.

P.S. Blindly trusting a GPS is also increasingly leading to trucks trying to go under low bridges, as in this story.

steveha

Yes, of course. What makes eating meat unethical is the support for factory farming, in which animals greatly suffer. (I recommend reading Jonathan Safran Foers Eating Animals)

If there is no animal, there is no pain, and everything is fine (except that we're already eating so much meat that it's unhealthy).

In fact, PETA promised One Million Dollars for the first commercially viable growing of artificial meat.

>Calls me a troll

Riiiiight.

Read this.

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/21/131490398/-nazis-a-word-with-deep-and-brutal-meaning

Now get out.

--
BMO

You're a day behind the news. That Clinton statement was from yesterday, and I interpret it as stalling for time. Today was a lot less ambivalent:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133242817
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133212560

They're not exactly kicking Mubarak to the curb, but they're brandishing the foreign aid stick, demanding democratic reform, and stressing that the US's loyalties lie with Egypt, not Mubarak.

You're a day behind the news. That Clinton statement was from yesterday, and I interpret it as stalling for time. Today was a lot less ambivalent:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133242817
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133212560

They're not exactly kicking Mubarak to the curb, but they're brandishing the foreign aid stick, demanding democratic reform, and stressing that the US's loyalties lie with Egypt, not Mubarak.

There is more to the research than this, as well.

Executive function ("self control") is associated with imaginative play: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288 for the pop summary. Imaginative play, in which kids grab relative raw "things" and make things out of them and make stories with those things (i.e., more like turning a stone into a building and a twig into a person than Legos or Playmobil toys) and unsupervised play are deeply on the decline.

The chilling fact: they recently repeated some tests for executive function that had been administered to children over 60 years ago. Contemporary 5 year olds show the same executive function as 3 year olds in the 1940s (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514) Say what platitudes you like about "new" kinds of intelligence and information processing and cognitive multitasking: a decline in the ability to do basic self-control is going to be a massive problem. Perhaps this also has something to do with the fact that college students study 40% less now than they did 40 years ago... and nearly half learn almost nothing in their first 2 years of college (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much)

Iran has learned from Soviet mistakes - you do need computer weapon to catch moose and squirrel.

Potentially, there could have been some albedo change that affected the ice melt. However, the prevailing winds from Iceland (jet stream) were to the east, while Greenland is to the west. That's why Europe was so badly affected. On the subject of volcanic eruptions, however, their effect is much more short-term than AGW, but generally the net effect is cooling, not warming. For a recent historical example, do a search on "The Year Without a Summer" Caused by the 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the next year saw the start of a "mini ice age". The northeastern US had snow and frozen lakes in July (prompting a massive move toward the west). Europe suffered extensive crop failures and public unrest due to the cold weather. The cooling is caused by ash in the atmosphere that reflects sunlight, or more seriously, but sulfur that is blasted into the upper atmosphere where it reacts with ozone. The resulting sulfur dioxide causes the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight and causes this cooling. The effect took 50 years or more to subside in the 1815 example. Read more at Suite101: The Year Without a Summer 1816: Caused by the 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia http://www.suite101.com/content/the-year-without-a-summer-1816-a54675#ixzz1BsG44VRD A number of people have suggested injecting sulfur into the upper atmosphere to combat AGW, but this "BandAid" fix could have completely unpredictable results, especially with regards to the ozone layer. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789622

What conceivable situation would fulfill all three, ie. being oppression rather than good police work?

Here's an easy example, since we are talking about smartphones. The police are now arresting people for taking video on public streets with their cellphone. No, really.

The referenced articles will lead you to a trove of cases where there is no other reason for police action other than oppression. Why might you want to record something happening on a public street if you are not a criminal?

Well, the cops might jump you, beat the crap out of you, charge you with felony assault on a police officer and then destroy the police surveillance videos that document the crime. In this case a cell phone video of what really happened surfaced and the charges were dropped. Lest you think this is a "one off", there are plenty of other cases where police video equipment mysteriously malfunctions just at the critical moment. You can find examples via the referenced articles.

