Slashdot Mirror

Here's a Ron Paul interview on NPR. Googling for "ron paul npr" returns quite a few hits. It suffices to say that I've learned quite a bit more about Ron Paul from NPR than from Slashdot (where he is possibly overrepresented, but sadly, by people who don't have many factual things to say about him).

Here's a 2007 interview of Ron Paul on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12224561
Here's one from CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/25/politics/politicalplayers/main3412826.shtml

I stopped bothering to search after that. If Ron Paul was good for ratings, he'd get more coverage.

Why? Partly because she was the Solicitor General:

SHAPIRO: How common is it for a new justice to have to recuse from the number of cases that Kagan is recusing herself from?

TOTENBERG: Well, it's not common because, at least more recently, we haven't had top Justice Department officials migrating to the court. But it's happened many times in our history. Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was solicitor general, for example, recused himself from about half the cases the court heard in his first year. But that high number was largely because he remained SG until he was confirmed.

And Kagan didn't do that. She stopped being SG right after her nomination. So, this high number of recusals, I think, is front loaded. She'll probably be recused from about a third of the docket this year, and then next year her recusals will plummet to zero or something close to that.

One interesting thing, Ari, is that there are a number of cases that she's reused herself from that she really had nothing to do with. And these are cases that generally involve commercial disputes. And the Justice Department filed a notice that it was taking no position, and these are just routine evaluations. They're done by lower-level lawyers but she signed the filing, so she's taking herself out of those cases.

SHAPIRO: And when she's recused and there are eight justices on the Supreme Court, what happens then?

TOTENBERG: Well, the case goes forward, as usual. And if there's a four-to-four tie, the lower court opinion is automatically affirmed without the Supreme Court issued any opinion, then presumably the issue can come up in another case, later, where Kagan can participate.

Okay, so there's the odd dude who's moderately well off who wants to take out some infidels, but if you are positing in any way that that makes up the majority of people who actually carry out terrorist attacks (planning != carrying out), then I call bullshit.

Sorry.

Research Reveals New Profile of Suicide Bombers

JOYCE: Working at the University of Michigan and the National Center for Scientific Research in France, Atran has collected surveys of failed suicide bombers and of the families of successful bombers. These surveys were done by Pakistani relief workers, as well as Israeli and Western psychologists and economists. They also interviewed members of terror organizations and studied their literature. What the researchers found contradicted the stereotype of the terrorist fanatic.

Mr. ATRAN: These people are fairly well educated, mostly from middle class and not acting at all in despair.

JOYCE: Atran summarizes these findings in today's issue of the journal Science. He notes that the government of Singapore recently published a similar report on Asian terrorists linked to al-Qaeda that found the same trend.

At Princeton University, economist Alan Krueger has studied not only bombers but the views of the Palestinian public on terror attacks aimed at Israelis. Again, surveys found no link between poverty and illiteracy and support for terror.

Mr. ALAN KRUEGER (Princeton University): I think there's very little connection between economic circumstances and support for terrorism or maybe even an opposite relationship, from what most people suspect.

JOYCE: As for the bombers themselves, Krueger says terrorist literature indicates they are more likely to come from the ranks of middle-class college students.

Just as the educated tend to make better workers, they also make "better" terrorists.

...if people have their basic needs met and are generally happy they won't resort to extremist shit like blowing themselves up in the first place.

The extremists have different beliefs, priorities, and concerns. Although they believe they are destined to rule the world, that their way is best and just, that Allah is on their side, only 1/6 the world believe in Islam, the mighty Islamic empire of 1,000 years ago is fallen, the Caliphate was dissolved 90 years ago, and immoral Westerners are rich and powerful. It vexes them, and they intend to put the world right.

I couldn't get private insurance because I had a pre-exisiting condition.

At the time, the state program in Oregon was full and only accepting pregnant women, COBRA was 845 dollars a month and private insurers turned me down for pre-exsisting conditions.

The pre-exsisting condition listed as the cause for denial was that I had a prescription for a generic anti-siezure I needed for migraines.

I don't agree with the Obamacare plan is the best approach, the Swiss model and Japanese are much better, but the United States needs to join the rest of the industrialized world and fix it's healthcare system and close the gap on the uninsured.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92106731

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/06/AR2009090601630.html

How does that help Assange when he was denied bail?

He was granted bail.

The article says that "a number of Assage's wealthy friends" pledged the $317,000 bail-- the summary is vastly inaccurate saying "Michael Moore" posted the bail.