Still wondering why you might want to keep your cellphone private if "you have done nothing wrong"? Follow those links and you'll find plenty of cases where people were arrested (and later released) and evidence on their cellphone was destroyed by the police. Catching bad guys by searching cell phones is probably quite possible. Does that mean that you should give up your right to privacy and have the police rifling through your electronic papers every time you interact with them? Does the 4th amendment really mean nothing?

. It turns out, the Arizona law was actually drafted by the prison industry, who hoped to make a bundle off of it. Yes, illegal immigration is a serious problem, but exploiting fear and hatred to make a profit, at enormous taxpayer expense, by locking up people who just want a better life for themselves and their families... how in the hell do these people even face themselves in the mirror when they wake up each morning?

I cannot mod the parent up, so I will just have to give my wholeharted approval through this reply.

Just one caveat... the forces of mediocrity have found a way to neuter the essay question, by instructing the graders to score by style rather than content. As a result, an SAT essay can be graded as well by weighing it as by reading it: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4634566 (admittedly, things may have changed since 2005, but for the better?)

I think the question at the end of the post, "... AI is getting just a little bit too commonplace?" isn't relevant to using AI to solve a Sudoku puzzle. I thought part of the definition of AI was the ability for a system and/or application to dynamically adapt and learn and apply new rules based on previous input criteria and patterns where no known patterns exist? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence). Since each valid Sudoku puzzle should have one and only one solution, there are different well defined algorithms and or approaches to solve a Sudoku puzzle solely on the correct application of logical rules, does this really count as AI?

Nonetheless, I wonder if the Google Goggle Sudoku Solver was implemented by Eugene Varshavsky? ( Fraud Suspected At Sudoku Championship: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114215648) {:-)

The "giant pool of money" theory is probably the best I've heard for explaining the current housing crisis.

When large financial institutions and countries sit on trillions of dollars (or the appropriate local currency), fractions of a percent of a percent of interest start to add up. So you invest, but in something safe like US treasury bills - you can't exactly bet your country's treasury on GM. Then interest rates plummeted, and people (and countries) started looking for better investments.

Well, real estate is always a safe investment, right? Housing prices always go up. So, a smart financier bundled a few thousand mortgages together, and started selling shares of that bundle to interested parties. Buying shares of mortgages was a hit. So much so, in fact, that there was greater demand for mortgages than there were actual mortgages.

So, there was an interesting business opportunity - issue as many mortgages as possible, because fucktons of people wanted to buy them. Doesn't matter if the person you issue the mortgage to has no money, because the whole mess will be off your hands before you worry about collecting a single payment. Then, suddenly, none of the people who received the no income, no job or assets (NINJA) mortgages could make payments, and the rest of the dominoes fell like a house of cards. Checkmate.

Although NPR phrased it a lot more eloquently. And they were probably sober at the time, too.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/01/state_dept_launching_democracy.html
..the State Department says, it's launching a Twitter contest to "tweet what you think democracy is in 140 characters or less." The person who gets the most "unique re-tweets" will receive a Flip Video HD Camcorder."
"Evan Williams [co-founder of Twitter] says Twitter fundamental to government"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8563109.stm
"open exchange of information will prevail in most regions, but we don't have any specific plans in China or other areas where we're blocked"
All sounded so cool when it was aimed at ....
Welcome back to reality. Enjoy the gems from WikiLeaks, note whats missing and welcome to the honeypot.

Or maybe this is all just a plan along these lines:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/01/04/132622672/could-it-be-spooky-experiments-that-see-the-future

\for those a bit dense: we place the monolith after the fact to make it appear for a real-life "2001 a space odyssey" mission due to "leaks" in the space time continuum.

You're either trolling poorly or high, I'm not sure which.