Then you didn't read the article nor do you really understand how it works

Anyone who hasn't forgotten their teenager years knows how it works. It's groupthink.

The ones who propose targets, build cases, and participate in debates, those are the ones who essentially "Run Anonymous"

More bored teenagers that learn to control the group. Nothing new, even when I was still in highschool and that was ages ago. The alpha of the group just became faceless and uses HTTP more often instead of a louder voice.

For a majority of Anonymous, it's not about principles or values, but they're activities are promoting someone elses (or even multiple people's) values.

You're overthinking this. Back when I was a teenager we had a protest march against the incompetence of the justice department. A few people handed out fliers, and the rest said "Oh hey, I was bored anyway. Let's go there." Many weren't even interested in promoting someone's values, nor even aware of the issues the march was about. Needless to say that it ended in vandalism.

No agent provocateurs, no people with a cause, just plain old "Look at the crowd here, let's go trash something. Fuck yeah!" groupthink. Try getting these numbers for something non-disruptive. Go on. Go to /b/ and become the fabled mastermind that herds the flock into doing something productive. Bonus points if they get out of their chair.

Are you actually trying to argue that Anonymous has made the net a worse place?

Are you actually trying to argue that Anonymous hasn't? Really now come on. That was Ebaums, right? It's bored kids pulling silly tasteless pranks, sometimes funny, sometimes not so much. Sure, they're not a "threat" to the Internet other than being obnoxious.

For every "cause" they've supported they've gone and harassed at least a dozen people who did nothing wrong but be at the wrong place at the wrong time (on the Internet).

I know! Joe Lieberman!...er...you said aside from right-wing Neocon wingnuts...um...at this point that's basically what he's become. So shoot, can't name one.

No, no. Joe Lieberman is totally a democrat. It's not like he torpedoed health care or anything.

If the outcome is negative the consequences are severe. The CIA agrees: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121352495?

So are you willing to bet the lives of your family? Suppose all the offspring of your immediate family are wiped out and you have no direct descendants? You good with that? Or are you thinking that you live in the first world, and only a bunch of dark skinned people who live near the equator will be in trouble?

So what is the cost of moving away from fossil fuels? More technological development requiring more basic R&D spending? Building solar/wind/ocean based power plants that require more local jobs? Less deaths in coal mines? Less worldwide dependence on politics in the middle east? Except for currently entrenched (and inefficient and incompetent) fossil fuel energy producers who is going to loose anything?

This is one of the things that really bugs me about the do nothing/know nothing climate deniers and skeptics. (Skeptic in this case is a weaker version of a do nothing attitude.) Moving away from fossil fuels has short term benefits and long term benefits that have nothing to do with climate change. So why fight against it? Or do you like being held hostage to religious strife in the middle east, or watch the morons at BP and Halliburton do a gigantic uncontrolled ecological experiment in the Gulf of Mexico? Perhaps you are a major stockholder in Exxon/Mobile, which has been one of the most profitable companies in history http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=exxon+profit&btnG=Google+Search#q=exxon+profit+history&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&prmd=iv&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=1o8ATcW0D4fEsAOhvICwCw&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&sqi=2&ved=0CHkQ5wIwCg&fp=1441ab651b23d901 Outside of personal greed I see no motovation to keep on the way we are going.

and highly toxic chemicals!

And they're going to set it on fire.

What could possibly go wrong?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4651126

The Chinese business called, "Build Your Dreams" sells a similar car for half the price of a Chevy Volt; seems to me that the cost model used by GM smells like fish 3 days in the sun. Warren Buffett invested in BYD, and he doesn't make many money mistakes.

The bailout was intended to get them through the bankruptcy by allowing them to shed obligations that made it impossible to continue doing business as they had. Union contracts were renegotiated, and pension and medical obligations were reduced. It allowed GM to cut the overhead by several thousand dollars per vehicle. The European and Japanese companies building in the US were not hampered by such heavy requirements, and have long been able to undercut GM on costs because of this.

Well that would be a great idea in theory. In practice UAW gives a lot of money to Obama and they weren't likely to get wiped out.

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/15/131328191/reasons-investors-may-want-to-sit-out-gm-s-ipo

The United Auto Workers union has gone from a drag on the company to a part owner. How the new relationship will play out is still unknown.

The UAW owns 17.5 percent of GM right now, and has the option to buy 2.5 percent more before the end of 2015. It could sell stock during the IPO or hunker down and remain a major player.

But arguments over wages will likely start cropping up, and will become even tougher to deal with as GM talks about how financially secure the company is now.

The biggest grumbling among autoworkers is the new two-tier wage system, under which some workers can earn $29 an hour and new hires get only half that. It's a system that makes shareholders and executives happy because it brings labor costs in line with non-unionized workers at Toyota and Honda plants in the South. But it could spell trouble for GM if the new wage system creates unrest with workers.

"It's hard to run a business where some people are making double what others are making for the identical job," Robinson says.

Besides the wage issue, there is mounting pressure on the UAW from its members and from other unions to demand that benefits lost during the auto crisis be restored.

"The three major US (auto) companies are making profits again . we demand that they do right by the workers who have done right by them," Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said in a speech at the UAW's major convention last summer. "Because just as there has been shared sacrifice in periods of pain, there must be shared prosperity in periods of gain."

"Sticking to their guns"? Haven't you heard all their carrying-on about reducing the deficit and in the same breath killing all tax increases? That they want to do reduce the deficit by cutting spending by [billions] and cutting taxes by [trillions]? That sounds like saying one thing and doing the opposite to me, or else their pants-on-head-retarded position prevents them from counting zeros properly.

It's amazing how cognizant everyone in Congress is of their own hypocrisy--when Stephen Colbert trolled Congress, the only laugh he got was for saying "I trust that [...] both sides will work together in the best interests of the American people, as you always do."

Unfortunately, that is exactly what would happen in the US:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92103242

government officials can't do something illegal because they make the laws which define what is legal.

Oh really? So all that money congress spend investigating Rep Charles Rangel was wasted money? And Alaska Sen Ted Stevens was not convicted in 2008 for corruption in a court room not by an ethics board?

Falcon

Helps to read the whole post.

unless they are so inept that they actually commit a felony that the rest of the members of their chamber or legislative body thinks is blatantly wrong.

I think that covers it.

government officials can't do something illegal because they make the laws which define what is legal.

Oh really? So all that money congress spend investigating Rep Charles Rangel was wasted money? And Alaska Sen Ted Stevens was not convicted in 2008 for corruption in a court room not by an ethics board?

Falcon

Helps to read the whole post.

unless they are so inept that they actually commit a felony that the rest of the members of their chamber or legislative body thinks is blatantly wrong.

I think that covers it.

Not only that, but most of the sensitive information was vetted.

Time's editor Keller says links were vetted to limit risks

That's great that the Iraq War casualties are so low. Only 4,287 dead and 30,182 wounded. Of course that's not all the expected casualties. As of 2008, 20% of the 1.6 million vets from both wars are suffering from PTSD and it is expected that their post-combat suicide rate will produce more deaths than those KIA. Then there's the under/untreated TBI injuries, estimated at one in five soldiers. Then there's the little matter of the Iraqis, who have suffered anything from 100,000 dead to 650,000 excess dead (from just 2003-06) as reported in The Lancet. Then there's the cost of the war to the USA, estimated at $2.4 trillion by the Congressional Budget Office but this number is thought by other experts to be overly optimistic. For example, Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the cost to be higher than $3 trillion. Then there's the cost to Iraq. It was one of the most developed nations in the Middle East prior to the war, with ~90% of urban and ~50% of rural citizens enjoying access to modern water supply systems. Now, open sewers. Garbage pickup went from being efficient to being suicide by IED. Electricity has yet to match pre-war levels. One in three Iraqis now lives in poverty. Sectarian violence is still rampant. And we gave Islamic terrorist organizations a massive PR coup and recruitment tool with not only the invasion and occupation, but also the national disgrace of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, assorted covert torture destinations, and secret renditions. All this for a war that was in the planning stage by Sept, 2000. That's before the inauguration, and nearly a year before the 9/11 attacks. It was supported by intelligence that was badly out of date, circumstantial, and in many cases transparently fabricated like the yellowcake/spy outing scandal; the 81 mm aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment (which turned out to be tubes for conventional rocket bodies very similar to our own and wholly unsuitable to uranium enrichment and was pointed out in the original, unaltered intelligence reports that only White House officials got to see at the time but red-lined my bullshit meter when Powell mentioned it in 2003); and the laughably insane sooper sekrit anthrax production semi fucking trailers which was over the top obvious bullshit to anybody with minimal training in molecular biology. But you're right, we should be thankful that life-long fuckup W didn't fuck it up even worse.