If I support my local NPR or PBS station with cash donations (which are a significant portion of that pie), and they use that cash to send to the NPR mothership to cover programming fees, how is that coming from the government, directly or not? Or are you implying that since the government printed my money that everything done with that money is government funded if we trace it back far enough? Or are you just parroting what you heard on Conservative Talk Radio(tm)?

Please, explain it to me in excruciating detail, since I am obviously too dim to understand it on my own.

As always you don't fail to disappoint. You debunk my stats (even the money?), while providing nothing to debunk them with. I call bullshit on your entire post. Please provide references. While I realize that proving an opinion like your can be a daunting task for anyone, thats what the big kids do. Also, the Red cross as an agenda pushing site? You are a delight ! Those fuckers at the Red Cross!! Nobody trusts them! Historically The Red CRoss have been way more untrustworthy than the US military I would DEFINITELY believe the army's numbers over the Crosses!
Here is a link to some info about the Red Cross so perhaps you may consider learning about the folks who you just trashed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_cross
I won't even deal with you where you imply that any act covering the printing press covers the internet, its simply to ridiculous to dignify with a forml response

3 people have been charged, not just Manning.

Lsstly. here is a lik to where Daniel Ellsberg compares the penatgon papers to wikileaks
http://www.ellsberg.net/
Here is a link to where the NYT compares the pentagon papers to Wikileaks
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24london.html
http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=625023
Here is a transcript of an interview with the attoney general in which... you guessed it!
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/30/131687812/wikileaks-a-reminder-of-the-pentagon-papers
And In case you didn't know the AG is kinda a high ranking civil servant.

So, now that I have provided evidence that ALL (not some) of the people involved have said its a solid comparison... its seems as though the absence of both facts and research have in way impeded you from forming strong opinions. Well played.

I await your responses to my previous questions

Proper checklists aren't constraints, they are reminders of proper procedures. There is even a saying in aircraft safety, "add but don't take away".

Pilots can fly highly complex combat missions and adapt to changes on-the-fly, yet basic procedure checklists reinforce memory. The pilot doesn't always read the checklist verbatim while doing a task, but does have it available to supplement his skill.

Have some Atul Gawande:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122226184

""We brought a two-minute checklist into operating rooms in eight hospitals," Gawande says. "I worked with a team of folks that included Boeing to show us how they do it, and we just made sure that the checklist had some basic things: Make sure that blood is available, antibiotics are there."

How did it work?

"We get better results," he says. "Massively better results.

"We caught basic mistakes and some of that stupid stuff," Gawande reports. But the study returned some surprising results: "We also found that good teamwork required certain things that we missed very frequently."

Like making sure everyone in the operating room knows each other by name. When introductions were made before a surgery, Gawande says, the average number of complications and deaths dipped by 35 percent.

"Making sure everybody knew each other's name produced what they called an activation phenomenon," Gawande explains. "The person, having gotten a chance to voice their name, let speak in the room -- were much more likely to speak up later if they saw a problem."

It is also fair to say that multiple languages are important - current studies suggest that for each language you learn, you add 5+ years to your brain's functional lifespan

Ref?

Here's one for you: Mental Stimulation Postpones, Then Speeds Dementia. They studied older people, and found that people who were mentally more active postponed the onset of dementia; but that once it set in, the dementia progressed much faster. They theorize that the brain damage occurs no matter what you do, but that if you keep an active mind, your brain has the flexibility to adapt or "route around" the damage for a while. But eventually, there's just not enough gray cells to do what you used to do, and your mind succumbs to the inevitable.

Interestingly, NPR just had a story about how most ISPs are already doing deep packet inspection for government agencies upon subpoena. Now they're realizing there's nothing in their TOS that says they can't just do it all the time. Also, courts have ruled that emails aren't subject to privacy laws protecting snail mail.

For the record, I don't think ISPs should be forced to block illegal content, just that I don't think it's a bad thing if they decide to do so. I certainly don't think net neutrality rules should apply to illegal content. If they want to deeply inspect my packets going across their network, I really don't care. If they find out that I like researching bomb making techniques and floor plans to public buildings, what could possibly go wrong?