As for AIDS, President Bush let ideology trump reality and wasted the money on a program that was at best ineffectual: "One of the White House's major aid initiatives, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), has wasted much of its funds on scientifically questionable programs designed to please American religious conservatives. Though studies show that only a comprehensive approach, including condom distribution, sexual education, and antiretrovirals, could reduce HIV, the White House insisted that PEPFAR spend one-third of its behavioral prevention budget on programs that promote abstinence until marriage. It also refused to let PEPFAR money go for programs like needle exchanges and aggressive condom promotion. Recipient nations had to sign an American pledge vowing to oppose prostitution, even though prostitutes are major carriers of HIV in Africa, and signing the pledge could scare PEPFAR recipients out of helping sex workers. Virtually no other major multinational donor agreed with PEPFAR's strategy. Even the administration's own inspector general responsible for overseeing aid couldn't prove that its methods had worked." As reported by CBS News. Heckuva job, heckuva job.

"During the Spanish-American War, a U.S. soldier, Major Edwin Glenn, was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using "the water cure." In his review, the Army judge advocate said the charges constituted "resort to torture with a view to extort a confession." He recommended disapproval because "the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture." Yet President Theodore Roosevelt defended the practice. "The enlisted men began to use the old Filipino method: the water cure," he wrote in a 1902 letter. "Nobody was seriously damaged." A Punishable Offense In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. "All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier. Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison." From here.

As for it being torture or not, there are a couple of convenient tests(The first is Erich "Mancow" Mueller, talk radio host, attempting to refute critics of waterboarding, the second is Christopher Hitchens writing about his experience with trying it).

There are certainly even nastier ways of hurting people(which, in part, is why waterboarding is so popular, none of that pesky physical evidence) but it is apparently way less fun than it sounds, especially if it can be repeated over and over, in combination with sleep deprivation, isolation, and the like...

Maybe the judge just thinks the lawyer that righthaven sent is an asshole, and he wants him to do as much work as possible. Judges basically get to do whatever they want in their own courtroom anyway. NPR had a story I heard yesterday where the judge refused to accept a motion to dismiss a case... from the prosecution. I didn't even know such a thing would be possible, but apparently judges really do have almost unlimited power in their little domains.

As for "conspiracy" I don't buy that nonsense, but it's pretty obvious the Housing Boom was caused by an inadvertent mistake by the Clinton administration, specifically the HUD. They passed a regulation that made it illegal to deny a mortgage application even if the citizen was too poor to pay it back. Hence a run-away boom.

So yes we can blame the Democrats, or at least the ones who were in the white house in 1997.

Hmm, I agree with most of the things you have to say... but there are plenty of other factors that filled the housing bubble. All the poor people alone wouldn't have had enough money to overinflate and overspeculate our economy to that extent :-P

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124578382 had a segment with some interesting numbers... about a third of the mortgaged properties (probably ones in "good" neighborhoods and grossly overvalued) were never even inhabited... they were simply purchased as investments, since the conventional wisdom back in the day was that real estate was always a solid investment / tax shelter.

With the artificially low interest rates thanks to the Fed Reserve, people with modest amounts of money were investing in real estate, or investing in these silly mortgage-backed securities to help rich people invest in real estate. There were even fraud rings where people would sell the same empty house to each other and pocketing the increasingly larger sums of borrowed money. The Planet Money people had at least one in their portfolio where a house that originally sold for $700K was eventually mortgaged out and foreclosed on for over $2M. And now there are all the silly strategic defaults, where lots of upper / middle class homeowners who can actually afford their mortgage want / need to sell for some reason, but of course can't find any buyers at the inflated price they bought it for, so really their best option is to go delinquent until the bank agrees to foreclose.

Anyway, if I had to pick a single thing to blame, I'd choose the Fed Reserve for artificially lowering the interest rates in a pathetic attempt to "keep the economy going", or an illusion thereof. If banks can't make money off of interest like they traditionally could, then of course they're going to have to get very creative. All low interest did was keep people speculating, because securing big loans was like free money :-P

IANAE, but I won't believe in any kind of true recovery until interest rates are back above inflation (assuming that too can hold steady at ~3% ). In the meantime, we're toying with some freaky financial system which I doubt anyone understands well enough not to get taken advantage of.

original manufacturer gets screwed over because the junk products are being sold on the market with their company name attached to it.

Which is different from this Slashdot story, where they are trying to sell stuff with Chinese company names attached to it, and claim they have paid up for the IP.

And come on, who really thought that China was willing to spend lots of money just to "build a railway between a few locations", especially when the contract has "technology transfer" written in it.

For some perspective from "the other side":
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/22/131520776/china-s-technology-transfer-draws-ire

Mr. SHIROUZU: Well, starting in 2004, four foreign companies - Siemens of Germany, Alstom of France, Bombardier of Canada and Kawasaki of Japan - they agreed with China to transfer technology so that China can come up with the high speed trains. China spent money for that. In Kawasaki's case, China spent close to $760 million to come up with a train that goes as fast as 155 miles per hour.

And over the last five to six years, China's train companies learn quickly, enough so that they started adding technology, innovation to the original technology. And they believe they've done enough re-innovating that trains that they came up with are their own technology.

BLOCK: You talk in one of your reports for the journal with folks at one of China's high speed rail companies, CSR, and a spokesman says, look, this is nothing like Kawasaki's bullet train. He has this great quote, we attained our achievements in high speed train technology by standing on the shoulders of past pioneers.

Mr. SHIROUZU: Yes. That's what they say. They don't deny the fact that their latest trains are based on foreign technology. They don't deny that. Foreign companies are saying that you haven't made enough additional innovation. There's no way you can call this your own technology.

But, China says, no, no, no. You know, we made enough additional innovation that we're calling these trains the result of our effort. So they feel that they can export these trains to places like U.S., Brazil, Russia maybe, and foreign companies feel that that is in violation of their contract.

So looks like a contract dispute to me. If the foreign companies made mistakes in "legal" in their haste to seal the deal or "gain a foothold", then too bad so sad.

Everyone with a clue already knew what China wanted. It's been known for years what's going on, see what the US Bureau of Industry and Security says:
http://www.bis.doc.gov/defenseindustrialbaseprograms/osies/defmarketresearchrpts/techtransfer2prc.html

Most US and other foreign investors in China thus far seem willing to pay the price of technology transfers - even "state-of-the-art technologies - in order to "gain a foothold" or to "establish a beachhead" in China with the expectation that the country's enormous market potential eventually will be realized. A primary motivation for investing in China at this time and despite the difficulties and risks involved, is in order to beat foreign and domestic competitors to the China market.
Numerous US high-tech firms have agreed to commercial offset or technology transfer agreements in exchange for joint ventures and limited market access in China. An increasingly frequent type of commercial offset is the establishment of a training or R&D center, institute, or lab, typically with one of China's premier universities or research institutes located in Beijing or Shanghai.

If you play with fire don't act surprised if you get burned.

Dave Barry's already gotten that experience.

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/15/131338172/humorist-dave-barry-and-the-tsa

From the article: It's unclear whether it would lead to an automatic, more intrusive pat down by federal Transportation Security Administration officials.

No, if the image is unclear, the TSA's reaction is not. If you are not sure, check out what Dave Barry went through when the image of his groin was "blurry" http://www.npr.org/2010/11/15/131338172/humorist-dave-barry-and-the-tsa

I don't know why we are relying on a Google translated article when Xinhua News Agency (state run) offers their own English translations (second copy) of this exact news release. And they're much more readable. Such news sites often offer me periodic enjoyment.

Patent and innovation discourse aside, it should be noted there's an interesting piece comparing the locality of populations in the US vs China. Let's face it, China (and the Southeast Asia region this connects them with) have a higher population density and a greater need for this high speed lengthy rail. It's also going to bring much needed economic development via freight shipments to very poor areas that the United States probably wouldn't experience on a corresponding scale.

Oh, also, there's some pretty entertaining rail-envy springing up.

And before you call it outright theft, consider the history of the "technology transfer" program that seeded all this. It sounds like there's going to be lengthy lawsuits lasting a decade or more and that the companies have reason to sue -- good reason. I wonder how this is going to affect future "technology transfer" programs to China. Also, one last bit of praise: NPR's radio coverage of this has been top notch.

I don't know why we are relying on a Google translated article when Xinhua News Agency (state run) offers their own English translations (second copy) of this exact news release. And they're much more readable. Such news sites often offer me periodic enjoyment.

Patent and innovation discourse aside, it should be noted there's an interesting piece comparing the locality of populations in the US vs China. Let's face it, China (and the Southeast Asia region this connects them with) have a higher population density and a greater need for this high speed lengthy rail. It's also going to bring much needed economic development via freight shipments to very poor areas that the United States probably wouldn't experience on a corresponding scale.

Oh, also, there's some pretty entertaining rail-envy springing up.