Oh, wait... maybe I need to start using encryption.

.

But now that the info's been disseminated more, my biggest personal concern isn't over NN itself, but with the unfortunate timing of the US's 'discomfort' with wikileaks (do I need a link) + the U.N.'s 'concern' with internet not being controlled.

Not that the US could be strong-armed by the third-world countries (and other proponents of UN regulation of internet), but that the U.S. could take advantage of the UN's concern in order to stuff wikileaks or other sites/services considered a threat to national security.

Just like in the west, it is not "the goberment" that does the random picking. It is the parents.
This article has a nice quote regarding that.

"If my children don't get picked to carry on in gymnastics," Li says, "I'll move them to diving."

Parents are the ones dead set at making their kid into the next [insert competitive activity here] prodigy.
So they pack their kids to specialized training schools at the age when they are barely aware of the world around them.
And yes, they don't put a gun to their heads - but that is purely because an adult doesn't really need a gun to make a 4-year-old do what he/she is told.

And you don't need to produce optimal results (which is a ridiculous goal in itself - they are aiming for SUPERIOR results) - or do you really think that there are hundreds of gold medals to be won in gymnastics at every Olympic?
As the gymnastics teacher in one of those videos says - that is the thick bottom end of the pyramid.
Only the super-best get to go to the Olympics. But every kid whose parents THINK that they can afford to ship him/her to one of those schools (Note that the entire family wears their coats when at home. Heating is for the western capitalist pigs.), WILL get the chance to start the training at the age of 4.

I just love that last part of the video, where you get to hear the little girl's mother talking about how she has "wished for a successful kid since she got married".
And then how she speaks, while cluelessly smiling, about her 6-year-old daughter always complaining that she doesn't want to go the gymnastics school - yet she stands ready to go each morning, and when asked why she goes if she doesn't want to she replies "that if she doesn't go, she will have to run 30 laps as punishment".
She often cries when alone in bed at night, but she says that her parents want her to go to the gymnast school - so she does.
And in the evening, the girl studies English - so if all this doesn't pan out, she can at least be a doctor.

It is always wonderful seeing parents live their unfulfilled dreams through their children.

We need -both-.

You're right. In case someone thinks that police recordings are sufficient, here's a recent example that demonstrates why they're not. Two months ago 3 Dallas PD officers were caught beating a motorcyclist (who was not resisting) on camera and guess what one of the officers decided to do when he realized this was being recorded? He moved the camera to conceal the beating.

Dallas Police Charge 3 Officers In Alleged Beating

video

...proceeds going to the families of the Intelligence agents and sources who are killed from it's release.

You're making shit up. Please stop.

To save time when that happens, the US could always crib from the Canadian military's draft policy on transgender soldiers. The policy does specifically allow transitioning soldiers to wear the uniform of their target gender.

Dealing with non-heterosexual, non-cisgender people in the military isn't some bizarre new thing that the US is blazing new ground on. Other western militaries are well ahead of the US, as even NPR has realized.

The turmoil of this issue is only beginning

Only for you and a few of your homophobic buddies. I expect you'll all keep whining. The rest of us will just go on getting the job done in a world that's slightly fairer than it was yesterday.

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/07/131857684/how-gay-soldiers-serve-openly-around-the-world

"Frank says all five countries he studied — Britain, Israel, Canada, South Africa and Australia — had major concerns about the potential effect on military effectiveness and recruitment patterns before their bans were dropped. But all five countries quickly implemented changes. And, Frank says, they experienced no wide-scale problems after the bans were repealed."

Impractical solutions are not solutions. Consider that only one federal judge has been impeached in the last 20 years, and it had nothing to do with his work in court. Look at the world around you, do you really think that not one judge has abused his authority in court in the last 20 years? You really can't expect the State to punish a judge for biasing a case in favor of the State, can you?