And before you call it outright theft, consider the history of the "technology transfer" program that seeded all this. It sounds like there's going to be lengthy lawsuits lasting a decade or more and that the companies have reason to sue -- good reason. I wonder how this is going to affect future "technology transfer" programs to China. Also, one last bit of praise: NPR's radio coverage of this has been top notch.

It would also be "less objectionable" if we were not exposed to significant dose of ionizing radiation.

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

No, it wouldn't. As long as we are put under duress to forfeit our 4th amendment rights, it's not acceptable. Please stop muddying the issue - the question you raise is one that undoubtedly has a technical solution. The one that I raise does not.

government officials can't do something illegal because they make the laws which define what is legal.

Oh really? So all that money congress spend investigating Rep Charles Rangel was wasted money? And Alaska Sen Ted Stevens was not convicted in 2008 for corruption in a court room not by an ethics board?

Falcon

government officials can't do something illegal because they make the laws which define what is legal.

Oh really? So all that money congress spend investigating Rep Charles Rangel was wasted money? And Alaska Sen Ted Stevens was not convicted in 2008 for corruption in a court room not by an ethics board?

Falcon

It would also be "less objectionable" if we were not exposed to significant dose of ionizing radiation.

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

As we can see here, the TSA doesn't like even blurry crotches. All that stuff we heard about "blurring the private areas" was a lie by the TSA and John Pistole because here we have someone who had to get patted down anyway because of a blurred crotch.

"The left hates China because of their disgusting intolerance of any human rights"

You mean like displaying the corpses of political prisoners in Body Worlds? (second link, NSFW) (third link)

I wonder when I can see Cheng Jianping in Body Worlds?

The TSA claims it is "only" the equivalent of a chest x-ray.

Point of fact - while I don't disagree with the general point of your comment, this statement is not true: they are arguing that it is a very small fraction of the radiation dose from a chest x-ray. Rough numbers, a chest x-ray will deliver ~100 microsieverts of ionizing radiation. The TSA specs say that a single scan delivers ~0.02 microsieverts. You would need to go through 5000 scans to reach the equivalent of one chest x-ray.

There are, additionally, scientists who dispute the accuracy of the 0.02mSv rating, and claim it's far higher, though I haven't seen numbers indicating exactly how much higher. Assuming it's 10x higher than the TSA published, you'd still be looking at 500 scans to achieve the amount of radiation exposure as a chest x-ray. For pilots, and other frequent fliers, this could move it into the realm of being a significant individual health concern, above and beyond the aggregate public health issues.

Even at the TSA-rated numbers, the x-ray scanners will pose an aggregate public health risk - even with a VERY low individual risk, you are multiplying this exposure across millions of passengers every year - you're going to see some non-zero number of cancer cases being triggered by the xray exposure from these devices. If the TSA-rated numbers are significantly lower than the actual radiation exposure (as some scientists are suggesting), you're looking at a ticking time-bomb, regardless of privacy issues.

They could opt for the millimeter-wave scanning devices instead, which do pretty much the same thing, but don't include the fun feature of exposing you to ionizing radiation; however, even if they moved all their scanners to that technology, that still wouldn't address the numerous legitimate privacy concerns inherent to the use of the technology in the first place, and there are some potential concerns about genetic damage caused by exposure to waves of this frequency as well.

Offshoring maintenance? As in having maint done in a stopover in Hong Kong or Cyprus instead of the States? I hadn't heard of that. Any more info on that?

Worse than this. See this NPR story. Aircraft are flown from their home base to Mexico or South America for maintenance by some airlines, because the overall costs (including the rather high per hour operating costs of moving the aircraft) is cheaper than domestic. Another NPR story lists some of the problems with this. An except from the second story:

One mechanic says that just a few days earlier, he and his colleagues were replacing a kind of rivet, commonly called a Hi-Lok, along the fuselage. The airline's manual said they should use a "shear" Hi-Lok that's carefully engineered to withstand a specific amount of pressure on a specific part of the plane. But the mechanic says Aeroman didn't have the right Hi-Loks on hand, so the supervisor told them to use "tension" Hi-Loks that weren't approved for that repair.

The mechanic says he resisted, because the wrong Hi-Loks "would cause, actually, a crack in the fuselage when there is turbulence." When the supervisor pressured him to use the incorrect part anyway, "I told him no, because the manual does not allow me to do that," he says. But the supervisor ordered him "to go ahead and install it, because we were in a hurry to turn around the airplane."

Another mechanic ticked off other problems at Aeroman. Some employees don't store glues at the required temperatures, he says. That means the glues could fail — which potentially means that parts of the airplane could fall apart.

And this mechanic says some workers can't even read the airlines' repair manuals. The manuals are written in English, but some mechanics at Aeroman can't read English — including him. So, the mechanic says, "you have to ask for help [from] another colleague. And in my case I ask for help, often." The problem is mechanics are under so much pressure to finish the repairs that they don't have much time to coach their colleagues.

Offshoring maintenance? As in having maint done in a stopover in Hong Kong or Cyprus instead of the States? I hadn't heard of that. Any more info on that?

Worse than this. See this NPR story. Aircraft are flown from their home base to Mexico or South America for maintenance by some airlines, because the overall costs (including the rather high per hour operating costs of moving the aircraft) is cheaper than domestic. Another NPR story lists some of the problems with this. An except from the second story:

One mechanic says that just a few days earlier, he and his colleagues were replacing a kind of rivet, commonly called a Hi-Lok, along the fuselage. The airline's manual said they should use a "shear" Hi-Lok that's carefully engineered to withstand a specific amount of pressure on a specific part of the plane. But the mechanic says Aeroman didn't have the right Hi-Loks on hand, so the supervisor told them to use "tension" Hi-Loks that weren't approved for that repair.

The mechanic says he resisted, because the wrong Hi-Loks "would cause, actually, a crack in the fuselage when there is turbulence." When the supervisor pressured him to use the incorrect part anyway, "I told him no, because the manual does not allow me to do that," he says. But the supervisor ordered him "to go ahead and install it, because we were in a hurry to turn around the airplane."

Another mechanic ticked off other problems at Aeroman. Some employees don't store glues at the required temperatures, he says. That means the glues could fail — which potentially means that parts of the airplane could fall apart.

And this mechanic says some workers can't even read the airlines' repair manuals. The manuals are written in English, but some mechanics at Aeroman can't read English — including him. So, the mechanic says, "you have to ask for help [from] another colleague. And in my case I ask for help, often." The problem is mechanics are under so much pressure to finish the repairs that they don't have much time to coach their colleagues.

I heard the interview with Wu on NPR a couple weeks ago, he didn't have a reason why Apple was so dangerous, it just was.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130982785

I think he is just adding keywords so he'll get more hits for his book.

Someone here suggested that "people need to get over being seen naked". I can't find that comment to respond to it because it has (rightfully) been modded into oblivion, so I'll post this as a general response: some of us don't care about being seen naked. Hell, if people are so concerned that I might be smuggling a bomb under my penis (it's not *that* big), I'd go naked all the time; I don't care. The only thing that would bother me is the cold. What *does* bother me is that there are serious health concerns with the scanning machines. I don't know about you, but I've known cancer patients. I've seen some die. It's not pretty, and we shouldn't have to sacrifice our liberty or our health just to FEEL "safe". If anyone needs to "get over" something, the original poster needs to grow a pair and stop being so scared that he's willing to sell out his own country and sacrifice his health to FEEL "safe".

this book salesman? Because it has NO content.

Yours In Electrogorsk,
Kilgore Trout.

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

I am not going to go through one of those machines.

VERY scary stuff here.....

As long as they don't say it's "umami"...

Remember, a person that only makes $15,000 a year uses less government than a person that makes $300,000 a year.

Government is a tool for wealth. People that make more money, use more government. That is what all those millions of laws are for, for rich people.

You know that Arizona immigration law? It was written by millionaires that own prison businesses: http://topics.npr.org/article/0eWt7HBbjtbJX?q=NPR

If you make a million dollars from government, you should pay government a million dollars.

by posing as "hikers".

Yours In Osh,
Kilgore Trout

o The scanners must be provably safe.

I don't care if anyone sees me naked. Hell, I'll strip and walk through the metal detector if they want. But there are serious questions about whether these new scanners cause skin cancer. Until that's resolved, or until some new, safer technology appears, I am not getting in one.

Ok, ok. Let me amend my statement.

Funny but it seems that a good portion of those stupid people are either in charge of creating laws or enforcing them.

Ok, yeah, that still doesn't quite get it.

Laws like that are more often the result of naivete and incompetence/ignorance than stupidity or malice.

I don't think it's naivete or incompetence but definitely ignorance, greed, or maliciousness.

Consider this: It's naive to think DRM won't negatively affect legitimate purchasers and will stop piracy but it's incompetent to outlaw breaking DRM and malicious to shut down internet connections based on mere accusations of piracy.

And, I will say outright that malicious (or at least sociopathic greed) is at play in Arizona where private prison companies helped draft Senate Bill 1070. Link

Oh, and there's red light cameras, too. Those in charge of enforcing the law shortened the yellow lights which resulted in an increase of rear end accidents and they did just to make a buck.

The law feels (or at least appears) to be written in black&white terms but it's a colorful world. There should be room for discretion and leniency as well as shame and punishment. You might say that that's already a problem as people on the bottom of the financial totem pole get hammered by the law while people on top have their lawyers apologize and they go about their merry ways and I would agree with you. And, frankly, I don't really have a solution short of bringing back 1950's tax rates since those with wealth and power use that wealth and power to influence elections and lawmakers to gain ever more.

Cause it is not just their job to enforce them, but a LEGAL OBLIGATION as well.

Talk about trying hard to keep people from doing any thinking on their own. They can just keep that in mind every time they need to decide how moral it is to bust a college kid for smoking pot and getting his federal aid revoked.

This is not new. Dateline 2007: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9015536

So, the Psyop Worked.

  Propaganda 101.

Speak for yourself when you say 'we'.

People who used daguerrotypes weren't exactly exactly numbering in the millions... the camera, plates, development equipment, etc. required cost a pretty penny even back then.

So let's take an objective look at things... I don't know which size that particular photo was, but one site on the interwebs lists as the largest daguerrotype plate a 6.5 x 8.5 inch plate. That's -huge-, but let's roll with it.

Now let's see what other photography equipment you're not likely to find with a typical tourist... how about a LEAF APTUS-II digital back? It's only 53.7mm x 40.3mm and has a resolution of 10,320 x 7,752 pixels.

Let's blow that sensor up to the size of that plate. The aspects don't quite match.. Losing a bit off the length there you're left with 52.7x40.3mm and 10,127 x 7,752 pixels.

So now on 8.5" we've got 10,127 pixels or ~1,191.4DPI and on 6.5" we've got 7,752 pixels or ~1192.6DPI.

Let's call it a round 1190DPI. I'd say that's pretty tight and you'd need at least a magnifying glass to see details no larger than a few pixels - which the blobby messes from the photograph discussed can pretty much be labeled as. (Note that the two photos in the article linked to are different photos - the detail from the photo referenced in the 'microscopy' section can be found on the original page: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/10/22/130754296/first-photo-of-a-human-being-ever )

That's not even counting large format digital camera backs or -scanning- digital backs (sure, exposure sucks, but daguerrotypes weren't exactly 1/800s wonders either - the second image was a 10-minute exposure) that will give you a much greater resolution yet.

And all that without the fuss and nasty chemicals and a result you can copy again and again and physically handle any which way you want (other than setting it on fire and electrocuting it, I suppose) without fear of smudging off the exposed elements, etc.

Then again.. most people don't care to have that much resolution in the first place. The primary mode of display these days is on the internet. While that's gone beyond the 800x600 'e-mail size' photos, by far the most gallery sites still do not post a full 5MP picture, never mind the 10MP that's just about standard now, unless it's a site specifically for great photos or panorama photos (which you most certainly would need a microscope for if printed out at the size specified above.).
In that respect.. it certainly is interesting.. and makes me wonder why so many people still buy into the megapixel race.

Actually even in Somalia, one of africa's most volatile regions, there is a thriving stock market that is ruining (enriching?) there lives. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/12/a_pirate_stock_exchange.html Oddly enough, Somalia would be a pure Libertarians dreamland. No taxes, no real government to fuss with, and everyone is free to set up any enterprising business.

Bonus points if guns are used to make that business even more profitable.

Trading this fast brings the market closer to optimal economic efficiency, where prices at any instant accurately reflect value. Latency contributes to the very inefficiencies that you blame these "large investment firms" from profiting off of.

Let's just relax and listen to this episode of Planet Money on high-frequency trading.

I know. It's NPR. They fired Juan Williams. Whatever. (FWIW: on the Diane Rehm show from Friday, they defend Williams, say there was a "rush to judgement" and say that NPR went "off the handle". You'd NEVER see most news employees do that on-air.)

W

Or is it? NPR recently ran a story reporting that "mentally stimulating lifestyles may speed up dementia once it hits in old age." It's not a long read but it's certainly relevent to the discussion. Maybe these 70-year olds are merely enjoying the delay effects described?

It's probably the case that the mental stimulation is having no effect on the disease itself, but is helping a lot with allowing the effects of the disease to be masked by the increased plasticity of the rest of the brain. In other words, you're going at the same time but you're suffering far less.